So I guess this is as close to a victory announcement as we're going to get.

Quote Originally Posted by Washington Post
“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Tuesday on PBS’s “NewsHour,” when asked by anchor Judy Woodruff if the country was near the end of the pandemic.

Fauci expanded on, and clarified, his views in an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Post, saying the global pandemic is ongoing but the United States is transitioning to a period in which the virus is no longer causing the level of hospitalization and death seen during the omicron wave of infection this past winter.

“Right now we’re at a low enough level that I believe that we’re transitioning into endemicity. ... We’re not in the full-blown explosive pandemic phase. That does not mean that the pandemic is over,” Fauci said. “A pandemic means widespread infection throughout the world. ... In our country we’re transitioning into more of a controlled endemicity.”

Restrictions are easing as many Americans appear to be putting the pandemic behind them. Masking requirements have been lifted across most of the country, and officials stopped enforcing a federal mask mandate in transportation settings after a judge struck down the requirement.
There's still a pandemic out there ... China has still locked down several cities. But at this point the west seems to be just shrugging and moving on. While the disease is still around, a combination of vaccination and natural immunity is rendering it and its variants a lot less lethal than it was two years ago. It's not a novel coronavirus any more, not after a majority of people have had it.

So I guess this is as much of a "win" as we're going to get, as it drops from the news. I suspect there will be booster shots and new shots against later variants, same as the flu. But we are now back to "normal", at least as "normal" as things will be.

Respectfully,

Brian P.