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If you’ve heard people say it’s time to start “living with COVID,” you’re not alone. TheSkimm asked two experts what that phrase actually means, and how we can assess our own risk going forward.
 

We’ve been at similar junctures before—at the end of the very first surge, again in the pre-Delta downslope. Each time, the virus has come roaring back. It is not done with us. Which means that we cannot be done with it.
Jennifer Nuzzo and Crystal Watson are quoted. 
 

The omicron wave that assaulted the United States this winter also bolstered its defenses, leaving enough protection against the coronavirus that future spikes will likely require much less — if any — dramatic disruption to society.
Andy Pekosz and Shaun Truelove are quoted. 

The end of D.C.’s mask and vaccine mandates means that some residents, particularly parents of children under the age of five, and those who are immunocompromised, are re-calculating risk as some D.C. council members criticize the move.
 

The new normal is hard to predict. The economic picture is mixed while downtowns remain under peril.
 

The United States has recorded more than 1 million “excess deaths” since the start of the pandemic, government mortality statistics show, a toll that exceeds the officially documented lethality of the coronavirus and captures the broad consequences of the health crisis that has entered its third year.
 

The pace of people getting Covid-19 vaccine booster shots in the United States has dropped to the lowest it has ever been, and many public health experts are concerned.
 

What has been accomplished in the 25 months since Chinese scientists first shared the genetic sequence of the newly discovered SARS-CoV-2 virus has defied the predictions of the most optimistic prognosticators.
 

Doctors and researchers continue to look for answers and treatments for those living with COVID-19 symptoms after the virus is gone.
 

Some people don't get COVID despite being exposed to the virus — a mystery researchers are trying to unravel.
 

COVID-19 will never go away, infectious disease experts tell us, but the global health emergency it sparked will be over when the disease becomes “endemic.”
 

In states across the country, mask mandates are now being lifted. But today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated that it is not changing its mask guidance. The CDC still recommends masking indoors in areas of high COVID transmission, which is most of the country right now.