[Dylan16807]

Notice how I didn't say growth, since it bounces up and down. And that looks like a significant proportion to me.

If your argument is that these numbers are not enough for "very widespread extent", then are you saying it was never a pandemic to begin with?

And you already said it was endemic. Are you arguing that a pandemic needs bigger numbers than that?

[pc86]

You didn't say growth but the definition of pandemic is "characterized by very widespread growth or extent."

98.5% of ED visits are for something else. What would that number have been in 2020 or 2021?

[Dylan16807]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

The severity has dropped more than the prevalence.

Hospitalizations suggest that in the US the peak in Jan 2024 was around 80% as big as Jan 2023. If that's accurate, then Jan 2024 had more cases per day than most of 2020 and a good chunk of 2021. That's a lot of extent. There had been 120 thousand cases in the entire world when pandemic was originally declared, and the US is currently doing a multiple of that each week.