If you think the COVID pandemic is done and ever-evolving variants pose no significant threat, consider these two realities.

The first is a recent U.S. study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It tracked 150 million workers and their absences in the workplace in the United States since the end of the so-called public health emergency in 2023.

Its central conclusion: “Health-related absences from work continued to track COVID-19 circulation and were 12.9 per cent higher in the post-pandemic period compared with before the pandemic (140,000 monthly absences).” Absences were highest in occupations with the greatest exposure to the public.

The study added that continuing circulation of COVID variants has created “a new year-round baseline for work absences” that amounts to adding an additional flu-like season in the workplace.

Reality No. 2: excess deaths. That’s the level of mortality above what it was before the pandemic. This metric has not returned to normal and remains significantly elevated.

Just last month Swiss Re, a global insurance firm that analyzes mortality risk by forecasting future life expectancy trends, pegged that number of excess deaths at two per cent above the pre-pandemic annual mortality rate. When you extrapolate that number to North America’s population of 617 million, that works out to be 120,000 unanticipated dead people per year. That’s roughly the equivalent of two fully loaded standard commercial jets crashing and killing everyone aboard every day.