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Comment by kingds | Hacker News Reader

in what ways have we not already returned to normality?

Well flu vaccination rates are down from pre-covid levels, I'd guess more antivax sentiment's also impacting other common vaccines.

This inanity is impacting even vaccination rates for rabies in pets! https://time.com/5538926/dogs-vaccines-antivaxxers/

I think we’ve returned to a new, more callous form of reality, where mass injury, illness, and death are normalized, and any real concern for public health or intervention, including that which was considered entirely rational before COVID, is now greeted as impossible or insanity.

Yea, this is one of the sad long term consequences I've taken away from COVID: I used to think that when a crisis happened, we would all pull together and rely on each other to do the right thing and collectively act to help.

Now, I know that when the next crisis happens, half of the country is going to whine and complain, deny, protest, defy, and belligerently do everything in their power to deliberately make it worse. I've totally lost faith in humanity.

I think it very much depends on where you live. Rural America returned to normal a long time ago. Many cities, like San Francisco and Atlanta, have not and are still feeling the effects to varying degrees.

Urban American returned to normal a few months later than Rural America, but we're talking like, April 2022. SF is still suffering from some dynamics that started during COVID but it's not like there are still lockdowns or compulsory masking or anything like that.

> we're talking like, April 2022

Masks were mandated on the subway in New York until September 2022. I'd consider this to not be "normality".

Sure, my figure comes from the west coast — NYC a few months later. I don’t think that detracts from the overall sentiment.

Fair enough.

I lived in Atlanta for most of my life and commuted downtown daily for over a decade. For unrelated reasons, I moved away in July of 2020 during the lockdown.

I returned this past week for work and the city certainly did not seem back to normal. The areas around Broad Street and the intersection of Baker and Peachtree are usually bustling during lunchtime, it was a ghost town.

If your definition of normal is not lockdowns or mask requires then yes we're back to normal, but in large cities it's a new normal and certainly not a pre-pandemic normal.

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