The sooner we accept that COVID-19 is the new flu, the better

No more fearmongering, no more lockdowns, no vaccine mandates. The disease is here to stay and we need to return to something like normal before it's too late.

Not everyone is going to get the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s indisputable fact—though we are dishing out around 770,000 doses a day currently.

No matter what the government does, no matter what we do, there will be a large minority of Americans (and people throughout the world) who will simply never get the shot.

COVID-19 is not going away. According to experts—and to common sense and reasonable observation—the disease will become “endemic” rather than go away altogether. The pandemic will dwindle as more and more people are vaccinated or become sick and gain natural immunity, but it will continue to evolve and variants will pop up and spread and we’re basically stuck with it now.

Just like the flu.

When the coronavirus first began spreading, there were plenty of people who falsely claimed it would be no worse than the flu, ignoring the fact that it was a novel virus that humans had no immunity against. But with time, the comparison becomes more apt. The flu is not going away, either. Many people get yearly flu shots and I suspect that COVID-19 will be, if not the same, at least similar. The really bad part is over or drawing to a close in the developed world, though for many poorer regions it will take much longer. It’s time to accept this and it’s time for us to move on.

We may need to keep getting booster shots on a yearly basis, we may not, but for the foreseeable future, COVID-19 is here to stay. It’s just becoming a lot less frightening. The rate of hospitalization among the vaccinated is extremely low. The rate of death even lower. Among children, the rate of hospitalization and death is so low I can’t really fathom why kids need to wear masks at school.

I’ve been a proponent of masks and vaccines and even lockdowns especially before the vaccine became so readily available, but I think it’s well past time that we all moved on with our lives. It’s time for professional scolds to stop making outrageous claims—because no, not wearing a mask is not like drunk driving, no matter how many hot takes make that outrageous leap.

It’s also time to stop mocking people who refuse to get vaccinated. Vaccination is a personal choice and even if we disagree with those who make it (and I do) we have no right to tell other people what to put in their bodies (or what not to, for that matter—including ivermectin). Yes, I realize that fighting the culture war is the most important thing anyone can possibly do with their time, but maybe efforts to divide us over every single possible topic, from vaccines to comic books, is just one way to keep us busy while the super-rich and powerful laugh all the way to the bank?

I agree with Michael Tracey who writes:

Most (sane) observers now acknowledge that COVID is well on its way to becoming an endemic disease, and will not be fully eradicated any time soon, if ever. Therefore it stands to reason that COVID has ceased to be an issue which ought to compel everyone’s constant, hyperventilating attention; nor does it any longer constitute an acute “crisis.” And so whichever factions have a vested interest — commercially, institutionally, politically, or otherwise — in maintaining the appearance of “crisis” need to be treated not just with intensifying skepticism, but when appropriate (which is often) outright contempt. 

If we acknowledge that COVID-19 is not going away, in part because too great a segment of the population will not get vaccinated and in part because it’s a virus that evolves quickly and can still be passed on to the vaccinated, then we have to accept that this is a disease that we’ll be dealing with, as a society and a nation and a global population, for many years to come.

The last thing we need is an even more divided society. Steps to segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated are dangerous slippery slopes. We should be concerned with the unintended consequences of overreach, even when that overreach is ostensibly designed to save lives. Measures that made sense at the outset of a global pandemic no longer make sense when there is no chance of actually stopping the disease.

And if you don’t buy the slippery slope argument, I wonder how you can hand-wave away Biden’s most recent vaccine mandate: That US businesses with over 100 employees must require vaccines or weekly testing is an act of government overreach so galling, so authoritarian that it truly beggars belief. That president-elect Biden said he would not mandate the vaccine only serves to show just how flimsy the word of our political class truly is—on the left and the right.

Cheerleader of petty tyrants, Chris Cillizza, argues that Biden should double-down on the vaccine mandates because they poll well with the general public, as though policies that infringe on basic human liberties should only be discussed based on their popularity. “Biden's presidency will be defined by how he is perceived to have reacted to the coronavirus pandemic,” Cillizza writes. “And with his vaccine mandate, he's on very solid ground.”

How delusional do you have to be to argue that Biden is on “solid ground” by foisting a vaccine mandate on people like some modern day emperor? This isn’t just bad political advice, it ignores fundamental human rights issues that the left should care deeply about. The only thing that matters to the Cillizzas of the world is whether or not an issue polls well.

The expansion of federal power will surely never come back to haunt the DNC or the American public in the years to come.

Enough is enough. Enough of the hysteria and control tactics and fearmongering. COVID-19 isn’t going away no matter how many freedoms and rights are quashed.

Short of an entirely universal vaccine mandate (which will never happen, no matter how much talking heads are pushing authoritarianism in response to the disease) or other more enticing incentives (which could happen, but nobody seems to be pursuing a vaccine-tied-to-stimulus plan) we will muddle through.

People will keep getting sick and some will die and others will have lifelong side effects and many others will be just fine, and slowly the population will become more immune to the disease and it will become endemic; just another influenza-like sickness that we should treat accordingly, soberly and with our liberties and dignity still intact, not sacrificed—once again and always—on the alter of security.