LIFE may never fully go back to normal in the US without a widespread vaccine to cure the coronavirus, researchers warn.
Without a widely distributed COVID-19 vaccine, American life won’t fully go back to normal – and drastic measures will still be needed even after lockdown restrictions ease up, according to three new studies.
Researchers from the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics released their bleak conclusion in three separate reports within the last two weeks.
The reports come as more than 16,000 in the US have died from the virus and 465,000 have been infected.
Restrictions would ease state-by-state after a state recorded 14 days of decreasing daily new case numbers, AEI suggests.
About 750,000 coronavirus tests would be done each week under the Washington D.C.-based think tank’s plan.
However, CAP believes the national lockdown would last for 45 days, with a digital surveillance system put in place for contact tracing.
The contact tracing plan would use cell phone location data to track down a person’a potential exposure to known cases.
Harvard predicts the national stay-in-place order would last three months, with digital surveillance enacted and millions of tests done daily.
All three studies call for a period of national lockdown, which would only be lifted after certain conditions are met.
Once schools and some non-essential businesses reopen, massive testing would be needed – ranging from AEI’s suggestion of 750,000 tests per week to Harvard’s suggestion of a whopping 100 million daily.
Although the reports differ in their solutions, all three conclude that gatherings of more than 50 people should be banned – even after lockdowns end – until there’s a vaccine.
Despite experts’ bleak predictions, the CDC said Thursday that essential employees who have been exposed to confirmed or suspected cases of virus could return to work if they’re not showing symptoms.
Although President Trump said he knows workers are “going stir crazy” at home, he said he can’t predict when the virus threat will be over.
“The numbers are changing, and they’re changing rapidly and soon we’ll be over that curve,” he said Wednesday at the daily White House coronavirus briefing.
“We’ll be over the top and we’ll be headed in the right direction. I feel strongly about that.”
Do you have a story for The US Sun team?
Email us at exclusive@the-sun.com or call 212 416 4552.
Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSunUS and follow us from our main Twitter account at @TheSunUS.
