So that was it, wasn’t it?

The Super Bowl was our unofficial return to normality for the United States. A relatively normal game, with a halftime show geared toward people in their 40s. But the “normal” part was the crowd. It was the general atmosphere. The Chinese Olympics that nobody is watching feature athletes getting served by people in hazmat suits. Meanwhile, SoFi stadium gathered over 70,000 fans for the big game, and the cameras panning the vast crowd showed the spectators to be almost entirely maskless.

This was the end of the pandemic in the United States — or at least the primary signal that, as a culture, we are ready for the end.

Hearing this may be enraging, of course. A significant number of Americans lost loved ones in the last two years and have felt that the country never took Covid seriously enough. Fine. It also might enrage you perhaps because your children are still going to schools a few miles away from the stadium wearing masks, or are subject to other forms of health theater, with general mask mandates in L.A. County having applied to everyone two and older. I understand those feelings. I’m just like the rest of you in the blue states, pleading with the local school-board for relief.