As the COVID rates continue to fall across the country and many COVID-prompted restrictions are being lifted nationwide, including many of the mask mandates that had lingered, the question on many people’s minds is whether COVID can be considered “over.”
Speaking with NBC News, not only did CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky puncture that hopeful expectation, she added that we might never be totally rid of it.
“I do anticipate that this is probably going to be a seasonal virus,” Walensky said, putting future COVID in the same category with other respiratory illnesses like the flu, sicknesses that thrive in the winter when more people are forced indoors by the cold to breathe the same air laden with each other’s myriad varieties of germs.
And just like COVID isn’t expected to truly disappear, neither are the fashion accessory du jour of the past two years: the face mask.
“I would say put your masks in a drawer, anticipate you may need them again and hope that we don't,” Walensky said.
“We may want to be more vigilant during some seasons,” Walensky added. “Maybe during respiratory season, if things ramped up, we would want to put on our masks again to protect both from flu and from Covid and from all other respiratory diseases.”
As for booster shots for that COVID vaccination, those might not be done for good either. The CDC head said the jury is still out whether or not people will have to line up to take the jab again in 2022, as is whether a new COVID variant might arise to take over as the dominant strain in America as delta and omicron did previously.
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