What will endemic coronavirus be like?

It will be interesting to see what the endemic steady state of SARS-COV-2 will be.

We are still averaging over 1k deaths a day. A Flu season's worth of deaths in less than a month. In pre-pandemic times seasonal Flu was enough to strain health systems with its ~500k hospitalizations. We are still averaging about ~40k hospitalizations a week. A Flu season's worth of hospitalizations in three months. (Both of these counts are likely underestimates of true coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths).

These aren't levels that would be sustainable in the long-term.

Unlike Flu, the coronavirus vaccines are extremely effective and post-booster vaccine effectiveness against infection is back to pre-Delta levels. Time will tell what the post-third dose vaccine effectiveness will be in the long-term. We also have a number of very effective non-vaccine treatments and medications in the pipeline that will further reduce hospitalizations and deaths.

In addition, we don't have a clear picture of how much antigenic drift the coronavirus will have year to year. This will greatly influence how robust infection-acquired immunity will be and how often if at all people will need updated vaccine boosters. Nor do we know how long immunity in either case will last absent mutations. Each Flu season is like encountering a new Flu virus with a relatively immunologically-naive population because Flu has such high antigenic drift.

Endemic coronavirus will likely not be as severe as it is now, but it probably will be relevant enough that we can't ignore it in concert with the existing burden of Flu. I think people expecting coronavirus vaccine requirements to not become standard for both kids and adults are kidding themselves. It wouldn't surprise me to see more Flu vaccine requirements to boot as well, especially in schools.