How this ends
February 10, 2022
People have likened pandemics to wars. They've mapped pathogens' spread as if they were invading armies.I know something about this.
Yet plagues are not wars. They have no Appomattox, no Armistice.
Even more than their beginnings, pandemics' endings always prove elusive. When did the medieval Black Death end? That's a trick question, whatever the textbooks may say. So it will be with our own pandemic.
Epidemiologists neatly define the dividing line between pandemic and endemic, the next state of COVID we expect.
Yet more than biology determines the end of a pandemic. Also key will be social, cultural, and political factors.
To simplify: together we will decide when this pandemic ends.
But our timing won't align perfectly. Each of us has our own COVID chronology. When our lives were first disrupted. When we began wearing masks. When someone we love fell ill, or died. When we experienced symptoms. Moments waiting for test results. Days when isolation became too much to handle, when the ongoing stress became more than we could bear. Our first vaccination date.
And the ending? Some among us are ready now to call it, as dashboard numbers dwindle. Others of us see far too much risk to let down our guards.
Me? My pandemic will end when, as I walk out the kitchen door, I glimpse a mask hanging from a hook -- and I can't remember when I last wore it.
