The choice was basically more freedom or less death after COVID arrived three years ago. Places like Florida and Texas chose freedom, California chose less death. And San Francisco in particular spared a lot of lives.

It may still be a few years before the clearest picture of the pandemic's impact on our health emerges. But one new study focuses on the not-often-discussed group of people who never regained, or only partially regained their sense of smell and taste after having COVID.

This has been a long time coming. And yes, COVID is still with us, but the daily and weekly case counts we've been tracking for nearly three years are no longer that useful, so it's time to move on.

There is now good evidence to suggest that the new, bivalent boosters from Moderna and Pfizer cut infection risk by half from the so-called "Kraken variant" of Omicron, XBB.1.5.

The triple-demic that experts were warning of months ago is taking shape in hospitals across California as it is elsewhere, with a COVID surge and new variants coinciding with a spike in influenza and RSV.

It may be too soon to tell what the holiday season has in store when it comes to the tail end of this three-year pandemic. But there is reason to hope that we won't have a very severe winter surge of new COVID infections, especially if more people get their updated boosters.