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I read it as returning to that feeling of normality. I won't think it'll go back to as it was before but when we as a society have high confidence in generally what we expect the near/medium term future to look likw, then it's a the new normal.

I'm an optimist -- I think with the arrival of multiple vaccines of varying efficacies, potentially needing to be "boosted" or recalibrated at varying frequencies, coupled with cheap/fast/accurate tests and a supply chain that can keep up, I'm confident we can get to a state which resembled the previous in at least a few important ways: social interaction is sufficiently derisked that social gatherings can resume, travel will pick up again, large gathering places like schools can go back to in-person if not at 100% capacity, then maybe at 80-90%. WFH will likely persist.

I personally miss going to conferences.

It won't be the same (no period is ever exactly the same as some period in the past), but it will have some of the same qualities as the world in 2019. That's my hope.

> It's looking more and more like this deadly virus is going to be part of our lives for months or years to come, if not decades

I don't understand this attitude. No, we will go back to normal. This cannot continue forever. We cannot live the rest of our lives in fear. This is not how we evolved and I'm honestly sick of it.

There is growing evidence that there is immunity out there beyond antibodies; including memory T-cells. It's likely we'll be fine long before a vaccine is produced, through a combination of herd immunity and just better therapeutics (there are some big studies on inhaled steroids right now that are promising).

Mississippi, Florida and other states are starting to go back to normal without any increase in fatalities (and don't go on about cases, because there is no distinction between people who test positive and people who test positive because they've actually been sick). Fatalities are going down across the board. Exponential growth does not go on forever. It ends.

Things should have been back to normal months ago. All these lockdowns have just delayed the inevitable. When this is over and we can prune all the data, I expect to see the same fatality rates between countries that did and didn't lock down, excluding places like NYC, northern Italy, Michigan and other places where we put all the elderly people together.

In 2030, we'll look back at this as a time of overreaction and mass hysteria.

Agreed, we are living through a mass hysteria event. The shared delusion is that through moral acts one can somehow avoid exposure to an endemic human coronavirus.

> moral acts

You spelled "wear a mask and avoid crowds" wrong.

> I don't understand this attitude. No, we will go back to normal. This cannot continue forever. We cannot live the rest of our lives in fear. This is not how we evolved and I'm honestly sick of it.

It's not about living in fear, it's about not catching the virus. The facts are that COVID-19 is still out there actively infecting people, deaths are still climbing at more or less a steady rate, and it doesn't really care about how you or anyone else feels about it. Many a school has opened under the rationale of "we can't just hide from it forever", only to go into shutdown again because of the inevitable outbreak that occurs when a bunch of kids are packed like sardines into a hallway or classroom environment.

> Mississippi, Florida and other states are starting to go back to normal without any increase in fatalities (and don't go on about cases, because there is no distinction between people who test positive and people who test positive because they've actually been sick). Fatalities are going down across the board. Exponential growth does not go on forever. It ends.

Just because COVID-19 isn't immediately fatal doesn't make it harmless. What are the rates of reinfection, and how does that impact a patient? What are the chronic effects of being infected, if any? You may have a cavalier attitude about the virus's effects, but plenty others (including the elderly, infants, the immunocompromised, etc.) do not, and the virus doesn't discriminate between who cares about it and who doesn't. It is far better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough in such a case, even if it comes at the expense of inconvenience.

It remains to be seen whether I'm right or djsumdog is right, but one thing is for sure: Nature doesn't care what we feel or think. The virus is not going to go away just because humanity is bored of it, or unhappy with it, or because we just have this desire to go back to some nostalgic definition of normal. Nature doesn't respond to a macho "I'm not afraid" attitude.

We see this again and again with the re-openings (and then the inevitable follow-up re-closings). When the re-openings happen based on clear, measurable criteria being met, they have been more successful, but still not 100% successful. When they are based on this vague feeling of "well, we have to get back to normal some time so why not now?" then hospitalizations go up, deaths go up, and everyone goes "surprised pikachu" and businesses have to close again. When we look back, the proof will be in the pudding, and I believe we will find that the outbreak spikes are strongly correlated with repeated efforts to re-open too soon.

Also, who's getting infected? I don't recall exactly where I read it (some NY Times article, probably), but a lot of the summer cases have been in younger, less vulnerable populations that don't tend to die from it. However, there are signs that cases in elderly populations are now increasing, which, if true, foreshadows a future increase in deaths.

