No doubt
Yes to my endless frustration, just in the past few days in a futile effort to convince individuals as well as my shul to at least encourage mask wearing, I've been hearing things like "it's basically just a bad flu" (people are mind-boggingly still saying this!??!). "well right now it's a weaker strain, people arent dying from it", when I countered with the fact that in March also people were not dying initially and look at whats happening in EY, "it's not the same as then because now we're already six weeks in to this wave which "definitely" started R"C Elul so....". How about the fact that just yesterday two people in Lakewood did die, "Oh no, they died from blood clots, in EY they are dying from COVID". When I pointed to the fact that we obviously don't know how this virus operates as no one can fully explain why it waned for a few months and is now back with a vengeance, "Oh everyone knows that's because viruses can't survive in heat" notwithstanding that EY was breaking heat records for days just as the virus was also heating up there..... I wish there were a "tearing my hair out" emoji...
To make matters worse, there are apparently a few doctors from Lakewood and elsewhere, who are promulgating as absolute fact that anyone who does not currently have symptoms (even if they had some and they went away) is not at all contagious, which directly led to at least two people (that I know of directly) in my neighborhood to come to shul (without a mask naturally) only a couple days after testing positive because they were not experiencing symptoms....
Hashem Yishmor Aleinu......