No authoritative, scientific organization has announced an end to the pandemic
How pandemics end
"In other words, pandemics can end not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. Allan Brandt, a Harvard historian, said something similar was happening with Covid-19: “As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes.”
Whilst there is some element of truth to that in some cases, the key phrase is "learn to live with" the disease. It's important to unpack what that means. It's not a decision that can be made at an individual level when transmission in a pandemic is dependent on community behaviour. Learning to live with the disease comes with a
community-level acceptance of the risks and trade-offs required for a given level of exposure. And there are winners and losers from every trade-off. It doesn't come from everyone simply acting in line with an outcome that leads to them being winners as an individual. Ultimately, everyone loses in that scenario.
And so in order to "learn to live with" the disease, you need to have, at a community/state/national level, some overarching consensus of the price you are willing to pay. That price is not just as a one-off but ongoing. "Learning to live with" something requires that ongoing payment.
Some communities have done this. NZ for example. Through some combination of exceptional leadership and providence, they have reached an overarching consensus that their version of "living with the disease" is by eradicating, maintaining exceptional test and trace practices, a willingness to aggressively isolate if needed and keeping their borders shut to other nations where the virus is out of control. There is no doubt a cost to this. Their tourism industry is going to feel a real dose of pain - some companies will go bust, some people's livelihoods will be decimated - but as a nation they have come to a consensus as to what "living with the virus" looks like and the NZ mantra to "be kind" is making a real difference to mitigate that pain for those most affected.
Taiwan is a similar story, as is South Korea. Both have taken a similar tack but with the added expectation of turbo-charged personal hygiene practices. The needs of the community being supported by actions of its individuals, all willing to pay that price in order to "live with the disease".
In comparison, the US is deeply divided. There is no overarching consensus as to what "living with the disease" looks like in the US and each day that consensus becomes less and less likely. There is no communal willingness to share the pain and sufficiently support those who are likely to feel the most pain, be it economic or health (or for many scenarios, both), to mitigate the downside of whatever that consensus may look like. Any degree of willingness that exists is only at the individual level. You see it every day on this forum, be it in commentary around masks, social distancing, scaling up of personal hygiene practices or opening and closing of businesses/services. You see it from your President. Instead of genuinely "learning to live with the disease", there is instead an underlying inference that others need to "learn to live with the disease" on my terms. And that's not the same.
"Learning to live with the disease" involves changing behaviours, it involves community acceptance and it involves paying a price. So far the US has been unable to agree on any of these.