[raydev]

> relatively harmless due to vaccinations and previous exposure

This year's dominant strain was significantly less lethal/debilitating for unvaccinated people as well.

The restrictions are still reasonable in hindsight, especially in places like Canada where hospital capacity was quickly overwhelmed in all waves leading up to and until this Spring.

Restrictions obviously can't create a world with "COVID zero" but it can slow down the infection rate so that hospitals can still treat other emergencies (although, again, in Canada it was barely enough). Kinda hard to run a hospital as usual if you have 30 people per day rolling in and they never leave.