Dr. Zubin Damania, AKA ZDoggMD, recently said,
We need to stop every single pandemic restriction, including vaccine mandates including mask mandates, including kids wearing masks, including thinking about it, including hearing about it on the news. All of it, I want it gone.
Amen. I too am over COVID. You urgently need to get back to normal. Everyone except for me needs to stop talking about COVID. The only voice I want to hear discussing COVID is my own voice.
And my voice will be heard ceaselessly. I must convince you things are perfectly normal. I will give numerous TV interviews on the virus, and my many podcasts, articles, and social media posts will be devoted to COVID. What better way is there for me to convince other people they should stop talking about COVID than for me to talk about it incessantly?
None of this is new for me. In contrast to doctors who actually treat COVID patients, those of us who value nuance and centrism have been saying the pandemic has been over for a year now.
While others panicked, I laughed along with Drs. Damania and Monica Gandhi about “variants, shmariants” in a podcast called “The End of the Pandemic” from February 2021. They rightly warned then not about the virus, but about a “contagion of panic and fear”. Sadly, they’ve had to spend the past year continuously discussing COVID, reminding everyone the pandemic ended last year.
I agreed with Dr. Lucy McBride who wrote an article in March 2021 called “I’ve Been Yearning for an End to the Pandemic. Now That it’s Here, I’m a Little Afraid“. In that article, Dr. McBride coined the term “Fear of Normal” to describe people who just weren’t ready for the pandemic to end. Sadly, FONO is still a big problem today, though the virus is not. If you or someone you love is suffering from FONO, please watch one of Dr. McBride’s numerous TV appearances, which are devoted exclusively to the pandemic, which she said ended a year ago.
I also agreed with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who said in September 2021, “The emergency phase of the disease is over. Now, we need to work very hard to undo the sense of emergency. We should be treating covid as one of 200 diseases that affect people.” As is appropriate, Dr. Bhattacharya discusses no disease other than COVID.
More recently, viral immunologist Dr. Scott Balsitis, a founder of the “Urgency of Normal” campaign, said, “We believe the data point to restoring full normalcy for children. We really mean the full normal.” His Twitter feed is devoted to nothing but COVID, which is normal.
These wise people all recognize that it makes a lot of sense to constantly talk about something once it’s finished. It wasn’t easy in 2021 to listen to other people drone on and on about the pandemic, as I declared it over, over and over again. However, I’m prepared to spend the rest of this year talking about COVID and only COVID to convince everyone else they should stop talking about it.
I won’t stop talking about COVID until you stop talking about COVID.
This isn’t just normal. It’s full normal.