Thread by @wolftivy

People get sick sometimes with transmissible viruses like cold, flu, and COVID. We can either accept that gracefully, or radically transform society for the worse before being gracelessly forced to accept it anyways.

Let it rip.

In Feb 2020, lockdowns and extreme caution were warranted. We didn't know how bad the virus was, and we thought our society could fight it.

By June, when lockdown enforcement became a politicized double standard, it was obvious we weren't going to win without a miracle.

Many hoped for a vaccine miracle. But the vaccine only partially helped. By then the vaccine was politicized too, and political tensions were at highest for decades, so no one was in a position to publicly notice that the virus was, on the grand scale, simply not that bad.

The consequences of letting it rip are:

Mingling with the unwashed public is somewhat more damaging to your health than it always was.

Ventilation becomes more important.

Slight increase in endemic severe illness at most amounting to a year off life expectancy on average.

At this point, continuing with the lockdowns+boosters sham barely even puts off the inevitable. It's time to relent.

We might worry that the politicization makes it impossible to back down, but the smart consensus broke that barrier in march/april 2020, and we can do so again.

Political tensions are waning, costs have become very obvious, and the science is clear: we lost. Time to move on.

We can and should still avoid getting badly sick through personal habits, healthy lifestyle, and vaccines, but COVID is no longer an acute collective health problem because we have run out of useful collective action to take.

We should also continue to change our social spaces to be more hygienic. Do more outside in the sun. Open the windows. Crank up the ventilation. Use more wood and copper surfaces. These have always and will always be worth it.