Despite warnings from prominent scientists that there's a 20% chance of a new, Omicron-scale COVID-19 outbreak sometime in the next two years (with one such scientist saying it's probably closer to 40%), and despite ongoing issues with the disease—from a death-rate that's still claiming more than 1,000 lives each week, to chronic "long-COVID" infections that don't go away for months or years after the disease has technically lapsed—the US government has declared the pandemic over, and