Readers might have the idea that I started this post with a sarcastic or rhetorical question. And yet it’s not. I find the question a really difficult one to answer. Mulling over that very question is one reason it’s taken me four months to write a post on COVID after my January post on Omicron.
Plus, Omicron – or some version of it – remains with us.
A Pandemic?
In fact, underneath the standard definitions, we find a lot of disagreement over how, exactly, to identify a pandemic at all. Sure, we find appeals to rising case numbers, global spread, and so on. But aside from the first couple of months of the Omicron wave (a very notable exception), official global (i.e., not just USA) COVID case numbers have been relatively stable since May 2021. And COVID deaths have been trending downward ever since May 2021. Especially since February 2022.
But it can’t be about stability alone. Whether stable or not, case numbers and deaths are still appallingly high. And depending on how things go in places like China, they could get much higher. Plus, underneath this overall worldwide stability we find lots and lots of rises and falls within individual countries.
A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?
The best I can do is to refer people back, once again, to the slogan ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated.’ The worst outcomes – hospitalization, death, and so on – hit unvaccinated people far harder than the vaccinated. For people fully vaccinated – and especially people with a booster – the risks from COVID really aren’t much greater than the risks from seasonal viruses that we wouldn’t call pandemics.
For unvaccinated people, it isn’t over yet.
A perfect answer? No. But it’s the best answer we’ve got.
The ‘End’ of the Pandemic?
Much like wars, it’s not always clear when pandemics begin or end. That’s especially true in a world where technology has gotten to the point where vaccines can fight an ongoing pandemic.
So, I say above that it’s probably a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ at this point. But the answer doesn’t really satisfy anyone. And things could change quickly, either for the better or worse. I suspect that in 20 years, we’ll have official beginning and end dates for the COVID-19 pandemic that look a bit different from the dates we’d choose now.
Postscript
Note: Sometimes I write my posts a bit early and then schedule them on a timer. I wrote the above post sometime around April 20-22. Surely some readers would point out that no other than Fauci himself declared an ‘end’ to the pandemic (or perhaps the ‘acute’ pandemic) on April 27, 2022. They might wonder why I didn’t address Fauci’s announcement.
Well, by now that reason should be obvious. I wrote the post before April 27, despite the May 5, 2022 publication date. But I decided not to edit the post. I still think it’s basically right. Pandemic end dates are social or political facts as much as they’re material or biological ones. We’re seeing all that play out right now.
