On the Covid ‘Off-Ramp’: No Tests, Isolation or Masks

Jason Moyer was days away from a family road trip to visit his parents when his 10-year-old son woke up with a fever and cough.

Covid?

The prospect threatened to upend the family’s plans.

“Six months ago, we would have tested for Covid,” said Mr. Moyer, 41, an academic administrator in Canton, Ohio. This time they did not.

Instead, they checked to make sure the boy’s cough was improving and his fever was gone — and then set off for New Jersey, not bothering to tell the grandparents about the incident.

In the fifth summer of Covid, cases are surging, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported “high” or “very high” levels of the virus in wastewater in almost every state. The rate of hospitalizations with Covid is nearly twice what it was at this time last summer, and deaths — despite being down almost 75 percent from what they were at the worst of the pandemic — are still double what they were this spring.

As children return to schools and Labor Day weekend travel swells, the potential for further spread abounds. But for many like Mr. Moyer, Covid has become so normalized that they no longer see it as a reason to disrupt social, work or travel routines. Test kit sales have plummeted. Isolation after an exposure is increasingly rare. Masks — once a ubiquitous symbol of a Covid surge — are sparse, even in crowded airports, train stations and subways.

Human behavior is, of course, the reason that infections are soaring. But at some point, many reason, we need to live.