Dateline COVID19 pandemic

The Coronavirus Pandemic- echo report by Caroline Mimbs Nyce published in The Atlantic

COVID-19 is not going away. The virus that causes it is on track to become endemic, like the ones that cause the common cold. You’ll probably encounter it at some point, if you haven’t already.

That doesn’t mean you should stop taking precautions. We can still buy ourselves time—time to vaccinate more people and avoid deadly hospital surges. But the virus will be part of our lives in the long term.

Why COVID19 virus outbreak is so bad published in VOX

The Florida surge is a microcosm of a summer gone wrong.

“We need to prepare people that [the current wave of cases is] not going to come down to zero,” one psychologist warned my colleague Sarah Zhang.

The virus itself could still get worse. “Delta could continue to ratchet up its rate of spread, or it could be ousted by another super-infectious variant,” our staff writer Katherine J. Wu warns. “There is no playbook for evolution.”

Global inequities could worsen as the virus transitions to endemicity. “The human and economic costs of new diseases are borne by all, but unequally,” the historian Kyle Harper reminds us.

But eventually, the coronavirus will become a less worrisome part of life. “When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu,” Sarah Zhang reports.