Statistically, we obviously aren’t there in terms of mortality or long term health impacts. Mentally, many people (and employers) are there. Morally is up for debate given the statistical bit. Public health officials are kind of all over the place on both the mental and moral aspects so it’s not surprising the public is also all over the place.
I will just speak to the statistical bits for the moment.
Long term health impacts: Although there have been people with post infection syndromes in the past, nothing with both the significance and scope of what we are seeing with Covid. The data is still pretty nebulous, but ballpark-ish @Beth33 ’s post above outlines them well. (Although, technically diseases like polio probably had a larger significance/scope in post-infection impacts, but we responded to those accordingly, so just thinking of diseases we treat like the flu.)
At a personal risk assessment for someone with no underlying vulnerabilities, the best analogy I can give is smoking. Many people choose to smoke, despite the known health risks, for various reasons. Some people choose not to smoke but are in smoke filled environments on a regular basis despite the known health consequences. We don’t have enough data to directly correlate how much health damage is done by different levels of smoke exposure vs different quantities of repeat Covid infections. Some people smoke and have no apparent related health problems. Some people are infected by Covid and have no apparent related health problems. But the correlation with poorer health is still very strong for both.
Until they get a handle on treating Long Covid, I would consider it in the same broad realm as smoking. Do I want my kids doing it or being exposed to it on a regular basis? Nope. Is it realistic to think they’ll never encounter a smoke-filled environment? Also nope. Are they likely to have health consequences from an occasional encounter? Still nope. Are they likely to have health consequences from extensive encounters? Yep. Where is the line? Therein lies the rub.
Mortality impacts: At a population level, it is clearly still no where near the flu. For the last 6 months of 2022, following the Omicron wave with widespread infection acquired immunity and vaccines (second generation ones most recently), it’s hard to imagine the immunity wall of protection being much higher. And yet…
~75k deaths in from July-December, so 150k on an annualized basis.
So from a mortality standpoint, the impact of Covid is still over twice as bad as flu and RSV combined. (And that’s assuming Covid deaths in the next 6 months aren’t more than the past 6 months, which I wouldn’t bet on.). And most think that Covid number is an undercount (probably by around 20%), whereas the flu and RSV number is an estimate that’s already got its undercount factored in.
It’s hard for me to understand treating it like the flu when the impacts are clearly so much more significant than the flu. It seems like the impacts are what should drive the level of response.