JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Back to normal: That’s how many of you felt on the July 4th holiday weekend and some even for the past few months.
Masks restrictions are mostly gone. Millions of Americans are vaccinated. The phrase "post-pandemic" is being used.
THE QUESTION
Are we post-pandemic?
THE SOURCES
- Director of Accreditation and Infection Prevention Chad Neilsen at UF Health Jacksonville
- National Institute of Health
- State and national COVID-19 databases
- Avera Health
- WHO
THE ANSWER
No, not yet.
WHAT WE FOUND
The term is more complicated than it sounds.
A NY Times articles says there are two parts of the pandemic: the medical and the social. Neilsen agrees and says we are out of one but not the other.
“We are not quite post pandemic yet," Neilsen said. "It might feel that way because of loosening restrictions due to vaccinations being more prevalent here in the United States, but when we talk about pandemic at its basic definition is large scale disease spread across the world involving large amounts of people and we are still seeing that.”
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Neilsen says while the US is averaging about 12,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day, places like Brazil are averaging 55,000 cases per day and India is averaging 47,000 per day.
Avera Health says a pandemic can end in 3 ways:
- When a vaccine is developed
- Infection and death rates plummet
- And/or people stop living in fear and learn to live with the disease
By those three points, you may think we are in fact post-pandemic, but NIH says pandemics end when herd immunity is achieved.
The NY Times world vaccination tracker shows about 41% of people around the world are vaccinated. We aren't at herd immunity.
“We are basically exiting the pandemic from a social perspective and not a disease perspective," Neilsen said. “People are lulled into feeling like it is over because governors are relaxing public health restrictions. Public health emergency orders are largely disappearing across the U.S., but it is still very much alive outside our borders.”
The World Health Organization outlines pandemic phases. Neilsen says we are probably in the post-peak period. The last stage before post-pandemic.
He says more people need to get vaccinated to help reach the final phase.