Year Three

In early 2021, everyone started talking about how it had been a year since the pandemic started. Then last fall, everything referred to how it had been 18 months. Now we're in the "it's been two years" period, and already I'm seeing references to the fact that we're entering year three.

Lots of countries and communities are now considering COVID endemic, "a constant presence in a particular area of the world or in a particular population. ...It’s not necessarily present at the ideal level, but it’s expected and somewhat predictable." What does that mean? A lot of places are just doing away with vaccine and mask requirements all together, including restaurants, schools, and entire cities. The UK, which had provided home rapid tests to anyone who wanted them so they could test in advance of socializing, is now ending that program. It seems like a ploy just to appease people who think there's been too many restrictions, especially with elections and such upcoming in some places.

But infection rates aren't really at a low level or even their lowest level in the past year. I can't help but wonder if people had just been a little more patient and waited a few weeks for things to get even better, would this have a better outcome. I've probably said it here a bunch of times, but I keep going back to the parachute analogy: "The parachute has slowed our descent, we can take it off now" 😕