Asklemmy

My magic eightball says, "Signs point to yes" - we're in a global state where every winter there are pretty significant health risks to flying and outbreaks... if you don't know someone with long COVID then you're extremely lucky, it's really degenerative in some people I love.

The difference is that if something like those first two COVID winters happened again it's unlikely we'd see any sort of mass order (and government mandate to allow remote work) in America like we saw before. But up here in Vancouver most jobs that can be done remotely have now shifted to that and people avoid going to crowded places when an outbreak is happening. You'll often just see Skytrain extremely vacant if people have heard a flu is going around.

Countries outside the US have invested independently in better staffed research teams to fight annual outbreaks and sane countries have rolling mailing lists (I got an invitation two weeks ago for my next free shot!) about when to top up your flu/covid/rsv vaccine. If the US wants to be a breeding ground for outbreaks we can't stop them, but we're trying to insulate Canada as well as possible and working with the EU to do so.