THE PANDEMIC IS OVER

What gives a Texas pathologist practicing in a suburban community the right to declare THE PANDEMIC IS OVER in screaming headlines?  Shouldn’t such a pronouncement come from an official institution like the NIH or the CDC or the WHO or a prestigious university?   Read on, I’ll tell you.

The graph of the number of positive tests resulted each week by the laboratory where I practice gives you a fair image of the pandemic in my community:

There were two waves, a small one last summer and a bigger one in the winter.  But since the end of February, the number of positive tests has been low and constant.  Positive tests have not disappeared, but the rate of positives is not changing.  Search for rates in your community, and I bet you’ll find a similar graph.

Recall that epidemic means an increasing number of cases in a community, and that pandemic means an epidemic all over the world.  From the graphs it’s obvious that the number of cases is not changing, and it hasn’t been for several months.  If there’s no epidemic in my community and there’s no epidemic in your community, then there’s no more pandemic.  The pandemic is over.

The graphs also tell us that the virus is still here, and probably will be for a long time, maybe forever.  Epidemiologists call this the endemic rate—the rate of disease that is always present in a population.  People will still get sick, and some may even die, but it’s no longer an epidemic.  We reached herd immunity more quickly than many “experts” predicted.   

So now what?  We have to learn to live with the virus. Know your immunity status.  If you are not immune, continue COVID precautions if you wish to avoid contracting the virus.  The pandemic may be over, but the virus and its variants will be with us for a long time.