People say they want COVID-19 to become 'endemic.' But what does that really mean?

As Canadians grow increasingly weary after two years of COVID-19, many people are tossing around the term “endemic” as an expression of hope that we’re moving into a stage where we pull back public health restrictions and live with the virus.   

“The word ‘endemic’ has become one of the most misused of the pandemic. And many of the errant assumptions made encourage a misplaced complacency,” Aris Katzourakis, a professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, wrote in an article published in the journal Nature earlier this week. 

“Thinking that endemicity is both mild and inevitable