A face mask lies on the ground, amid the coronavirus pandemic, as a person walks by outside Pennsylvania Station in New York City, October 5, 2021.

We are so over Covid-19

1. More than 3 in 4 Americans (77%) support the relaxing of CDC guidelines on masking and social distancing in areas with low Covid rates.

2. Roughly 3 in 4 (73%) also agree with the statement that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.”

3. Among that last group, more than 4 in 10 want there to be no future Covid regulations or mandates put in place.

And according to a new AP-NORC poll, 44% of Americans said they often or always wear masks around people outside of their homes. That’s down from 65% in January 2022 and 82% in February 2021.
These numbers come even as Omicron subvariant BA.2 has become the dominant strain in the US.

What these polls makes clear is that, almost no matter what, most people do not want to go back to where we were three months ago, or a year ago or two years ago.

Which is why you saw politicians — Republicans and Democrats — falling all over themselves over the past two months to revoke mask mandates and other mitigation measures. (No state currently has an indoor mask mandate in place.)

And it’s also why no politician is going to be leaping to put any sort of mandate back in place, even if the Omicron subvariant produces a bump in cases nationwide. (Covid cases are rising in 13 states this week compared to last week, according to Johns Hopkins University.)

There’s no question the highly contagious subvariant will continue to spread in the coming weeks.

But it’s equally clear that the days of government-mandated mitigations — primarily through mask mandates — are over.

The Point: The pandemic feels like it’s over for the majority of Americans. Even if the virus isn’t quite done with us yet.

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