Interesting article from WaPo.
[...] So when will the pandemic actually end?
According to Fauci’s logic, the answer is only when the numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths come down and stay down. But as appealing as this notion is in its simple clarity, it clashes with history: Over the past century, the end of respiratory pandemics has never been clear-cut.
Instead, in four cases — the 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009 flu pandemics — hospitalizations and deaths ascribed to the pandemic pathogen continued for years after the sense of emergency had passed. This reality reveals that the “end” to a pandemic can’t be determined by some sort of epidemiological milestone or acquiring a magic-bullet treatment that removes all risk from the virus. Rather, historically, the resumption of regular life — if it was even interrupted in the first place — guides the end of a pandemic.
Most experts agree that the 1918 flu pandemic, caused by an H1N1 virus, had three waves, concluding in the winter of 1919. Some, however, include a fourth wave and date the end to 1920. This cloudiness arises because deaths continued in the years after the declared end of the pandemic; as late as the winter of 1928-29, for example, H1N1-related deaths in the United States topped 100,000. [...]
Even though it might take years for a population to fully adapt to a novel pathogen (though with less and less impact as time goes by), pandemics often end simply when people are done with it.
