Which of these "covid view camps" do you fall into?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Out of those Camp 3. I'd like something like Austria, vaccinated can live life as normal and go everywhere with no mask mandates while unvaccinated are banned from most public places.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To elaborate my viewpoint is basically Camp 5 for people who are vaccinated and Camp 1 for people who are not.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There's no way this forum is majority 4 and 5. The vast majority of this forum was decrying the supreme court striking down Biden's tyrannical osha mandate. While I'm happy and relieved that was struck down (and it'll help Biden and the economy in the long run politically), I was also pretty disappointed that the Supreme Court upheld the CMS mandate (especially because it was so close), while many of the milquetoast Republicans on this forum thought both decisions were the right choice.

Vaccine mandates are an outlier issue for this forum, which is much more opposed to other restrictions like mask mandates and lockdowns. Seems pretty obvious why: This forum is overwhelmingly vaccinated already, so vaccine mandates have zero effect on the lives of most people here. I find the individual liberty argument compelling, but for most it's the easiest policy to sign on to in order to "end the pandemic" at no cost to themselves.

I've only come around to opposing vaccine mandates because of Omicron. If vaccines substantially lowered the risk of spread, I could still see the logic in requiring them, especially in healthcare settings — we should be able to require people to make certain choices if it substantially reduces the harm they do to other people. With Omicron, however, spread is inevitable, so there’s not really a compelling logic to requiring vaccinations; it still reduces your risk of dying and is a good individual decision to make for the vast majority of people, but the broader societal benefit just isn’t there anymore.

The benefit is hospital resources. If Omicron hit before the vaccine, we'd probably be in an Italy 2020-type situation. However since Omicron is basically just a cold for a vaccinated person, the vaccine is alleviating that pressure. As it is, there's still enough unvaccinated people to make hospitals too strained and create a really bad situation if a vaccinated person had to go to the ER for a different reason.

It'll probably be moot soon though, South Africa shows that Omicron will soon be over.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The results of this poll are honestly concerning. For a while I actually felt like this forum was too hawkish on COVID, but now it seems like the backlash in the other direction is getting out of control.

What is the ideal position in your view? Camp 3?

I already posted:

Somewhere between Camp 3 and Camp 4.

Not that I think these camps accurately reflect the range of possible policies around COVID, but camp 5 definitely seems massively irresponsible (and camps 1 and 2 massively overreacting).

What about Camp 5 applying only to fully vaccinated people?

Like here's kind of my issue with mask mandates, they seem pretty pointless in regards to me.

Like I'm fully vaccinated and boosted. I suppose I could still catch Omicron but it'd fall somewhere between a minor cold and completely asymptomatic if I did. Now I could still infect other people perhaps...but I really only associate with people who are also vaccinated and at low risk. So how is the risk any different from during flu season or if there's a cold going around? Furthermore cloth masks don't protect much against Omicron anyway and expecting people to wear N95s every time they go grocery shopping, to the mall or a sporting event or music show is obviously not feasible and not going to happen. So really me and other people like me going unmasked is really no different than going unmasked during flu season three years ago.

BTW I was at the Mall of America yesterday and I'd estimate only about half of people there were wearing masks. Now granted there's no mask mandate in Bloomington and the mall policy is to only "recommend" them but also consider the demographics of people who go to the MoA. Based on the region it's almost certainly a heavily vaccinated and Democratic group. So I bet a decent chunk of the unmasked are actually probably Democrats who basically just think that they're vaccinated now so they should be able to just live their lives as normal.

Now the anti-vaxxers, f[inks] them, who cares. They can be restricted and have these mandates put on them, no sympathy. But a lot of people don't want to be inconvenienced just because those utter morons exist.