My experience is that the bottleneck is in the appointment technology. I have been unable to make a booster appointment for weeks. I took a chance and walked in to the Amazon SLU clinic this weekend. An onsite steward steered me to that same appointment site to make an appointment and magically there were 92 slots available for immediate appointments at the location where I was standing. I "booked an appointment" and walked right in and got my booster. YMMV but my experience this weekend was very low friction.

New Zealand and Taiwan show all this death and disruption was optional. We have never even bothered to attempt what has proven to work. Quarantine, test, trace, isolate. Harsh restrictions on travelers and the infected so everyone else can live their lives. We utterly failed as a nation. No country spent more money, or lost more citizens, and there is no sign that anything was learned. Even in liberal publications there is no sense of all the better ways we could have approached this. There is still no push for a testing, tracing and isolating system.

@2: the science geeks in my life explain it like this - viruses want one thing. They want to live out their lives silently in their host. Killing their host defeats the purpose. This virus is evolving into something that will be more akin to the common flu - with similar death rates among vulnerable people, less death among healthier hosts. This allows greater reproduction and survival for the virus - its primary goal. I share your concern that no one will even notice this and continue restrictions for a public health situation we've accepted for many years. The one exception would be masks - I wouldn't mind masking up for certain situations (bus/plane) where one may be stuck inside during flu season with many people. This attitude is common in Asia.

There was a Seattle Times article that noted hospital crowding now is due to elderly individuals in that need to be discharged into assisted living, but there is a shortage of that, so they linger in hospitals beds.

@5 I'm sorry and with all due respect your "science geek" friends are clearly not actual epidemiologists or virologists.

A virus doesn't "want" anything. Any immunology scientist would never phrase anything in such a way. It's all about election pressure.

And this virus, quite unlike the flu, due to is abnormally long incubation period and high degree of asymptomatic spread has almost zero selection pressure to alter its rate of fatality. It doest kill people right away it takes weeks to months. It often doesn't have significant notable symptoms right away causing people to get medical attention and quarantine.

A virus with high fatality rates or that has short incubation or immediate symptomatic pathology has selection pressure to become less deadly as, of course as you say, people die or get obviously sick before they can spread it. The flu more often has almost immediate symptoms. As do most colds.

Covid19 is not in any way like this. And why is has been such a nightmare scenario for epidemiologists. It exists in the 3 Bears "sweet spot" of not too hot or not too cold.

Pardon: "selection Pressure"

Be afraid, be very afraid...oh yeah and give up all your freedom while you are at. Induced Mass Psychosis is great way to attain power over people, just ask the German Fascists or the Seattle Marxists.

@8 spot on. Also othering just like Fascist did.