Nearly every sailor on the ship has sighted land recently. "Tierra!" "Tierra!" And then somehow it slips away. Or someone else say, "Nah, that's not land. You're seeing things." Or we sail and sail and don't get any closer. Pretty frustrating.
Countries like Denmark, Thailand, England, Japan, Spain and, in many places, the United States* have pretty much declared the pandemic over, even though countries like Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, and especially Hong Kong (OK, not a country) are getting clobbered.
What's the holdup? Once everyone gets over Omicron, aren't we home free? Why don't we declare victory and go home? The answer: variants.
Well, at least according to a whole string of articles and papers like this one and this one, all of which boil down to "we don't really know what the next variant, or the one after that, will come at us with." Omicron features a massively improved ability to transmit itself, but it's less dangerous. If you're vaxxed and boosted, you probably won't get really sick.** But who knows what the next one will bring?
Omicron has also spawned over 50 mutations so far, that we know of. The pandemic still rages around the world, regardless of our insistence on "moving on to normal," so there a vast and fertile field in which the virus will mutate.
So - we are declaring our intention to "live with the virus." The pandemic isn't over, and the new world is not in sight. We wait for the end of Omicron, and we wait for the next variant of concern. The lookouts doze in the crow's nest. Does anyone believe in the new world any more?
* - Over 90% of Americans live in a municipality which does not require masks.
** - Long COVID, however, is another story; any variant would probably come with this feature.
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