The fact is we don’t really know. It’s a NOVEL coronavirus, so we don’t really know the seasonality of it in human populations and it’s increasingly clear we have no good estimate on how many have already been infected or precisely how long immunity will last for either infection acquired immunity or vaccine acquired immunity.

Our ignorance hasn’t stopped us from mandating some pretty drastic things like business and school closures that will have long term damaging effects though.

I don't think herd immunity is the sole bar for lifting restrictions. As you approach herd immunity, spread and new cases will slow as the bug finds it harder to find new hosts. No US politician has been able to implement a "zero covid" bar, they'd get lynched (New Zealand managed, but they've got very big moats and a socialist society). As long as the health-care system isn't overwhelmed, and it's not trending there, it's going to be hard to maintain restrictions just because.

Also... the at-risk population will have first access to vaccines, and the most motivation to actually get one. That will reduce both spread and case severity disproportionately to their % of the general population.

Unless we keep hearing "Got your vaccine? Don't let your guard down just yet! Don't travel, don't hug grandma! Another wave/variant is on the horizon!"

Never as long as Fauci is still running things.

Two weeks.

Florida has vaccinated 46% of the population over 65%.

Seeing as they account for over 83% of the deaths, in about another month when we have vaccinated everyone over 65 who wants one this is effectively over.


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I used to think, also, that restrictions wouldn’t be able to last “just because”, but I have since traded that logical optimism for cynical pessimism. I am appalled at how unserious most people in the public are about their freedom being trampled on. They still don’t understand. I am convinced that the only way restrictions will be lifted is large-scale civil disobedience. Unfortunately politics, apathy, and cowardice are much too pervasive in our culture that I now wonder if it will ever happen. Hate to be a downer. Not saying I don’t think the economy will not recover to some reasonable level, but if anyone thinks all restrictions are going to be cancelled, and we are just going back to “normal” I would caution to think otherwise. Virtue signaling, politics, and “love” have opened Pandora’s box of executive power, and it is going to be impossible to put it back in, regardless of herd immunity.

I sincerely hope that in one year this post will look like the ramblings of a crazy person, but I am not putting my money on that happening.

Not to mention, as cases and deaths drop almost entirely due to vaccines and natural herd immunity, there will be a mass propaganda effort in order to pretend that lockdowns, masks, and all other futile efforts were the main reason that the virus was “defeated”, leaving the door wide open for similar measures the next time anything threatening comes along. Just watch.

Winner, winner. Chicken dinner.