Look, Jack, Americans will be meeting long before July 4th

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Biden knows this right? The reason he focused on July 4 as a day when Americans could potentially get together with friends and have barbecues is not because he thinks it will take that long to achieve some degree of normalcy. It was partly for symbolism (“we declare our independence from the virus!”) And partly because his habit with the pandemic is to under-promise and overcome. He never lost his goal of delivering 100 million doses in his first 100 days, even though it was clear on the day of the inauguration, as the US was already nearing that pace, that we would easily reach that goal.

Keep in mind that even blue state governors like Larry Hogan and Andrew Cuomo have begun to reopen * major venues * like limited-capacity Camden Yards. By the time July rolls around, some may be at full capacity. There will no doubt be massive rallies on Independence Day this year to watch fireworks, and perhaps not exclusively in red states. Biden just wants to set the bar to return to normal as low as possible to make it child’s play for his team to clean it up – and, of course, to manage expectations in case there is a vaccine-resistant variety of the black. swan shows up to complicate things. .

Go to 2:55 here and watch Gottlieb drop another bomb of truth in the debate over relaxing precautions. Vaccinated people will relax their precautions no matter how ‘the debate’ goes, he correctly says:

Now take a look at this:

We will reach 50 percent vaccinated at a rate of 1.43 million doses per day in early May, but we are well ahead of that rate, averaging 2.2 million doses over the past seven days. And of course, a significant portion of the population has already been immunized by contracting and recovering from the virus, meaning that the population’s actual immunity will exceed 50 percent by the day we hit that vaccine milestone. Herd immunity could occur sometime in April. And sure enough, with so many seniors vaccinated, the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed by another wave by then is pretty much gone.

Well, things are looking so good right now in terms of supply that even the blue state of Michigan led by Gretchen Whitmer is preparing to set aside “fairness” considerations in prioritizing the vaccine and making it available to everyone in a few weeks to open up:

Michiganders will celebrate July 4th as they wish.

When our friends in Europe can get back to mass holidays in Europe is a different matter, as Italy, Germany and France are each plagued by an increasing number of things right now. Italy is looking at a new lockdown around Easter and German scientists say a “third wave” has already begun in their country, and more restrictions will follow soon. How comes? Partly because the British variant is running wild, but also partly because they struggle with vaccinations. Here’s how they stack up to the US in cumulative vaccinations per capita:

We are about three times better. Measured by the current seven-day moving average, we are twice as fast. I wonder how scenes where the US and UK return to normal will play out on the continent this summer. Hopefully it will lead to less hesitation about vaccines among Europeans, but I wonder if the slow pace won’t have political repercussions for governments either.

I’ll leave you with this grim story, which is typical of the media. Strictly speaking, it is not true: the only way to “end” COVID is to vaccinate the planet, which is not going to happen anytime soon. As long as there are populations where the virus can spread, the risk remains that a variant will emerge that can beat current vaccines. But the pandemic as we know it will end here by the summer, and mRNA vaccine developers need to be able to adapt quickly to variants emerging and boosting Americans. The pandemic is not “over”, but it is over.

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