Anna Nicholson@MediaActivist I agree – though I might not express it quite so strongly, given how much governments and media are downplaying risks (presumably to save ‘the economy’)
I just looked at the WHO website to check, and they’re still (informally) calling it a pandemic, though since May it has not been a PHEIC (public health emergency of international concern): https://www.who.int/news/item/05-05-2023-statement-on-the-fifteenth-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-pandemic
It’s easy to quibble over words, but the fact remains that, whether endemic or epidemic, SARS-CoV-2 poses a potential health risk to everyone, not only in terms of the immediate disease it causes (Covid-19), which rarely (but avoidably!) leads to death – but also because anyone infected can end up with long Covid, the implications of which may take years for us to realise
(And I shouldn’t really have to emphasise that everyone may be at risk of hospitalisation, death or long Covid: even if people in ‘vulnerable’ groups are at greatest risk, they are just as valuable as everyone else, and we should do all we can to protect them)
Speaking of masks, the WHO advice there is woefully outdated (some last updated in 2021), and they don’t even mention FFP2/N95 or FFP3/N99 masks in their advice to the public 😷
It even tells people how to make their own 3-layer masks (!), which was reasonable back when the droplet transmission theory was touted, but with the recognition that SARS-CoV-2 is primarily transmitted in aerosols that linger in unventilated air, cloth masks no longer suffice 🤦🏻♀️
The WHO do still recommend governments to keep monitoring the spread of the virus, but here in the UK that has all but stopped recently as far as I can tell
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