Our public health school is back in person full time. Rumor mill is CDC will declare an end to pandemic precautions and just throw their hands up and say it's endemic, such is life, godspeed y'all. Healthcare facilities will never be the same, and I think a lot of people in liberal areas will continue to mask for a while universally and slowly slip to either not masking ever or only when sick. Conservative areas will rejoice and return to business as 2019-and-before.

Had a class today where a guy relatively high up at the CDC's healthcare quality section came and gave a talk on infection prevention in congregate settings and used a lot of COVID examples. He talked about pros and cons of a lot of things including universal testing. He never mentioned the annoyance of residents and staff being routinely tested nor did he bring up cost of tests. I asked about the cost, and he just said the healthcare system in this country is bad and we'd never have been able to succeed if the fed didn't pay for a lot of the tests for LTCs. (1) we didn't fucking succeed don't pretend that (2) good luck creating an intervention that no one can afford and as such no one will follow. He was super cool and it was an interesting talk, but certainly some different viewpoints on things.