"Several people said they felt whipsawed as Democratic mayors and governors who once championed safety measures as a public good and emblem of civic virtue now seemed ready to turn the page..."

"... on a pandemic that, while easing, is still killing more than 1,000 people every day across the United States.... 'It feels like we’ve truly been left to die,' said Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers, a writer in Mountain View, Calif., with cystic fibrosis. 'It seems too much too soon, like people are giving up because they can’t be bothered anymore.'... 'We just haven’t learned,' Dr. David Goldberg, 32, an internal medicine physician, said as he and his wife took their 1-year-old daughter, Isabel, for a walk through their neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Parents of children younger than 5, who are not eligible to be vaccinated.... He said he was standing in line at a grocery store recently when a man next to him complained that he did not feel well. 'I was like, Dude, what are you doing?' Dr. Goldberg said. 'I feel for parents who are just waiting. They feel left behind. Kids can get sick and they can die.'"

From "After 2 Years of Pandemic Life, Turn Toward Normalcy Is a Shake-Up/As the Omicron variant recedes, cities and states with the longest mask and vaccine mandates are rapidly lifting them. The abrupt shift has unsettled the most vigilant Americans" (NYT).