The summer’s appeal is even stronger for young people who feel they’ve missed out on big moments of early adulthood. Andrew, a 24-year-old living in Brooklyn, told me that he’s quitting his production-assistant job this summer and traveling across France, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom with a group of high-school friends. (He asked me to use his first name only because his company doesn’t know he’s planning to quit). “It’s like the trip we had wanted to do postcollege in a world without COVID, and it’s been delayed ’til now. We’re all excited to quit our first jobs out of college, pack up and move out of New York City, and travel around Europe all summer,” he said. “I turn 25 in August, so I’m sort of like, Really, this is my shot.”…

Willingness to take risks is the thread that tied together my conversations with young people eager for a return to “normal.” They acknowledged the degree of privilege inherent in being able to make these moves—and in being healthy and well after two years of life with a deadly disease. These people have developed individualized ways to examine risk and determine COVID’s threat in the vacuum of clear public-health messaging and government guidance. In the U.S., more than 1,500 people are still dying of the virus every day. But to many young people, it seems like everyone they know who’s their age has been sick with the virus but bounced back a few days later. The pandemic might not be over—it’s certainly not for immunocompromised people, kids under 5 years old, elderly folks, and people who remain unvaccinated—but for the majority of people on an individual level, it is.