Two years is a long time, but we are almost there. It was March 2020 when the

World Health Organization officially declared a COVID-19 pandemic. When

restaurants closed and Zoom became a daily part of many of our lives, when

people began hoarding toilet paper and sanitizing groceries. Sure, habits and

guidance have changed since then, but two years later, a lot of people are ready

to be done. I think it's hard to process what's actually happening right now,

which is most people are going to get COVID. All right, and what we need to do is

make sure the hospitals can still function. Janet Woodcock, speaking to a

Senate committee last week, on the one hand that could sound like fatalism in the

face of the Omicron surge. On the other, it could represent the best possible in

game. COVID, a disease that thanks to vaccines is no longer as deadly, something we

all get like a common cold. Yes, I think first of all, there is a little bit of

fatalism on the current surge where people are saying, oh, everybody's going to

get infected with Omicron in this search. I don't think that's true. Dr. Ashish

Jop is a physician and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. He

told NPR he has a different take that something closer to 20 or 30% of

Americans will be infected in the current surge. But what about the next

surge? What about the next variant? How do public health officials keep the

public tuned in? There's so much COVID out there. I think the key here is that

over the long run, eventually we will get to a point where this virus no

longer poses a mortal risk to people. Consider this, many Americans are living

like we are already at that point and some are simply ready to move on. We'll

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