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Bad News about the Pandemic: We’re Not Getting Back to Normal Any Time Soon
Thinking that we might is an example of what psychologists call “anchoring bias”, Scientific American ,  By Gleb Tsipursky on July 18, 2020  “……….. we tend to vastly underestimate both the possibility and impact of a disaster striking us. Moreover, we will rush to get back to normal even when we should be preparing for the aftershocks or continuation of the disaster.We know that the best way to deal with COVID-19 conclusively involves finding a vaccine. It usually takes a decade or more to develop one, as a result of the high costs of research and the safety regulations around the approval process. Fortunately, government, market and philanthropic forces have combined to channel extensive funding toward developing vaccines and minimizing the approval process standards to the bare minimum needed to ensure safety and effectiveness.

Still, while over a hundred organizations launched projects to develop vaccines, and several have created a viable prototype, it will take many months for the vaccine to go through human trials. In the ideal scenario, if one of the first several vaccines does successfully make it through trials and proves highly effective without any unacceptable side effects—a very big if—we might have a vaccine approved for widespread use by summer of 2021.

What then? Well, we need to mass-produce the vaccine, to distribute it to the most vulnerable among us, and eventually to give it to everyone. Producing enough vaccine for only, say, the 100 million most vulnerable Americans would itself take a few months. You also have the obstacle of distributing it and actually vaccinating people, as well as dealing with anti-vaxxer sentiments, so add another few months. That brings us into the start of 2022 on a highly optimistic timeline.

But given the fact that only a very small percentage of all vaccines make it through the trials, we shouldn’t expect that we’ll get so wonderfully lucky, considering the possibilities of either unacceptable side effects or insufficient effectiveness. More realistically, it might be not until 2023–24 when we get a sufficiently safe and effective vaccine.

Now, this information was known as early as February. However, the normalcy bias makes it very difficult for us to imagine that our world can turn upside down so quickly. In early 2020, it was extremely uncomfortable for political and business leaders, and ordinary citizens, to even begin to imagine that it wouldn’t be until early 2022—and more realistically 2024–25—that we could, with incredible luck, expect to vanquish COVID-19. This is despite clear statements from the best scientific experts to that effect………

we won’t get anywhere if we don’t face the facts. We need to acknowledge that COVID-19 fundamentally disrupted our world, turning it upside down in a few short weeks in February and March 2020. Regrettably, it will not disappear; believing that it will helped get us mired so deep in this mess, making the U.S. outbreak one of the worst in the world in terms of deaths per capita.

Next, we need to understand and evaluate where each of us has fallen into these biases, and to evaluate the pain we cause ourselves by doing so. Then, we need to consider the long-term impacts realistically, and plan for a scenario that addresses the likelihood of major disruptions.

So, prepare to deal with waves of restrictions and loosenings for the long haul, especially as it’s likely that the coronavirus will get worse in the fall, as weather gets colder and we spend more time indoors. Remember, even if you made some bad decisions in the past, you always have the opportunity to make better decisions going forward to survive and thrive through the pandemic.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-about-the-pandemic-were-not-getting-back-to-normal-any-time-soon/