I honestly suspect Omicron is going to mark the end of the COVID “state of exception” in America \u2013 it’s apparently so infectious that everyone will have the experience of seeing multiple close contacts catch it.
So, in mostly vaccinated social circles, the wave will make a sufficient impression of people catching COVID and it mostly being a bother to overwrite any earlier impression of outbreak as catastrophic; it will join the other human coronaviruses as perpetually in circulation, coming in waves that might have a body count in a nursing home you’ll probably catch and feel under the weather. You might even see people born from here out developing their immunological armor the old-fashioned way, by getting repeatedly infected as resilient children
Unvaccinated and mixed social scenes, by contrast, would presumably experience the wave as more traumatic in a way that pushes them to join the first group or generates sufficient will to apply other measures to raise vaccination rates
I absolutely believe a flood of even minor cases might saturate our healthcare system to the point of collapse in the meantime, but I don’t think the truth of this fact would generate enough will to apply or sustain any measures sufficient to make the difference in preempting it, so feh
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