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Why didn’t we just let it burn through originally? by DakotaDomer

Because it leads to more sickness, more death, and more community spread. At some point we need to seriously use the tools at our disposal to reduce community spread down to a manageable number. We then need to implement enough contact tracing for people to actually make the right personal decisions off good info.

This summer didn’t have to happen. We didn’t have to declare victory over masks as if they were the enemy. If we focused our efforts on stopping the virus and not stopping restrictions - none of this had to happen. (Alternatively we could have made it to 90-95% vaccine adoption and stopped it too)

We screwed up - and now we’re going to need more restrictions - because it’s fairly clear that 90+% immunity will not be permanent and if we have a virus present in 1% of the U.S. population on any given day…it will never, ever, go away. A pandemic that lasts 20 years will end up with a lot more deaths than one that lasts 1 or 2.