> The new variant is basically a bad cold. Why do we still have these silly mandates?? In the case of more serious disease (which the Alpha, Delta, and other v

> The new variant is basically a bad cold. Why do we still have these silly mandates?? In the case of more serious disease (which the Alpha, Delta, and other variants perhaps were), the "mandates" (assuming you're referring here to horizontal interdiction like lockdowns, school closures, etc) make even less sense. They stratify spread acuity by socioeconomic status instead of risk. Achieving a vertical stratification, where the low-risk cohort (which is enormous in the case of all variants of SARS-CoV-2, and easy to identify by age and comorbidities) experiences a highly acute spread, is a much faster path to endemic equilibrium, and is only disrupted by what you rightly call silly mandates.