Sounds like you're fortunate to be in a relatively sane place.
I was recently traveling with a stop in Washington DC's Dulles Airport and saw many masked people, including, sadly, some masked children. Still, fortunately, the masked were clearly a small minority. Maybe 1 in 40-50.
In my neck of the skycrapers, very urban PMC, I think the appetite for cooties theater is gone. There always was some pushback, and I would expect it will be much be stronger now, against any mandates, testing, tracing, masks & etc. So I'm optimistic that this isn't going to become a major issue again-- just some noise burbling up here and there, like nutty Rutgers or kookoo Lionsgate, all this sort of thing getting heavy pushback.
However, what keeps me from singing the victory song as we head into autumn 2023 is that I thought this in the fall of 2021, too, and then look what happened. By December 2021, where I am, cooties theater had descended once again in full force. Everyone canceled everything, and in my family over the jabs compliance there was such an absurd drama, it would make for 13 episodes of a total crap soap opera. People I had thought sane, decent, and sensible truly lost their minds, obsessing over testing and one even took to wearing a mask to sleep in her own bed.
But anyway, things are different than they were in the fall of 2021. More people are sick, and more people have woken up.
Here is my personal operating assumption for how things are shifting:
Group One is going to go on believing that they did the right and good thing to get all the jabs, believing that it would have been so much worse otherwise, and all the deaths following the jabs were just coincidence. They also go on believing that jab injuries are very rare, but that it's totally common to suffer heart damage, neurological issues, embolisms, fatigue, headaches, weird allergies, etc as a consequence of a covid infection (and of course they've all had covid, and several times). They will therefore ascede to masking and other rules, should they be imposed, and an important minority of this group will blame "anti-vaxxers" (which is anybody and everybody who for whatever reason didn't want the injections, but especially the people in Flyover Land who, OMG, voted for the Bad Orange Man). There will be some ugly episodes and flaming drama on Twitter!! And these people, I mean the group that thought they did the right thing to comply, and that jab deaths and injuries are rare, they are going to just go on complying, getting their injections, and also taking loads of pharmaceuticals for all their many ailments. And therefore I expect (very sadly) that maybe half of them them will be gone from this earth in, oh, I suppose, about 5 years or less. Some of them may hang on for a good while longer than that, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Group Two took one or two or maybe even three jabs, but they've figured it out that it's not a good idea to go on jabbing, the cooties show is cockamamie shale, so they're not taking more, and many are aggressively seeking to heal themselves and clear the spike. They may be with us for many years, and possibly most of them (I hope) for their normal expected lifespans. They do not trust the health authorities as they once did and they will resist mandates, masking & etc.
Group Three figured out it was a con early on and didn't take jabs.
So in just a few more years, I expect that we'll be living with mainly Groups Two and Three-- not a constituency for cooties theater.
no subject
I was recently traveling with a stop in Washington DC's Dulles Airport and saw many masked people, including, sadly, some masked children. Still, fortunately, the masked were clearly a small minority. Maybe 1 in 40-50.
In my neck of the skycrapers, very urban PMC, I think the appetite for cooties theater is gone. There always was some pushback, and I would expect it will be much be stronger now, against any mandates, testing, tracing, masks & etc. So I'm optimistic that this isn't going to become a major issue again-- just some noise burbling up here and there, like nutty Rutgers or kookoo Lionsgate, all this sort of thing getting heavy pushback.
However, what keeps me from singing the victory song as we head into autumn 2023 is that I thought this in the fall of 2021, too, and then look what happened. By December 2021, where I am, cooties theater had descended once again in full force. Everyone canceled everything, and in my family over the jabs compliance there was such an absurd drama, it would make for 13 episodes of a total crap soap opera. People I had thought sane, decent, and sensible truly lost their minds, obsessing over testing and one even took to wearing a mask to sleep in her own bed.
But anyway, things are different than they were in the fall of 2021. More people are sick, and more people have woken up.
Here is my personal operating assumption for how things are shifting:
Group One is going to go on believing that they did the right and good thing to get all the jabs, believing that it would have been so much worse otherwise, and all the deaths following the jabs were just coincidence. They also go on believing that jab injuries are very rare, but that it's totally common to suffer heart damage, neurological issues, embolisms, fatigue, headaches, weird allergies, etc as a consequence of a covid infection (and of course they've all had covid, and several times). They will therefore ascede to masking and other rules, should they be imposed, and an important minority of this group will blame "anti-vaxxers" (which is anybody and everybody who for whatever reason didn't want the injections, but especially the people in Flyover Land who, OMG, voted for the Bad Orange Man). There will be some ugly episodes and flaming drama on Twitter!! And these people, I mean the group that thought they did the right thing to comply, and that jab deaths and injuries are rare, they are going to just go on complying, getting their injections, and also taking loads of pharmaceuticals for all their many ailments. And therefore I expect (very sadly) that maybe half of them them will be gone from this earth in, oh, I suppose, about 5 years or less. Some of them may hang on for a good while longer than that, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Group Two took one or two or maybe even three jabs, but they've figured it out that it's not a good idea to go on jabbing, the cooties show is cockamamie shale, so they're not taking more, and many are aggressively seeking to heal themselves and clear the spike. They may be with us for many years, and possibly most of them (I hope) for their normal expected lifespans. They do not trust the health authorities as they once did and they will resist mandates, masking & etc.
Group Three figured out it was a con early on and didn't take jabs.
So in just a few more years, I expect that we'll be living with mainly Groups Two and Three-- not a constituency for cooties theater.