Three years after the World Health Organization ended the COVID-19 public health emergency, infectious disease specialists still disagree about whether the pandemic is over. There is no case count, transmission rate, or death threshold that marks the boundary between pandemic and endemic. Past flu pandemics, he noted, faded into background endemic disease in much the same way. Public health bodies are unlikely to issue a formal declaration, because the transition is a gradual biological process rather than an administrative event. CDC officials have described it as endemic, and some prominent epidemiologists say the pandemic phase has passed, while others emphasize continued unpredictability.