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Earlier this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared “mission accomplished” with Covid-19 – announcing that Texas would completely reopen “EVERYTHING” and lift its mask mandate. The move was quickly criticized by experts and officials, with President Joe Biden describing the move as “Neanderthal thinking.”
At the same time, the coronavirus epidemic in America is really improving. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down and vaccination rates are on the rise. So maybe it’s not so unreasonable to ask: when will this be over? When can we get back to normal – and when should states reopen to help?
Experts have told me that there is still a lot of guesswork involved, and that we might not know when we are really back to normal until we get there. “I think this point will become apparent in retrospect,” Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage told me. “We will suddenly realize that we are laughing, inside, with people we don’t know and whose immunization status is unknown, and we’ll be thinking, ‘Wow, that would’ve been unimaginable back then. … ‘”
But there are parameters for judging whether a state should reopen – most of which we’ve heard about since the start of the pandemic: cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccination rates.
The aim is to bring these measures to safer levels and to ensure that these favorable trends continue. So the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths is expected to drop – preferably to points lower than they were before the fall / winter surge – and, just as crucially, continue to drop from there. During this time, vaccination rates are expected to steadily increase.
A measure that is not worth seeking for the moment: the immunity of the herd. In theory, that’s a reasonable goal – the point at which so many people have natural or vaccine-induced immunity that the spread of the virus slows down and eventually stops. The problem is, we don’t know the appropriate threshold for collective immunity; there are too many unknowns about the virus, its variants, and how immunity works to be certain.
As Anthony Fauci, the leading federal infectious disease expert, said at a press conference this week, “We shouldn’t be so obsessed with this elusive number of collective immunity. We should just be concerned about getting as many people vaccinated as possible as quickly as possible, because herd immunity is still a bit elusive.
The reopening process must be done slowly. By gradually reopening, each state can see if any of its movements are leading to excessive spread of the virus. If things go wrong, a state can back down. If things go well, maybe it can continue to lift the restrictions.
This should all be tracked locally as well, as different cities or counties may have different experiences than a state as a whole.
By all of these standards, much of the United States is moving far too quickly. The number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the country is too high – even higher than before the fall / winter outbreak – and the vaccination rate is too low, with a paltry 12 percent of the country entirely vaccinated. Texas, despite its rush to reopen, is no better off for Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths or vaccines.
This could lead to further outbreaks before the vaccination campaign is truly over. This is of particular concern given other possible threats the country faces with Covid-19 – in particular the potential rise of new variants, which could shape-shift to evade immunity, making our efforts so far unsuccessful. Experts say the best way to prevent this from happening is to contain the virus, by denying it the replications it needs to mutate.
The United States is almost at the finish line: As Biden said, every adult in the country could be vaccinated by June. But until then, it’s up to us, and our officials, to make sure as many of us reach that finish line as possible.
To learn more about how states can return to normal, read my explainer on Vox.
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