While doomers are still shouting loudly from their soapboxes that the end is coming and governments are still touting nebulous risings in cases and whatnot, I feel as though there is a wind of change in the air.

The first reason for this is the MSM : not long ago every news outlet blindly parroted the message that COVID is an apocalyptic crisis, that we should all be terrified and that the measures are not only effective but morally righteous. They overwhelmingly supported wearing masks, staying home and getting the vaccine ASAP and silenced or ridiculed those who dared question the official government narrative.

Now, however, I feel as though they are beginning to turn around on such things. They report openly on situations like riots and protests against the measures, publish interviews with doctors and scientists who question the way COVID was handled and in rare instances even show solidarity with those who will not or cannot get vaccinated by speaking out against totalitarian measures such as mandates to even go to your work.

Another example is the people all around me. Maybe this is entirely anecdotal and I just caught the people who agree with me, but I'd say 8/10 people I talk to about the measures and current state of the virus agree that mandates go too far, that the virus is no longer a threat and that further lockdowns, closures, masks and vaccine coercion are only going to make things worse. Hell, I even managed to get a lot of people to agree with me that the best thing for us right now (Netherlands being 85% fully vaccinated) is to just let the virus loose and let people get natural immunity by enduring a mild case. I myself had a very mild COVID infection probably because I got it a few weeks after my first vaccination, and after telling this story many people agree that that is preferrable to boosters due to natural immunity's longevity and far greater efficacy. I also hear a lot of people agreeing with me that boosters are a very transparent attempt by Pfizer to boost sales and that they don't want it, preferring instead to use all that tax money to help the economy recover or to dampen the huge increase in energy prices.

On the topic of people, when I look around me I can barely see anyone wearing a mask or maintaining a strict 1.5 meters of distance. People don't get tested for every cough and sneeze anymore and people stopped treating people like lepers for having a runny nose. In most people's minds the virus is already defeated and the crisis is over, all that remains is complaining about what restrictions are still in place and why they are still in place. Where once you would be given a condescending look about what a science denyer you are for questioning the experts™ you can now count on either an agreement or at the very least a discussion that isn't purely about moralism. And even then they often concede on several points that the way COVID was handled was not only inconsistent, but harmful in so many other places.

And finally, governments like the Dutch's know very well that this crisis is nearing its end. They reinstated the mask mandate to "reinstill a sense of urgency about the coronavirus in citizens." To me, and fortunately more and more people, this sounds like "you aren't as afraid of the virus as we'd like you to be so we hope that this scares you back into accepting whatever measures we impose on you." People are waking up to the fact that how this pandemic was managed was a complete joke and more and more people are saying no to them.

The MSM is, of course, still trying to sell COVID fearmongering. It sold really well and it was easy to write scary articles that got a lot of clicks. But if you look past their cherry picked, anecdotal and sometimes fallacious articles there is a lot of rising resistance. I think it won't be long before governments run out of excuses or, god forbid, try something truly authoritarian and people will start just ignoring the rules. And when that happens, all this will finally be over.

But what do you think? Is the end finally in sight, or do the doomers still hold sway?

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