Dear Friends, I Hope We're 30% Done With Our COVID-19 Marathon

Hi Friends

Its been almost three months since I last wrote about COVID-19 and I greatly appreciate all of you who've written to thank me for my prior article. Its good to know my writing helped you gain clarity yourself about what's happening, and how to protect yourselves, your families and your organizations from the misinformation all around us.

Unfortunately, almost everything I predicted three months ago has come to pass (with very dire consequences for more than 160,000 Americans who've now died from COVID-19) and with back-to-school right around the corner, I wanted to share my current thinking with all of you about the next few months.

Although I've spent probably ~200 hours reading and thinking about the coronavirus these past few months, nobody's opinion is infallible, and this next phase is the most difficult to predict with some very large variables in the near future, but here we go:

(1) Be careful, be safe, wear masks. Take care of yourselves, your extended families and your friends. You may be tired of explaining to friends and relatives that COVID-19 is an **especially deadly airborne virus that is very contagious if you spend multiple minutes close-by with someone who has it, indoors or out** killing ~1% of those it infects. Please keep educating and gently reminding family and friends that we all need to keep social distancing, washing our hands, wearing masks when around other people, avoiding gatherings of 10-or-more-people (especially indoors like churches, restaurants and bars) and being especially careful around people who are 60-years-or-older. Even though the economy is back to 80% open, the COVID-19 virus is still here, still very deadly, and its even ***less safe*** to be around other people now then it was in March/April/May when we were all locked down (because so many more people are infected and 20-40% of people with COVID-19 don't show symptoms, and don't have any idea they're infected). Be careful, be safe, wear masks. And read this Open Letter from 239 scientists recommending better messaging to the public about how COVID-19 is airborne.

(2) As I mentioned in my last post, this is very likely to be an 18-36 month marathon (and we're just in month 6 right now), but there is some very good news, that 7 vaccine candidates are now starting large-scale human trials (and 1 Chinese vaccine has even been approved for use by the Chinese military), and its highly likely that some of these vaccines will succeed and be available to American health care workers by December 2020 and available for all-of-us by mid-2021. The vast majority of epidemiologists believe some of these vaccines will work (for at least 50% of the population), but public health experts believe figuring out who gets them first will be very tricky and polarized since it'll take many months to produce hundreds of millions of doses and they will need to be rationed at the beginning. In addition, 20% of Americans have said they don't want to get vaccinated and 30% more are not certain, so 2021 could be very messy. Here are two great pieces on the vaccine progress so far:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-02/coronavirus-vaccine-confronts-humanity-with-next-moral-test-kdck4x2j

(3) In my last post, I predicted that we'd grow from 50K deaths to 150K American deaths by August and now I'm predicting we'll see another 75K-150K+ *additional* American deaths by December 31 **unless the President and Governors finally realize that we need a 2nd even stronger ~4 week lockdown** that nobody seems to have the political courage to enact. If we did a 2nd lockdown, we could get the virus under control in just a month, but almost nobody is recommending this, and unfortunately that means cases and deaths will continue to burn across the country, especially in California, Texas, Florida and the South, as currently, but once the Fall arrives we are very likely to see cases oscillate upwards everywhere again. The CDC is obviously scared of the same likelihood (but continuing to be muzzled), because their website only projects deaths through September 1, nobody in power is willing to share with the American public that COVID-19 deaths could double again to 300,000 by the end of the year. This is a really sad prediction because all this loss-of-life is completely preventable with leadership that respects the facts as scientists understand them. This weekend there was a great Op-Ed in the New York Times recommending a 2nd, hard lockdown, but I don't have much hope that politicians are listening:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/opinion/coronavirus-lockdown-unemployment-death.html

(4) Finally, its back-to-school season and most parents I know have no choice except having to deal with another semester of remote learning. We are blessed in that our daughter's Calvert School is working overtime to try and open this fall for younger students, with hyper-cleaning, daily temperature checks, masks-for-all, social distancing, optional remote learning for parents/students who prefer to stay at home, etc. Even though we know its highly likely there will be outbreaks at almost all schools that re-open (including Calvert), we are sufficiently persuaded by the research on COVID-19's risks to children under age 10 to allow our daughter to return to school this fall, but I completely understand and respect the decisions of superintendents, principals and parents everywhere to keep their children home to protect teachers and elderly family members -- and in fact as a policy matter I agree that almost all schools should be entirely online/remote this fall. In my humble opinion, its highly likely that almost every school that does open for on-campus learning will be back-to-remote by November (including Calvert), as additional COVID-19 outbreaks flare up across the country, but I believe the benefits to Amelia of returning to school for 2-10 weeks of in-person learning and socialization with her peers before she's likely to have to return to remote learning is worth it for her. She's been separated from her friends and human contact for long enough, we think the emotional and learning benefits outweigh the minimal risk **for her age group**. Here's the best research summary I've seen on the risks to children:

https://www.vox.com/21352597/covid-19-children-infection-transmission-new-studies

As always, questions, comments and criticisms are encouraged and appreciated. Comment away!