Admittedly, the only way for that post title to be more confusing would have been to add a couple of double negatives, but the point still stands. Most people probably weren’t being as rigorous as they thought they were–and importantly, needed to be. A fair number of people, often unknowingly, were engaging in risky behavior, but simply had the fortune of not being exposed to COVID. Obviously, the exposure rate has risen.

This isn’t to blame people whose jobs put them at risk, or anything like that. And we’ve had massive communications failures that haven’t helped to explain the current reality (Biden’s press conference today really wasn’t what I was hoping for).

But we need to realize that, especially with Omicron, though it’s not like we were doing a good job with Delta either, two doses isn’t enough. You will likely be protected from hospitalization, but not infection–and we have no idea what this means for long COVID. Three doses does seem to restore high protection against symptomatic infection, but it remains to be seen if that level of protection by itself, even if widespread, would break chains of transmission.