Obviously the pandemic is not currently over and will not be in the foreseeable future. For this discussion, assume that the actual end of the pandemic would be when there is no more elevated risk of sickness/disabling relative to the norm before COVID.
The world has decided on a vaccine-only strategy where a majority of the populace does not get vaccinated which isn't going to do anything. The concept of herd immunity through "natural infection" is even less effective, as we can see with the many cases of reinfection. Even something as mild as mask mandates are non-viable in the US.
So, assuming no mitigations are implemented again... how does the pandemic actually end? Is it just gambling on eventually getting a mild strain that actually becomes "a bad flu"? Do we have any historical data on what kind of timeframe we can expect here?
Or is it just going to be like this forever?
I honestly wonder how much death that would take. I guess it would involve overloading hospitals etc and with their capacities still steadily dropping it gets likelier every day.
Most likely the first thing that's gonna happen. With the amount of people leaving/avoiding healthcare careers, and the ever-increasing number of significantly ill people, it's basically inevitable.
Aren't hospitals still overloaded now?
And I haven't looked in to it, but as of a year ago there was a dire crisis in medical staffing due to so many people dying, becoming disabled, or crashing out due to unrelenting stress and understaffing. And it's all the way up and down, from ambulance paramedics to Drs and everyone in between.
I was under the impression that, while there are now less staff who are more overworked, ER patient numbers aren't as bad as they were in the early days of the pandemic. Then again I don't work in healthcare, so maybe they are.