I just don't get it. We will have more tools and an informed population that is normalizing wearing masks and better hygiene. Not to mention 6 more months of other ways we will progress and prepare. Unless there's some terrible mutation that increases CFR or transmissibility I don't see how it's possible for wave 2 to be worse.
I agree with this, in general, as there's no doubt our testing/tracing/quarantining/hygiene/mask wearing will be better than the 0.0 we essentially had in late Feb/early March when this truly took off - it might not be what I'd like to see or what South Korea/Taiwan have, but it'll be a lot better.
Another possible plus is if we find out that 10-20% of the population has already been infected, which is quite possible based on early returns from antibody testing some populations (and the high rates of infection on ships and in prisons), meaning most/all would have immunity (at least for awhile) and would no longer be contagious, removing 10-20% of the targets for transmission, which will at least moderately slow down the rate - and if we're clever, we'll have many more of those people with antibodies in high contact jobs, further reducing transmission.
It's also unlikely that the virus is going to change much (we already know its mutation rate is quite slow) according to most of the virologists, which is why a vaccine would hopefully work for years, instead of only partially working and needing to be retooled for a "new" viral threat every year, like we have with influenza.
And the big, huge unknown wild card is whether we will truly have an antibody therapy by the end of summer (or sooner for convalescent therapy) that works to at least prevent most serious illnesses and deaths (I think convalescent plasma will work for serious cases, but is hard to scale for millions) and I think the engineered antibody approach will do that and it can be scaled for millions by the end of the year. I also think we'll have massive antibody testing by the end of summer (if not sooner), so people will know if they've already been infected and are very likely immune.
I'm on the very conservative side of exposure risk right now, with a wife and son who are both asthmatic and immunocompromised, so I'm not willing to risk getting COVID if there's no high confidence treatment available, but I'm willing to risk getting it if there is and I imagine many think that way. There's certainly no guarantee right now that any of the antibody approaches will work as a high confidence treatment and/or a preventative, but very preliminary results (10-20 people only, so very preliminary) with convalescent plasma are promising (and it's worked for several other diseases in the past) and the engineered antibody approach worked pretty well for Ebola.
I also think we'll have a commercial vaccine by February - I truly think Pharma is going to come through here, but that's just a guess. And we also might see some other drugs that work at least somewhat (like remdesivir and dozens of others being tested) as treatments, not just the antibody approaches.
