Is The COVID-19 Pandemic Over?
Yes. Probably. But as with many things, it depends.
We’re currently nearing the end of 2024. It’s been almost 5 years since the very first reports of a new respiratory virus started coming out of Wuhan. In that time, we’ve seen ups and downs, waves and lockdowns, and endless arguments about almost every topic imaginable.
One of those myriad topics that seems to pop up regularly is the question of whether we are in a pandemic or not. According to some people, the pandemic ended almost as soon as it was declared, sometime around mid-2020. For others, the only way that we can call an end to this game is when COVID-19 is gone from the planet entirely.
The thing is, pretty much everyone who comments on this topic is, to some extent, right. Whether you think that the pandemic is over, or never will be, depends entirely on how you define pandemic.
Words and Meanings
The problem with the idea of a pandemic is that there is no one, entirely settled definition of what a pandemic is. There’s actually a wonderful paper from 2009 co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci that discusses this issue in depth. The paper, titled “What Is a Pandemic?” talks about the confusion that surrounded the definition of the word during the 2009 influenza pandemic.
