By Rudy Takala
The coronavirus pandemic may be over as early as June, Vice President Mike Pence said in a Thursday interview on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. He said that assumptions about immunity and existing trend lines played a role in his forecast.
“There is a high likelihood that if you’ve had this coronavirus in the past, that you will enjoy some immunity from it in the future,” Pence said. “It’s among the reasons why our nation, should the coronavirus reemerge at any time in the future … our nation will be in a much better place.” He added, “If some of those early studies hold out, there will be an awful lot of Americans in the fall and in the winter of next year that actually enjoy a degree of immunity from the coronavirus. That will …. be a bulwark against this.”
“I truly do believe … that if current trend lines hold, that by early June, we could largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us, and begin to see our nation open back up and go back to work,” Pence said.
It almost sounds like Pence expects America to have achieved herd immunity by next Fall.
By HELEN BRANSWELL
Michael Mina, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the United States squandered a chance to prevent the virus from taking off here and now must do what it takes to beat it back.
“We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases.
“What the means is we have to be patient. By the end of April shouldn’t be anyone’s consideration at this point,” he said. “We have to assume at the very least this is going through May.”
Others suggest it may be longer before stores and restaurants can reopen, before authorities can consider reopening schools and universities.
Philanthropist Bill Gates warned in an appearance on “CBS This Morning” on Thursday that things like lifting bans on mass gatherings — public meetings or concerts — could be quite a way down the road.
I’ll take Bill Gates’ estimation over Mike Pence’s estimation any day.