COVID-19 has been in the United States for over two years, since January/February of 2020. Since then, it’s changed into different variants like the Delta variant, the Omicron variant, and most recently, the Omicron Ba.2 variant. 

Many people have been wondering whether this will ever end, whether there will ever be a final variant, or if there will be a final vaccine that’s a cure-all magical drug.

Having a final variant is highly unlikely- just from the variant Omicron, there have been four confirmed sub-variants in Europe and Africa, according to immunologists Prakash and Mitzi Nagarkatti. Viruses are always susceptible to change- it’s how they’ve lived so long. It’s what makes them so scary to people today.

However, humans have gone through this before. Just like variants of COVID-19 are the most feared threat today, influenza- better known as the flu- was once the most feared virus by humankind. 

The first record of it is by Hippocrates, a Greek physician that lived back in 400 BC. Because it’s been around for over 2400 years, there have been many variants, enough to have four different main types, all of which can be divided into subtypes, then into groups, and those into subgroups. 

Essentially, there are a lot of variants, just like COVID-19. According to cdc.gov, they have a lot of the same symptoms and effects. While COVID-19 is more dangerous than the flu, increased vaccination rates and being cautious will help the danger level decrease until humans can consider it just as dangerous as the flu.

Humans adapted to the flu, and even though there are always new strains and variants, people don’t immediately call a quarantine and take refuge in their homes or leave their schools for two weeks to take precautions.

This could be what happens to the future of humans. They’d learn to live with COVID and adapt to it like they have the flu or any other strain of sickness that’s come around. 

It wouldn’t be like what humans had before COVID because now that it is a virus, there isn’t a plausible way to take it back. It could be the start of a new normal, however.