From what I've read the death certificate may say COVID in the list of causes of death, but some states only count COVID deaths if the first line says COVID. It's happening at the state reporting level, not at the doctor or hospital level.
Everyone but people who want a Mad Max world wants people's behavior to be regulated. In an authoritarian state, the regulation can be capricious, but it is often brutal. Examples in history are common from Ghengis Khan to Soviet Russia to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the list goes on and on.
In a functioning democratic republic, the state has rules and regulations everyone needs to follow. There is a mechanism to challenge the authority if someone feels it goes to far.
Libertarian ideals shifts that responsibility for regulating behavior to the individual from the government. All but sociopathic libertarians agree that behavior needs to be regulated.
The sweet spot for regulating behavior is where someone's behavior harms someone else or puts someone else at risk of harm. The drunk driving laws were put in place because somebody driving a car while impaired is a risk to others on the same road.
The problem with shifting the responsibility to the individual is that if someone decides that just don't want to respect others' boundaries they will jut go around harming others and not caring. Someone may also decide to draw the line in an unreasonable place as far as their neighbors are concerned. Then there is conflict and/or harm as a result.
Philosophically I am very libertarian. Personally I think I am fairly good at regulating my own behavior so as to limit harm, though not perfect. From experience, some people are not very good at regulating their behavior, even if they want to.
My partner has done domestic violence perpetrator counseling for over a decade. She's found that while about 10-15% are sociopaths who like hurting others, the rest are people who have some kind of severe trauma in their past, whether it be PTSD from the military or something else or abusive parents (most had abusive mothers). Because of the trauma they are hyper-reactive and fly off the handle without even thinking about it. When their brain kicks in later they feel a lot of shame for what they did.
Studies have also shown that about 2% of the population are born sociopaths. They lack the ability to have empathy towards others. Some become criminals, but others learn to play within society's rules enough to stay out of serious trouble. Without outside rules regulating their behavior, they will become monsters.
A society in which everyone regulates their own behavior and there is little need for outside rules is a utopian dream. Maybe we can achieve it someday, we did achieve the utopian dream of the Middle Ages quite well. But right now any attempt to achieve it will result in Lord of the Flies with a handful of sociopaths running everything. Basically Somalia.
A choice to get vaccinated or not, or to social distance or not, or follow any of the other rules and recommendations from this pandemic are really affecting everyone's lives. It's a fact that people who are unvaccinated can get COVID more easily, are sick longer, and can spread it more easily. Those who were vaccinated a while ago are a bit better, but the best group for this are those who are vaccinated and boosted. Even those who are boosted can get it, and it appears that for about 20% of the population the vaccines have more limited effectiveness against Omicron.
For those concerned about getting the economy going again, practicing pandemic hygiene is still vital. A lot of people are getting Omicron and it's causing large numbers of absences from work. Some places around here have reduced the hours they are open because they have staff shortages and some places have closed completely because their entire staff got sick at once. If people were still masking and social distancing, it wouldn't stop the spread, but it would slow it down so the staff shortages weren't as severe.
We're facing severe hospital staff shortages right now because people have quit the profession due to burnout, others are now disabled because of COIVD, and they are losing staff due to infection. There has been some criticism here about firing hospital workers who refused to get vaccinated, and I'm of two minds on that one.
According to the New York Times and HHS ICU bed dashboard, nationally 82+% of US ICU beds are full. According to the HHS, 78.5% of US hospital beds are full right now.
As COVID become endemic (with us always), it looks like Omicron is going to be the variant we have to live with, or something very similar to Omicron. Omicron might turn out to be the most contagious disease we've ever encountered. If it isn't, it's way up there and may be out at the end f the spectrum for how contagious a disease can be. It's less dangerous than previous COVID variants, but it is still much more dangerous than any flu variant.
Since 1918 we have become very good at treating bad cases of the flu. Most often the flu kills by opening up the person to secondary infections like pneumonia that do them in and we're much better at preventing that. COVID tends to kill directly. We have some drugs that can treat an active infection and we will probably get better at that in the future.
But much of the world will never have the drugs to treat the disease, so it's going to run wild in the developing world for a long time to come.
We also know that immunity from vaccine or infection fades over time. Omicron has mutations that get around existing immunity. It's really more like SARS 3. With the virus running rampant in the developing world, it will mutate again the way Omincron did and it will return to the developed world. It's virtually certain that the new variant will be as contagious or more contagious (if possible) to Omicron. It might be milder than Omicron (pandemic viruses in the past have mutated into more minor forms, some of the endemic viruses today may have once been very deadly), but I don't see why a new variant wouldn't be prevented from being more deadly than Omicron. As long as it can spread OK (and stay alive), there is nothing evolutionary preventing it from getting more deadly.
If past is prologue, we will likely see at least some immunity from existing vaccinations. Those who are up to date will fare better than those who are unvaccinated or under vaccinated.
Even if we don't get a killer variant, a virus as bad as Omicron sweeping the population every year will likely cause frequent disruption of the economy and put a constant strain on the healthcare system. Something we will all have to pay for.
Humans live in societies and even if some people want to pretend they are independent of the obligations of their society, they really aren't unless they are living alone in the middle of nowhere. In a pandemic good pandemic hygiene affects everyone, including yourself.
The concept of "my body my choice" is a great one when the decisions a person makes about their body primarily only affects them. I am very libertarian about recreational drug use for example. I never partake (hate the feeling of being high), but others can do what they want as long as they aren't haveint a big impact on my life (don't drive while high for example). When a person is making choices that open them up to be an incubator for a potentially lethal virus, the concept breaks down. Their choices aren't just impacting their lives anymore. It's impacting their neighbors too.