I don’t think we will know with certainty. But I feel sure for myself that it’s not “now.”
Actually, I think there will be a bright line of sorts at some point. It will happen when there’s an effective vaccine, low case numbers, and highly effective treatment protocols (which we’re heading toward). As for my personal risk, that component of the bright line will be determined by my doctors. My risk tolerance is lower than many people’s but higher than a few others. My docs will rely on the evidence and experts as well as their own knowledge of my health status and history, and we’ll make the decision on when, how, and if together.
For some period of time, I’ll probably have to continue to wear a mask to protect others who have not yet been vaccinated. How long will depend on how many people refuse to get vaccinated or have some legitimate medical reason to delay vaccination, among other factors.
FWIW we did a modified version of our 6 couple dinner club. Met in the park couples each sitting 6 feet away from each other and brought our own food. Masks off to eat of course. So outdoor 6 feet plus unmasked I seem to be okay with.
The issue of my comfort zone doesn’t come up as I know of two different groups: those who much more worried about their potential risks than I am of mine, whose cautions I respect and comply with; and those much much less cautious than I am, who I would decline an invitation from.
I consider myself more from the POV of being a potential risk to others than at high risk myself.
I don’t know about bright lines. At some point this will be similar to deciding when after 9-11 was the right time to take down the flag. I doubt a vaccine, if one happens, will deliver enough efficacy to enough to be that line.
That’s a deal-breaker to me. What would it hurt to wear a mask? Things cool off in October so masks will be comfortable. Why wouldn’t people want to take that extra precaution just to be on the safe side?
Check out figure 3, outside speaking/extended period of time with and without face coverings. Without face covering, you go from low risk to medium risk. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3223
It’s exceedingly likely we will never have a vaccine. We don’t have an HIV vaccine, we don’t have a SARS or MERS vaccine, we don’t have a set of “common cold” rhinovirus vaccines, we don’t have a Herpes or Hepatitis or Zika or Dengue or West Nile vaccine, we don’t have vaccines for many, many common debilitating viruses. We have a Flu vaccine but it’s usually only around 50% effective and requires constant redevelopment, a novel Flu could still appear and kill millions.
We WILL need to learn to live with this, even if a vaccine is found we won’t have anything close to universal vaccination and herd immunity because of idiots.
But if we do get a vaccine, the only people who will need herd immunity will be people who can’t get the vaccine. Most non-idiots will be protected.
We do have a Hep A and Hep B vaccine. I think we have a Dengue vaccine as well.
I wonder why people insist on taking an unnecessary risk of not wearing a mask if you really need to socialize that badly. I’m not talking about the maskholes. I’m talking about people who are not conspiracy theorists and know that masks do work at least as source control.
Not really what we would consider a useful vaccine. It’s only safe for people who’ve already had Dengue fever, as it can cause severe problems in uninfected people. From Wikipedia:
The vaccine is only recommended in those who have previously had dengue fever or populations in which most people have been previously infected.[2] The value of the vaccine is limited by the fact that it may increase the risk of severe dengue in those who have not previously been infected.
Ah, thanks. I was too lazy to look it up. Going by memory from about a year ago.
Does it really boggle the imagination that much? The most popular social activity is eating and drinking. Tough to do with a mask. Masks make it hard/impossible to gauge emotions and other non-verbal communication, things that are important when you’re trying to connect with close family and friends. For many people, they just want to see the faces of those people close to them. We’re hard wired for it. These things aren’t important with impersonal transactional things like going to a store or getting deliveries, but socializing with a mask is simply not the same. It might be enough for some situations, but it should be pretty obvious why people choose to make exceptions.
Maskholes are fucking morons. But the people on the other end of the spectrum that make enemies out people doing anything short of living in a literal bubble and treating every other person like typhoid Mary will push more people into becoming sympathetic to maskholes. It can be just as toxic as the conspiracy theories.
Given that we have learned to live with the risks described above, how does the risk of COVID compare? By that I mean the risk of (1) being exposed, (2) “catching it,” (3) passing it on to someone else even if I don’t get sick, (4) becoming seriously, even deathly, ill?
It seems to me that of the diseases listed above the only ones that are as widespread and as easily spead as COVID are the common cold and the flu. The others are confined to specific parts of the world. Flu can be deadly, but the risk of death or serious illness, especially with a vaccination, is nowhere near as high as COVID right now. You don’t have one person at a wedding, say, spreading flu that results in 150 cases with three deaths.
HIV is spread by intimate contact of some kind, same with Herpes-- i.e., you don’t get them from having lunch across a table from someone or singing with them in the choir.
How do y’all see us learning to live with the risk of COVID before or even without an effective vaccine?
Different people make different decisions all the time as to what constitutes unnecessary risks in various contexts, and the severity of possible repercussions. Not everyone thinks exactly like you. Plenty of opportunity for you to wonder.
But the repercussions are never just for you. I have to help my 85 yr. old Dad take care of my 90 yr. old Mom. So, I go over there 4X a week to help out. I wear a face shield with a big mask that I tuck around my chin so that she can see my face. She should probably be in a home but my Dad is afraid of her catching covid.
