End of the Pandemic
The federal public health emergency declared for COVID-19 ended this week. Not because we beat it, but because we’ve surrendered. COVID-19 is now endemic in the world population.
For many, the pandemic was over long ago. There were many people healthy or stubborn enough to ignore it early on. Some people lead lives that are already so solitary that it made little difference if they took precautions. The businesses that didn’t shut down entirely in 2020 re-opened months if not years ago, too.
And for some it will never end. Those with compromised immune systems now have to live in fear of another virus. Their loved ones have to take extreme precautions to make sure they don’t carry the highly-contagious disease to someone so ill-equipped to fight it. People who lost loved ones will never be over it.
There are also those with “long COVID.” They have severe, long-lasting effects that change their lives for the worse. On the lighter end, they may no longer enjoy their favorite foods or get a little foggy-headed some days. On the other hand, they may barely be able to breathe.
Personally, I can’t help but to think back to the early days of the pandemic, when we almost came together as a society to beat the virus at the outset. I’m not claiming it would have been easy. It was a stretch from the beginning, but we had a chance to limit transmission until an effective preventative came out.
We’ve beaten diseases before, even viruses. Smallpox and Rinderpest have both been declared eradicated, in 1980 and 2011, respectively. Both were eradicated using vaccines. We’re also close to eliminating polio with vaccination. Several more diseases are on their way to the chopping block, too. And it’s a good thing. It stops people from suffering, and in the long run, it’s much less expensive to eradicate a disease than it is to manage it.
The two things that make COVID-19 especially dangerous are also what makes it so difficult to eradicate now. It mutates more quickly than we can develop and manufacture vaccines, and has a long dormant period where it is still transmissible without the carrier being aware. It’s sneaky, and can adapt quickly.
Now, it’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to get COVID-19 under control. COVID-19 has become one more deadly virus circulating regularly among the population, and will continue to have an annual death toll. Depending on its mutations, it could easily have a resurgence.
And COVID-19 almost certainly won’t be the last new disease we deal with, either. Swine flu, Bird flu, newly mutated strains of old diseases; there have been regularly occurring outbreaks throughout my lifetime, with little action to prevent them from repeating.
As diseases morph and change, there will be new challenges to our collective, societal health. The only way we will triumph is if we’re ready to morph and change to beat these unseeable dangers. The alternative is to become a sickly society.
