Most of the people in the hospital with covid right now either chose not to be vaccinated, or have immune systems compromised or senescent enough that they weren’t effective, as I understand it. And I get that we never were in the habit of saving the old and immunocompromised from the flu, though it now looks as though masking habits would likely have helped a lot, so we can accept the latter category. While I’m uncomfortable generally with connecting medical treatment to moral judgments about behaviors, I get frustration with those who could have had effective shots and refused.
But it isn’t true that most of the people in the hospital are there because they refused to get the shots; most of them are there for other reasons. So I’m still inclined to keep an eye on hospital utilization and guide my behavior on that basis. Right now, in my area, we’re doing pretty good; not quite to last summer levels, but almost. And my wife works in the hospital, so I have easy (even unavoidable) access to information about how that’s going; for others it might make more sense to track that less carefully. But my new normal is that I intend always to update my masking choices based on how the hospitals are doing. Masking has become easy and comfortable for me, and, while I like eating out, I don’t mind putting that on hold for a while when hospitals are full and there’s a small chance I’ll shorten some wait times in the emergency department and avoid exacerbating the problems which cause burnout to be such an issue among medical personnel. My cognizance of these issues makes me more susceptible to frustration with the unvaccinated by choice, so I certainly get where you’re coming from, there.