a dangerously high baseline¶

About a year ago, just after the delta peak, I predicted that (in the absence of NPIs) we would see COVID "settle" into a dangerously high baseline of daily cases. I warned the people in my life not to accept the inevitable "COVID is over" rhetoric and give up on precautions. I called it Flu 2: Deadly Boogaloo. I warned everyone I could think of that we were headed for another, much more infectious variant, which would spread quickly enough to constantly mutate to evade prior immunity. From there, we would see constant, deadly, disabling waves. It wasn't long before omicron arrived and, as predicted, completely overshadowed the transmission of all previous strains.

While "experts" lauded it as the "end of the pandemic," I begged everyone to understand that they were actually saying "This is the end of us caring." The propaganda started ramping up like crazy, endlessly hammering home a message of "We're done! COVID is a normal disease now, get infected all you want!"

I watched as everyone around me started submitting, one by one, to the deadly status quo. "You gotta live your life," they said. More and more, my friends and family stopped trying to avoid becoming statistics in this mass death, mass disabling event. People organizing for COVID safety stopped wearing masks, stopped demanding COVID leave, contact tracing, etc. We're watching history unfolding in front of our eyes. We're watching an entire international society accept a permanent pandemic. We're watching a baseline being laid, where death and disability is just... more likely. We're seeing the expansion of acceptable levels of despair.