Around here, I’ve mostly forgotten about COVID, at least in practical terms. Obviously, it’s changed us for the rest of our lives, but I don’t find myself gripped with the fear that I had in 2020 or 2021. I’ve had it. I survived. I’ve been exposed since and not gotten it. It sucks, but we have treatments now. Vaccines. If I feel sick, I wear a mask to protect others. That seems to be mostly the extent of what precautions I can take these days without looking like a crazy person to the locals.

One thing about being off social media is that I’m not constantly assaulted with information of a dubious nature about the disease. Hell, I’m not constantly inundated with fear-based information about most things. I find I can think more clearly about such things.

That said, my RSS reader spit out an article about getting kids to mask up again (I won’t link it) and it said that “COVID is more like HIV than the flu.” And there it was. That old fear, that “the world is falling out from underneath me” terror that I lived with daily for almost two years.

I did not miss it, the old fear. I’m no longer sure how seriously to take proclamations like that. The Metafilter comments are definitely taking it to task, so maybe that is bullshit. I’m just going to do my best to forget it. Ignorance is bliss and all that. Or in this case, at least, ignorance is not living in abject terror every waking moment.