> A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals.

> An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time

In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should make that a bit more clear. Being vaccinated reduces the negative effects of infection, and may also reduce infectiousness and spread, but it didn't end the pandemic.

But does it matter? If omicron becomes the "new flu" (or "the new cold") for the young and healthy, and with vaccines even for old and weak, do we have to call it a "pandemic" anymore?

I mean... did we have a "cold pandemic" or a "flu pandemic" before 2020? I'm pretty sure most of the planet had a cold every winter, and we just lived with it. Same with the flu... risk-groups died, and noone bothered the young with it, we just called it "normal life".

> In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs.

> A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic.

The cold and flu are "stable" albeit seasonal. While we might expect that outcome for variations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we're not there yet. A rapidly exploding number of infections is not a stable number of infected individuals.

At any rate, some people getting vaccinated and choosing to live as if the infections do not exist does not "end the pandemic."

it’s nice to believe, but a lot of our ability to return to normal requires these bureaucracies to be on board. it doesn’t matter that you individually are comfortable sending your kid to school, that school’s not going to be open if the consensus and bureaucracies are against you.

somehow we failed to coordinate the back-to-normal in my region when the vaccines arrived. this seems like the next best opportunity to admit that we’re ready to lift restrictions, so here’s hoping we can keep the majority on board this time.