When masks were reintroduced last week, my main concern was not masks themselves, but that it would restart the whole cycle of increasingly harsh restrictions. If vaccine passports and ‘WFH if you can’ are implemented, which looks increasingly likely, then door is wide open for the rule of six to return a couple of weeks later, followed by harsher restrictions later on.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. We all know masks don’t work and have no impact on case rates, as proven by no link between mask mandates and positive test results from almost every territory in the world.
Vaccine Passports also don’t work, and actually risk the opposite effect, of increasing vaccine hesitancy.
Working from home *may* provide a small amount of relief but if it’s as highly transmissible as expected, it’ll be a drop in the ocean.
Effectively, every small step toward more restrictions, especially those that have been proven to fail in other countries, makes it easier for the government to say “we tried, but it didn’t work” and then bring in even stricter controls. The problem for us, and them, is that it isn’t clear even with Delta, let alone Omicon, that lockdowns actually work. Look at New South Wales in Australia; months upon end of one of the democratic world’s strictest lockdowns and increases in case rates only seemed flat along the Y axis.
