With New Jersey roughly 75% vaccinated against COVID-19, people weary of the pandemic want to know what a post-pandemic world will look like. Will the new normal mean that COVID-19 becomes an endemic disease, more like the flu? The metrics are squishy. Perry Halkitis, Dean of the Rutgers University School of Public Health, says, “There’s no magic switch or magic number, right?… It’s only like 100 cases a year that makes it endemic. It’s more of a general feeling or sense. You have a disease that is not spreading incredibly, which is basically where we are right now.”
Other health experts think we still have a ways to go before school mask mandates, for example, get canceled. But, with a COVID-19 vaccine just approved for younger children and with new medicines in pill form from Pfizer and Merck in the pipeline, we’re getting closer.
