Is The Covid-19 Pandemic Over?

The complex answer to a seemingly simple question

Pictured: Littering. Throw your masks away! Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

It’s 2022, nearly three years since the first cases of an unknown coronavirus were detected in Wuhan, China, and there’s a question on everyone’s mind: is the pandemic over? If not, when will it be done for good?

The question seems simple enough. It is anything but.

Stock photo results for “complex” are either roads or wires, apparently. Photo by Bofu Shaw on Unsplash

As with many things during Covid-19, the question of when the pandemic will be over, or if it already is, is almost impossible to give a single answer to, because like many things in epidemiology it’s all about definitions. If we define pandemic one way, maybe it’s already over and done, but using other interpretations it will probably continue on forever.

Sound like a headache to you? Imagine being an epidemiologist full time.

Defining Pandemics

There are many ways to define a pandemic, but they tend to fall into two main categories — scientific or social. The first type of definition is by far the simplest one, because it is fairly strict and easy to understand. The most common way of putting it is from a textbook called A Dictionary of…