I think there’s a lot of other-optimizing and social pressure intended in this. Even if one is in the minority of immune (or near-immune), most of the people you care about aren’t, yet. And we all know there are significant numbers of fools “out there” who’ll claim immunity even when they don’t have it. If we normalize risky-seeming behavior for a significant fraction of the populace, we’re likely to see a whole lot of impostors spreading the disease.
Also, reinfection is very rare, and the vaccine is quite effective, but neither is perfect protection. The only real answer is the combination of immunity and risk-avoidance that really makes it impossible to spread.
Both of these motives combine to make me prefer NOT to return to normal, even if I personally am no longer at high risk, until it’s just no longer a newsworthy quantity of new infections.
I think there’s a lot of other-optimizing and social pressure intended in this. Even if one is in the minority of immune (or near-immune), most of the people you care about aren’t, yet. And we all know there are significant numbers of fools “out there” who’ll claim immunity even when they don’t have it. If we normalize risky-seeming behavior for a significant fraction of the populace, we’re likely to see a whole lot of impostors spreading the disease.
Also, reinfection is very rare, and the vaccine is quite effective, but neither is perfect protection. The only real answer is the combination of immunity and risk-avoidance that really makes it impossible to spread.
Both of these motives combine to make me prefer NOT to return to normal, even if I personally am no longer at high risk, until it’s just no longer a newsworthy quantity of new infections.