Celebrating the end of the COVID-19 pandemic

[glennds]

In its press release about science and technology accomplishments in it's first term, the White House yesterday included "Ending the COVID-19 pandemic" among the accomplishments.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175 ... dfff5c0000

Might even the hardest core Trump fan consider that a stretch?
A lie?
A delusion?
An aspiration?
A lighthearted joke, kidding, just to drive the Marxist left crazy?

Or has the pandemic really ended and the MSM is just not reporting it, those buggers?

ending as apposed to ended? as in -- in the process of bringing it to an end?

[Tortoise]

It's a nonsense claim. It's resume padding. Politicians (whether D or R) typically try to claim credit for all sorts of things that they shouldn't.

Covid-1984 transitioned from pandemic to "casedemic" some months back after the initial wave of "dry tinder" deaths, but that had very little to do with what Trump or any other politician or public health official did. The virus continued to spread everywhere, as highly contagious viruses tend to do, regardless of various states' and cities' best efforts to prevent it.

If a Dem had been President during the Covid-1984 pandemic, in the weeks leading up to the election they also would have been taking credit for ending the pandemic -- or at least for significantly reducing deaths and hospitalizations. Case in point: That's exactly what NY Gov. Cuomo has been doing.

Shameless self-promotion is a skill that virtually every high-level politician and corporate manager has mastered.

[vnatale]

This supports what I stated was the difference between the words "ended" and "ending" when it is used in accounting financial statements. Does it carry over to their use in other circumstances?

Vinny


https://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/t ... ded-ending


Gustavo, ContributorProfessor of Legal and Financial Translation
Hello, Catchan.

Bazza has made a very good point that has led me to think about the use and meaning of the past and the present participle of verbs introducing abridged relative clauses to refer to the beginning (begin, start, open) or end (end, finish, close) of an event or period.

It is interesting to note that all of these verbs can be transitive or intransitive. In their transitive use, they can be found in the past participle form to convey a past, passive meaning (in line with what Bazza replied). “year ended/closed on December 31” will then mean “year (that was) ended/closed on December 31.” Instead, in their intransitive use these verbs adopt the present participle form (-ing) to express a present/future, active meaning: “year ending/closing on December 31” = “year that ends/will end on December 31.”

Notice that when the verb only admits the transitive use the present participle (active, present/future meaning) will not be possible, as is the case with the verb “complete.” We can say “the session completed yesterday” but we CANNOT say “the session completing today/tomorrow” (in this case, we will need a full, non-abridged relative clause: “the session that will be completed today/tomorrow.”)

[WiseOne]

Hmm, let's see what the definition of a "pandemic" is. Unfortunately, it's an extremely subjective term. However, the CDC does have a definition for "epidemic" which presumably is less serious than a "pandemic". This one is focused on the flu, but presumably would apply to COVID which behaves similarly. (Unfortunately there is no definition on the CDC webiste).

QUOTE:
The CDC's definition of a flu epidemic relates to the percentage of deaths in a given week caused by influenza and pneumonia. The "epidemic threshold" is a certain percentage above what is considered normal for that period. The normal level, or baseline, is statistically determined based on data from past flu seasons.
END QUOTE

And a pandemic can be considered to be a global epidemic.

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/feat ... pandemic#1

So, presumably an unusual rate of deaths attributed to the illness in question is part of the definition. Well, that applied in March and April for sure. Since then, however....not so much.

The US is geographically too diverse to make much sense of the data, but Europe being much more homogeneous and physically more compact gives a good indication of mortality compared to expected deaths over time. Check out the top plot on this page:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Sorry I couldn't paste it in....none of the special buttons are working right now (e.g. quote). But it clearly shows that there was a huge spike in excess deaths in early 2020 that quickly dropped back to more or less normal levels and they've been there ever since. In the US, you get this same effect but moving across geographic locations. The total US #s reflect a summation of these numbers.

You could argue that the pandemic was over sometime in May. It's still moving through parts of the US due to our spread-out geography, but most of it was over here too by around that time.

So to claim that the pandemic is done is pretty much accurate. You could argue that epidemic conditions still exist in isolated pockets of the US, but that's really about it. If you stopped all PCR testing tomorrow and just let life go back to normal, I bet we wouldn't see anything particularly noteworthy going on.

[glennds]

So to claim that the pandemic is done is pretty much accurate. You could argue that epidemic conditions still exist in isolated pockets of the US, but that's really about it. If you stopped all PCR testing tomorrow and just let life go back to normal, I bet we wouldn't see anything particularly noteworthy going on.

If this is the case, then someone needs to share the memo with the rest of the world.

[flyingpylon]

So to claim that the pandemic is done is pretty much accurate. You could argue that epidemic conditions still exist in isolated pockets of the US, but that's really about it. If you stopped all PCR testing tomorrow and just let life go back to normal, I bet we wouldn't see anything particularly noteworthy going on.

If this is the case, then someone needs to share the memo with the rest of the world.

In that same memo they could also mention that infections are not cases, but I guess it’s a little late for that.

[GT]

So to claim that the pandemic is done is pretty much accurate. You could argue that epidemic conditions still exist in isolated pockets of the US, but that's really about it. If you stopped all PCR testing tomorrow and just let life go back to normal, I bet we wouldn't see anything particularly noteworthy going on.

If this is the case, then someone needs to share the memo with the rest of the world.

Or can the memo let us know when it will be officially over - what benchmarks need to be hit - same or less deaths than the flu - "cure" with 100% adoption?