When do everyone get timeline

Pandemics are hard to predict accurately, but we have enough information to make some confident guesses. In short: Life this spring will not be substantially different from the past year; summer could, miraculously, be close to normal; and next fall and winter could bring either continued improvement or a moderate backslide, followed by a near-certain return to something like pre-pandemic life.

Here, in more detail, is what Americans can expect daily life to look like for the next four -ish seasons. For the most part, daily life will continue to be far from normal for the next few months. Normal is of course a slippery word, given that many Americans have had to report to work or have chosen to dine out, travel, and do all sorts of things that others have avoided.

But whatever people have not been doing for the past year, they can expect to keep not doing it this spring. In fact, experts fear that the pandemic could get much worse in the near term, because variants of the virus that are more contagious or vaccine-resistant than the original version have begun circulating in the United States. The good news, though, is that even with these variants, existing vaccines appear to reduce the risk of severe illness, meaning more and more people will be protected as vaccinations continue.

Whatever happens in the spring, the summer should be a sublime departure from what Americans have lived through so far.

Based on the drop-off in cases and hospitalizations over the past few weeks, he thinks life could even be close to normal as soon as sometime in May.

Other experts I consulted were slightly less optimistic, but they generally agreed that at some point between June and September, the combination of widespread vaccinations and warmer weather would likely make many activities much safer, including having friends and family over indoors, taking public transit, being in a workplace, dining inside restaurants, and traveling domestically whether for work, visiting loved ones, or a vacation.

Regardless of when vaccines for children become available, all of the above applies to kids and their families, according to Emily Oster, an economist at Brown who writes about everyday pandemic decision making in her newsletter ParentData. In-person schooling should become safer as well. Both Fauci and experts at the MassCPR event said that rare, serious side effects like the allergic reactions sometimes occur once a vaccine is widely distributed because it reaches many more people than a clinical trial, including some with health issues or genetic profiles that make them susceptible to severe reactions.

The allergic reactions did not prompt a recommendation to halt vaccinations, but rather to heighten vigilance so that people prone to severe allergic reactions not take the vaccine or take it only with medical help nearby in case a severe reaction occurs. On one hand, she said, early trial results have shown the vaccine to be more effective than hoped for and vaccination — particularly of those at high risk — might be desired. Another unanswered question is whether the vaccines, whose trials have shown that they prevent people from getting seriously ill and dying of COVID, also prevent people from becoming infected in the first place and, importantly, from passing the virus on to others.

Those outstanding questions, however, are why masking, distancing, and other public health measures will be needed even by people who have been vaccinated until we know the answers. Experts detail vaccine unknowns, need to continue masking, distancing.

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Big Super Bowl parties are a bad idea. Vaccinated healthcare workers may attend the Super Bowl. Vaccines continue for priority groups including frontline workers and Americans over age As many as million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of February.

Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines require two shots given three or four weeks apart, so the only people with full-scale protection at this point will be those who got their second vaccine dose in January. Vaccine is not vaccination," said Dr. Vaccines are expected to have reached roughly million Americans , and priority groups are likely expanding to include people under 65 with preexisting conditions.

Each state may decide a little differently who's first in line for their shots, but generally the priority groups include healthcare workers, people over 65, frontline workers, and people with preexisting conditions. Osterholm is 67 years old, so he's in one of the priority groups for vaccination. Houses of worship may limit crowds and keep ceremonies virtual or outdoors.

Fortunately, with vaccines now available to the most vulnerable people, the pandemic should be much less deadly in the US. Additionally, antibody therapeutics will start to fill in the gap for people who don't get the vaccine, blunting mortality. Antibody drugs, like Regeneron's antiviral cocktail , appear to be most helpful as an early-stage treatment to keep people out of the hospital. Masks are still recommended. You may be able to have a margarita on Cinco de Mayo at a socially distanced restaurant, depending on what transmission, virus surveillance, and vaccine uptake is like where you live.

Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, will be ready for his margarita on Cinco de Mayo as "indoor stuff starts becoming more comfortable. Overall transmission in the US starts to go down. Large gatherings are still prohibited. Some bars and movie theaters may reopen, likely requiring masks and maybe with rapid tests. Fourth of July barbecues are back! Outdoor gatherings, including weddings, may be relatively low-risk in certain parts of the country, but social distancing should still be maintained.

Sports stadiums may allow fans at limited capacity. Saskia Popescu, an infection-prevention and biosecurity expert, likely won't be headed back to theaters in either, in part because it's so hard to remain masked while you're there. So unless you're going to totally remove that from the equation, I think it's going to be a little bit challenging. Universities reopen and grade-school students return to in-person learning, without masks.

Large corporations may reopen office buildings. Outdoor concerts may resume in areas with low transmission. Trick-or-treating returns. Halloween house parties are still ill-advised but may be lower-risk activities in communities with easy access to rapid or at-home testing, low transmission, and widespread vaccine adoption. Indoor concerts may return at limited capacity.