One year on and it seems like we are approaching the finish line. In theory, all adults will be vaccine eligible by the time you read this. Texas lifted all restrictions at the beginning of the month, although I visited Texas this month and that has had little effect because county restrictions are still in place. I recently discovered I have been vaccinated since January as part of the AstraZeneca trial. (AZ is pretty much irrelevant in the U.S. at this point, having been delayed long enough that it's impact will be small once approved. A shame. It has been approved in 15 countries and could have saved tens of thousands of lives in the U.S. if our bureaucracy was slightly less incompetent.) It might be worth looking back a year.
At the outset, I was in pretty much the same position I am now -- that is to say, lucky. I recall stressing greatly over the plunge in the value of my retirement savings, being as close to using it as I am. That turned around quickly and decisively. I made a smooth transition to working from home. For a few weeks we all couldn't get toilet paper, but I buy in bulk and was stocked up until it returned to the shelves. The biggest problem for me was the gyms were closed, but it was Spring and outdoor activities were findable. Like I said, lucky. With a capital L.
As far as trying to guess what the future held, I was hit or miss. I went through some simple calcs and came to the conclusion that we were looking at 400k U.S. deaths, which was a low -- we are over 500k now. I was not optimistic about finding a vaccine quickly, noting that there had never been a coronavirus vaccine before. I suspected our big advances would be in treatment and mitigation. I was right about treatment and mitigation, but wrong about the vaccine. I would not have guessed that our sclerotic bureaucracy would have roadblocked vaccines, but I should have, being familiar with sclerotic bureaucracies.
I rightly pointed out that the virus did not respect jurisdictional boundaries and that different experiences and policies in bordering states and counties will be a source of friction. I know plenty of folks in lower Michigan were regularly venturing into Ohio and Indiana where bars and restaurants were open. (Indiana had some fun with that.) I openly wondered how we would get back to normal. Looks like Texas and Florida are leading the way there, eventually enabling the more cautious States.
Now it looks like vaccines will be available to everyone in April. Maybe by high summer the whole country will be back to normal. That'll be nice.
One thing that should (but may not) come out of this is a review of why we didn't get drugs approved more quickly. We could have had a vaccine months earlier than we did. We could have had post-infection treatment drugs and therapies months sooner than we did. We never even considered variolation which we could have started right away. In fact, it seems this virus was tailor-made for variolation and challenge trials considering there was a majority cohort that was not in danger of death or hospitalization. We need a deep, deep dive into evaluating the lockdowns. Not just did they help or not, but were they cost effective. In the future, surgical lockdowns based on known effectiveness would be enormously beneficial in avoiding economic disasters. All that is asking too much of mere humans, I know. I suspect we will learn and adopt one lesson for every ten we discover.
One final prediction from a year ago:
Many people are looking to the 1918 flu pandemic as a comparable. I don't know how accurate that is. It's a very different world. But I will point out that what followed that plague was 9 years of one of the greatest booms in history called The Roaring Twenties. That roar went far beyond just the economy. Once we get through this, things could get lit up in here, is what I'm saying.
I'm sticking by this one. I predict the madness of life will be ratcheted up during the decade. You may fear it now, but you'll regret it if you don't enjoy it.
Addendum: If you really want to draw conclusions about what worked and what didn't over the last year, you can start with this excellent timeline of events.
