When you can prove in a court of law that person "x" infected person "y" at "Z" date/time - then you can say this with even a minimal level of confidence.

Don't want to get sick? Order groceries online and have them delivered to your door.

Are you saying that because it can’t be proven that you infected someone else, it is okay to put others at risk?

And that since we can’t hold individuals responsible, everyone else needs to alter their behavior?

That is, one infectious person wandering around a grocery store gets to force everyone else to shop online and is not doing anything wrong?

Those delivery people may be carriers. Better to grow and eat your own produce and avoid society at all costs.

Ok, then when does this end?

I'm all ears!

Violence. It gives people a lot of perspective very quickly. Sooner or later, it's where we're going to end up.

As far as I know the current view is that it won’t end, but it will become a regular the same way the flu is. There may even be yearly shots combined with flu shots for all the new variants that may evolve.

I truly hate that guy, but “facts don’t care about your feelings”.

I don’t think OP is concerned with yearly shots or covid hanging around. It’s the lockdowns and other restrictions that people care about.

Bingo. It’s long since time to stop spending this much energy on this myopic fixation on Covid. There are billions of other things for each individual to worry about besides the spread of Covid. And that is a fact, which doesn’t care about the feelings of people pushing society to continue waging an impossible war on a respiratory virus.

Except that when these variants strike in waves they overwhelm hospitals that even the fittest among us still need from time to time. Perhaps permanently increased hospital capacity and a few million fewer people is a better trade off. Assuming there aren't other less visible costs.

The existence of Covid won’t end, but the pandemic has to. Living with overloaded hospitals forever, or doubling/tripling our health systems capacity to deal with it permanently don’t sound like very good ideas.

Endemic aerosolized variants could ultimately cull / mame everyone with a weakened immune response. The end game could be permanently higher overall mortality and reduced respiratory fitness in a significant part of the population.

If humans evolve to adapt then those adaptations may come at the cost of something else, given large enough time scales.

I agree with it's constant forever, just like flu. maybe we get a breakthrough treatment / vaccine for all virus' like that.

But we don't regular wear masks during winter nor enforce limited capacity or hours or quarantines. Personally of those options I'd be down for short term, financially assisted family quarantine and punishments for going to work sick.

Maybe it doesn't? At least not until medical science catches up to allow the level of social/global interaction we had been taking for granted for decades.

In the history of our species, we have never been this connected on a global level before, we were potentially sitting on a timebomb just waiting for the appropriate viral trigger to bring it down.

It doesn't end until you make it end. When I close my laptop, I am unaware there is even anything going on; I don't wear a mask, I am unvaccinated, and I am fortunate enough to live in a place where people largely behave in this same way. My life is 100% the same as it was 3 years ago.

If you're restricting your own behavior, stop. If you're being restricted by third parties, seriously consider moving or outright disobeying. This doesn't end until people (not politicians) make it end.

Unless you live in a 100% isolated, self sufficient community, your number will be called eventually. If that's the tradeoff you want to make then enjoy your life. But bragging about your life being the same as it was 3 years ago isn't the brag you think it is. Meanwhile, everyone else is living 90% of the life they were 3 years ago, but they'll continue that for a long and healthy life.

I don't think my number will be called. In the US, the hysteria is already fading even in the most liberal areas. In certain states like SC and FL, the people have pretty much decided that the pandemic is over. I really don't foresee this flipping back to lockdown in those areas. Self sufficiency is a virtue, one that I have been cultivating long before any of this happened; owning land and knowing how to use it makes a lot of the bullshit happening in the cities rather trivial. Working remotely takes care of the rest.

There's no reason for me to brag here. You can pretend I am an unhealthy, fat hick if it makes you feel better. For anyone else who is thinking of becoming a bit more self sufficient and is chafing under the yoke, I would recommend leaving the large cities foremost, and buying a house on some arable land. Read "The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" for a primer on what is possible.

That's fair, if you're really that isolated then fair enough. Self sufficiency is great if you're able to achieve it, I commend you for that. My point is merely that the behaviours you describe (not wearing a mask, not being vaccinated) are counter to the self-sufficiency you're so fond of. Being that self sufficient sounds like something you wouldn't want to lose because you happened to catch COVID from your irregular contact with the rest of civilization.

I believe this has been more eloquently described as: “ignorance is bliss.”

It really is though. Early in the pandemic I was consuming the daily COVID stats, worrying myself over and over about it. Then one day I just decided to quit the news cold turkey. I immediately started feeling a lot better.

Or more verbosely, "Mental health improves when you stop consuming propaganda"

I also am thinking of moving again.. I'm not so worried about covid and I'm 100% willing to vaccinate but using masks forever is not something I'm ok with. I have some medical issues that make that really nasty and there is still no proper process or ID for this. I'm willing to accept more risk. I've lived in 4 countries so far so this is fine for me.

But the problem is that governments change. I'll move somewhere and a new government will get voted in that'll change the game again..

When society in your country or in every country strays too far from what you know is right, you can either become a revolutionary, or become self-sufficient, alone, or as a community. I don't have much advice for revolutions. For the other, all you can really do is move somewhere with like-minded people, rely as little as possible on the government, and try to live among your peers unmolested. This will be very hard if you like city life; the city is antithetical to self sufficiency for obvious reasons. But if you can accept a simpler life (and this does not mean lonely, boring, or anti-intellectual), I highly recommend it.

You live in a place where people are largely unvaccinated? So, anti-scientific anti-citizens? What a 'shithole' country that you must live in, right?

It will be over if we go inside and plug into a matrix like world. That was the missing piece from the first lockdown. Mass VR simulating our world.

Do you have any evidence of a significant covid outbreak being traced to grocery shopping?

Yes just type covid breakout grocery store in google to see all the local breakouts in your area.

wow, i thought you were being sarcastic (I was laughing at your lmgtfy 'joke') , but they actually do list them. awesome!

https://corpo.metro.ca/en/covid-19-cases-ontario.html

I said shopping, not working there.