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Notes -
Not all measures were removed in all countries at the same time. In the UK, the restrictions were 99% gone by February, but many places in the anglosphere or adjacent continued until the late year.
Personally, I think the following things contributed to society's funny amnesia moment:
The length of the pandemic. It had gone on for nearly 2 years, and as time went on the average person gradually stopped being as afraid.
Non-terrible vaccines had been administered into a majority of 50+ individuals in WEIRD anglospheric nations, which are the only countries that matter. At this point, much of the functional threat of the virus has been eliminated.
The increasing number of leaks that lawmakers, particularly those at the very top, were throwing racous lockdown parties while everyone else was being denied freedom of association. In the UK, partygate rendered any further restrictions politically difficult for the government to implement.
The timing of the Ukraine war. Socially, it immediately supplanted COVID as the Big Thing Everyone Cares about and governments were no longer rewarded for spending vast amounts of state resource on it. Politically, governments had to rapidly change their priorities to account for the war and its knock on effects.
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