Jeanne Marrazzo, new leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, everyone:
Can I make a quick digression? We recently had a long Covid [research] meeting where we had about 200 people, in person. And we can’t mandate mask-wearing, because it’s federal property. But there was a fair amount of disturbance that we couldn’t, and people weren’t wearing masks, and one person accused us of committing a microaggression by not wearing masks.
And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life. We really don’t want to go back. It was so painful. We’re still all traumatized. Let’s be honest about that. None of us are over it.
So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.
Edit - thanks for the help in bypassing the paywall.
It is incredible to me the mental gymnastics people will go to in order to forget not even a decade ago when people were by and large absolutely 100% not sick this often. This is what tells me they know what they’re doing. They understand what’s happening, but have chosen the comfortable(?) lie until the curtain falls. If you can remember your favorite old tv show, you can remember what life was like before now. It wasn’t this, and there is a very clear through-line of cause and effect.