The facts are that COVID-19 is still out there actively infecting people

As are many other viruses.

Many a school has opened under the rationale of "we can't just hide from it forever", only to go into shutdown again because of the inevitable outbreak that occurs when a bunch of kids are packed like sardines into a hallway or classroom environment.

It's now well established that schools are not significant drivers of infections. Which is actually rather surprising; it's a reasonable hypothesis that lots of kids would get infected and then pass it to vulnerable family members. But the results from schools around the world show that that's not happening to any significant degree.

It is far better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough in such a case, even if it comes at the expense of inconvenience.

You can't make that general statement without quantifying the harms on both sides. Denying education and socialization to children, throwing millions of people out of work, and telling people they can't visit family or friends for an indefinite duration goes well beyond "inconvenience".

>In 2030, we'll look back at this as a time for overreaction and mass hysteria

Well no actually. We'll look back on this as a time of mass stupidity, selfishness, racist/classist politics.

Had Trump just followed the Bush/Cheney pandemic plan, and listened to the CDC, before they were all threatened with termination. We could have easily got control of this back in January, instead we decided that the virus was a hoax, or just like the flu, or was easily handled, etc. So we are now stuck in this yo-yo pattern.

We semi lock down, everyone gets tired of wearing masks and limiting contact the state opens up; the cases flare up, the hospitals start to fill and the state semi-lock down again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

20% of the cases are severe, and 5% are critical, if we follow your plan and just open things up, hospitals quickly get overwhelmed. Mississippi has 10,000 hospital beds for 3 Million citizens, in July when things were good Mississippi almost ran out of ICU beds, and were quickly running out of beds (1).

I would like to see your plan for developing herd immunity quickly, which for COVID is close 80% infected and hopefully immune. When you talk abut herd immunity I'm assuming you want it to happen quickly because we are on a slow path to herd immunity. The only way to herd immunity quickly would be to remove all restrictions, no masks, no social distancing, no restriction of gathering size, back to normal.

For Mississippi, only 10K hospital beds for 3 Million people. For herd immunity, 2.4 Million people will get infected, 480,000 will require hospitalization. With all restriction removed we should see a similar pattern of infections like we do with the flu. So the majority of cases will happen in Dec, Jan, the peak in Feb, and Mar, the breakdown is about Dec (20%), Jan(20%), Feb(40%), Mar(20%) The average COVID hospital stay is 3 weeks(2), for young people it's actually longer than for old people.

In December we'll see 96,000 cases needing hospitalization, give or take, 10X the number of beds, and those cases will be there for 3/4 of the month which means for the rest of the herd immunity event about 400,000 people won't be hospitalized. What do you think happens to the death rate when people need to be in the hospital for 3 weeks don't go to the hospital? Yeah, they die. What do you think happens to households that have COVID patients who should be in the hospital but can't go to the hospital.

Once hospitals get overwhelmed the death rate will skyrocket, about 13% of Mississippi's population will die to achieve quick herd immunity, kind of looks like the Spanish flu numbers doesn't it? Frankly we'd be better off to not admit anyone who has COVID, at lease the hospitals would still be able to function for normal issues.

Let's not forget about the flu, because that will be raging at the same time, I bet getting the flu and COVID at the same will be really bad, so how many people who get mild flu and mild COVID will require hospitalization, but it won't really matter because there won't be any room anyway.

Now lets imagine this event playing out all across the country, that will be mass hysteria.

(1)https://www.modernhealthcare.com/hospitals/mississippis-five...

(2)https://www.kpcnews.com/covid-19/article_8ab408ad-8fb0-5f74-...

>In 2030, we'll look back at this as a time for overreaction and mass hysteria

Well no actually. We'll look back on this as a time of mass stupidity, selfishness, racist/classist politics.

Had Trump just followed the Bush/Cheney pandemic plan, and listened to the CDC, before they were all threatened with termination. We could have easily got control of this back in January, instead we decided that the virus was a hoax, or just like the flu, or was easily handled, etc. So we are now stuck in this yo-yo pattern.

We semi lock down, everyone gets tired of wearing masks and limiting contact the state opens up; the cases flare up, the hospitals start to fill and the state semi-lock down again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

15% of the cases are severe, and 5% are critical, 20% requiring hospitalization, if we follow your plan and just open things up, hospitals quickly get overwhelmed. Mississippi has 10,000 hospital beds for 3 Million citizens, in July when things were good Mississippi almost ran out of ICU beds, and were quickly running out of beds (1).

