China’s zero Covid policy definitely isn’t the answer. At this point, I think the lines are already drawn and the various societies have decided to take whatever policy they deem most appropriate for them.

I think individual risk tolerances are going to be different. Personally, I would absolutely love to go for a run if I had access to a gym with little human traffic, or if I lived somewhere that wasn’t highly densely populated, i.e. not central Bangkok like where I am right now. I’d be OK with it back in Penang, though.

About his vaccination and infection status, I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions. When it comes to things like Covid, I think there are a lot of confounding factors, e.g. presence of one or more comorbidities, that it’s hard to say why his fifth infection was the big one for him. I’ve known enough families with similar prior infection and vaccination status who’ve caught Covid, and the range of severity between individual family members is enormous. But, for clarity, his sequence was Beta infection -> fully vaccinated -> Delta -> (booster?) -> Omicron 1-> (booster?) -> Omicron 2 -> Omicron 3. I’ve mentioned booster twice because I’m not sure if he got it before or after Omicron 1.

His employer probably wasn’t acting legally but the thing is he’s in no mood to pursue the issue further because these issues take their time to work their way through the Malaysian legal system, and also because he really doesn’t feel physically up to it.