They will call us, “The Greatest Generation”.
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Yeah, but they’re starting with a serious handicap - the process has begun, but with no logistics planning, and Biden’s team still isn’t being allowed a full transition (they’re being shut out of a lot of access they should have). Globally things are even worse - the entirety of Africa isn’t going to get the vaccine for years. All of this means delays in the potential for herd immunity, which we absolutely can’t afford. We’re already getting mutations, and if we get one that’s significant enough that vaccines don’t work on it, we’re starting from zero again, only with thousands of people dying a day and all the medical systems in collapse as the starting point.
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Oh, it WILL be endemic.
More worryingly…
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This is from 12/22, so while unconfirmed at the time, it was highly suspected to be here for a while.
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Lol, no.
Maybe some place in Europe or Asia has the capacity to maintain some sort of lockdown for two years, but the US sure as shit does not. Americans will just burn down the government before they do this for 2 more years.
My guess is that the US will vaccinate old people, the very sick, and medical and emergency staff pretty quickly, which should dramatically drop the death rate. I bet that takes another month or two. You really need to get the entire 75+ crowd, as that is where the losses are particularly brutal. Once we do that, I’m pretty sure it will be a free-for-all in most states. Once it is a free-for-all in most states, it will rapidly follow on for all states. No one wants to be the last to open up, if for no other reason than that a lockdown is pretty useless if the rest of your open borders nation is open.
Once the US gets its old people vaccinated, the only thing that will trigger a lockdown will be literally running out of hospital capacity. We are already more or less into “just manage hospital capacity, not death rates” as a policy, but that will become even more extreme once we vaccinate old folks and put a solid dent in the death rate.
Personally, I have no clue what the “right” answer is as to when to open up, but I’m pretty sure I know what the US will do, regardless of whether or not it is right or wrong, we are not going to be in lockdown in 2022 unless COVID-21 is killing hundreds of thousands of kids.
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Does anyone know what the death rate of the new virulent UK version is?
Something that is more virulent but less lethal wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it crowds out more lethal strains while at the same time granting immunity to those that get it. On the other hand, something with the same death rate as normal 'rona but with a higher virulence could be a real disaster.
Sadly even then part of me would not be surprised if it also depended on the race, ethnicity, creed, and income status of those kids.
Seems the mortality rate is comparable to the version that was most preventable before, but more contagious.
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In science terminology, “virulent” and “lethal” are similar in meaning. The B.1.1.7 variant is more transmissible, but seems to be no more virulent than the strain currently circulating. Estimated R0 for current strain is 1.1, new one is 1.4. Significant, but it appears that the vaccine will still work.
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