I really don't know how to cope with the fact that if COVID never goes away (or at least, goes away enough where we can just go back to normal mostly), we're never going back to normal. I know people keep saying "It's never going away, accept it." and I just can't honestly, and don't know how to cope with that. My son just turned 1, he's basically not going to get to have any kind of normalcy in his life. Even when he's able to, getting children to cooperate with consistently wearing masks is going to be hard if not downright impossible. You can be the best parent in the universe and kids are still going to take them off when they aren't supposed to.
I don't enjoy wearing masks, but will wear them when it's necessary, I just don't want to stick to the point where everyone has to wear them all the time. I'd gladly accept a societal change that you see in many non-US countries where people wear them if they feel sick, that's a really good idea, but I just don't like them being just a normal thing everyone does, sick or not. And to be clear, obviously they're very important right now for safety measures, but in a vacuum if COVID wasn't a thing, I would not wear one unless I was actually sick/getting sick.
While Delta being the last variant and wave, that would be great, but the situation described still sounds incredibly bleak. The thing that makes this even more infuriating is how easily this could have been avoided, if the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers just got their fucking shots and wore a mask for just a little bit. I still remember that time back in 2020 where at one point we could have actually done a consistent lockdown for 2-3 weeks and this thing would have been DONE. That didn't happen for obvious reasons, because people go all Herman Cain and don't believe COVID is real until they get COVID. An aunt on my wife's side didn't believe COVID was real, definitely got COVID at one point, refused to get tested, and still refuses to get vaccinated despite the fact that the vaccine got FULLY APPROVED by the FDA recently, people such as my mother-in-law are reluctant to discuss it with her because it's a "sensitive subject". We got invited to a party at a different aunt's house that would happen in a few weeks, but we are not going because we don't feel safe taking our son to that. Everyone but the one aunt I talked about before there is vaccinated, with the exception of a niece that's not old enough. About two weeks ago, everyone in that house got COVID including the niece, fortunately the niece ended up being fine and not having it too badly, and the rest of them didn't have it too badly either because they were vaccinated. Now my mother-in-law is trying to guilt trip my wife about us not going to that party and it's utterly exhausting. She keeps trying to say things like "Well you take him to daycare", and yeah, we do because we have to so we can work, and the staff all wears masks, is required to be vaccinated, and deep cleans everything. The staff is also required to get vaccinated. All parents are required to wear masks.
I just want this all to be over enough where we can go somewhat back to normal.