This is the million dollar question everyone is asking about COVID-19: When will life become normal? And will the school be open this fall?
The answers are everywhere on the map – from governors of Texas and Mississippi declaring that their states are already open and have lifted mask mandates, to health experts ominously warning that the virus will always remain.
However, the reality depends a lot on how you define ‘normal’. And if enough Americans act this summer, it may not be as depressing as you might think.
Experts believe the fall could be the season of a ‘new normal’ in which the world will slowly reopen and connect people again, but with masks, routine testing and possibly even vaccination cards to enter cinemas or restaurants.
“It will be so gradual that we will probably not even notice it,” said Howard Markel, a historian of medicine at the University of Michigan and a pediatrician. “It’s not a light switch or like V-Day – it’s over, you know, we won! It’s not like that.”
So what can derail it all? Experts in infectious disease agree that at least 70-85% of the country must become immune to starve the virus. Markel said he benefits about 90% with a virus.
“It all depends on how many people roll up their sleeves and get the vaccination, you see,” Markel told ABC News. “It’s my fear, it’s what stops me at night.”
This is what health experts can do according to this year:
Spring will be a time of uncertainty and possibly more deaths
The country is at a standstill with the virus. Although the national average of seven days dropped by 74% within a few weeks, the US still averages 64,000 new cases per day. The average is at the same level as the previous fall just before things exploded during the holiday season.
The advanced progress means that the country will soon have an already high viral transmission in the season of spring holidays, graduation ceremonies, family holidays and neighborhood gatherings, although a new, more portable variant of Britain is expected to become the most. dominant strain of the virus by mid-March.
Health experts warn that states like Texas and Mississippi have now reopened and lifted mask mandates. There may be one last heartbreaking increase in new cases – followed weeks by hospitalizations and deaths – just as the country is on the verge of mass vaccinations.
“I know that the idea of wearing a mask and returning to everyday activities is attractive. But we are not there yet,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said. “We’ve seen this movie before. When preventative measures like mask mandates are rolled back, things go up.”
Fingers crossed, summer becomes the season of mass vaccinations
If production can continue, the US expects to enter June with enough vaccine doses for 300 million Americans. The vaccines will continue to be restricted to adults, with some supplies available to 16-year-olds.
“I think it’s a big business,” said Simone Wildes, a doctor at Infectious Diseases at South Shore Health in Massachusetts and medical associate of ABC News, about the rollout of mass vaccination.
“But if we can get it June, July, we can have a decent summer. But it really depends on how things unfold in the next few months,” she said.
Markel also predicted that almost all ‘early adopters’ of the vaccine would get a chance in early July. At that point, much of the country could slowly expand its “pod”.
Markel said he still would not recommend placing an early deposit on a non-refundable beach house with extended family.
Wildes agreed.
“Be flexible that if you know that people are not vaccinated, if there is an increase in the number of cases, especially with the variants, that we can cancel the plans,” Wildes said. “There’s nothing wrong with drawing up preliminary plans, but I think we just need to be mindful of where things are at that particular point.”
Depending on how many Americans are vaccinated, falling can become the ‘new normal’.
Dr Anthony Fauci said on Thursday that he now thinks that ‘fall, mid-autumn, early winter’ can all go back to work, children will be at school and indoor dining will be buzzing again.
His prediction follows an announcement by the White House that one vaccine manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, will be able to accelerate its supply. But it will still take the summer months to deploy the vaccines.
“By the time we fall with the implementation of the vaccination program, you will see something remarkable in the direction of returning to normalcy and you will probably get there by the end of the year,” said Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases. diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he prefers to sit “normally” in quotes now because life is likely to look very different. For example, online business meetings can become more common than full meeting rooms, if possible.
“Masks should be one of the last things,” Schaffner said. “They are troublesome, they are dull, but they are so effective and so easy and so cheap. It would not be the first things I take off; they would be the last.”
But if enough people are vaccinated, he agrees that schools and colleges should be able to open this fall at low risk, and the US can see a clear Thanksgiving.
“My expectation is that by the end of summer and in autumn we will have this ‘new normal’, and we can all – I hope – thank you in a more conventional way on Thanksgiving and sit around the table with our family. “Friends, family, with masks off and thank you and be glad we came through this horrible pandemic and survived,” Schaffner said.
Yet every expert interviewed by ABC News described a kind of cautionary “wait-and-see” approach. Vaccine hesitation among some Americans remains a source of concern. And if viral transmission in other countries remains high, the virus could mutate in a way that breaks away. against the effectiveness of the vaccines – which can endanger even vaccinated individuals.
“We may return to some of the things we are used to, but to say that we are going to be normal again – it is not going to be the same,” Wildes said.
“I think it’s even going to be hard to embrace people,” she later added.
If it’s over, but in many months or years, Markel, who’s been studying pandemics for 30 years, is sure of one thing: “We’ll forget it all.”
“We will go our happy way,” he said. ‘I tell you, I’ve studied a lot of pandemics. This is the end. It’s like memory loss. And that’s what I’m worried about. ‘