I was literally thinking of starting almost exactly this same thread. When I thought about writing it, I would have written it just like you did and predict that people would be wearing masks. I think I was thinking optimistically that people would be considerate of others and people would just uniformly comply.
But when I’m reading it from this side, I’m a lot less optimistic. It took a LOT for people to start wearing masks. Even with the death rate as high as it is, some people are refusing. It will vary a lot based on where people live, whether it’s rural or urban, red area or blue.
I think most people will go back to how they were behaving in 2019 fairly soon, maybe as soon as spring of 2021 at the first sign of warmer weather in the US, even if the case rate is still high.
Caring only lasts so long. I’m reminded of the time after 9/11 when people were caring about each other. That only lasted a few months. I think this will be the same, sadly so. I hope I’m wrong about this.
I think Covid-19 will have shifted from major pandemic to background endemic by fall of 2021. My guess is that the sort of people who won’t take the vaccine are also the sort of people who don’t wear masks and are likely to be among those who will develop or have already developed immunity the “old fashioned” way. The vaccines (all of them) will likely be the sort of thing that needs to be updated yearly, like a flu shot. The mandatory aspects of mask wearing will likely be gone by then as well, but many of us will continue to use them. September 2021 will be more like September 2019 than September 2020.
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The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows about a quarter of U.S. adults aren’t sure if they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly another quarter say they won’t.
Many on the fence have safety concerns and want to watch how the initial rollout fares — skepticism that could hinder the campaign against the scourge that has killed nearly 290,000 Americans. Experts estimate at least 70% of the U.S. population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or the point at which enough people are protected that the virus can be held in check.
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You should have also bolded the word “estimate”, istm.
Regardless, the biggest concern is people in nursing homes and they’ll mostly take it. They get a handful of pills every morning anyways so I’m not worried about anti-vaxxers there. A lot of people who are saying they don’t want to take the vaccine just don’t want to be first in line, they’re not against vaccines in general. After they see it didn’t kill grandma, most will get onboard.
I think I’ve said this already in another thread, but it probably bears repeating: A lot of the time, survey answers are posturing – what people are really expressing with their “I wouldn’t take a vaccine” statement might be anything from “I don’t trust Donald Trump” to “Those liberals can’t tell me what to do” (weirdly, this particular historical moment and situation lends itself to posturing from both sides of the political spectrum). And even for people who are being completely honest in answering the survey, what they think they will do in the future may be different from what they actually end up doing. In all probability, if you have to show proof of vaccination to enroll in college, board a plane, or attend a sporting event, most people will get vaccinated.
Remember that many people will/already have developed immunity the “natural way”, and many authorities have already stated the infection rate today is probably on the order of ~10x the number reported thru testing results. I am not an expert, but ISTM the combination of vaccines and getting immunity naturally could bring us to herd immunity, without needing to rely solely on vaccines to get everyone. I am being optimistic here, but that makes sense to me, at least.
I really don’t think that’s overly optimistic. Up to this point, reinfection seems rare. There will be a decent base of naturally built immunity that we can mostly only guess at but doesn’t seem included in that “expert estimate”.
If available vaccines live up to their early effectiveness figures and serious side effects are rare, I expect we’ll see up to 70% or so of the U.S. population getting vaccinated, especially if vaccination is required to work in jobs dealing directly with the public and to travel.
Mask-wearing will continue fairly long-term, particularly among older people and those with pre-existing conditions that render them more susceptible to infectious/serious complications from Covid-19. Protection for those folks will depend in part on herd immunity being achieved in the population as a whole (it’s a myth in general that all you have to do to be protected from infectious disease is get vaccinated yourself; even if the vaccine works very well, there’s a significant percentage who for whatever reason don’t mount a good enough immune response).
I think this is a gross underestimate unless your definition of a few (I tend to think 3 or 4) is vastly different from mine. There are for example close to 50 million people over age 65 in this country. That’s without even going into non-age related co-morbidities. If you’re over 65 and unvaccinated in the future you’re going to be playing with fire - that’s roughly where the mortality curve starts deflecting upwards like a rocket.
