a fundamental misreading¶
Anyone who tells you COVID has become endemic is basing that claim on a fundamental misreading of what the term actually means
Endemic does not mean mild. Endemic does not mean cases go down. Endemic does not mean "no longer a concern." Endemic means persistent in a population. It is a LONG-term assessment. It means that we don't see new variants from different lineages emerge and sweep across the globe, but rather isolated outbreaks that emerge from a low-level background of cases from the same lineage. Omicron is not descended from delta, delta did not descend from beta, beta did not descend from alpha. All of these are competing, distinct lineages. That's not something you see in endemic diseases like influenza, where each outbreak is a descendant of the last successful one. This is important because it means we still don't actually know where the next variant will come from or what it will look like. All we know is that it necessarily must be able to evade immunity to omicron. Considering that we're seeing evidence of reinfection with the same strain within a relatively short time span, that could mean the next threat is a sublineage of omicron, OR a sublineage of any prior variant of concern, OR another new and distinct lineage. Bottom line, we can't make the determination that COVID is endemic until we see that outbreaks are no longer coming from distinct lineages. And if we ever do, that's not actually good news, because it means same-strain reinfection is normal, which means deaths will keep coming. Also this, which covers more of what it actually looks like once it IS endemic: