For boosters, I'm "too healthy" and do not qualify under even the most generous reading of the CDC guidance.
On office access, my office is still not open while the rest of my family has gone back to work/school. My spouse is higher risk and my kids only got their first shots last week.
So why the fuck am I, "the low risk one", stuck at home alone all day? Who the fuck am I protecting? What is the point anymore?
It's like getting pulled over and being able to say "trust me officer, I've got a license" and they believe you. Honesty and waiting your turn buys you nothing. Total incompetence.
It's not about you.
I'm not convinced that boosters should be required, in order to go back to work. But, really, to answer your question: It's not about you. It's about the people you're around. At work.
Just like everything else with COVID -- the reality is that we have to account for the affect on everyone, and not just ourselves. Individually, we have extremely low odds of suffering the worst from COVID. Collectively, hospitals have overflowed, 700,000+ people in the States have died, and many are suffering long-term health consequences.
It's not about you. It's about everyone.
That being said: I'm in Canada, where boosters are still uncommon. I've never heard of any booster requirements, just to go into the office.
Also to clarify, I'm very much NOT arguing for forcing people to return to work or an in-person model of work. In fact, I quite like the "remote style" of work and would continue it even while in person. I just miss my commute and the scene.
When we were dealing with a completely and utterly unknown virus for which we had no information, no effective responses, no useful therapies or treatments, no real understanding of how it spread, no vaccines, and not even a clear idea of where community spread already happened, taking some extreme measures in response to a pandemic made sense.
We now have much better information than we had plus vaccines faster than we ever had vaccines in response to a new pandemic before plus the resilience of the COVID survivors, both known survivors and unknown survivors, and useful therapies and treatments.
The risk calculus has changed and so must the response shift from the public to the private: from government to individual.
I don't think it has shifted all that much in many countries. Yes, we have vaccines and better treatment. At the same time, vaccination rates aren't as high as they should be, plus we're dealing with a new variant that's more than twice as contagious and probably causes more severe cases. We're also dealing with waning immunity.
I wouldn't go as far as saying these factors offset each other completely, but last year, we've had all kinds of non-pharmaceutical interventions in place (masks, contact restrictions). Many countries have now abolished these.
I might buy the "individual choice" argument if negative effects were only felt by those choosing to not get vaccinated, not wear masks or similar, but once hospitals/ICUs overflow, other people suffer or die too.
This bears repeating every time this gets mentioned:
In the US, even before the pandemic, it was "standard" for ICUs at most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities to operate at 80-90% capacity[1] and for ERs to be overwhelmed by patients in bad flu years[2].
SARS-CoV-2 is basically already an endemic virus, just like influenza, and in the near-term it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that somehow miraculously unlike influenza, it won't have a material impact on hospital utilization rates.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...
[2] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
That's the only thing I can work out - they are worried about one person getting sick and dying on campus from a back to work mandate - then what happens?
If this reasoning was logically sound then the same should apply for all of the existing fatal diseases listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics. Let's also not forget seasonal flu.
Most likely your office is still WFH because nobody cares. Maybe nobody else wants to go back, maybe the company saves money, maybe someone high-up is still nervous about covid, probably a combination of those three.
It's similar to how at most places there are signs everywhere saying "please remain 6 feet apart", "due to covid ..." and people don't even follow these rules. Nobody bothered to take the signs down.
Ultimately if you're vaccinated, there's not really a point to masking or social distancing. The exception is masking in public areas like supermarkets and doctors' offices where sick people have to go and it's not a big deal. Or in areas where there is hospitals are overflowing and there are too many unvaccinated, like earlier in the year.
And beyond that, limits on individual activity have as much to do with collective regional transmission rate as they do with individual risk (though CA numbers look pretty decent recently).
- Your personal risk if you caught COVID
- The risk that you would spread COVID to other people if you caught COVID
- How productive you can be at home compared to your office/school
Your overall health only impacts the first one which is why you haven't been eligible for a booster. You still have just as much risk of spreading COVID as anyone else so unless you would be much more efficient at the office/school, it still makes sense to stay home.
For example, I would bet you would agree that your kids are getting more out of going to school rather than doing it remotely so that third variable shifts the overall equation to favor them returning to in person schooling.
Saying because people in my family didn't know about this, and would have wanted this relatively new information to help make a decision.
Given a choice, she'd rather be the one that's home all day but that's sadly not to be.
1) A booster
2) A less restrictive workplace or perhaps an "essential" job.
3) A medical condition that precludes the vaccine.
Maybe it would help to work from a cafe, or even outside on a picnic table. You can tether to your phone.
Of all the things I miss from pre-pandemic life, commuting in to the office is NOT one of them.
A debate wouldn't be productive but let's just say a cafe or park is not a long term solution.
That may just be a factor of my neighborhood, as many people that could re-locate, relocated to the same areas.
Given all the commercial space available as companies vacated, its just the free market in action.
What I'm finding is that people rejected one environment, but have not been given a framework to navigate an unstructured life. And like a familiar structure.
For some person having a ritual marking the beginning and the end of the workday can also be useful to balance work and personal life.
This doesn't help with missing the coworkers of course, but depending on what kind of job and where they live maybe something can be done about that too ?
If anything, not being in the office should give you more time to exercise in the way you want to.
I'm not looking for everyday, but one day a week would be nice to have more interactive discussions about the work that week etc.