When will Covid really be over? Three things that will mark the end of the pandemic | Erica Charters

History tells us the end of a deadly outbreak isn’t just about medical data – it’s about political and social changes too

More than two years after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic and more than 18 months after Covid-19 vaccinations were first widely administered, it can still seem there is little consensus on what stage of the epidemic we are now at. Is the epidemic over, with British restrictions lifted a year ago and airline travel surging? Or do soaring case rates and continued individual health measures suggest the epidemic is nowhere near its end?

The trouble is that epidemics do not have the sort of neat, objective endings we may imagine. A swift and decisive endpoint, achieved through the speedy application of scientific innovation – a magic bullet treatment – is usually wishful thinking. It is unlikely we will see anything like that with Covid-19.

Erica Charters is professor of the global history of medicine at the University of Oxford, where she leads a multidisciplinary project on How Epidemics End

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/fLw4KZb