MOTHER TONGUE

How the scientific label has masked political choices

- KIERA BUTLER

LAST FALL, THE end of the pandemic seemed tantalizingly close. After the Delta wave subsided, businesses began to relax their mask policies. Most Americans had received at least one vaccine. People bought plane tickets for holiday travel. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, University of California, San Francisco, infectious disease specialist Monica Gandhi declared, "Covid-19 will soon become endemic-and the sooner the better." Once this coveted state of endemicity happens, Gandhi wrote, we can all look forward to "a full return to normal."

Since then, politicians have increasingly used "endemic" and "normal" interchangeably. In November, when Tennessee ended its state of emergency, politicians explained the transition as a response to when "the virus becomes endemic." California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the looser guidelines he unveiled in February 2022 a response to an "endemic" virus. After two years of masks, tests, and fights with friends and family over differing levels of Covid caution, many people seem to casually hear what they want in the term: Endemic means the end of the pandemic.