{"id":3680,"date":"2021-03-02T23:16:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T05:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/?p=3680"},"modified":"2021-03-02T23:16:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T05:16:36","slug":"march-2-2121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/?p=3680","title":{"rendered":"March 2. 2121"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


\nThe Most Likely Timeline for Life to Return to Normal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An uncertain spring, an amazing summer, a\ncautious fall and winter, and then, finally, relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOE PINSKER<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FEBRUARY 22, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end of the coronavirus pandemic is on the horizon<\/a> at last, but the\ntimeline for actually getting there feels like it shifts daily, with updates\nabout viral variants, vaccine logistics, and other important variables seeming\nto push back the finish line or scoot it forward. When will we be able to\nfinally live our lives again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pandemics are hard to predict accurately, but we\nhave enough information to make some confident guesses. A useful way to think\nabout what\u2019s ahead is to go season by season. In short: Life this spring will\nnot be substantially different from the past year; summer could, miraculously,\nbe close to normal; and next fall and winter could bring either continued\nimprovement or a moderate backslide, followed by a near-certain return to\nsomething like pre-pandemic life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, in more detail, is what Americans can\nexpect daily life to look like for the next four(-ish) seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

SPRING 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part, daily life will continue to be far from normal\nfor the next few months. Normal<\/em> is of course a slippery word, given\nthat many Americans have had to report to work or have chosen to dine out,\ntravel, and do all sorts of things that others have avoided. But whatever\npeople have not been doing for the past year, they can expect to keep not doing\nit this spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unlikely that enough people will get\nvaccinated in the spring to restore normalcy. In fact, experts fear that the\npandemic could get much worse in the near term, because variants of the virus that are more contagious or\nvaccine-resistant<\/a> than the original\nversion have begun circulating in the United States. The damage those variants\nwill do is still unknown; \u201cMarch to May is the mystery,\u201d as my colleague\nRobinson Meyer wrote earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news, though, is that even with these\nvariants, existing vaccines appear to reduce the risk of severe illness,\nmeaning more and more people will be protected as vaccinations continue. And\nvaccines can change individuals\u2019 risk calculus. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown\nUniversity\u2019s School of Public Health, told me that in a month or so, in the\nabsence of a variant-driven surge, he\u2019d probably be comfortable going to a\nfriend\u2019s house for a drink, mask-free and indoors, if he and his friend were\nboth fully vaccinated. \u201cAs we get into late spring, a lot of that stuff\u2014the\nsmaller gatherings of vaccinated people\u2014I think starts becoming quite\npossible,\u201d Jha said<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMMER 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever happens in the spring, the summer\nshould be a sublime departure from what Americans have lived through so far. As\nmy colleague James Hamblin wrote last week<\/a>, \u201cIn most of the U.S.,\nthe summer could feel \u2026 \u2018normal,\u2019\u201d even \u201crevelatory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBarring some variant that is just really crazy,\nI expect the summer to be a lot like the summer of 2019,\u201d Andrew Noymer, a\npublic-health professor at UC Irvine, told me. Based on the drop-off in cases and hospitalizations<\/a> over the past few weeks, he thinks life could even be close\nto normal as soon as sometime in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other experts I consulted were slightly less\noptimistic, but they generally agreed that at some point between June and September,\nthe combination of widespread vaccinations and warmer weather<\/a> would likely make\nmany activities much safer, including having friends and family over indoors,\ntaking public transit, being in a workplace, dining inside restaurants, and\ntraveling domestically (whether for work, visiting loved ones, or a vacation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of when vaccines for children become\navailable, all of the above applies to kids and their families, according to\nEmily Oster, an economist at Brown who writes about everyday pandemic decision\nmaking in her newsletter ParentData<\/em><\/a>. In-person schooling should become safer as well. Though the\ntiming for kids\u2019 vaccines is uncertain, Oster\u2019s guess is that they might become\navailable over the summer for children 12 and up, and later for children under\n12, perhaps in the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The safest way to phase activities back in will be for people to\ngradually go from smaller, private social settings (such as a friend\u2019s house)\nto bigger, public ones (such as a restaurant)\u2014which is also what many will\nprobably feel most comfortable with. \u201cPeople will slowly expand the social\nworld that they engage in, building [their] pod back up,\u201d predicts Oster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jha, for