Originally Posted by
freshmanjs
No, I'm not talking about disease metrics. I'm talking about quality of life.
Where I live, we've gone from:
April: Most businesses closed, all restaurants closed, all schools closed, all colleges closed, people not even going to the grocery store / struggling to get a slot on instacart, people putting off all minor healthcare, all salons closed, and essentially no social interaction - all with a huge number of cases.
August: Nearly all businesses open, nearly all restaurants open for outdoor seating and takeout/delivery, most schools open in person, many colleges open in person, back to normal (except with masks) at stores, back to normal with doctors, salons opened, and lots of social interaction - all with a tiny fraction of the number of cases we had in April.
To me, yes, that's massively better. Yes, there are regions that haven't completed that transition yet, but it's not far off. Certainly not 2022.
On your comment about new cases being massively worse today, that's almost certainly not true. During the NY/NJ peak in April, there were more new cases than there are now...they just weren't testing enough to document them. The evidence for this is in the much higher hospitalizations and deaths then vs. now.