David Wallace-Wells, NYMag: We Are Probably Only One-Tenth of the Way Through This Pandemic
We are, finally, beginning to see some real plans from people with the power to enact them. On Tuesday, California governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a sort of road map for a gradual “reopening” of the state — including benchmarks for testing and hospital capacity, and continued social-distancing guidelines and even temperature checks. A handful of serious, sobering national proposals have been put forward by think tanks and the like in the U.S., and the White House has produced a set of guidelines to govern a gradual, region-by-region pullback from full-economy quarantine. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a similar blueprint (and gave a memorable illustration of the terrors of exponential growth in a pandemic). Coming alongside news from hot spots like New York that new hospitalizations and even deaths may be plateauing or even declining, the plans are a little flicker of light at the end of the quarantine tunnel. Indeed, over just the last few days, Americans have grown less worried, and more optimistic, about the coronavirus pandemic.
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WNU Editor: Historically speaking pandemics take a year or more to burn themselves out, and where "herd immunity" can then dominate. That is why no one should be surprised that a new wave of cases are now appearing in Asia and Europe, and this may be the case for a year or more. There is also the real fear that this virus may mutate into something even more dangerous, thereby making any attempts to develop a vaccine quickly next to impossible. I call this the nightmare scenario.
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