No, It's Not

Over two years after the pandemic began, articles about its end are still featuring the world "endemic," and are full of phrases like "wait and see" and "No one can predict" and "We have no idea" and my personal favorite, "There's not even a measurement to say that something is an epidemic or pandemic. All of this is in the eye of the beholder."  All of these bold statements appeared in the same article, titled, a little dishonestly, "It won't be a pandemic forever. Here's what could be next."

What's next is "endemic."  We've already talked about what "endemic" means:  COVID-19 will be around forever, killing us in smaller numbers and mostly in the winter, just like regular flu.   Mostly because of variants and their origins:  large numbers of people who are not vaccinated, who serve as the breeding grounds for Delta, Omicron and whatever comes next.

Anyway, it turns out that, if you believe Dr. Arnold Monto - a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan and acting chair of the US FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, who gave us the "eye of the beholder" quote above - I get to decide when it's over.  I've been beholding this pandemic, right here at this blog, since April of 2020.  

Great!

Guess what.  It's not over.