With mid term elections coming up, all politicians will campaign on a Vaxed and Relaxed platform. They all will brag about what has been accomplished and ignore the steady state of over 400 deaths a day from COVID-19. If you say life has returned to normal enough times the sheep will believe you. The government cut its free at home testing program because they would prefer that you believe that the pandemic is behind us. It is not.
The vaxed and relaxed population took every precaution at the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down, social distanced, and wore masks. Yet the virus just will not go away. It persists. These folks got vaccinated and some even got boosted and with that done they decided the pandemic for them was over. They decided that for them the COVID virus was no worse that the flu.
The BA 5 virus is the most transmissible variant of the virus ever and we do not yet know the lingering effects of long COVID. Since testing is so lax, we have no clear picture of just how many people are being infected every day. BA 5 now seems to have peaked and cases are starting to fall.
During a typical flu season you might see on average 800 to 1,780 deaths a day. Right now there are about 2,3oo deaths a day from COVID-19. COVID is not like a mild flu. If the rates of death due to COVID remains the same for a year there would be 832,600 deaths globally. OCID is the number 4th cause of death in America right now.
COVID is here to stay. Any hopes of mitigation or eradication have long since passed. The virus will continue to mutate. The virus has found ways to escape the protections offered for the vaccinated. Though vaccines that were designed to offer specific protection against the Omicron variants are now becoming available, the uptake will likely be limited. That leaves plenty of human fuel to stoke the viral fire.