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Is the COVID-19 pandemic over? Yale experts weigh in

BY BRIAN ZHANG AND OMAR ALI STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

In a September interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” program, President Biden declared that the COVID-19 pandemic had come to an end. His remarks were met with firm reservations and retracted shortly after by the White House.

Amid changing attitudes regarding the virus’ future landscape, the News spoke with several members of the Yale community, across disciplines and backgrounds, to weigh in on whether the pandemic can be considered o cially over.

What is the present situation?

Mark Schlesinger, professor of health policy and a fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, explained that around 500 people are still dying from COVID-19 each day in the United States alone. Under present circumstances, it might seem inhumane and even disrespectful to allude to the pandemic being “over,” he said.

“Even setting aside the emotional overtones, when a pandemic becomes endemic (though most recent estimates being that about 94% of Americans have had at least a brush with COVID to date), that does not mean that the pandemic is over, since each new variant represents its own distinctive challenges and threats,” Schlesinger wrote to the News.

Schlesinger continued to explain that in this sense the pandemic might never be over but very few would want to say that with candor because of the toll since the pandemic began.

Moreover, for immunocompromised individuals, the privilege of assigning and debating a defi ned end to the pandemic was never theirs in the fi rst place, according to Arden Parrish ’25.

While they understand that more people will want to “pretend that the pandemic never happened” as cases decrease, the attitude also puts immunocompromised students like themself — who are more prone to infection and severe side e ects — in a vulnerable position, they said.

Parrish emphasized that Yale has actually “moved backwards” in its response to accommodate immunocompromised students during COVID-19, mentioning that professors have stopped making lecture recordings available. Many have also reinstated “old ableist” attendance policies, they said, that punish sick students for missing class and thereby force classmates to show up with contagious illnesses.

“Yale in particular sacrifi ced the health and safety of our most vulnerable members,” Parrish said. “The pandemic proved that it is possible to have a learning environment that does not discriminate against disabled or immunocompromised students in these ways, and it’s frustrating to watch our school reverting back to the way things were before even though COVID is very much still present on our campus.”

Cases are likely to rise as we head into the winter months, shared Yale Sterling Professor of immunobiology Akiko Iwasaki. Many indoor places are not requiring masks and do not have adequate ventilation or humidifi cation, creating optimal conditions for virus transmission.

Is the course of the pandemic relevant?

According to Cary Gross, professor of medicine and public health and director of National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale, the question of when the pandemic is over is a symptom of the very thinking that has led to America’s fragmented, suboptimal response to COVID-19.

“By perpetuating the fallacy that the pandemic will have a clear finish line — and that line may be just around the corner — we risk delaying important work that needs to be done,” Gross told the News. “We need to revamp and reinvest in our public health system to enable preventive options. We have to ensure access to healthcare and address the fact that our nation’s health care system is more fragile than we had thought.”

Gross drew attention to the importance of carefully monitoring COVID-19 transmission, hospitalization and death rates moving forward — and using these rates as guidelines for assessing risk and adjusting the fl exibility of our day-to-day routines. Ultimately, politicians, scientists and citizens must persist in doing the hard work of revamping America’s approach to pandemics now and in the future, he said.

CATE ROSER / CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

Yale School of Public Health and political science department a liates discuss whether the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

What will constitute the end of the pandemic?

According to STAT, the end of a pandemic is usually defi ned by a point when human immune systems have become adapted to fi ght against the most fatal manifestations of an infection. Traditionally, when contraction with the disease causes a milder illness, the pandemic becomes endemic and is less concerning.

Political science professor Gregory Huber believes there are two di erent ways to think about the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under strict definitions of the word “pandemic,” COVID-19 may no longer qualify as a “novel” virus as more populations worldwide acquire immunity from exposure or vaccination. Despite widespread outbreaks, particularly among undervaccinated populations, COVID-19 may simply be understood as an endemic virus, ebbing and fl owing like the seasonal fl u.

“Another way to think about the COVID-19 pandemic as having ended is behavioral — the widespread disruption of human activity has subsided,” Huber wrote to the News. “This does not mean that COVID-19 is not a threat to many, but for those for whom the disease is less threatening, the extreme behaviors that we took to reduce the risk of disease are no longer worth the social cost.”

What measures should the public maintain moving forward in regards to stopping the spread of COVID-19?

Sumaira Akbarzada SPH ’21 agreed that the declining public consciousness of COVID19 can be rooted in psychology. She explained that widespread depression and isolation have perpetuated an exhaustion and a desire to move on prematurely, with many Americans thinking that it is no longer worth it to continue practices such as self-isolation and social distancing.

