Is Covid making a comeback?

Mask mandates are creeping back in in the US—have we learned our lesson?

Surprise! Covid is back.

This season features a hot new SARS-CoV-2 variant: “Eris.” Similar to past and future variants, people will get sick. A thing we seem to have forgotten happens to human beings.

As animals are prone to do, we get colds, flus, viruses, and suffer from a multitude of other diseases. It is an inconvenient part of life, that in fact humans have done well in addressing. We now have ample tools available to aid us in surviving illnesses that once killed us. We also have old classics like the immune system. Oddly, some of us are more terrified than ever.

I think many of us were afraid of Covid early on. Few seemed to know what it was, how serious it was, or how it spread. Media and government warnings did not help. The daily Covid counts certainly did not help. Imagine if the CBC tracked and reported cold and flu diagnoses daily? (And also counted a death toll that included people dying with a cold or flu, rather than from a cold or flu.) Imagine preventing people from celebrating Christmas, going to work, attending school, exercising, or moving about freely every winter, on account of flu season. Imagine forcing people to cover their noses and mouths for two years straight to avoid… getting sick? Making other people sick? Communication? (A known means of forming social bonds, endangering efforts to divide us.) Imagine doing so despite the fact it was clear that doing so made no difference in terms of Covid spread. Imagine locking people in their houses every winter, knowing that every winter is flu season, and some of those flu seasons are quite bad. Imagine forgetting what life is really about and demanding everyone around us forget as well.

We truly did lose our minds. Will we do it again?

This week, Morris Brown College in Atlanta announced they were reinstating mask mandates on account of “positive cases.” A post on the school’s Instagram account explains a return to Covid protocols — including physical distancing, contact tracing, quarantining, a ban on large gatherings, and masking — for the next two weeks. (Just two weeks to stop the spread amirite!)

The fact that people are actually still getting tested for Covid is strange in and of itself. (Why? You’re sick. Go to bed. Whether you are sick with Covid or some other cold doesn’t make a lick of difference to your recovery… But also, where are people getting all these Covid tests?! Is now a normal household item?) Even stranger is the desire of some to go back to the charade that took place over the past three years, revealed to be primarily a money grab on the part of Big Pharma.

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Jamie Lee Curtis on Instagram: “And we’re BAAAAACCCCKKKK. No, not Michael Myers but masking will be. COVID is on the rise. SO MANY friends now are really sick. BE MINDFUL. WEAR A MASK if required or even if you feel unwell and are out in public spaces.”

August 23, 2023

"This is what endemic means -- it doesn't go away," Dr. Jayne Morgan, executive director of Health and Community Education at Piedmont Healthcare, told CBS News. That’s right! It’s not going away. Which means we all need to move on with our lives. We can’t freak out and lock down every time someone gets sick.

… Or can we!