instance, expects to host 20 or so\nfriends for a Fourth of July barbecue in his backyard, with every adult\nvaccinated and no one having to wear a mask. He imagines himself being\ncomfortable eating indoors at a restaurant later on in the summer, provided\nit\u2019s not packed and the ventilation is decent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summer will still have its limitations,\nthough. The experts I spoke with didn\u2019t foresee the return of indoor concerts,\nfull attendance at sporting events, or high levels of international travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They did, however, expect that Americans will be\nable to ease up on mask wearing and social distancing in other contexts. \u201cI\nthink when people are vaccinated themselves, they will start letting their\nguard down, but it will also genuinely be safer from a public-health\nperspective,\u201d said Jennifer Beam Dowd, a professor of demography and population\nhealth at the University of Oxford and the chief scientific officer of Dear Pandemic<\/a>, a COVID-19 public-education campaign. Noymer\u2019s prediction is\nthat masking will be necessary in public settings until every American has at\nleast been offered a vaccine, at which point he figures he would be okay with\nrepealing mask mandates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even once these precautions are no longer\nstrictly necessary, many people will probably keep up some of them, opting to\nwear a mask, say, on public transportation or in a grocery store. Oster thinks\nthat while certain activities should become much safer over the summer, many\npeople might not be comfortable resuming them until the end of the year or even\nlater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FALL\/WINTER 2021\u201322<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if the summer feels like the end of the\npandemic, it could turn out to be more of a temporary reprieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the U.S. population should be vaccinated\nby the fall, but some resurgence of the virus seems likely in the colder\nmonths. \u201cIt won\u2019t be as bad as this winter, but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to\nbe pretty bad or [if] just a few people will get it,\u201d Noymer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, the latter scenario seems more\nlikely, and could still allow for additional normalcy; indoor concerts might\neven come back. \u201cThe summer might be a little early for really large crowds,\u201d\nDowd said. \u201cI see the autumn as the important turning point for those kinds of\nmass gatherings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This scenario might result in isolated viral\nflare-ups, but vaccines should significantly reduce the likelihood that anyone\nwho gets infected would end up in the hospital, and could also make them less\nlikely to spread the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another outcome seems less probable but more troubling: Whether\nbecause a variant ends up evading existing vaccines or because infections surge\namong unvaccinated people, cases might climb again. Even after a wonderful\nsummer, a rise in cases could necessitate a reversion to many of the\nprecautions from earlier in the pandemic, even if it doesn\u2019t require full-on\nlockdowns. \u201cI\u2019m not saying that the return of the masks and working from home\nand all the crap that we hate is guaranteed,\u201d Noymer said. \u201cBut if it does\nreturn, it won\u2019t be in the summer. It\u2019ll be in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, though, if stubborn variants do\ncirculate, new vaccines should be able to tame them relatively quickly.\nAdjusting an existing vaccine recipe could take only a few months, meaning that\nthe disruption to daily life would not be as drawn out as what Americans have\nlived through already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPRING\/SUMMER 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond next winter, experts\u2019 predictions are\nblessedly simple: Life in the warmer months of 2022 should be normal, or at\nleast whatever qualifies as normal post-pandemic. The virus will still exist,\nbut one possibility is that it will be less likely to make people severely ill\nand that it will, like the flu, circulate primarily in the colder months; some\npeople would still die from COVID-19, but the virus wouldn\u2019t rage out of\ncontrol again. Meanwhile, Americans should be able to do most, if not all, of\nthe things that they missed so much in 2020 and 2021, mask- and worry-free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this dreamy era is still more than a year away, and\nsome unforeseen obstacle could delay the resumption of normalcy. Jha said he\ncouldn\u2019t picture what that might be, though. After a year spent gaming out how\nbad the pandemic could get, he can finally see ahead to a time when there are\nno more catastrophes to imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOE PINSKER<\/strong><\/a> is a staff writer at <\/em>The\nAtlantic, where he covers families and relationships.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Most Likely Timeline for Life to Return to Normal An uncertain spring, an amazing summer, a cautious fall and winter, and then, finally, relief. JOE PINSKER FEBRUARY 22, 2021 The end of the coronavirus pandemic is on the horizon at last, but the timeline for actually getting there feels like it shifts daily, with updates about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3680"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3686,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680\/revisions\/3686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rockaria.net\/bluebirdprairie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}