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'm not so sure, honestly. Two of my coworkers probably have long covid (general fatigue to the point that one of them has given up his old hobby of MMA after getting COVID a year ago) and their reaction when asked about it was essentially "Well what're you gonna do? We have to go back to normal. :grillman:" Maybe the numbers will tell.
Glad to hear some people are at least getting the ball rolling; there's nothing near me.
Who knows may be you can be the one that starts the COVID safety organizing effort in your area. All the stuff I mentioned are done with pretty small crews, and they have been effective for their size.