3 ms·

It seems that what really happened was that this novel coronavirus became just like the common cold: endemic and benign. It's often said there is "no cure for

by EGreg 4y ago

It seems that what really happened was that this novel coronavirus became just like the common cold: endemic and benign. It's often said there is "no cure for the common cold", and millions get it every year, but they don't close schools because of it. The common cold is also a coronavirus, that was probably quite novel around 100 years ago, but now the vast majority of people have enough immunity to it that the only variants that spread are benign.

jfengel 4y ago
The United States is still experiencing about 500 deaths a day from COVID-19. That will put it in the top 10 causes of deaths, which is certainly not true of the common cold. It may be endemic, but it is not benign. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we're willing to live with that. That makes it no longer a Public Health Emergency, the term that the WHO uses. It's still a pandemic, in the sense that it's a transmissible disease causing widespread harm. And it will continue to, mostly among the unvaccinated. (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-co...). Ideally, we'd continue to encourage people to get vaccinated rather than risk the "natural immunity" that has a nontrivial chance of killing them.