I would like to see your plan for developing herd immunity quickly, which for COVID is close 80% infected and hopefully immune. When you talk abut herd immunity I'm assuming you want it to happen quickly because we are on a slow path to herd immunity. The only way to herd immunity quickly would be to remove all restrictions, no masks, no social distancing, no restriction of gathering size, back to normal.

For Mississippi, only 10K hospital beds for 3 Million people. For herd immunity, 2.4 Million people will get infected, 480,000 will require hospitalization. With all restriction removed we should see a similar pattern of infections like we do with the flu. So the majority of cases will happen in Dec, Jan, the peak in Feb, and Mar, the breakdown is about Dec (20%), Jan(20%), Feb(40%), Mar(20%) The average COVID hospital stay is 3 weeks(2), for young people it's actually longer than for old people.

In December we'll see 96,000 cases needing hospitalization, give or take, 10X the number of beds, and those cases will be there for 3/4 of the month which means for the rest of the herd immunity event about 400,000 people won't be hospitalized. What do you think happens to the death rate when people need to be in the hospital for 3 weeks don't go to the hospital? Yeah, they die. What do you think happens to households that have COVID patients who should be in the hospital but can't go to the hospital.

Once hospitals get overwhelmed the death rate will skyrocket, about 13% of Mississippi's population will die to achieve quick herd immunity, kind of looks like the Spanish flu numbers doesn't it? Frankly we'd be better off to not admit anyone who has COVID, at lease the hospitals would still be able to function for normal issues.

Let's not forget about the flu, because that will be raging at the same time, I bet getting the flu and COVID at the same will be really bad, so how many people who get mild flu and mild COVID will require hospitalization, but it won't really matter because there won't be any room anyway.

Now lets imagine this event playing out all across the country, that will be mass hysteria.

(1)https://www.modernhealthcare.com/hospitals/mississippis-five...

(2)https://www.kpcnews.com/covid-19/article_8ab408ad-8fb0-5f74-...

>this deadly virus

the deadly virus with the extremely high survival rate?

>maybe we are going to have to change our definition of normal

no we won't. things returned to normal after much more serious pandemics. people are already realizing the risks of this virus were oversold and starting to move on.

> extremely high survival rate

COVID-19 is (so far) about 10x-20x deadlier than the common flu which we have vaccines for and approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu which is considered the deadliest in modern history.

What is your basis for "extremely high survival rate"?

I guess people see ~2% death rate and assume that's low?

> approaching about half of the total death toll of the 1918 flu

Approaching half of 17-50 million dead?

"We" is the United States here, right?

> In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 850,000 died (0.48 to 0.81 percent of the population).[129][130][131]

We're pretty close to half of 500k.

Growth mindset.

covid has killed 25 million people?

I don't think people were ever arguing that the virus is particularly deadly. Like ~2% death rate is really really high for a flu but it's not the black plague or anything. If you're a young-ish healthy adult with a normal immune system then (statistically speaking) quarantine likely didn't benefit you at all.

The thing that makes COVID novel is that it's extremely contagious. Your part in quarantining is not spreading it to the more vulnerable/unlucky people in your life. Because a 2% death rate in a country of 300 million people is still 6 million dead in an entirely preventable way.

our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself, and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met.

where is your 2% number coming from? CDC estimates the infection fatality ratio as: 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

> our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself

That can happen from failure or from success. The far more important comparison is response vs. what the virus would have done without that response.

> the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met

Criteria like what? The only one I've seen is trying to get the rate of spread down and we really haven't managed that.

> our response to the virus has caused more harm to more people than the virus itself,

That’s not a bad thing. A bad thing would be if our response caused more harm that the additional harm the virus would have caused but for the response, but that it caused more than it allowed the virus to cause is not a problem.

> and the goalposts to end restrictions keep moving once the previous criteria are met.

No, they haven't. It's true that both the restrictions in place in some jurisdictions and the criteria for step down have been revised based on better understanding of the virus and associated activity-related risks, but that's not the same thing (and has resulted in loosening of some restrictions directly and easing of some criteria, as well as tightening other a restrictions and criteria.) But they haven't moved in response to meeting preexisting criteria.

You think we should just ignore new information ?

It's not 2%. The WHO currently pegs IFR at 0.5-1%, and that's heavily tilted towards known risk groups, particularly the elderly.

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating...

1.5-3 Million still feels like a lot, regardless of if it's my parents and their friends or if it is me or my friends.