Links

As the curve flattened, misconceptions took hold. Perhaps the biggest was that social distancing was a policy that would need to be enacted only once, for a brief period, after which the virus would be defeated and life would return to normal. With this fantasy in mind, politicians began to argue that the time had come to reopen. A number of factors—mounting economic distress, inevitable claustrophobia and fatigue, the President’s deranged tweets about “liberating” certain states, an explosion of justified protest against police brutality and racial injustice—combined to weaken the consensus around social distancing. Across the country, and despite a lack of testing-based data about how widely the virus had spread, bans on gatherings were lifted. We were tired of being shut in and shut down; we wanted to go back to the world we’d left behind in March. We told ourselves, erroneously, that our social-distancing efforts had defeated the virus.

The reality, of course, is that social distancing cannot cure or defeat covid-19. It only allows us to hide from the virus while scientists do their work. The overwhelming majority of Americans—perhaps as many as three hundred million people—are still susceptible to infection. As they venture back into a reopened world in which the virus is still circulating, they are at risk. In the past few weeks, this simple reality has asserted itself. In states as varied as Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California, we have seen a steepening of the curve. Since June 15th, case counts in the United States have exploded from roughly twenty thousand new cases a day to more than sixty thousand. The U.S. now leads the world in the production of new coronavirus cases. The sheer number of new cases and deaths is staggering. Since May 28th, when the hundred-thousandth American died of covid-19, sixty thousand more have been killed by the virus. The C.D.C. is now projecting that we will reach somewhere between a hundred and sixty-eight and a hundred and eighty-two thousand deaths by August 22nd. The harsh truth about our situation is clear: it isn’t over. (...)

In retrospect, one of the biggest weaknesses in our pandemic planning was that many infectious-disease experts, including me, focussed on the threat posed by a novel strain of influenza. We feared a repeat of 1918—and yet, because we now have the technology to create and mass-produce a new flu vaccine in only a few months’ time, a flu pandemic isn’t necessarily the worst-case scenario. As we are currently discovering, designing and testing an entirely new vaccine against a never-before-seen infectious disease is a far more uncertain and daunting task. The fact that the novel coronavirus is RNA-based, like H.I.V., intensifies the difficulty. It’s possible that a vaccine will arrive this year—but many experts think that it could be two years or even longer before a safe and effective shot has been developed, tested, manufactured, and made widely available.

The challenge, therefore, isn’t just flattening the curve but keeping it flat—holding the line not for months but for years. In a study published in Science in April, researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health estimated that, in the absence of a vaccine for the coronavirus, periods of social distancing would be necessary into the year 2022. (Their analysis was, in its own way, optimistic: it incorporated the possibilities of new treatments for covid-19, increases in I.C.U. capacity, and the spread of durable immunity over time.) The researchers noted that, even after social distancing lets up, governments will need to continue tracking the virus and addressing occasional outbreaks. In that sense, there’s a good chance that the pandemic may not be over until 2024.

America’s Coronavirus Endurance Test (New Yorker)

___

June 2021. The world has been in pandemic mode for a year and a half. The virus continues to spread at a slow burn; intermittent lockdowns are the new normal. An approved vaccine offers six months of protection, but international deal-making has slowed its distribution. An estimated 250 million people have been infected worldwide, and 1.75 million are dead.

Scenarios such as this one imagine how the COVID-19 pandemic might play out1. Around the world, epidemiologists are constructing short- and long-term projections as a way to prepare for, and potentially mitigate, the spread and impact of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Although their forecasts and timelines vary, modellers agree on two things: COVID-19 is here to stay, and the future depends on a lot of unknowns, including whether people develop lasting immunity to the virus, whether seasonality affects its spread, and — perhaps most importantly — the choices made by governments and individuals. “A lot of places are unlocking, and a lot of places aren’t. We don’t really yet know what’s going to happen,” says Rosalind Eggo, an infectious-disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

“The future will very much depend on how much social mixing resumes, and what kind of prevention we do,” says Joseph Wu, a disease modeller at the University of Hong Kong. Recent models and evidence from successful lockdowns suggest that behavioural changes can reduce the spread of COVID-19 if most, but not necessarily all, people comply.

Last week, the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections passed 15 million globally, with around 650,000 deaths. Lockdowns are easing in many countries, leading some people to assume that the pandemic is ending, says Yonatan Grad, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. “But that’s not the case. We’re in for a long haul.”

If immunity to the virus lasts less than a year, for example, similar to other human coronaviruses in circulation, there could be annual surges in COVID-19 infections through to 2025 and beyond.

How the Pandemic Might Play Out In 2021 and Beyond (Nature)

___

America’s about to make a double digit percentage of its population homeless. Something like 20 to 30%, or more of American small businesses have or will shut down by the end of the pandemic. The jobs won’t all come back and those that do will pay worse and feature worse treatment than the ones before (which were mostly not well paid and featured routine meanness.)

We’re talking about 30 million to 60 million homeless.

These are staggering numbers.

The United States will feel third world. Oh, parts already did, when I landed in Miami airport the first time I immediately thought “third world”. Relatively prosperous third world, but third world.

Those places will be worse ((and Florida, as I predicted near the beginning of the crisis) has handled the pandemic noticeably badly.)

Of course, for many, little will change. They’ll keep their jobs, they’ll be fine. I recently witnessed a discussion of infosec jobs, talking about how for a person with a degree and a couple certification $120,000 was a lowball. There will still be good jobs, and you’ll still be able to lose everything in a few months if you become seriously ill.

But when those people who are hanging on go out in the streets, they’ll see, even more than now, the fate that awaits them if they slip.

So much of American meanness, and the culture is mean in the details of its daily life, comes from this fear. Because it is so easy to slip into the underclass, even if one “does everything right”, Americans are scared, even terrified, all the time. They suppress it with massive amounts of drugs (most of them legal), and most deny it, but the fear drives the cruelty.

America Is About To Feel Like A 3rd World Nation; and American Social Collapse Is Far Closer than Most Will Admit (Ian Welsh)

Image: Ana Kova
[ed. Doomscrolling (so you don't have to). See also: Here’s How to Crush the Virus Until Vaccines Arrive (NYT)]