It will be around going forward for the foreseeable future, just as many other viruses are. We're in a different place to 1920 when the Spanish flu came along because science is so much more advanced, so more treatments will come along as well as probably more effective vaccines. Even the often-pessimistic scientists in the UK are saying "each six months will be better than the last." Omicron is unfortunate, but it's spreading so fast that it will be much shorter wave than we have had before.

But the only real definite we know is that Covid is unpredictable! But I do think there will come a time in the not-too-distant future where society will say "to hell with it" and just get on with life while mitigating risks - just as many of us with immune system problems do every year with the flu and norovirus anyway. I'd certainly get to that stage now if it wasn't for the fact I have an 87 year old mum and want to keep her as safe as possible as she can't have the jab for medical reasons. That said, I'm not sure many people are actually less nervous around elderly people who HAVE had the jab - so the nerves would be there anyway!

But I don't think we're going to wake up one morning and find it's gone. But I do think there are things that could be done to help people get through it - such as halting the daily news stories about it that aren't news stories anyway. Scientist X says such-and-such MAY happen, and that the next wave COULD be the largest, that we MIGHT reach a certain number of cases a day. And so on. I don't think people don't want to hear mays, coulds, and mights anymore. If it's an unknown, wait until it's a known before reporting it. Likewise, do we need to know daily figures? Would we be better off with weekly figures? Must every utterance be a major news story that runs for a week? In the UK, the Boris said in March or April that Covid passports "couldn't be ruled out." And the news stories ran for weeks saying that they are likely to be brought in. And then they weren't. I think the media (press and TV and internet) are no longer being responsible. They're not reporting facts, they're making clickbait out of every little thing that might or might not happen.

I really do think we would all have mentally coped with this better if we had the same technology we had thirty years ago: no rolling TV news, just the bulletins at 6 and 10. No headlines forever popping up on your phone. No internet, and so no news stories about it on every page you turn to. That way, even in lockdown, we could at least forget about it for a few hours a day. The only way to do that in 2021 is by literally isolating yourself from every media source possible.

It's still rife in the UK. Friend of mine caught it at a non-WAM shoot this month because the tog turned up infected because he reckoned he'd be safe three days after a positive test.

And that's why it'll keep mutating and spreading. Too many asshats not getting the vaccine, or having the common sense to not spread it to other people.

100% this.