Earlier this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared “mission accomplished” with Covid-19 – announcing that Texas would fully reopen “EVERYTHING” and remove its mask mandate. The decision was quickly criticized by experts and public officials, with President Joe Biden describing the measure as “Neanderthal thinking”.
At the same time, the coronavirus outbreak in America is really improving. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have decreased and vaccination rates have increased. So it may not be absurd to ask: When will this end? When can we get back to normal – and when should states be reopened to help make this happen?
Experts have told me that there are still a lot of assumptions involved and we may not know when we are really back to normal until we get there. “I think that point will be clear in retrospect,” Bill Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist, told me. “Suddenly, we will realize that we are laughing, at home, with people we do not know and whose vaccine status is unknown, and we will think: ‘Wow, that would have been unimaginable at that time. … ‘”
But there are indicators to judge whether a state should reopen – most of which we have heard of since the beginning of the pandemic: cases, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccination rates.
The goal is to take these metrics to more secure levels and ensure that these favorable trends continue. Therefore, the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths is expected to fall – preferably to points lower than they were before the fall / winter peak – and, so crucially, to continue to fall thereafter. Meanwhile, vaccination rates are expected to show a consistent upward trend.
A metric that is not worth pursuing for now: herd immunity. In theory, it is a sensible goal – the point at which so many people have natural or vaccine-induced immunity that the spread of the virus slows down and eventually stops. The problem is that we do not know the appropriate limit for herd immunity; there are many unknowns about the virus, its variants and how immunity works to say with certainty.
As Anthony Fauci, the leading federal infectious disease specialist, said at a news conference this week: “We shouldn’t be so fixated on this indescribable number of collective immunity. We should only be concerned with vaccinating as many people as possible as soon as possible, because collective immunity is still a somewhat elusive number ”.
The reopening process must be done gradually. When reopening gradually, each state can see if any of its movements are leading to an excessive spread of the virus. If things go wrong, a state can back out. If things go well, he may continue to lift restrictions.
All of this should also be monitored locally, as different cities or counties may have different experiences for a state as a whole.
By all of these standards, much of the United States is moving very quickly. The numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from coronavirus in the country are very high – even higher than they were before the fall / winter peak – and the vaccination rate is very low, with a measly 12% of the country fully vaccinated. Despite the rush to reopen, Texas is no better off with Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths or vaccines.
This can lead to further outbreaks before the vaccination campaign is actually completed. It is especially worrying because of other possible threats that the country faces with Covid-19 – particularly the potential increase in new variants, which may change shape to escape immunity, rendering our efforts so far unsuccessful. Experts say the best way to prevent this from happening is to contain the virus, denying it the replications it needs to mutate.
The United States is almost at the finish line: as Biden said, every adult in the country can be vaccinated by June. But until then, it is our responsibility, and our public officials, to ensure that as many people as possible reach the finish line.
For more information on how states can return to normal, read my explainer on Vox.