[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.