I had never heard the term “coronavirus fatigue” before, but I could instantly sympathize when the subject line first crossed my inbox.

The unending morass of restrictions and cancellations has been extremely wearing. Even though fatalities in Pennsylvania have been essentially flat since July, heavy-handed public health dictates continue with no end in sight. The mantra of “slow the spread” hides the fact that there is no defined endgame, no stated milestone when our freedoms will be restored.

Countrywide, debate swirls around lockdowns and universal masking. The startling lack of evidence that marked the beginning of the public health response continues largely without remark, even though there is now substantial real-world data to draw upon.

Different countries, and even different states, adopted disparate approaches to mitigating the virus. Some countries, like Sweden, did very little, while others like the Philippines threatened citizens with imprisonment for violating lockdowns. Other countries, like Japan, implemented lockdowns and universal masking from the start.

Yet the “curve” of positive cases has proven inevitable. Once the locked down countries allowed their citizens to emerge, infections increased. Whether masks were mandated or not did not prevent the “curves” from occurring. Differences in fatality rates seem to be tied to demographics, population density, and health care infrastructure — not the restrictions that were made. Even more clearly, prolonged restrictions did not stop the curve, and only served to wreck the economies of those countries that enacted them.

The island communities of New Zealand and Hawaii are ideal examples, where incoming travel has been virtually cut off and citizens’ freedoms significantly limited from day one. Yet both places are currently experiencing outbreaks that were not prevented by six feet of distance or face masks – measures being forced on entire populations, whether healthy or at risk, for the first time in human history.

Here in America, we used to be willing to take risks to preserve our way of life. Now, we are apparently willing to destroy our way of life in a futile effort to eliminate risk. Every life lost is a tragedy, but the virus is not the civilization-ending threat that the politicians used to justify vastly increased control over our lives. To put it bluntly, approximately 170,000 deaths (assuming this number is even accurate) of mostly elderly, ailing people have occurred in a nation where 2.8 million people die annually.

Experts and politicians have been given the benefit of the doubt as they dealt with a largely unknown disease. That excuse is no longer tenable. Provide the vulnerable with the means to protect themselves, but give us back our freedoms to congregate, to run our businesses, and to breathe fresh air. Americans must demand the right to assess their own risks and make their own health choices.