[basisword]

Maybe he’s right. Hopefully he’s right. But personally, I feel like this is just more shortsightedness. I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office - only for restrictions to be increased a month later as cases rise. This cycle repeats and people seem to not learn. They get overly optimistic and then kicked in the teeth. Yes, things are better than they’ve been but 4 months ago we also thought it was over until Omicron arrived. How long until another more serious variant comes along that escapes vaccines? Predicting the end of Covid when the world is in the middle/late stage of a huge wave seems super shortsighted.

[warning26]

Exactly -- remember this past summer when the pandemic was over? Or how about after fall, when the pandemic was also over?

If there's one thing predicable about the the pandemic, it's that it is unpredictable. I, too, hope that omicron is the much-hyped final wave, just like delta was supposed to have been. But to declare that it definitely, totally, is the final wave right now seems a bit premature.

[peteradio]

I think there is reason to be a bit more hopeful in America at least when you consider a few things:

1) Natural immunity is quite robust: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

Now, that is according the CDC whose governance has sought to give the impression that natural immunity is not so great (perhaps for generally good reasons). But now they see fit to give the impression that natural immunity is pretty substantial, clearly giving much more immunity weight than vaccine alone. So that is some clear signal just reading between the lines.

2) Seroprevelance indicating natural exposure is quite high overall in the U.S. and especially so in some regions, see for yourself what that looks like in your own region: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ (nucleocapsid is proxy for exposure and recovery)

Now, you might look at those numbers and see only 30% or so, but realize this is end of October statistics. Many (dare I say all?) regions in the U.S. have seen en exceptional wave since those statistics were collected. I would be confident to say 50% - 100% increase in statistics of recovered.

edit: I'm just some guy on the internet so if you think this stuff is wrong or misrepresented, call my ass out. If you are not capable of parsing the references I give you, assume I have bad intentions.

[Yoric]

...and then comes BA2.

I'm not very optimistic about that one.

[watwut]

> I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office

This has nothing to do with employer thinking and trying to predict covid.

This is all about some managers feeling lonely. And even as it sounds cynical, I really mean it and think it is factor in this. The other factors are also some management feeling less in control or thinking it will be more productive. But imo, them feeling lonely, especially those who have no real social life outside of work, is a factor.

People love to pretend that companies and management are all about rationality, but they are not. Their emotions influence their actions a lot (so are developers emotions etc).

[ryandrake]

Exactly. COVID has made very clear humanity’s amazing ability to play make-believe, making failed attempt after failed attempt to get “back to normal”. We have this idea that “life as it was in November 2019” is the One True Normal, and we must keep trying to return to this Normal lifestyle, despite that pesky, stubborn reality.

Every time restrictions relax, and we rush back to capital-N Normal, cases rise, deaths rise, hospitals fill up, and it’s nothing but “Surprised Pikachu” faces from politicians! We keep not learning, over and over.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to snap us out of this trance and accept lifestyle changes. A “9/11 quantity of deaths” every 3 days is apparently not enough.

[immibis]

We could get back to normal if people would stop thinking that we could just declare it, as if the virus could read and follow government proclamations. All it takes is to not spread the virus for several weeks.