It’s the million-dollar question everyone is asking about COVID-19: When will life return to normal? And the school will be open this fall?
The answers are everywhere – from the governors of Texas and Mississippi who declare their states already open and lift their masks, to health experts who warn badly that the virus will always persist.
The reality, however, depends a lot on how you define “normal”. And, if quite a few Americans step up this summer, it may not be as depressing as you think.
Experts say that autumn could become the season of a “new normal” in which the world slowly reopens and people will reconnect, but with masks, routine tests and possibly vaccine cards to allow them to enter cinemas or restaurants.
“It will be so gradual, we probably won’t even notice it,” said Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and a pediatrician. “It’s not a light switch or a V-Day – like, it’s over, you know, I won! It’s not like that.”
So what could derail everything? Infectious disease experts agree that at least 70-85% of the country should become immune to starvation of the virus. Markel said he favors 90% with such a hidden virus.
“It all depends on how many people roll up their sleeves and get immunized, you see,” Markel told ABC News. “So that’s my fear, that keeps me awake at night.”
Here’s what health experts might say this year:
Spring will be a period of uncertainty and probably more deaths
The country is at a standstill with the virus. Even with the seven-day national average declining by about 74% in a matter of weeks, the US is still averaging about 64,000 new cases a day. This average is equal to last fall just before the cases exploded during the holiday season.
This stagnant progress means the country is about to enter the season of spring trips, graduation parties, family vacations and neighborhood gatherings with already high viral transmission, while expecting a new, more transmissible variant coming from the Sea. Britain the dominant strain of the virus until mid-March.
Health experts warn that states like Texas and Mississippi are now reopening and lifting mask warrants, there could be a last heartbreaking increase in new cases – followed weeks later by hospitalizations and deaths – just as the nation is on the verge of mass vaccinations .
“I know the idea of wearing a mask and going back to your daily activities is appealing. But we’re not there yet,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I have seen this movie before. When preventative measures such as mask warrants are lifted, cases increase. “
Fingers crossed, summer becomes the season of mass vaccinations
If production can continue, the US expects to arrive in June with enough doses of vaccine for 300 million Americans. Vaccines will continue to be limited to adults, with some offers available for teens over the age of 16.
“I think it’s a huge undertaking,” said Simone Wildes, an infectious disease physician at South Shore Health in Massachusetts and an ABC News medical contributor, at the launch of the mass vaccination.
“But if we can do it in June, July … we might have a decent summer. But it really depends on how things go in the next few months,” she said.
Markel also predicted that by the beginning of July, almost all “first acceptors” of the vaccine would get a shot. At that moment, a large part of the nation could expand its “bridge” – slowly.
Markel said he would not yet recommend depositing a deposit early on a non-refundable beach house with extended family this summer.
Wildes agreed.
“Be flexible, 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 these plans,” Wildes said. “There is nothing wrong with making interim plans, but I think we just have to pay attention to the situation at that time.”
Depending on the number of vaccinated Americans, the fall could become the “new normal”
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that he now believes that “fall, mid-fall, early winter” that everyone could return to work, the children will be at school, and the restaurants inside could hum again.
His prediction follows a White House announcement that a vaccine manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, could speed up its supply. But it would take the summer months to implement the vaccines.
“Until we fall with the implementation of the vaccination program, you will see something visible in the direction of return to normalcy and most likely you will get there by the end of the year,” said Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and chief adviser. of President Joe Biden.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he prefers to put “normal” in quotation marks now, because life would most likely look like it. Online business meetings, for example, could become more common than conference rooms “if possible.
“Masks should be one of the last things that happens,” Schaffner said. “They’re annoying, they’re weird, but they’re so effective, so light and so cheap. They wouldn’t be the first things I take; they would be the last.”
But if enough people are vaccinated, he agreed that schools and colleges should be able to open at low risk this fall, and the United States could see a brighter Thanksgiving Day.
“My expectation is that we will enter this” new normal “by the end of summer and by autumn and we all – I hope – thank you on Thanksgiving, in a more conventional way, sitting around the table with our family, friends, relatives, with free masks and thank you and rejoice that we went through this terrible pandemic and survived, “Schaffner said.
However, each expert interviewed by ABC News described a kind of “wait and see” approach. The hesitation of the vaccine among some Americans remains a concern. And if viral transmission to other countries remains high, the virus could move in ways that eliminate the effectiveness of vaccines – endangering even vaccinated people.
“We might go back to some of the things we’re used to, but let’s say we’re back to normal – it won’t be the same,” Wildes said.
“I think it will be really hard to hug people,” she added later.
When it’s all over, no matter how many months or years from now, Markel, who has spent 30 years studying pandemics, is sure of one thing: “We’ll forget all about it.”
“We will go on our happy path,” he said. “I’m telling you, I’ve studied a lot of pandemics. This is the end. It’s like amnesia. And that’s what I’m worried about.”