ABOUT COVID’S ENDURANCE

The end of the pandemic has been less like a car slamming on the brakes and more like a ship that has turned off its engines and is slowly gliding to a stop.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s weekday COVID communiques, the descendants of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings that began three years ago, have come to a close, replaced by weekly updates that will count down toward the end of the federal health emergency in May. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which tracked the virus worldwide around the clock from the start, closed on March 10.

Once-ubiquitous masks have slipped from many faces, with some still choosing to wear them in public but most places having dropped their mandates…

But COVID is not gone. On Thursday, there were 11 deaths in New York state and hundreds more nationally. There remain thousands of hospitalizations among people at risk, primarily the unvaccinated and the elderly. There is always the chance that new variants will emerge, and in fact it’s almost certain that the virus will continue transforming and permeating itself in some form pretty much indefinitely, which is why the particularly vulnerable, including senior citizens and those with comorbidities, should continue getting boosters when they are available. …

Now that we have survived, we can hope that policymakers at every level will be better prepared for the next one, because COVID certainly won’t be the last. That includes practical considerations, like keeping proper stocks of PPE, but also sociological ones, like understanding the damage that disinformation can inflict.