According to historians, pandemics have two types of end: the medical, which occurs when incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear of disease decreases.
"When people ask 'When will this be over?' they ask about the social distancing," says Jeremy Greene, medical historian at Johns Hopkins.
In other words, an end can occur not because the disease has been overcome, but because people tire of panicking and learn to live with it.
Harvard historian Allan Brandt said something similar is happening with COVID-19: "As we have . . .
