# Is the COVID Pandemic...over? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Created:** [April 11, 2025, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886 "2025-04-11T01:44:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/21 "2025-04-11T14:02:43Z")
It sems to have reduced to an “acceptable” baseline in the UK: > | Hospital admissions | Stable | Baseline | The overall weekly hospital admission rate for COVID-19 remained stable at 1.24 per 100,000 compared with 1.27 per 100,000 in the previous week | > | --- | --- | --- | --- | > | ICU/HDU admissions | Stable | Baseline | The overall ICU or HDU rate for COVID-19 remained stable at 0.03 per 100,000 compared with 0.04 per 100,000 in the previous week | Because I am over 75, I was offered (and accepted) a Covid jab. This is also offered to people with respiratory problems. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/22 "2025-04-11T18:51:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@Bullitt](#): > > > > Bolding mine. Some medical facilities near me still require that masks be worn. It’s either in San Mateo County or Santa Clara County. I can’t remember which. > > > > So there are some places that still require masks. > > Even before covid, there were some medical facilities that required that masks be worn. It’s probably more of them now than it was then, but it’s not entirely new. Interesting. Not in my experience (thankfully), but, okay I can see that. I have encountered that for specific, contagious patients in special rooms, but not facility-wide in your basic hospital. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/23 "2025-04-11T22:22:37Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The original hope of “lock downs” and masking & distancing was that we could contain it to a small region of Earth That’s not how I remember it. I don’t recall anyone (seriously) thinking that COVID could be meaningfully contained. Instead, the goal was “flattening the curve”. It was not possible to keep the infection rate from going up. But maybe the time-constant of the exponential could be expanded a bit so as to not overload medical resources, and maybe delay some of those infections past the point where the vaccine would be available. A valid goal and it probably worked to an extent. But it seems that people forgot about that as a goal and extended lockdowns past the point where they were actually useful. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/24 "2025-04-11T23:07:47Z")
The academic medical community now considers covid to be in the endemic phase; a constant presence rather than a disruptive outbreak. So says Harvard School of Public Health. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/25 "2025-08-18T00:17:15Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That’s not how I remember it. I don’t recall anyone (seriously) thinking that COVID could be meaningfully contained. Certainly “people” in Aus thought that – and probably NZ as well. It was perhaps a “stupid” thought, but it was encouraged by actions of my state government. Every man is the centre of their own world, and I know people who thought that COVID could be “contained”, and still think that it should have been. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/26 "2025-08-18T00:22:57Z")
I was certainly speaking from a US (or North American) perspective. Island nations like New Zealand had some hope of containment. Australia seems a bit borderline but I can certainly believe people _thought_ it could be contained. I’m still not particularly happy that “flattening the curve” got memory-holed. The extended lockdowns, especially in schools, caused more harm than good. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/27 "2025-08-18T02:29:38Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I’m still not particularly happy that “flattening the curve” got memory-holed. The extended lockdowns, especially in schools, caused more harm than good. I don’t know that those are the same things? “flattening the curve” was certainly a good idea – Italy and China, and parts of the USA, showed what happened when the curve got ahead of the hospital capacity. Extended lockdown of the schools was certainly a mistake, but where was it ever associated specifically with “flattening the curve”, rather than morality\* or mindless panic? \*In my state, school lockdowns were partly the outcome of the collectivist political orientation of the government ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/28 "2025-08-18T02:42:36Z")
The corollary to “flattening the curve” is that you _let up_ as soon as the hospital situation improves. But that largely didn’t happen here. It was not strictly related to the schools except in that school lockdowns were part of the extended set of lockdowns which were put into place to flatten the curve. But once the hospital situation was under control, everything else should have been reevaluated, starting with the least-at-risk populations (and types of gathering). Europe mostly did this; the US didn’t. One of many problems with political polarization is that it makes it impossible to make tradeoffs. Maximum caution is just as stupid as maximum incaution; between the two I suppose I’d pick caution, but it is nevertheless actively harmful compared to something in the middle. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/29 "2025-08-18T02:58:12Z")
Just to be clear, it’s not flattening the curve that bothers me. It’s that if you perform some action X based on circumstances Y, but then there is a change such that Y no longer holds, then you should not blindly continue doing X. You should, at the least, reevaluate to see if there are other (still valid) circumstances that justify X. Better would be to abandon X and start from scratch. It’s likely that there is some new action, different from X, that would be a better fit to the new circumstances. Also, the burden of proof should be on the one asking for the non-default action. They’re the ones obligated to show that X is still justified. We should revert to not-X unless a high standard of argument is reached. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/30 "2025-08-18T06:57:49Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > > > That’s not how I remember it. I don’t recall anyone (seriously) thinking that COVID could be meaningfully contained. > > Certainly “people” in Aus thought that – and probably NZ as well. It was perhaps a “stupid” thought, but it was encouraged by actions of my state government. > > Every man is the centre of their own world, and I know people who thought that COVID could be “contained”, and still think that it should have been. I have a friend, in the US, who said, “that was when I thought that if we all stayed home for 6 weeks it would die out”. Do yes, there were people in the US who thought it would be contained. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/31 "2025-08-18T07:18:34Z")
I guess there must be a few people out there that believed it. But I have a reasonably diverse set of acquaintances and can’t think of anyone that thought it would just be nipped in the bud. Though this does depend on exactly _when_ we’re talking about. Early on, say Jan-Feb 2020, it just wasn’t clear whether this would be a limited outbreak like SARS or something else. Our company sent everyone home in March. Maybe then, a very optimistic person could think this would be a limited outbreak. But a month or two after that, it seems like it would be hard to believe. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/32 "2025-08-18T07:42:00Z")