That’s conservative. If you’re over 50, which is over a third of the US population including me, you damn well better be getting your vaccine as well. Because while the mortality rate may be far lower than your elders it is still in that uncomfortable range where it is fair bit higher than your juniors. Personally I’ll not be sitting in a restaurant until I’ve had my series of shots at a bare minimum.
I’ll get the shots, and I am glad I’m not in the first group. I’m generally not an early adopter; I want to see the community-level side effects. I’m also able to work from home through at least June, and I don’t have kids, so it’s less urgent to treat me first. Depending how a poll or survey asked the question, I might look like I’m saying I won’t vax, when what I’m in fact saying is “I have no need to vax first” and “if there are important side effects for Pfizer’s product, I might wait to see what Moderna’s got going.”
Remember, when you’re talking about percentages of a population that need to be immunized, that we don’t know when kids will be able to get the shot. I’ve had trouble finding an exact age, but either under 18s or under 16s will be waiting until at least the fall before a vaccine is released for them. They may not be likely to get a serious case of the disease, but they’ll still be un-vaccinated and possibly contagious humans mixing with other people.
I agree with your numbers and that >50 is a reasonable age to get a little more nervous. I just can’t muster it for long at 51. I suffer very little effects from any bug I get. Even when I got mono, I was totally milking it. For 8 months now of daily checks my temperature has been 36.1-36.7 I know I’m not invulnerable intellectually but my entire life has taught me that this thing won’t kill me. Lol. Weird to actually type that out.
I think with the vaccine and better treatments it will fade into into the background of cold/flu type of winter diseases.
I also see that this vaccine could help speed a new type of vaccinations in all categories of viral infections.
I do hope and pray we shift to a more aware society not to work while contagious, don’t send kids to school when they are sick, and remote schooling remains a option.
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Many of the 30 epidemiologists, physicians, immunologists, sociologists, and historians whom I interviewed for this piece are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is headed for a better summer. But they emphasized that such a world, though plausible, is not inevitable. Its realization hinges on successfully executing the most complicated vaccination program in U.S. history, on persuading a frayed and fractured nation to continue using masks and avoiding indoor crowds, on countering the growing quagmire of misinformation, and on successfully monitoring and countering changes in the virus itself. “Think about next summer as a marker for when we might be able to breathe again,” said Loyce Pace, the executive director of a nonprofit called the Global Health Council and a member of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. “But there’s almost a year’s worth of work that needs to happen in those six months.”
The pandemic will end not with a declaration, but with a long, protracted exhalation. Even if everything goes according to plan, which is a significant if, the horrors of 2020 will leave lasting legacies. A pummeled health-care system will be reeling, short-staffed, and facing new surges of people with long-haul symptoms or mental-health problems. Social gaps that were widened will be further torn apart. Grief will turn into trauma. And a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this.
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<Insert 6,000-word article with detailed analysis of all areas of American life affected by COVID.>
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To truly prepare itself against the next pandemic, the U.S. has to reimagine what preparedness looks like. Every epidemic is different, as new pathogens with unique characteristics emerge from different regions. But those pathogens eventually test the same health systems and expose the same historical inequities. Think of epidemics as a million rivers that must all flow through the same lake. The U.S. has been trying to dam the rivers. It has to focus on the lake.
It must reverse the decades-long underfunding of public health. It should invest in policies such as paid sick leave, affordable child care, and reparations that would narrow the old inequities that make some Americans more susceptible than others to new diseases.
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There is a likely future in which America’s immune system learns lessons from COVID-19 but its collective consciousness does not. Indeed, the U.S. has a long history of plastering over social problems with technological fixes.
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I am 65 years old and have no place to call for an appointment and no idea where I will go. My mother is 94, nearly housebound, and she and her house-calls-only doc doesn’t know either. Many months were wasted in the U.S. when other countries were building vaccination apps and facilities. Biden is inheriting a mess.
This might not be ideal but Is probably a necessity, for the U.S, given the planning failure to date:
