City councilor cancels annual holiday party due to Covid-19

Only one of our feuding commenters lives in Boston, and the other lives far, far away from Boston.

There are three ways that a human to human transmitted pandemic ends (sorry none of us epidemiologists asked you). They can be singular, but are more often a combination:

1. There is a definitive cure or elimination via vaccines

2. It abates because it burns through the population and becomes endemic

3. People learn to manage the risk

In the case of the 1918 flu, number 2 was the dominant situation.

For Measels, Smallpox, and Polio, vaccines (#1) were used to wipe out the long running epidemic cycles.

HIV has been more complicated, mostly a combo of #1 (treatments suppressing viral load) and #3 (condoms and sex education). HIV is still an active global pandemic, though damped down a bit.

COVID clearly involves all three - Omicron is pulling down the #2 slot here, but vaccines have reduced some transmission and protected people from death and severe illness, while behavioral responses are also in play (like wearing masks and cancelling events when things get heated up).

We don't have good records of how we got other coronaviruses turning into the "common cold" (although there is some evidence that the "flu pandemic" in the 1880s was possibly one of those four common cold coronas), but that may be the eventual fate of SARS-CoV-2: a endemic nuisance.