The official end of the pandemic?

This week, Joe Biden's CDC went from urging caution in terms of wearing masks to telling the world that vaccinated people don't have to wear masks indoors. At the start of the week, Randi Weingarten told FNC's Martha MacCallum that she was undecided on whether schools could return to in-person learning this fall. By Thursday, Weingarten had preached a passionate, hour-long message on the necessity of returning to in-person learning.

The pandemic is over. At least, that's what Tim Carney argues in this article for the Washington Examiner. I agree with Carney's article, especially the part where he says "It’s over. COVID-19 isn’t gone, of course. The coronavirus, the current novel one and its variants as well as other such viruses, will never be gone, and every public health expert knows that."

Carney expands on his opinion in the next paragraphs:

And the pandemic is still raging in other parts of the world, especially in India. But in the United States, the emergency is over. The epidemic in America is like a poisoned rat, limping, staggering, crawling, and gasping its last breaths. The poison is the vaccine now jabbed into the arms of most adults.

People need to understand that the virus hasn't disappeared entirely. That wasn't a reasonable expectation. When Dr. Marty Makary wrote this WSJ op-ed, 'the experts' explained why herd immunity was months away. Dr. Makary stuck to his prediction, though. In the end, Dr. Makary, not 'the experts', was vindicated. Here's the opening of Dr. Makary's op-ed:

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Here's what Dr. Makary said about the CDC's COVID guidance change: We won't get to zero COVID cases anytime soon, if ever. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't live normal lives. With case numbers dropping and deaths and hospitalizations plummeting, why trust the fear porn merchants? That doesn't make sense. <>div>
Stick a fork in this pandemic. It's finished.