When will the coronavirus subside to the point that the United States can return to normal?
The answer to that question depends on which expert one asks. It may also depend on when the expert is asked.
On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci hinted that the U.S. might not return to normal until 2022 during an interview with National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
“What we’ll likely have, as the efficacy of the vaccine is shown at the population level, we will have a gradual relaxation of some of the stringent public health measures,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. “I can foresee that even with a really good vaccine, that mask-wearing will continue well into the third or fourth quarter of 2021.”
Fauci then hinted that a full normal could take until 2022.
“I don’t think … that it’s gonna be at a level that people feel like there are no public health measures to be implemented until we get to the end of 2021, at least,” he said.
Just over a month ago, Fauci was singing a slightly more optimistic tune, saying that normalcy would likely return in 2021. In a September interview with the website Healthline, he said that if the U.S. had a vaccine that was 75% to 80% effective and a majority of people continued to use masks and social distance, “then we could get the level of infection down so low in the community that by the third quarter or end of 2021, we could start thinking in terms of normal.”
Fauci is likely revising his estimate to include 2022 because the current surge in coronavirus cases suggests that many people are not practicing adequate safety precautions.
Dr. W. David Hardy, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, set the timetable for normal a bit sooner, suggesting it might come in the second or third quarter of 2021 if enough vaccines are ready and available by then.
But he suggests that normal will actually be a “new normal.” For example, wearing masks during flu season could become a regular practice.
Fauci is not alone in suggesting that normal will come in stages. On Friday, Dr. Ashish Jha suggested that “we should be able to do some amount of indoor dining much more comfortably” by next summer if most people are vaccinated by June.
Jha, who is dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said that other activities would have to wait until fall.
“The question is concert halls, movie theaters. I can imagine next fall going to a movie,” Jha said. “But I’m gonna be wearing a mask, and it’ll be driven a little bit by how much virus there is in the community.”
Some experts won’t put an actual date to their predictions.
In September, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, said, “The old normal? I don’t know when that day will be, but it will be in the great and distant future.”
Schaffner noted many potential problems with a vaccine that could delay getting back to normal, including that many people do not want to get vaccinated, that the vaccine will not be 100% effective, and that people won’t know at first how long the protection from a vaccine will last.
