Experts eye summer for return to 'normal'

Many experts are forecasting that by the summer, life in the U.S. will largely return to normal, with most people who want vaccinations obtaining them and many fewer deaths and COVID-19 cases. This is not the same thing as herd immunity, which many experts think is unlikely. It has become more common for experts to compare COVID-19 with the flu, a health problem that can be kept under control through annual vaccinations. In the meantime, recent news about COVID-19 continues to be positive. Blanchard Valley Health System reported only five hospitalized COVID-19 patients on Thursday, and hospitalizations have been falling across Ohio, prompting Gov. Mike DeWine to end the overnight curfew he imposed last year. Opinions vary on why hospitalizations are down. Older people are the most vulnerable to severe illness and death, and vaccinations across the U.S. and in Ohio have concentrated on immunizing older Americans. In a recent interview with New York magazine, Harvard University epidemiologist Michael Mina argued that the COVID-19 virus is seasonal, like most coronaviruses. "In the summer, when a lot of people were saying, 'This might not be a seasonal virus,' it was just so obvious to me that this was going to hit harder in the fall and that we needed to prepare for that. Now, I think the corollary is that there's no reason to think that infection rates wouldn't drop a few months later, just like all of the other coronaviruses," Mina said. "We don't fully appreciate or understand why seasonality works like this, but if the trajectory stays this way and we also start to achieve some level of herd effects or herd immunity, I think the next few months could start to offer a reprieve," he said. Like other experts, Mina said the new virus variants are a "wild card." Many epidemiologists say they worry new virus variants that are more infectious could fuel a new spike in cases in the coming weeks. In any event, falling hospitalizations are not the only good news. Vaccinations are accelerating, although debate continues about whether the Biden administration is doing enough to speed up the pace of vaccinations. Immunizations have risen to an average of 1.7 million a day and continue to trend upward. The COVID Tracking Project said Thursday, "Our weekly update is published. COVID-19 cases are down 23% from the previous week. Since the national peaks in January, cases are down 57% and hospitalizations are down 42%. Deaths are down 10% since last week." Herd immunity takes place when enough people have become immune from a pandemic — either from catching the disease or from being immunized — to end an epidemic. Youyang Gu, a statistician whose forecasts at covid19-projections.com have generally been on the mark, was predicting as recently as last month that the U.S. would achieve herd immunity in July. The section of his website discussing the matter still has the headline "Path to Herd Immunity: 2021 Outlook of COVID-19 in the US." But in a Feb. 11 update, Gu wrote, "Our modeling suggests that it is increasingly unlikely that we will reach theoretical herd immunity in 2021." On Twitter, he explained that he's not being pessimistic: "Herd immunity does not have a hard threshold, and being close to herd immunity may be sufficient to prevent large outbreaks." "The endgame is the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines that virtually eliminates severe illness," he wrote. "And we are just a few months away from reaching that goal." As of Friday, Hancock County had 126 active cases and 95 total deaths. According to the Ohio Department of Health, 7,767 first shots had been given in Hancock County as of Monday. Ohio reported a total of 941,265 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic arrived as of Monday, and 16,394 total deaths. The death count includes deaths which should have been reported earlier, as the state announced Wednesday it had missed about 4,000 deaths and would be adding them over the next several days. Ohio has given more than 1.3 million first shots, about 11.2% of the population, and given two shots to 481,339 people. Ohio currently ranks seventh in the number of doses given by a U.S. state, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Vaccinations in Ohio currently are limited to people 65 and older, school employees, health care workers and individuals with certain severe medical conditions. DeWine has said he wants to concentrate on that group a few more weeks before opening up shots to anyone else.