October 6, 2024
Is the COVID pandemic over?

To be able to gauge whether the COVID pandemic is over, we must first understand what characterizes what a pandemic is. Unfortunately, despite the billions of funds funneled into it by countries and organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has failed to offer a single, definitive definition of the word “pandemic”. The best definition we can find was published in 2009 by The Journal of Infections Disease, and the WHO Guidance Document was published in 2009.

According to the JID, there is “no single accepted definition of a pandemic”, but there are several “key features” that apply to all or most of them. Based on the JID definition, a pandemic has the following characteristics:

  • extends over large geographic areas
  • disease movement or spread via transmission can be traced from place to place
  • High attack rates, high symptomatic cases, “explosive” spread
  • minimal population immunity
  • novelty
  • infectiousness
  • contagiousness
  • disease severity

If we use the JID definition, it is clear that COVID can no longer be considered a pandemic because it is no longer a new disease and most areas in the world have already developed population immunity.

Moreover, the emergency has passed as most countries are now registering low cases and deaths.

Meanwhile, if we use the WHO Pandemic Phases, one will clearly see that we are now in a post-pandemic world.

Evidence is showing that COVID has become seasonal and that no amount of government intervention will eradicate the virus.

In fact, several countries are already moving away from the pandemic phase and are slowly transitioning towards “living with COVID” which is in fact a signal of the post-pandemic world.

Meanwhile, the Philippines, which relies mostly on WHO guidance, is unable to make a final determination of the path the country will take. On one hand, is a continued push for the pandemic narrative.

On the other, is an acknowledgment that the emergency phase is over as vaccination sites are now closing and therapeutics (despite their questionable effectiveness) for COVID are now being made available.

Even if the WHO is hesitant to declare, the reality is that THE PANDEMIC HAS ENDED A LONG TIME AGO. Our governments must now end the COVID theater and focus on recovery and strengthening our overall health system.

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