Do we know anything about the new strains? More dangerous? Vaccine effective?

coolerguy12 said:

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Then you have Easter, summer vacation, 4th of July, back to school, thanksgiving, Christmas... just two more years...

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I think Easter is fair to add to my list. By summer there will be a fairly large portion of the US vaccinated. A lot of other people that' aren't vaccinated will probably have antibodies by then. Right now the vaccine still isn't readily available enough to curb us long term. This is probably more of a seasonal decent we are having.

Salute The Marines said:

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The Big12Ag said:

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Salute The Marines said:

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This thing is over

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Very close.

Masks optional by June I hope. No crowd restrictions.

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Our county judge has made masks optional since June.

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Whether Collin Cnty is optional or not, you'd think that masks were optional around here as a lot of folks are not wearing them anymore. Went to Urban Air with kids this weekend and a large portion of parents were not wearing them. And honestly, since I did a lot of the obstacles with the kiddos, my mask became a chin diaper a lot. It would. Keeping a mask on while doing anything "athletic" is not realistic. Though only a few parents were doing as much as I was.

I look at it like this. I do feel that masks limit viral load to a degree and that is very good. But I also completely understand not wearing one as well. I honestly love to see people's faces and cannot wait to stop using mine. I still use it when I can (I do not at gyms and obviously at Urban Air I was hit and miss). But I harbor no ill will towards those either choosing not to wear them or who cannot. It's their body and not my place to tell them what to do.

In the afternoon went to Boomer Jacks in Allen to pick up the wings for the super bowl. A tradition in our house. Almost no one not working there wore masks. Now, its a restaurant, so that kind of goes with the territory. But even those standing around the bar, which was fully packed, weren't wearing them. And it seemed to be 100% capacity almost. There might have been empty tables but it was so crowded, I couldn't tell. Point is, here in Collin County at least, things are very lax. A few weeks ago we went to Walk Ons in The Colony in Denton County. Same thing capacity wise. Doubt it was only 50-75%. Had to be 100. Good bacon burger by the way. People are just exhausted with al of this. Many have already had the virus or had a vaccine. Expect to see a lot more of this going forward if you are not in places like California or states that enforce things more.

I do think the drop has a lot to do with more and more being vaccinated. Which is fantastic. Should be able to schedule my first dose this week or next. I could see us getting back to the real normal by this summer in a lot of states.

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over by summer

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willing to bet that some non-negligible portion of schools aren't offering full-time in-person in the fall and that those in-person still require masking, by and large (especially in urban areas and blue states)

but maybe that's not the "over" we're discussing

crisis being over being different from crisis response being over

also, even if this proves seasonal and cases fall off into the summer (as vaccinations continue), i fully expect that tension will be ramped up back again in September/October

dark winter being such an on the money phrase it's going to be hard to shake

cone said:

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Quote:

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over by summer

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willing to bet that some non-negligible portion of schools aren't offering full-time in-person in the fall and that those in-person still require masking, by and large (especially in urban areas and blue states)

but maybe that's not the "over" we're discussing

crisis being over being different from crisis response being over

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Agree. The response will be difficult to change in some places. And you already see some push to continue masking b/c how low the flu is. Granted, flu #s went down as the Covid #s went up even before mask mandates were created. But that's been the thing I've seen used to try to keep vaccinated people wearing masks.

Certain states will drop masking fast. Others will hold on. And within certain industries masking may hold on.Education will be one of those. Some districts will get rid of mandates, others won't.

Gordo14 said:

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#1 cases are still very high
#2 if we ditch masks and social distancing cases will quickly reverse course at this point
#3 while cases are falling nationally very quickly we've not seen that happen everywhere. For example Houston has seen a mild drop of cases so far.

This gives me confidence we will likely be done sometime in the spring, but we're not quite at the point where we can ignore it yet. This is great news though. Maybe a month and half or two months from the end.

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this is completely incongruent

if #2 is true, how can we be 2 months from the end?

TheMasterplan said:

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Gordo14 said:

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#1 cases are still very high
#2 if we ditch masks and social distancing cases will quickly reverse course at this point
#3 while cases are falling nationally very quickly we've not seen that happen everywhere. For example Houston has seen a mild drop of cases so far.

This gives me confidence we will likely be done sometime in the spring, but we're not quite at the point where we can ignore it yet. This is great news though. Maybe a month and half or two months from the end.

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#2 doesn't make sense if we've been practicing masks and social distancing forever.

If those were helpful, we would've seen cases drop long ago.

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Yeah, it's a real mystery.....