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Get ready for permanent fun. From Fareed Zakaria's newsletter:

Covid-19 Forever?

We’re all waiting for the pandemic to end—but will it, ever? At The Wall Street Journal, Daniela Hernandez and Drew Hinshaw write that it’s beginning to dawn on “governments and businesses” alike that we’re probably heading for a future of endemic Covid-19, in which the virus simmers and evolves, necessitating constant updates to vaccines, but never goes away.

“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” former CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden tells them. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”

At The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang talks to experts who draw much the same conclusion. Vaccines may help prevent severe illness and death, but they may not fully block transmission; as more people develop immunity and as that immunity wanes, while new variants emerge, asymptomatic spread could linger as a risk. If the pandemic is a campfire, Zhang writes, we may never douse it completely, but we might wet the logs enough to cool the blaze.