Contrary to the 45th president of the United States of America, the virus isn’t going to go away “by itself.” If there’s a lull in the infection rate in July and August–and that’s a big if–there’s every reason to think that it will go back up in September and October. It could be a pretty scary fall and winter. I wouldn’t bet on your big holiday gatherings happening the way they did last winter. And, god forbid, what if it came back this fall and was worse than ever? It happened just that way in the fall of 1918.
So this won’t end until we have a vaccine. No, it won’t be available this year, as our imbecilic liar of a president claims. Some optimistic voices have said 12 to 18 months. Maybe that’s true. But let me remind you of one fact: The fastest vaccine ever produced, the one that protects us against Mumps, took more than four years to develop. So it’s not unreasonable to think that we could be living with this for a while.
Meanwhile, we seem to have no national plan to mitigate the spread of the virus. And there’s no reason to think that the Trump administration will ever produce one.