No change was noticeable walking around Canberra on Friday, what many view as the pandemic's "end" proving more whimper than bang.

Australia is now at a crossroads which, while always inevitable, seemed anything but just a year ago.

So now that COVID is being treated like any other virus, despite the looming possibility of future variants, what will the next wave look like?

Politicians have little to gain by offering anything other than vagaries.

A COVID-weary population does not want to hear mask mandates, capacity limits or - whisper it - lockdowns remain in the arsenal.

But "you're on your own" is no viable response either, particularly to immunocompromised or elderly people most at risk.

And three experts have spoken to The Canberra Times airing their concerns as Europe heads for winter.

They warn the decision is premature, even "immature", and will hit Australia's poorest the hardest.

As the northern hemisphere plunges into winter, the World Health Organisation is warning signs of a new wave in Europe are already emerging.

"Although we are not where we were one year ago, it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is still not over," the WHO's Europe director Hans Kluge said this week.

That makes the risk of a new variants spreading in the coming months significant.

But unlike Delta and Omicron, very little may be done to curb its spread, with Australia's beleaguered health system set to bear the brunt.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson says a cluster of new strains emanating from the northern hemisphere is causing different symptoms - violent vomiting and diarrhoea - to previous strains.

There are slivers of light. Many Australians are now eligible for a new Omicron-specific booster, with vaccines promising to combat multiple strains being trialed overseas.

But concerningly, Professor Robson says early signs suggest the new variants "don't seem to respond" to most jabs currently available.

He warns the government is shifting "from 60 to zero" just as vaccine immunity is fading away, and while booster numbers remain sluggish.

"The booster program is bogged in 10 feet of sand at the moment," he says.

"People have been given a message that it's all over, it's not a problem, don't worry any more. The messaging is a shocker."

Professor Robson says the easing comes with health workers "smashed, absolutely crushed" after two years of a "monumental horror show".

"I'm so bloody sick of COVID, and want it over probably more than anybody else," he stresses.

"[But this is] when we could have given all the people that work in hospitals a bit of a breather, and start catching up on this monumental, Biblical backlog of work that we have to do."

As the government emphasises personal responsibility over draconian measures, Professor Robson says Australians need to shift back to a mindset of mask-wearing in high-risk settings, opting to isolate when they are sick, and coming forward for boosters.

"I just can't tell you how much I hope it's next year. It's not yet," he says.

"But if we can make a bit of this magic happen, then I think we're going to be positioned properly to live with COVID."

As it becomes clear even mild symptoms can cause those long-term health conditions, what learning to "live with COVID-19" looks like becomes less so.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison said the end of isolation would see COVID-19 treated "like the flu", a comparison picked up by his successor Anthony Albanese.

But Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Australian National Phenome Centre, warns COVID-19's links to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even dementia make it distinct.

He says political leaders, and even chief health officers, don't fully understand the impacts be felt years down the line.

"I don't think there will ever be a safe time to treat it like the flu, because it's not like the flu," he says.

"It's not really living with COVID, it's dying unnecessarily with COVID. That's the problem."

Professor Nicholson believes it could take a year for studies into COVID-19's ongoing impacts - often falling under the umbrella term 'long COVID' - to provide proper insight.

Australia was certainly slow, by international standards, to ease the leash.

The UK abandoned all restrictions in March, while most of Asia and North America opted against the grueling lockdowns imposed here.

Professor Nicholson accepts that "in the real world, we have to draw the line somewhere" by allowing Australians to return to normal life.

READ MORE:

But he insists that must not mean downplaying the threat with Australia "not out of the woods".

"[The decision] was driven, unquestionably, by the desire for politicians to save money. But it's not actually supported by the science saying that the COVID risks have gone away," he says.

"The messaging is implying that the threat is gone and the disease is not severe. Neither of those things are true."

So where does Australia compare to other countries when they abandoned restrictions?

Professor Nicholson says that is difficult to gauge; we're testing less than we were six months ago, while hospitalisation rates continue to "fluctuate quite wildly".

"The important thing about this disease is there's still so much we don't know about it, even the simple statistics aren't easy to interpret anymore," he says.

"We're lacking information about how long it takes, and what it means, to recover from COVID. So we have information missing on both ends."

Ending isolation payments, which the government argues are unsustainable in the long-term, could make staying at home while sick a luxury of the well-off.

Liz Allen, social researcher and demographer at the Australian National University, says the government has opted for the most "palatable, ideologically-drive approach" for a population fatigued by two years of restrictions.

Dr Allen says financial support should remain in place for vulnerable Australians unable to work due to the virus, or needing to avoid workplaces where it is spreading.

The alternative will be inequality "becoming more entrenched, seeping deeper into Australian society", she says.

"It is premature. It is immature for a so-called advanced country like Australia," she says.

"It is going to see a generation of COVID inequality, the likes [of which] we probably have never seen before. And it's of our making."

Dr Allen hoped the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020 would "illuminate inequality and bring it to the fore in a way that I don't think many Australians had previously appreciated".

Instead, it only sharped pre-existing disparities based on age, wage, gender, race, and geography.

Despite a "popular narrative" claiming Australians worked from home en masse, Dr Allen says the data shows most did not or could not, even during the harshest lockdowns.

Financially secure people were more likely to remain home while the virus spread, but those living paycheck to paycheck were often forced out into the open.

READ MORE: What the end of COVID-19 isolation means for people with a disability

There are questions raised over whether police enforced restrictions equally in western Sydney and the city's plush eastern suburbs.

And women were significantly more likely to lose their job as the virus' shock first rippled through the economy.

Now, financially insecure people may have no choice but to go to work, despite testing positive.

That also makes them more likely to bring the virus home, having contracted it from a colleague. "It's not just adults that we're selling out, it's their highly-vulnerable dependents as well," Dr Allen warns.

"I really fear for the future of Australia when policy, time and time again, opts for the easy road and fails to bring everyone along for the economic ride.

"[This decision is] saying it's all over, Red Rover. It's really not, particularly for ... families who are really doing it tough."