Yeah, that's close to my experience as well. TBH, I feel so alienated right now, I've lost friendships over my refusal to return to a pre-COVID life, and my brother tried to pathologize my caution when I turned down an indoor concert that would probably have several hundred unmasked people in attendance, if not more (no mask mandates or anything, unsurprisingly, at the venue). In theory, I'm not necessarily even against doing indoor shit at non-busy public places for a little while (as long as I keep my N95 mask on the whole time), but idk, indoor concerts and being shoulder-to-shoulder with 1000s of peeps still seem like one of the riskiest activities, even with a good respirator.

I think the endorsement of "let it rip" is exactly why so many people are in full-on denial mode, initially it was just all the antivaxx chuds, but now that :biden-alert: and other liberal public figures have given the OK to go back to normal, liberals are completely on board too with "letting it rip", and have been for a while, with just complete disregard for how their actions can affect people less privileged or more at risk than they are.

I don't know how long we can keep up the pretense of "back to normal". Like I'm very skeptical western governments would bring back those protective measures unless maybe some of the rich ghouls start dying in droves or something, but as more and more people succumb to COVID-caused sickness, disability, and death, or know someone important in their life who suffered from those things, I feel like this denial will only last for so long and that something will have to give at some point, idk. Or we'll lock down because of an ebola pandemic or some shit, since the scientists say that climate change will only increase the likelihood of pandemics, as the barrier between wildlife and humans gets reduced more and more from these animals being displaced and forced to relocate closer to people. :yea:

I just don't see a way that COVID wraps up anytime soon so long as we continue this eugenic "let it rip" policy, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, there's no evolutionary pressure for COVID to get weaker because the time from contracting COVID and dying from it is so long. So we are literally flying blind with no way of knowing how COVID will evolve (something tells me that giving this virus unlimited vectors in which to spread and evolve though probably isn't the greatest idea).