Even through the worst of the pandemic, children going to school has always been my primary concern. I'm totally fine with having to work from home for a few more years. Restaurants and big events closed sucks, but I can live with that. I personally really miss church, but I can totally see how a big crowd indoors singing is one of the most high-risk activities you can do. I'll survive.

But children need school. They need to socialise. Homeschooling can work, but it puts a serious strain on the parents, the kids, and their education. Until last week, Dutch kids would be quarantined until tested if a certain number of their class mates tested positive, but in the face of omicron, that lead to entire schools closing, so they ended that.

With everybody vaccinated and boosted, Covid is as under-control as it can possibly get. It's not going to get better than this for the time being, and with the vaccine and omicron's lower lethality, deaths seem to be down. The biggest problem there is that there are still unvaccinated people occupying ICU beds, leading to non-Covid related treatment getting postponed, and sometimes leading to deaths.

I think we should still do all the low-hanging fruit: wear masks, keep distance where possible, wash often, but other than that, open everything that's not clearly a very high-risk activity. And voluntarily unvaccinated people should not fill ICU beds that other people need.