Originally posted by West-River_Jack
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Influenza, even with a reasonably effective vaccine, kills from 30,000 to 60,000 people in the US every year. Add, probably, at least an order of magnitude to those totals if we did not have a vaccine.
There is zero guarantee we will EVER have an effective and widely available vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Yes, there is an enormous amount of research currently going on, but (from Wikipedia) "There are no vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections. Treatment is only supportive."
If public policy is being made on the assumption that a vaccine will soon be available at all, let alone widely available, then it is bad public policy. Period.
Long term, and even with a vaccine, the target is and always has been "herd immunity," where a sufficient number of people have an immunity to the virus to prevent any significant spread. I've seen estimates all over the map regarding what percentage of the population needs to have immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in order to provide herd immunity. Some say we've already achieved it. Others say the number is something like 60%. Nobody really knows.
Recall that the purpose of all the shutdowns in the first place was to "lower the curve" in order to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed by serious CoVID-19 cases. This has been achieved.
The head of the CDC has recently said that schools should be reopened: “It’s a critical public health initiative right now to get these schools reopened and to do it safely,”
College athletes are as a group probably about the least at-risk group there is, a combination of particularly healthy and young. Does this mean that some of them won't come down with CoVID-19? No.
And I think that a Covid party is a particularly stupid idea. Personally, I am in an at-risk group. I limit my exposure by limiting my trips out of the house and when I do, I'm pretty diligent about maintaning social distance. I have not seen conclusive evidence that masks--at least the basic nose- and mouth-coverings that most people wear, do very much good at all and I've seen some studies that seem to indicate that the opposite may in fact be true. I don't know if those studies have been, or will ever be replicated, so the question is IMHO still open. I'll wear masks where people want me to, however (and avoid those same people as much as is possible.)
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