After a year, we seem to have entered a weird state of stasis. Deaths and infections have plunged back to summer levels. Here in Michigan we are allowed to dine-in again, but with a restriction of 25% capacity [[note: just before I posted this, the capacity limit was raised to 50%]]. Some restaurants haven't reopened yet, perhaps feeling there is no profit at operating at that level, or perhaps unable to find labor thanks to the fat relief checks, or rumors thereof, going around. None of the fast food shops around me have opened their lobbies, and all restaurants have big ol' Help Needed signs out front. (Interestingly, every State bordering us has allowed full capacity dine-in.)
Aside about capacity: If a restaurant is restricted to 25% capacity what does that mean? 25% of the number of seats you normally have? 25% of the capacity set by the fire marshal? Those could be hugely different numbers. I understand these are not supposed to be hard and fast counts, they are just supposed to be numbers that will cause you to reduce contact by an amount that effectively discourages transmission. But if that's the case you need to allow a lot of latitude in whom you penalize.
We are all either used to wearing our masks or are of the small percentage who refuse. Either way, nobody's behavior on that front is likely to change greatly.
Vaccines are dribbling out, but we seem to have done nothing to speed up our bureaucracy in an effort to save more lives. The AstraZeneca vaccine, in use for months in the UK and India, just approved by Canada, with a factory full of doses ready to ship in Baltimore, has yet to be approved and no one seems to be in a hurry. Were I a screeching, news channel talking head I would be howling about how this is killing people. (God bless Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution who has been relentless in pointing out the mortal foolishness of this.)
The latest example of this is the "first dose first" movement. Already in place in the UK, "first dose first" is a response to the fact that while a single dose of a two dose vaccine is slightly less effective at preventing infection than the full two doses, it is almost universally effective at reducing severity of an infection to non-life threatening levels. As such, if your goal is to save lives, it's what you want to do -- get more people one dose rather than a smaller number with two doses. Nobody -- not the FDA, not the States -- seems even mildly interested in this.
Like I said: Stasis. Status quo. Shrug. I guess we'll get to the end of the pandemic at a stroll instead of a sprint.
