Myself and some friends went to a party three weeks ago. A few days later, a couple of us (myself included) end up with COVID. We're all vaccinated, with the full span of vaccines represented (myself: J&J). We tracked down the person at the party who probably spread it; they were also vaccinated, but only became symptomatic the day after the party. Typical story.

There's evidence that, at least, the vaccines (possibly with hypothetical boosters down the line) are effective in keeping those afflicted out of the hospital. I can only speak for myself, but it did do that. It sucked; about as bad as an influenza bout I had a couple years ago. Go down the list of symptoms and I checked all of them. Ten days later (almost to the day, amazingly), it cleared up.

What does the return to "normal" look like? Well, nothing will ever be normal again, if you define Normal to mean "the way things were in 2019". It isn't going away. Delta is no joke; so we wait until it clears up? Until we have another vaccine? And what about the 2022 variants? You want to wait until 2022, and we'll be in the same exact situation then, and you'll want to wait again, because the Omega Variant is no joke. And in 2023, the Zeta Variant will be no joke. No one is joking.

What do you want "normal" to look like? For many people, it may mean more opportunities to work from home. That can't work for a remotely significant portion of the world; tech is privileged in that it can, sometimes work, but that privilege is born on the backs of thousands of workers in healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, services, supermarkets, food processing, etc who don't have that privilege. This isn't "I can work safely, but most can't"; it's "I can work safely because most can't".

I don't want Normal to mean that. Sure that means we need to be smarter in every industry, to make work and gatherings generally safer. Get vaccinated. Wear masks. Quit it with the open offices and everyone two feet away from each other. But at least for me, it also means, I don't want to work remotely. I don't want that to be the norm in our industry. I want to collaborate with coworkers in person. I'm tired of zoom meetings. I'm tired of the PlayStation in my living room looking at me every time I walk to the home office. I'm tired of bringing on new coworkers and never knowing them beyond a line of ASCII text in a Slack direct messages list. Most of all, I'm tired of saying "yeah we're still work from home for employee safety" to my friends in healthcare and manufacturing, who inevitably feel jealousy and derision because not only was that never an option for them, but its only an option for me because it was never an option for them.

There are higher goals than safety; a time for it, certainly, but that time has passed. The world is not going to get safer. The only reasonable option is to adjust our expectations to be alright with a less safe world. You will get sick. I can say with certainty; it sucks, and may actually be the end for some people. This is going to happen, guaranteed, no matter how isolated you remain. You will make a mistake; you will get COVID; and you'll feel like an idiot, having made so many sacrifices to spend 18 months in isolation only to end up in the exact same place as those who didn't care.