Bingo. It’s long since time to stop spending this much energy on this myopic fixation on Covid. There are billions of other things for each individual to worry about besides the spread of Covid. And that is a fact, which doesn’t care about the feelings of people pushing society to continue waging an impossible war on a respiratory virus.

Endemic aerosolized variants could ultimately cull / mame everyone with a weakened immune response. The end game could be permanently higher overall mortality and reduced respiratory fitness in a significant part of the population.

If humans evolve to adapt then those adaptations may come at the cost of something else, given large enough time scales.

I don't think my number will be called. In the US, the hysteria is already fading even in the most liberal areas. In certain states like SC and FL, the people have pretty much decided that the pandemic is over. I really don't foresee this flipping back to lockdown in those areas. Self sufficiency is a virtue, one that I have been cultivating long before any of this happened; owning land and knowing how to use it makes a lot of the bullshit happening in the cities rather trivial. Working remotely takes care of the rest.

There's no reason for me to brag here. You can pretend I am an unhealthy, fat hick if it makes you feel better. For anyone else who is thinking of becoming a bit more self sufficient and is chafing under the yoke, I would recommend leaving the large cities foremost, and buying a house on some arable land. Read "The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" for a primer on what is possible.

Or more verbosely, "Mental health improves when you stop consuming propaganda"

It really is though. Early in the pandemic I was consuming the daily COVID stats, worrying myself over and over about it. Then one day I just decided to quit the news cold turkey. I immediately started feeling a lot better.

When society in your country or in every country strays too far from what you know is right, you can either become a revolutionary, or become self-sufficient, alone, or as a community. I don't have much advice for revolutions. For the other, all you can really do is move somewhere with like-minded people, rely as little as possible on the government, and try to live among your peers unmolested. This will be very hard if you like city life; the city is antithetical to self sufficiency for obvious reasons. But if you can accept a simpler life (and this does not mean lonely, boring, or anti-intellectual), I highly recommend it.