Covid isn’t over, but even the most cautious Americans are moving on

Available metrics suggest the virus is declining, although no one really knows how much the coronavirus is circulating given a drop in data collection.

What the end of the public health emergency means

The toll of covid-19 is increasingly obscured as more data sources disappear, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s community levels dashboard that categorized the strain on county health care systems as low, medium or high. Now the CDC recommends Americans use a tracker displaying new covid-19 hospital admissions by county to understand the state of the virus in their community. By that measure, there were 6,600 new admissions nationally the week ending June 10, compared with roughly 30,000 at this time last year.

Other metrics, including emergency department visits, test results reported voluntarily by a network of laboratories and wastewater surveillance also indicate infections are low and declining.

“We are in a relatively good spot,” said Brendan Jackson, the CDC’s incident manager for its covid-19 response.

Americans seem to share this assessment, with 62 percent saying in May that covid-19 is over, compared with 47 percent who felt that way in February, according to the most recent Axios-Ipsos poll. More than half now say they never mask in public, and the share of respondents who said they always or sometimes mask dropped from 30 percent in February to 23 percent in May.

...

The vast majority of the more than 80 people contacted by The Washington Post say they are relaxing precautions, believing they’ll be fine because they’re up to date on their shots and transmission rates are low. Those who still mask and socially distance are making peace with most others no longer doing so.