Hard Work, Illness and Death

You probably don't want to read another post, here at The New World, about how COVID-19 will become endemic.  I don't want to write one.  I don't even want to look up all my other 'endemic' posts so I can link you to them.  Just type "endemic" in the search bar at the top left and enjoy.

So I won't comment or expand on what is really a pretty interesting article in "Wired," a periodical in which interesting articles about endemic flus are not always expected.  There are some pretty clear definitions of endemic, which are rarer than you might think:

Endemicity doesn’t mean that there will be no more infections, let alone illnesses and deaths. It also doesn’t mean that future infections will cause milder illness than they do now. Simply put, it indicates that immunity and infections will have reached a steady state. Not enough people will be immune to deny the virus a host. Not enough people will be vulnerable to spark widespread outbreaks.

Ah, that happy medium between immunity and vulnerability.  Forever.

Also:

Endemicity, in other words, isn’t a promise of safety. Instead, as epidemiologist Ellie Murray has argued, it’s a guarantee of having to be on guard all the time.

And finally - how we know when we get there:

...at some point, we’ll achieve a balance that represents how much work we’re willing to do to control Covid, and how much illness and death we’ll tolerate to stay there. 

So the new world will, it seems, include a constant conversation regarding hard work, illness and death.

Question:  If everyone - and I mean everyone - had gotten vaccinated by, say, the summer of 2021, would we be having this conversation right now?

No.