The writer is a science commentator
By some accounts, the season finale of the pandemic approaches. Omicron appears to be less severe than the Delta variant. Some of this will be down to immunity built up through vaccination and infection; research also suggests the variant prospers more in the upper airways than in the lungs. Accordingly, hospital stays are shorter and fewer patients require intensive care.
That has framed the belief that Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is settling into the background alongside other relatively benign coronaviruses that mostly induce symptoms of the common cold. The sense of an imminent ending is reinforced by the image of a “mild” variant coupled with many references to “endemicity” and “learning to live with the virus”. Nadhim Zahawi, former UK vaccines minister, said recently he hoped the UK would be “one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how to transition from pandemic to endemic”.