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The risk absolutely has gone away. Vaccination, acquired immunity, and the general drop in the number of effected people have plummeted COVID cases down to below the noise floor on risk analysis. If you go out and get sick, chances are it's just the flu, just like was true every year before the pandemic.

If you are letting fear of disease get in the way of living a healthy and fulfilling life today, that's an unhealthy trauma response.

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>If you go out and get sick, chances are it's just the flu

This is demonstrably untrue.

We in the US are in the 13th covid wave since the pandemic started from tracking wastewater data which is our most accurate way of determining transmission (fortunately at a much smaller peak as of right now than most waves)[1]. The past four years have had far higher covid transmission rates on average than the two years we consider societally "when covid was happening". It does not strictly follow seasonal patterns like the flu, we routinely get summer waves that peak quite highly. The flu does not do this. Millions of Americans have ME/CFS like symptoms after covid, some extremely severe.[2]

[1]https://www.pmc19.com/ [2]https://academic.oup.com/ooim/article/6/1/iqaf010/8379704?lo...

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> Vaccination

...doesn't prevent transmission

> acquired immunity

...only lasts 6 months or so, wanes, and a new variant arrives

> the general drop in the number of effected people

Long COVID is severely underdiagnosed

> that's an unhealthy trauma response

The precautionary principle is a rational response, especially what we already know about the widespread systemic damage that repeat COVID infections cause.

The only reliable protection right now is consistent N95 usage in public spaces, and very few people are doing that (though some certainly are, as I see them every day).

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