#1. For most of my adult life, I knew that I could carry diseases that may not be harmful to me, but fatal to others. And yet, only during the covid pandemic was I admonished to protect others by, for example, wearing masks or staying away from others. That's a good lesson, and I'll try to abide by it.
#2. For better or worse, and rightly or wrongly, mandates only work to the extent that people are willing to comply with or enforce them. If compliance or enforcement wanes, the mandates lose their legitimacy. Once the legitimacy of the mandates is lost, it's be better to discard them. When mandates are reimposed, they should have an expiration date or a metric that once attained, would end them.
#3. Higher quality masks (N95 and better) are more available now than they were at the start of the pandemic. They're cheaper, too. So it's possible to forgo masking mandates and yet ensure that people can protect themselves. A caveat, though: cheaper doesn't automatically mean affordable. Even a dollar a mask might be too much for some people.
#4. I really, really wish the vaccine makers or the CDC or the FDA or whoever controls such things re-calibrates covid vaccines on a regular basis as the virus mutates. It probably doesn't do much good to keep getting boosters of the same vaccine.
#5. The covid variants will always be with us. That was always going to happen as soon as the virus escaped Wuhan. The existence of variants, by itself, is not a slam-dunk argument for continuing emergency measures.
#6. It's hard to balance my own situation as someone who (I hope) doesn't have pre-existing conditions that would make it very bad to get the virus with with the situation of someone who does. I shouldn't ignore the concerns of others simply because I have a higher risk tolerance. That doesn't mean I should endorse any and all measures to address the pandemic. But I must constantly remind myself that others feel differently from me, and they feel that way sincerely. I need to respect their fear and take it into account, especially when I disagree with them.
#7. Always keeping point #6 in mind, I believe we need to take necessary risks for openness and living with covid. I sincerely hope--but am not confident--that if/when the tables are turned, and I'm the vulnerable one, I'd be comparably willing to support taking those risks.
#8. Mandates intrude upon civil liberty. That by itself doesn't mean they are wrong or should be eliminated. But it does mean that the mandates need to be justified and defended. Saying "it's not about civil liberties" is not a defense. It's a question-begging attempt to define an inconvenient problem out of existence.
#9. People like me, who say mandates intrude on civil liberty and who insist that they're inherently political bear the same burden as those we criticize. I demand that others settle on or at least engage the questions of at one point and on what basis do we decide which intrusions are justified and which aren't. I need to do the same.
#10. We'll never hit the sweet spot, the spot where the intrusion on civil liberties is perfectly balanced with safety. At best, we'll favor one or the other only a little more than necessary. At worst, we'll intrude too much on civil liberties while making things even less safe. In between: we'll do a little or a lot of both. Let's try to keep it as little as possible.
#10. I'm among the lucky few who (so far and knock on wood) have kept my job throughout the pandemic. I was able to work at home. I even continued to receive regular pay raises before the now obvious inflationary trend was so obvious. In the early months of the pandemic, my employer went so far as to say, almost explicitly, that we weren't expected to get as much done as we would have in the office. People like me should remember how lucky we are before we criticize those who want to scale back the pandemic restrictions.
#11. We need better standards and better tailored rules about covid. If you're sick, almost any symptom you can have is a symptom of covid, especially if you strictly and literally read the CDC guidelines and strictly and literally abide by the rules that various businesses, employers, and other institutions impose. In practice, none of us follows follows those guidelines completely strictly and literally, though some of us do so more than others.
#12. What I write here concerns covid as I/we currently know it. I can imagine other, much graver, deadlier, faster acting, and more communicable diseases that could afflict us. I sincerely hope nothing like that happens.
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