In a previous post I highlighted that the Covid-19 is no where near. In this post, I will highlight how the pandemic may actually end?

In the Politico, executive health care editor Joanne Kenen writes in a long essay “Epidemiologists now expect the coronavirus to be endemic, meaning it’s here to stay. But even if the virus persists, it doesn’t mean a perpetual pandemic. Over time, human immunity will keep growing through vaccination and natural infection; that’s already started. Scientists will develop new treatments. Eventually, Covid can become one of many diseases that circulate, that sometimes even kill, without bringing the world to a deadly standstill.”

The sooner people accept the changes in the way we live … the sooner we can get to the new normal.

Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at NYU and Bellevue Hospital (source: Politico)

In NPR News, Laurel Wamsley writes citing Lynn Goldman (an epidemiologist at George Washington University) “U.S. has certain things working for it — and some against it. The good news is we’ve shown the ability to lower rates of transmission and deaths from the virus. The bad news is there’s resistance to the two main ways to prevent transmission — getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.”

For the short term, it will be seasonal, like what we see with the flu, simply because we don’t have enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody in the world.

Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington (source: NPR News)

• Why We Can’t Turn the Corner on Covid
• When will the COVID-19 pandemic end?
• How We’ll Know When The COVID-19 Crisis Is Over
• How the Pandemic Now Ends

According Lynn Goldman, there are following two possible scenarios for the U.S. in the near future:

• “One is that the virus evolves to more readily evade the vaccines that have been administered. ‘Then we’ll have to go into a whole other round of revaccinating everybody‘.”
• “On the other hand, that might not happen, and the current vaccines will continue to be highly effective”.

In The Atlantic, staff writer Ed Yong writes “Eventually pandemic end. But this one is not yet over, and especially not globally. Just 16 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated.”

I have a lot of faith in the immune system. People may get colds, but we’ll have enough redundancies that we’ll still be largely protected against severe disease.

Marion Pepper, the immunologist (source: The Atlantic)

“There will be a time in the future when life is like it was two years ago: You run up to someone, give them a hug, get an infection, go through half a box of tissues, and move on with your life. That’s where we’re headed, but we’re not there yet,” Jennie Lavine, an infectious-disease researcher at Emory University, told Yong of The Atlantic.

Mr. Ahmed of West Virginia told Politico “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. We’re going to have to learn to live with it and find ways to deal with it. And not make it so politicized, dramatized and make people so upset.”