Editorial: When Will This Pandemic Officially End?

One of the many things that disheartens me about the COVID-19 pandemic is how a public health emergency fractured our world when it should have united it. The reality of a novel virus ravaging the global population, leaving millions of bodies in its wake, is something that, at least in my view, should have been viewed as a matter of fact, not of opinion. But very early on in the strange journey of the past two-plus years, people seemed to choose conceptual and behavioral sides: lab leak vs. zoonotic origin, masks vs. bare faces, broadly accepted evidence vs. conspiracy theory. This division reached fever pitch with the authorization of a handful of COVID-19 vaccines in this country and around the world. Indeed, the pandemic has proven to be fertile ground not only for widely disparate opinions about the nature of the situation but for misinformation and aggression. That said, no ...