Definitely. I don't think it's terrible at all given the alternative is tens or hundreds of thousands of additional people dying from Covid per year in the US. I guess we'll soon see the extent to which the public can be convinced to get booster shots every year. The governments of the world will have their jobs cut out for them, there will be a lot of resistance to forever Covid vaccinations as time goes on (and very lucrative for big pharma; Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are going to make a stupid amount of money over the next few years).

What will be interesting to find out in the near future, is if high vaccination rates + prior infections reduce Covid deaths below, say, 50k people in the US every year, or whether we're forever stuck with a sizable population killer no matter what (short of implementing elaborate forever cultural systems of lockdown; as in, those counter measures will have to become ingrained deeply into the culture, accepted and automatic). The next decade is going to be very weird and interesting on that front.

Vaccination is great but in addition to that we could also cut the ongoing death toll through public health campaigns to eliminate hypovitaminosis D. This could be done relatively cheaply.

https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/

From a public health perspective, the total number of deaths in a pandemic is less important than the timing of the case load. Too many cases in too short a period of time causes havoc in the health care system, and then helps lead to deaths from conditions unrelated to the pandemic (because hospital care is unavailable).

It may sound callous, but in terms of first priorities, reducing the total number of deaths from COVID19 has never been our #1 priority (to the extent that we've had any clearly formulated priorities at all). The implicit goal, as we were all saying in the spring of 2020, was/is "flatten the curve".

The actions of my local government align with that. Keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, but if you die because you didn’t get vaccinated, too bad so sad. Which seems the right way to handle it. Allow folks their individual freedom as much as possible, but don’t break the health care system.

> Allow folks their individual freedom as much as possible, but don’t break the health care system.

Unfortunately, these two goals, when combined with an infectious agent with a good-sized R0, are really in opposition to each other.

I don't think they need to be. At least not within reasonable bounds.

There's certainly an interesting discussion to be had surrounding individual freedoms vs the common good in a pandemic, but I'm not sure as to what extent we can even have those discussions while an embarrassing number of people feel that just being asked to wear a covering over their face in public spaces is an intolerable violation of their personal freedoms. When even the smallest requirements intended to protect the public's health are treated as if they were the harshest forms of oppression imaginable there simply isn't any room left for debate.

Still, for the population that believes a degree of concession can be reasonable and appropriate under such extreme conditions as a global pandemic I think it is possible to strike a good balance between individual freedom and individual and collective responsibility. I think we can work to protect freedoms while also insisting on some measures to help reduce the spread of a virus.

It doesn't have to be an either-or situation at least.

It's probably going to end end up the same as the Spanish Flu influenza variant, occasional localized outbreaks which are much less severe than the original pandemic.