Donald McNeil on the COVID Epidemic: ‘The End Is Near’

Donald McNeil — the science reporter who was unceremoniously run out of The New York Times a few months ago — now writing on his oddly-named Medium blog:

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.”

Instead, this virus is slowly becoming endemic: something we live with.

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.

I was out to eat last night, indoors, for the fourth time since hitting maxination (two week post-second shot). It’s still exciting.

See also: McNeil last week on the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origin.

★ Tuesday, 25 May 2021