What the ‘finish line’ for coronavirus will look like

What the ‘finish line’ for coronavirus will look like

 

After more than a year of trauma and heartbreak, state and local officials are pointing to an end point -- a return to the normalcy we've craved for months -- that they say is just around the corner.   But is it? And more importantly, what will it look like? And how will we know we're there?   "The reality is that we're not going to know when we've crossed that mythical finish line," said emergency physician Dr. Megan Ranney, director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health. "It's not like we're going to suddenly be done."   Even if there's no precise endpoint to search for, there are several important benchmarks in that gradual return to normalcy. This could include case numbers and vaccinations.   When it comes to the number of Covid-19 cases that would signal a "finish line," that’s also hard to pinpoint.   "Are we going to say, is it going to be (when we have) less than 10,000 cases (in the US)?" Dr. Leana Wen asks. "But then, what if we have cases but people are not getting sick? So would we be able to accept 20,000 cases but very few people in the hospital?"   But Wen says you can look at vaccinations as your own personal finish line. "I would argue for the approach of when you are fully vaccinated, that's when things get back to much more normal for you," Wen told CNN. "That way there's actually a timeframe that you can literally see for yourself."   However, with variants circulating, it will continue to be important to get as many shots into arms as possible to get us closer to the finish line.