I enjoy such balanced pieces and I think in times of hugely divisive topics like with COVID we need more of them! My big thanks and compliments to the author.

> We have no idea what the effects of Omicron on long COVID will be, but evidence of lingering symptoms should make us wary of just letting tens of millions of people get needlessly infected.

That... reads a little bit like what your typical hypochondriacs say. We have lingering symptoms of other illnesses as well (like bronchi-pneumonia).

Mathematically speaking, all hypochondriacs are technically correct, but the same applies for many other things that people just don't think about. There is no such thing as "zero percent risk".

In the end it's all about (a) the risk % and (b) whether that % is acceptable but alas, I don't think humanity will soon agree on actual numbers related to COVID. That's the crux and the core of the entire segregation issue.

It boils down to: if COVID truly kills 3% of people then that's horrifying; but if it kills 0.03% then why bother at all?

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I sympathize a little more with the "vaxxed and done" group. Endlessly worrying about risks that get smaller and smaller as herd immunity is nearing completion does not seem to be worth shutting down society for (if the risk is indeed getting smaller but random bits and pieces of news make me think this is the case). And we're also likely mortally wounding the economy so much that the kids whose physical health we are so worried about right now will have to deal with our mess and suffer severe mental health problems for decades (maybe a next Great Depression even?). I think that's a worthy discussion to have.

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"We need to keep the measures for the kids"

I hear you but I don't think people will ever arrive at an universal consensus on this topic. Even if the lockdowns last forever a lot of cultures around the world will still not change. E.g. where I live kids having a scratchy cough merits a pat on the head and insistence of drinking hot tea with lemon and honey and a few pills, and the matter is considered done (and 99% of the time it really actually is done).

On the other end of the spectrum we have parents that give me murderous looks if I sneeze in the mall at a 5m distance from their kid. Sorry but it gets a little absurd at this point. I get it, you get over-protective when you are a parent but you should also abide by the society you live in. If you are that worried then maybe don't live in the city? I definitely have not gone out just to murder your kid so maybe loosen up a little. We're all in this together.

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Many things in this world carry some risk and we just accept it and don't think about it. And I literally mean thousands such things. As COVID starts looking like a minor threat more and more with time (also illustrated by the "flurona" thing lately; it almost sounds like some medical professionals are ready to call COVID "a flu"?) we have to start asking ourselves if we aren't perpetuating extreme measures for a dwindling threat.

Continuous reassessment and readjusting is key. Maybe it's time to take a hard long honest look on how things are today. As a starting point, many doctors are saying that Omicron is more infectious but that a lot of their patients barely feel it.

IMO we shouldn't get distracted by segregation and point fingers at each other. That solved absolutely nothing so far and it's not realistic to expect it to change in the future.

Let's work on getting some actual numbers and see what we should do next?