How You’ll Know When the Pandemic Is Contained
There will be no dramatic end to the pandemic, but we can at least look for these four signs that it’s under control
After a dark, lonely winter — when cases of Covid-19 ravaged the globe, surpassing 2 million deaths in mid-January, and with new variants cropping up — we seem to have begun emerging from the absolute worst. Spring’s fate is up in the air, but the ramped-up vaccine program under the new administration is sending hopeful signals. Seeing more and more friends and family posting vaccine selfies on social media amid climbing vaccination rates makes the end of the pandemic feel a little more tangible, in some ways.
But when we say “the end,” what exactly do we mean?
It’s challenging to know when a pandemic will be over, because by definition, a pandemic is an epidemic occurring on multiple continents. Covid-19 may be on the downslope of wreaking havoc in the United States, but what about elsewhere?
Experts caution that there likely won’t be a complete end to Covid-19: Sporadic, small outbreaks may continue around the world. And even getting to that point is not on the fast track.
“The pandemic is not going to end in a bang; it’s going to end in a whimper,” says Syra Madad, an…
