Everything you've said is true. But not everyone is going to be vaccinated. That continues to be my point. It's not going to happen. Wish for it all you want. Where we are at with vaccinations in the United States is about where we are going to be. In fact, I think we'll slip a little as I don't think the rate of people getting boosters is going to match the first round. I'm not arguing that it *should* be that way. I'm just telling you that I believe with 100% certainty that it is going to be that way whether we like it or not. And that's why I keep saying it's time to just rip the Band-Aid off and move on. Because I honestly do not believe we have any other choice.
What does "rip the Band-Aid off and move on" actually mean?
What are we doing now that you want to stop doing?
What aren't we doing now that you want to start doing again?
Or, do you mean just accept that all the stuff we're doing or not today IS the new normal?
Assuming I pulled the CDC numbers correctly, between 10/22/21 and 11/22/21 there were 35,401 deaths. Assuming the vaccination rate had already flatlined and never increases again in any meaningful way and we keep doing exactly what we're doing today for other mitigations, multiply that out by 12 and it's 424,812 deaths a year, plus however many million "not dead" other impacts there are. Let's even be generous and assume we need to discount for all the people who had COVID and it's only 300,000 a year.
I mean, sure, people can become numb to anything, but it's going to be super disruptive to everything to keep that pace up for another year or years.
Using this assumption, let's say we stop doing every mitigation and everyone goes back to 2019 behaviors. Do we think that number is going to stay steady or go up? Cause, I'm guessing it would push it up.
(I don't think that's a valid assumption, I believe the vaccination rate will increase even if it's super slowly it will move up. May take years not months though. Which may be just as bad.)
I think that kind of means, we're at the new normal now. There's nothing to rip off or move on from. Just adjust, we're there. Masks, distance, mostly take out, whatever of those you're doing or not doing today, that's the new normal. If you're a business that depends on close packed, unmasked, in person patrons you'll just need to adjust that the consumer pool is smaller than it was in 2019. It's not gone, there's people that's fine with, just less than in 2019. No amount of wishing to move on will get everyone back to 2019 behaviors anymore than it will get them all vaccinated.
In the perspective of WDW, I think what we've seen is that even a smaller consumer pool is still large enough.