When is the pandemic over?
The pandemic isn't over. It's not. We are turning a corner and reached a peak. We've had surges and peaks before but this time should be different, according to the experts, and I'm not arguing that.
My point is that the pandemic isn't going to be over all at once. Except for the people who can't get vaccinated, of course. But the whole pandemic as it affects our country will end gradually, in spots that will be smaller and separated and grow larger, eventually covering the whole country. Think of a wet concrete slab, like your driveway after a rain. It's soaked, then it's just dark, stained by the moisture but without anything to splash. You can walk on it without getting your feet wet. When you come back out a little while later, it's not stained dark by the moisture except in a few places and most of those are small and you can tell they are where there was a slight irregularity and the concrete was not perfectly flat there and the water when it was laying on it there was just slightly deeper. A little while after that, and those spots will be dry, too. That's when the driveway is dry again.
If it is a new concrete driveway, you're supposed to keep it wet for a few weeks and not let it get completely dry as it will be in, say, summer, a few months away, when it will be bone dry. That's so the concrete can continue to cure and harden. And concrete actually continues to harden for it's lifetime. For decades and centuries. If you were a scientist with the necessary instruments, and you went and measured the concrete in, say, the sidewalks of New York city poured way back before horseless carriages, it would be harder than the new driveway at your house. Let's not whup an analogy too hard.
The pandemic will continue as long as there are new cases and deaths to report. Period. Almost, period. In fact, the pandemic will be over the way the driveway dries out. In patches first, and then in larger patches becoming contiguous. In your county, depending where you live, the hospital is now, maybe, not full to capacity and the staff are getting some relief. The morgue isn't full and overflowing into the conference room. And your county has reported no new cases and no deaths for a month or two, since winter. But over in the adjacent county, the county seat, where the big city has hundreds of thousands of people and a dozen hospitals, the pandemic is still on. There are new cases, and the number of them and of the deaths are down, but still high. Still hundreds per month instead of each day, but still hundreds. Those hospitals are still running shifts and most of the work is still intubating the covid patients, who are still showing up unvaccinated and stupid and whose loved ones still have to wait beyond the glass, dying without saying goodbye.
The big city in your county that is still reporting new cases and deaths per day in the hundreds or in the dozens still has a mask mandate for indoor facilities. And there are still people parading around pissed off and willing to get in your face if you insist that they wear a mask to dine in. And if you are still living and haven't had covid but are not vaccinated, for whatever reason, you better stay out of crowded indoor places for a while yet, and wear a mask. Your pandemic is over when the new cases are only double digit or single digit and the evening news hasn't carried the numbers in a while. Your concrete is hard enough now to drive on and park your truck on.
Now your pandemic is over, and since you live in a suburb of a big city, with a major airport and cruise ship port, you were the last to have your pandemic over.
So now. What are you going to do and what are you going to tell your kids and co-workers when, a few years from now, the evening news suddenly has the headline that another novel coronavirus, as contagious and deadly as the last one that carried us in pandemic for three full long years, is discovered in a city with an airport and a cruise ship port and you start hearing the phrase 'essential travel only' and 'wear a mask?' What are you going to do, and what are going to tell your kids and your co-workers and your mom in the nursing home?
Everyone wants the pandemic to be over. No one wants to get the disease, just like no one wants to be in the hospital, or suffer from suffocation, and no one wants to die. But no one wants to wear a mask and stay home. What are you going to do then?
The pandemic is over when it's over, until then be smart and not selfish and not complacent and not too tired to do the right thing.
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