The End IS Near. No, Seriously.
The subtext is we’ll never really be safe, we dare not demask, the pandemic will never leave us. It’s almost as if some writers are reluctant to let go of the biggest disaster (and biggest story) of our lives.
And yes, in those cases, herd immunity did it. We reached it the hard way — down the stone paths in the cemeteries— but we got there.
The pathogens that caused them didn’t vanish. They’re still with us. But you don’t need transmission exterminated to say an epidemic is over. You just need it manageable.
Herd immunity is not a moment in time. President Biden is never going to say: “Today, at 9:04 A.M., on the deck of the U.S.S. Moderna, the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 signed our general terms of surrender.”
We will probably have bad seasons and good seasons, as we do with flu. We may have annual shots with a blend of the South African, Brazilian, Indian or whatever variants are circling the globe that year. Luckily, because coronaviruses mutate more slowly than influenza viruses, they will probably be better matches than flu shots are.
Our national herd has many sub-herds. Immunity’s growth rate is variable, not just state by state, but block by block, and profession by profession. Front-line nurses and meatpackers, homebound software engineers and transitioning schoolteachers are all increasing their immunity levels by different routes.
