"The pandemic is over," President Joe Biden declared this month as he toured the Detroit Auto Show. "We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over."
"No one's wearing masks," he added, gesturing toward the convention center crowd. "Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape."
But the COVID epidemic isn't over. It has arguably lost its status as a disease that was utterly beyond control. But it's still causing more than 400 deaths a day, roughly three times as many as a bad season of influenza. New variants are still emerging; a wave of infections this winter could turn Biden's optimistic claim to ashes; and long COVID, a debilitating chronic condition, affects an estimated 16 million Americans.