We should not end the restrictions until we reach 10,000 cases a day – or considerably less

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It should be noted that he speaks (I think) about the standard for ending completely pandemic restrictions. He is willing to do it reduction restrictions on higher levels of community outreach, provided we do not get rid of them altogether.

And neither did Texas. The mask mandate has been lifted and businesses are open to capacity, but local authorities are empowered to issue new regulations based on the number of recent hospitalizations in their communities. We should not treat restrictions as a light switch, where we go from strict capacity limits to nothing., Fauci warns Jake Tapper in the video below. But neither did Texas. They had a 75% capacity for many companies before Greg Abbott’s new order authorized full reopening. It was a gradual adjustment.

Yet. Consider how difficult it will be to reach a benchmark of 10,000 cases a day – or “considerably less”, ideally, in Fauci’s words. The last time we had only 10,000 confirmed cases in one day in the United States was March 22, 2020, 348 days ago. Apart from a few days in May and June, it’s also been almost a full year since I’ve seen less than * 20,000 * cases a day. And remember, those case counts were recorded at a time when America’s testing capacity was still weak, much less extensive than it is now. In fact, in March last year, we generated more than 10,000 infections a day; the low number of cases was due to the fact that we were still in a primitive stage of detecting them then.

Which means you may not have seen a day with less than 10,000 infections for a full year, possibly from February 2020. Question then: Realistically, the number of cases will drop below 10,000 a day even after all have those who want a vaccine received one? Something like 15% of Americans insist that they will not get shot in any case. That’s 45 million people. Even allowing the fact that many will be immunized in the old fashioned way, and some are children who probably will not be very contagious regardless, we are still talking about a group of millions who will remain vulnerable to the virus. Couldn’t they generate 10,000 infections a day between them? Especially during a more contagious winter season?

A benchmark of 10K per day therefore seems an awfully high bar to return to full normalcy. Even if we soften that 15% of the resistance and convince almost everyone to get vaccinated, it will be a matter of several months before the entire population has access to the fire. And assuming we can do it all by September, we’ll probably have to go back and get boosters again, because the virus threatens a recurrence in colder weather.

Pandemic restrictions virtually forever, in other words. Not strict restrictions, maybe, but still. Recommended masks next winter, restaurants with a capacity of 75 percent or 50 percent?

Maybe Americans are getting used to the idea:

The irony is that the same survey has the number of those who believe that the pandemic is improving more or less, by 60%, the largest of all time. Americans are becoming more and more optimistic! And … even more resigned that their lives will be interrupted next year.

What really worries Fauci and his colleagues in Biden’s team are the new variants. It is not certain that we will end up with a fourth wave of the virus driven by more contagious strains, but it is certainly possible:

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Thursday that the most transmissible variant B.1.1.7 was presenting between 20% and 30% of the viruses obtained at surveillance controls in states including Florida, California and Georgia. These figures – just 1% -2% four weeks ago – are likely to double in 10 days, he said.

When this variant appeared with 50% in surveillance controls in parts of Europe and the Middle East, “we (saw) a major increase in (general) cases” “The same thing could happen in the United States,” he said.

“Everything the governors are doing now to relax all the public health recommendations we have made will be just a major invitation for this virus to spread faster and further,” Osterholm told CNN’s “New Day.” .

Watch the first minutes here, while Fauci presents his possible impossible landmark. For what he deserves, Biden does not seem to be hurt by the extreme caution advised by his advisers. According to a new AP poll, Sleepy Joe is approved by 70% in terms of pandemic management, including 44% among Republicans. This is probably mainly a reaction to the increased pace of vaccinations, but Biden’s emphasis on masks and not reopening too quickly is not a problem for him at the moment. We’ll see what it looks like in two months if and when tens of millions more people have been immunized and the White House is still urging governors not to open too soon.

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