It’s not over, plenty of states are having high Covid rates at the moment. [https://www.axios.com/2025/08/13/covid-19-symptoms-stratus-variant-states-highest-cases](https://www.axios.com/2025/08/13/covid-19-symptoms-stratus-variant-states-highest-cases) ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/33 "2025-08-18T08:21:27Z")
Why are we taking it as a given that extended remote schooling was such a bad idea? Those places are germ factories and while kids are resilient they would’ve certainly lead to a greater spread towards adults. Yes, I’m sure it had some downsides as far as education, kid socialization, and mental health, but the measures we took to slow it down probably saved millions of lives across the world. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/34 "2025-08-18T08:24:19Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s that if you perform some action X based on circumstances Y, but then there is a change such that Y no longer holds, then you should not blindly continue doing X. You should, at the least, reevaluate to see if there are other (still valid) circumstances that justify X. Better would be to abandon X and start from scratch. It’s likely that there is some new action, different from X, that would be a better fit to the new circumstances. Also, the burden of proof should be on the one asking for the non-default action. Pandemic control measures became the default when it was decided that not taking sufficient methods could potentially lead to an out of control pandemic like we saw in China, Italy, NY, etc early on during the pandemic. At that point it makes sense to use the precautionary principle until such time that the scientific understanding and/or reality of the situation changed enough to let it up. If we’re doing things that are working like masking, social distancing, etc. how often are you proposing we start from scratch? Do we need to start from scratch every day? Every week? Just go back to “okay, don’t do anything, we haven’t got the data in this week yet so everyone go to coughing parties like you normally would”? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/35 "2025-08-18T09:23:32Z")
Europe opened their schools and didn’t suffer millions of excess deaths. And it wasn’t “some downsides” to education. Students lost about half a year of their education. More for the least-advantaged students. “The measures” are not some unified thing. There were some good measures and some dumb measures. The extended school closures were one of the dumber ones. Very high cost with very little benefit. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/36 "2025-08-18T09:30:17Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It’s not over, plenty of states are having high Covid rates at the moment. > > [https://www.axios.com/2025/08/13/covid-19-symptoms-stratus-variant-states-highest-cases](https://www.axios.com/2025/08/13/covid-19-symptoms-stratus-variant-states-highest-cases) Paywalled. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/37 "2025-08-18T09:36:34Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Just go back to “okay, don’t do anything, we haven’t got the data in this week yet so everyone go to coughing parties like you normally would”? You’re just spouting nonsense. I never said anything along those lines. The US could have observed other countries and reevaluated the situation month-by-month. Luxembourg and Israel reopened schools in May 2020. But only about half of US schools were even open in May 2021. It wasn’t until Fall 2021 that the majority of schools were reopened. There wasn’t a great disaster in the early opening countries. The US didn’t have to be the leader in this respect but we could have seen what worked elsewhere and lagged them by a few months. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/38 "2025-08-18T10:05:22Z")
OK, sorry. Basically, nearly every U.S. state has seen an increase in Covid cases, and not a single state has had a decline as of Aug-5 (which is about two weeks ago.) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/39 "2025-08-18T12:50:22Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > and while kids are resilient they would’ve certainly lead to a greater spread towards adults. It’s a logical argument, but false. It turns out that kids don’t spread covid to adults. I guess that seems unlikely, even to me, but the counting is done, and the numbers are in: those “outbreaks” and other traced spreads didn’t come through kids. Kids aren’t just worse spreaders: it turned out that they are very very bad at spreading COVID-19, even in schools. However, given what we knew at the time, there came a point, even then, when gradual relaxation of school closures would have been rational. My own government was unable to do ‘gradual’, which I respect as a political principle, but some of it was a bridge too far, even for me. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2025, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886/40 "2025-08-18T13:06:48Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I guess there must be a few people out there that believed it. But I have a reasonably diverse set of acquaintances and can’t think of anyone that thought it would just be nipped in the bud. Though this does depend on exactly _when_ we’re talking about. Early on, say Jan-Feb 2020, it just wasn’t clear whether this would be a limited outbreak like SARS or something else. Our company sent everyone home in March. Maybe then, a very optimistic person could think this would be a limited outbreak. But a month or two after that, it seems like it would be hard to believe. Well, he obviously thought that when we were fewer than 6 weeks into the lockdown. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > Why are we taking it as a given that extended remote schooling was such a bad idea? Those places are germ factories and while kids are resilient they would’ve certainly lead to a greater spread towards adults. Yes, I’m sure it had some downsides as far as education, kid socialization, and mental health, but the measures we took to slow it down probably saved millions of lives across the world. It was good for some kids, and neutral for others. But it was really bad for most. I interviewed an autistic kid for college who loved remote high school. He could stim without bothering anyone, or attracting unwanted attention. He could conveniently review lessons more than once. He could hold his dog during lectures. Most of the high school kids in my upper-middle-class town did fine. They had a private bedroom and their own computer got lessons, and they were academically motivated and able to keep up. And it was mixed for the working class high school kids I’d been tutoring. (I continued over zoom.) Some essentially dropped out. Others had the freedom to start working earlier than they otherwise could have, and still continue in school. I tutored one girl who saw me in the staff area of a department store during her breaks. Of course, all of them lost a couple of months while the school scrambled to get them devices to use at home. Part of the deficit among poorer kids was a one-time start-up cost. But it was a nightmare for the little kids and their parents. Zoom kindergarten just isn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-covid-pandemic-over/1016886.md?page=3)