I don’t know about you, but the seemingly constant ping-ponging of the pandemic has been truly exhausting.
Lockdown! Just wait for the vaccines! Take off your mask if you’re vaxxed! Put them back on! Vaccine mandates! Boosters?
I wanted to share 2 pieces, both of which are predominately forward-looking at the pandemic:
#1 above asks some challenging questions, specifically about the United States’ pandemic response. In particular, this question would likely yield 100 different answers if asked to 100 different people, and I think that’s a problem:
What are we actually trying to achieve in the United States?
Public health guidance & messaging are frequently late or confusing, and often both. I believe the sense of aimlessness and reactivity is the source of my personal (though I’m likely not alone) sense of exhaustion.
#2’s title is certainly clickbaity, but I’d encourage you to look past it. The piece (fair warning, it will probably take ~30 minutes to read) offers some compelling arguments for how the next few chapters of the story will play out:
As many countries are going through another wave of infections, including some where the vast majority of the population has been vaccinated, many are starting to despair that we’ll never see the end of the pandemic. In this post, I will argue that, on the contrary, not only is the pandemic already on its way out, but the virus will be relatively harmless after it has become endemic.
There’s a lot more here, so if you have the time, give it a read.
