It's just terrible what's been happening, and there's no promise of reprieve in sight. Leaders are throwing around the term "endemic" like it's some sort of hard stop on mandates. It's not.
Some credible analyses project the "endemic" will erase longevity gains of the last 20 years, and disproportionately erase any gains towards parity that had been made among racialized and poor populations in the US over that same period.
It has yet to show any sign of killing at less than an order of magnitude greater than the flu. In the US flu deaths are between 12,000-50,000 yearly. If nothing changes, COVID-19 can be expected to claim 120,000-500,000 lives per year during the endemic phase.
Some perspective using 2020 CDC numbers for USA...
Heart disease: 696,962
Cancer: 602,350
COVID-19: 350,831
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
Alzheimer’s disease: 134,242
Diabetes: 102,188
Influenza and pneumonia: 53,544
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 52,547
Not captured there are underlying behavioral causes.
Also from CDC, Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the USA. It claims about 450,000 people per year (a lot of those cancers and heart diseases in the list above). About 10% of those deaths are from second hand smoke, which causes about 7000 cancer deaths and 33,000 coronary heart disease deaths in people unlucky enough to have to live/work with or otherwise tolerate chronic smokers. And that's why we have smoking mandates, because if you want to kill yourself, that's up to you, but there are at least some rules to make it a bit harder to kill your children, spouse, patrons, co-workers, etc... All those by-laws and smoke free jursidictional rules which are basically, you know... otherwise known as "Mandates"
I don't see COVID much differently than smoke free mandates. Some may not want to get vaxxed, but restrictions on their ability to endanger others are entirely appropriate, which includes exclusion from non-essential activities and gathering, as well as workplace, masking, testing, travel and quarantine requirements.
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