“Vaccinations cannot and will not provide 100 percent immunity, and vaccinated individuals can still carry the virus and infect others, even if … asymptomatic,” she said. “Therefore, it’s very important for public health … experts to continue educating the public and working directly with policymakers on the national level, to make sure mitigating the spread [of] COVID-19 is still a priority in this country.”

In an interview with the News, Shaper Mirza, associate professor of biology at the School of Science and Engineering at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, also compared COVID-19’s long-term survival to the fl u.

Mirza, who won the World Bank’s grant in 2020 for her research in COVID-19 epidemiology, echoed Akbarzada in saying that although immunization might weaken the virulence of the disease, it does not chart an end to the pandemic.

She urged the public to watch out for more virulent variants that can breach immunities developed post-infection or post-immunization, affirming that self-education is critical to the international conscience of a world sustaining its fight against the pandemic.

As of the morning of Nov. 28, 3,007 people in New Haven have passed away from COVID-19-related complications.

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu@yale.edu and OMAR ALI at omar.ali@yale.edu .

Yale wins gold rating for sustainability progress

BY ISABEL MANEY AND NEHA MIDDELA STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

This fall, Yale received a gold rating from a college sustainability tracking group, scoring higher than in previous years but falling well short of the system’s highest platinum rating.

The high rating, granted by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, recognized Yale’s sustainability efforts in several areas while also highlighting the need for improvement in sustainable finance and campus engagement.

Out of a possible 100 points, the university scored 70.5 total points, an increase from its previous score of 67.8, which it achieved in 2020. The scoring rubric is made up of fi ve overarching categories — operations, planning and administration, innovation and leadership, academics and engagement. The gold rating, which requires a minimum of 65 points, is the second highest score on the scale. Platinum, the highest rating, requires a total score of 85 points.

Yale could increase its score for future years by upping engagement with students in the professional and graduate schools, according to Lisa Noriega, a data analyst at the University’s O ce of Sustainability.

“The [STARS] report itself reflects areas needing attention as we develop our office’s programming,” Noriega said. “As a result of this reflection, new programming is underway to target a broader student population more effectively.”

By submitting data to STARS, according to Noriega, the Uni-

CLARISSA TAN / CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

Yale earned its second gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s STARS.

versity is also automatically submitting data to college sustainability rankings, including the Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges and the Sierra Club’s Cool School Ranking.

Princeton University also received a gold rating this year, while Stanford University scored at the platinum level. Several other peer institutions have not yet received ratings.

The rankings are another way to highlight the University’s sustainability efforts. According to the AASHE STARS website, universities derive several benefits from self-reporting for STARS ratings, including connections with other STARS institutions, suggestions for community engagement and concrete metrics to drive future sustainability efforts.

Sebastian Duque ’24, co-president of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, cautioned against putting too much credit on the results of the report and others like it, noting that reports like STARS are not always e ective at measuring campus sustainability and that the University is more open to making changes to its sustainability plan when pressured by student activism.

“In general, institutions can very easily use ratings like these to greenwash themselves and promote themselves as sustainable spaces or sustainable institutions when they’re not really fulfi lling the full share that they could be,” Duque said.

Even though Yale’s overall performance received a gold rating, the University did not perform well in all categories. It received its lowest scores in the subcategories of “investment and fi nance” and “wellbeing and work.”

The University received a 0.83 out of 5 possible points for “sustainable investment” and 0 of 1 possible points for “investment disclosure.” According to AASHE, schools are scored on the accessibility of information related to investments, the presence of an effective sustainable investments policy and engagement with divestment e orts.

“I think Yale is a sustainability leader in a lot of ways, in their operations and buildings, thought leadership and research,” said Jamie Chan ’23, a former president of YSEC. “There are still definitely substantial ways that they can improve, particularly with sharing Yale’s sustainability resources with New Haven and taking serious calls for fossil fuel divestment.”

Student groups like the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition have pressured the University to divest from fossil fuels, a commitment Yale has so far refused to make.

The current Yale Sustainability Plan outlines the University’s goal for divestment to “encourage Yale’s external investment managers to consider the risks and opportunities associated with climate change in their investment processes with respect to Yale’s portfolio.”

The University’s sustainability plan was not created to align with the STARS rating system, according to Noriega. Yale’s sustainability plan was created years before the STARS assessment system, but in creating the next sustainability plan for 2025, however, the results of the STARS report can help shape more of the University’s goals for sustainability efforts in the future.

AASHE was established in 2005.

Contact ISABEL MANEY at isabel.maney@yale.edu and NEHA MIDDELA at neha.middela@yale.edu .