How serious is the COVID-19 pandemic in 2025? Is it still an issue?

Measles is spreading amongst the unvaccinated Mennonite community in Texas.

One child has died and it has spread to Kentucky and New Mexico.

It's airborne and can stay alive for 2 and a half hours in the air.

Okay, but that has nothing to do with COVID-19.

It's all disease control.

It's all connected.

Don't be so myopic.

Is the COVID-19 pandemic still ongoing?

Yes, people still get sick, and they still die from it. People with long Covid still have it.

https://www.cdc.gov/covid/php/surveillance/burden-estimates.html

As of 2025, COVID-19 is no longer a global emergency like it was in 2020, but it hasn’t disappeared entirely. Most countries treat it like seasonal flu, with updated vaccines available and treatments improving. Face masks are now optional in most public places, used mainly by people at higher risk or in crowded indoor settings. Occasional outbreaks still happen, but hospitalizations and deaths are much lower due to widespread immunity and better medical care. Staying up to date on vaccines and following local health advice is still recommended, especially for vulnerable groups.

AND HOW!!!!

Exactly right. Control and current vaxxing is the key to preventing outbreak.

COVID cases are increasing in Maryland, health dept warns they expect many more cases this fall. I will be getting another vacination fairly soon.

Covid 19 is making a big reappearance in California, too:

COVID rising fast in California, fueled by new ‘Stratus’ variant tied to Omicron

By Rong-Gong Lin II
Staff Writer
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Aug. 26, 2025 3 AM PT

COVID-19 is once again climbing to troubling levels in California — a worrying trend as health officials attempt to navigate a vaccine landscape thrown into uncertainty by delays and decisions from the Trump administration.

Public health departments in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties have reported jumps in the coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in recent weeks. L.A. County also has reported a small increase in patients hospitalized with COVID.

“There is a lot of COVID out there,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco. “COVID is coming a little bit later than last year.”

The rate at which COVID lab tests came back positive in L.A. County is 12.6% for the week that ended Aug. 16, up from 7.6% a month earlier. In Orange County, it’s 14.4%, up from 8.1%.

“We are seeing outpatient cases increase,” said Dr. Elizabeth E. Hudson, the regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “With back-to-school season in full swing ... we are expecting to see an uptick in COVID in children over the next few weeks and this is already being seen in some parts of the country.”

In a blog post, Dr. Matt Willis, former public health officer for Marin County, wrote that “California’s in the middle of a COVID-19 wave, and statewide rates are among the highest in the nation.”

Among senior-age residents in Orange County, emergency room visits for COVID-like illness, as well as hospitalizations for COVID, are also on the upswing, said Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, a physician with the Orange County Health Care Agency’s Communicable Disease and Control Division, and Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the county’s health officer.

Hudson said the coronavirus subvariant XFG, nicknamed Stratus, accounts for the vast majority of variants seen in wastewater.

“This is another Omicron subvariant, so previous infections with other Omicron variants may offer some residual protection, but, as we know, that protection is not complete, so you can certainly be reinfected,” Hudson said.

It does seem that this summer, COVID season has been less intense than last year.

In L.A. County, for instance, current COVID hospitalizations for the week that ended Aug. 16 are about half the level seen during the same week last year. And in Orange County, emergency room visits related to COVID-like illness are less than half what they were last summer.

“Last summer’s COVID surge was the largest since 2022, so this year’s surge is more on par with our less-severe summer surges,” Hudson said. “People are definitely getting COVID this summer, but the intensity is much less than in 2024.”

The rise in COVID comes as the Trump administration has delayed the rollout of the updated vaccine for the fall. Last year, the federal government had fully green-lighted the annual reformulation of the vaccine by June, in time for a rollout that began in September.

This year, however, the Department of Health and Human Services led by vaccine skeptic Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has in effect delayed the rollout of this fall’s COVID shot.

“Updated COVID-19 vaccines have been delayed this year due to federal policy changes, and we are awaiting [Food and Drug Administration] licensure of this season’s products,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Times. “This means availability in September may be later than what people experienced last fall.”




(more at the link)