A mere 772 days, or two years, one month, and eleven days after the White House announced, “Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread” on March 16, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci declared yesterday that, “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.”
If you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are. What we hope to do, I don’t believe — and I have spoken about this widely — we’re not going to eradicate this virus. If we can keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people — and I don’t know how often that would have to be, Judy.
That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low. But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country. Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world, infection that spreads rapidly among people.
So, if you look at the global situation, there’s no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing.
Indeed, over in China — that country that we kept getting told was managing the pandemic so much better than the U.S. — “the threat of a wider outbreak in Beijing is far from over and the central government’s unflinching commitment to its zero-Covid strategy means China’s capital may still resort to citywide shutdowns.”