I skipped an out of state memorial service recently, I was comfortable with the idea of flying and staying in a hotel. But I knew my people in Houston were not masking up when we’re socializing with friends and family. I knew I would not mask up along with them, as I’d be the only one wearing a mask so yeah peer pressure. So I skipped it and it was as I expected no social distancing no masks anywhere. So far no Covid cases in the group.
I made the right decision but it was really for other reasons, the Covid risk just cemented my choice.
A combination of a few things:
a) Increased efficacy of COVID-19 treatment. The virus was idenitifed less than a year ago – there is still much to be learned. We’ve even learned a lot in 8+ months … and still, some portion of what we now “know for sure” about COVID-19 will be overturned. We’ll be making 180-degree turns about various aspects of COVID-19 for several years hence. Something that will likely be important – reliable treatment of non-terminal COVID-19 cases so that patients’ organs and overall body systems recover as fully as possible, as free as possible of lingering effects such as myocarditis, et al.
b) Society simply getting used to a given endemic level of the virus. Case numbers and death counts (per unit of time) will stabilize at some point, as opposed to dropping down to zero. IMHO, this will be true regardless of any medical advancements short of a “perfect” and widely-distributed vaccine. Some kind of equilibrium in the counting numbers will be reached and that will be accepted as the new normal. A “new normal” still gets accepted as a “normal” and voila! – society is back to (new) normal. People, as a collective entity, will then begin to act accordingly.
c) New societal rules will help ease the way back to a sense of normality. These new rules may or may not be directly derived from the pandemic-fighting efforts we are making now. One thing that I think could come are stark changed in public acceptance/reaction of outward signs of respiratory illness. Coughing violently and uncontrollably in public may become as negatively regarded as, say, public emesis or public urination. Another: coming into a workplace very obviously ill will no longer be seen as “hard-working”, “decicated”, or “heroic” by anyone – and those that encourage this kind of behavior from subordinates will be aging out over the near future.
d) More factors that we’re not even conceiving of. I feel like I can take for granted that the future of “society and COVID-19” will not much look like the present.
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being extremely or hyper-cautious, I am probably a 7 or an 8. In practice, I’m probably a 9 or 10 because my wife is hyper-vigilant herself, which I appreciate in a lot of ways.
On the other hand, my own mother, who is usually pretty educated when it comes to science and medicine, is taking chances she doesn’t need to and being passive aggressive narcissistic about it when I tell her she’s taking chances. “I was married to your dad, who was a doctor. I know about medicine and virology.” Right, you’re the one who went to med school and had a private practice for 40 years. I forgot. 
WHOA! Great and very thorough answer. What’s what I’m talkin’ about! Thank you. 
That seems like an overstatement. Depending on it, especially in the near to medium term seems overconfident, but “exceedingly likely … never”?
Even for highly effective vaccines this is simply not how vaccine created herd immunity works, and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that is only 50% effective in the short term would be considered a success enough to get approved. Let’s go with one that is, at least in the moderate term, 70% effective, and that 70% of the population gets the vaccine and repeats however frequently is necessary (both likely quite optimistic) … functionally that’s under 50% protected, not hitting that 60 to 70% that gets cited so often as what many experts believe is the line for herd immunity. The result is that those who are vaccinated still get exposed and are still at risk of infection. Reduced risk but there are more of them, so, if my literal back of envelope is right 40% of all infections would be in the vaccinated.
You don’t really protect the vaccinated so well until enough of the population is in the immune bucket, until the herd is large enough that spread stops, and exposures unlikely; vaccines are not a shield of invulnerability.
And the history of it is part of the caution many experts express about a potential SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. As noted by @needscoffee the dengue vaccine given to seronegative individuals made disease when exposed worse - by way of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), and such was seen in previous coronavirus vaccine development (in animal models anyway).
Really as they express in the op - they feel that being outside and distanced is enough, that masks in that circumstance add little additional protection and make the experience much less satisfying (unable to understand each other well, especially when outside and distanced, unable to see expressions so well, so on). To go by way of analogy - I went to the local farmer’s market yesterday morning. The woman in front of me had on all of, an N95, a surgical mask over it, goggles, hair covered, a face shield over all of that, and gloves. Did each of those things added to the others gain her some marginal decreased risk? Maybe. From her POV she may have looked at me and the others in line in our simple masks and wonder why we are taking unnecessary risks if we want to go the farmer’s market so badly. (FWIW I gave her over ten feet ahead of me in line. My anxiety is obviously much less than hers but, within reason, I respect hers with my behaviors.)
Of course. As is the case w/ countless choices we routinely make in matters other than COVID.
So what are you saying by your example - that you are fortunate that both of your parents lived past 85?
And your dad is making his choice, and is willing to have you bear the repercussions. So his choice should somehow burden the rest of society?
Reflects the approach I aspire to.
Right. But when those countless choices involve harming or killing others, they’re generally illegal, as they well should be. You may have the right to endanger your own life; you don’t have the legal or moral right to endanger others.
None of this matters. I’m not drawing an equivalency between the viruses, only pointing out that it’s by no means a foregone conclusion that a vaccine is imminent. COVID is here, we are getting an idea of how harmful, contagious, and persistent it is and it’s all bad news. If your position is that ANY risk, being that we’re now 9 months into this thing, is too much risk…how will you manage once we reach a point 2, 3, 5 years on with no vaccine? We’ll need to begin getting our heads around the idea that this is something we’ll need to live with for a while.