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The COVID-19 pandemic has been loose in the US for over five months at the time of this writing. Many people are hopeful that a vaccine will be ready soon, in order to help them resume their normal lives. However, yet more are questioning whether a vaccine alone will be enough to stop the pandemic.
Countries employed lockdowns of varying lengths of time to slow the spread of the virus. People in the US stocked up their pantry kitchen cabinets and waited it out around six weeks of lockdown, on average. However, the country lifted such lockdowns earlier than many experts recommended, leading to another spike in cases.
The question remains: what will stop the pandemic? How will this brutal saga of global history come to a close?
A vaccine for COVID-19 will help to slow its spread. In wealthier countries, a vaccine could even return things to something resembling normal. Larger gatherings could resume, provided attendees have been vaccinated.
However, this could lead to some issues with people who object to receiving vaccines but still want to attend larger gatherings. As such, the vaccine’s role in simply slowing the spread of the virus may be required in returning the US to normal operations.
Things will become complicated when one factors in the economic impacts of a vaccine, too. Wealthy countries may have no issue acquiring doses of a vaccine, but poorer countries may struggle.
This could lead to the pandemic raging in some parts of the world while others begin to return to normal. Then, a pocket of the disease could cause an outbreak that requires another shutdown to address.
As numbers fall off due to time and a potential vaccine, testing and contact tracing will be critical. Testing to screen for outbreaks of the virus, and contact tracing to find out who is getting the virus, will help health officials hunt the virus down.
By doing this, officials will be able to isolate the virus and quarantine those who contract it. This is much easier to do when case numbers become more manageable.
Many are hoping this will allow wealthier countries like the US to resume their normal activities. However, it will require a dedicated effort from the government to fund such a sweeping endeavor. The current administration in the US has left the handling of the pandemic largely to the states, leading many to believe the pandemic is likely to drag on in the US for longer than in other countries.
