> Society is collapsing under the weight of our reaction to the pandemic, not under the weight of a pandemic itself.

What restrictions? We've barely done anything to contain the pandemic. We had, what, a month or two of restaurant dining closed at best. The mildest possible hint of a suggestion that maybe you should cover your mouth instead of directly huffing air from strangers?

> There is no reason why a pandemic that kills fewer than 1% of people would cause anything to collapse. (That's about how many people die every year anyway, of normal causes).

This is completely wrong. For one thing, even at the best of times the death rate of covid is a bit over 1%, and the number was likely somewhat under-reported. The death rate is much worse when hospitals are overwhelmed (as they are just about everywhere now, and have been in large parts of the US for most of the pandemic).

And that's _only the excess deaths from covid_. There are also excess deaths from all of the other things people can't get treatment for, or can't get good treatment for. Injuries, cancers, heart attacks, and other diseases are going undignosed and untreated or undertreated due to the load that covid is imposing on the hospital. Someone need not die of covid in the hospital to kill someone else whose bed they were taking up.

And of course that says nothing about the number of people becoming disabled because of covid. We don't know yet exactly how many people are getting long-term disabilities because of covid, or how long long-term will be, but the numbers don't look good.

> The current variant spreading like wildfire in the US came from South Africa (or maybe Botswana). The previous one came from India. The original one came from China. Even if we had 100% compliance in the US with whatever measures you want, it wouldn't stop covid, unless we could somehow force everybody in the world to do the same thing, which is impossible.

For one thing, we don't actually know if that's where those variants came from. The countries that are doing a better job of sequencing infections and monitoring the course of the pandemic are more likely to spot a variant early. But let's set that aside for the moment. I agree that a zero-covid strategy relies on world-wide cooperation, but there are much better approaches that we could take than what we have been. A sensible approach to travel related quarantining rather than nonsensical travel bans would be a good start. Demonstrating leadership in how to handle a pandemic in general would be another. Contract tracing, regular testing, and better responses to localized outbreaks would all help. The US in particular is probably better positioned than a lot of the world to contain ongoing outbreaks to be more regional simply because of the size and low population density here.

> Nobody has ever satisfyingly explained to me how this meme of "if everybody did the right thing it would all be over by now" makes any sense. Australia, New Zealand, and China are not back to normal yet.

Even countries with better responses than the US are going to have imperfect responses, and people are still people everywhere you go. There's plenty of room to do better, but on average the places with a better response have had more time with lower levels of infection. There's no closing pandora's box now, and normal will have to include continually re-evaluating the situation and adapting, but we can have a better time with a better response.

That's the point of my original post too. Maybe nothing would have kept kids from having periods of remote schooling, and missing other social events (or, in places that have continued to have no restrictions, maybe nothing _should_ have actually justified a pro-covid attitude that's been adopted). Better planning and better responses, and more responsible behavior overall, could have given kids more certainty, more safe days in class, and a clearer understanding of how to live in the world as it exists today.