 So we are going to have a really long and rough couple of months ahead when it comes to COVID-19 and as bad as it is now it could get even worse. I mean we are seeing almost 200,000 new cases per day. We've surpassed 250,000 deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 and even though the virus is spreading more and more Americans are disregarding you know social distancing protocols. They are traveling in larger numbers for the holidays and when governors take action and issue more lockdown orders such as in Oregon residents are defying said orders and they're protesting outside of the governor's residence and on one hand you know it's easy to be angry at these folks for not wanting another lockdown but at the same time the federal government hasn't taken any action so governors they don't have the power of the purse that Congress has so without another federal stimulus if a governor locks down which is the right thing to do to mitigate the spread of the virus then you're just harming small businesses so is this really horrible situation that we find ourselves in where there's no federal money that states have to assist them with this lockdown but you have to lock down otherwise more people will catch the virus and die but yet more small businesses will go bankrupt people will suffer it's a disaster and we're not even thinking right now about what's gonna happen January 1st when the moratorium on evictions expires is Trump a lame duck president going to want to reissue that how many people are going to face eviction how many more people will go hungry before the holiday season like it's it's genuinely depressing to think about all of this and to make matters worse you know you have politicians like Congresswoman elect Marjorie Taylor Greene it responsibly posts selfies of herself bragging about how they're not wearing masks in Georgia we're still seeing the viral videos of Karen's getting kicked out of Costco's for refusing to wear masks and it just proves that people are incredibly selfish incredibly selfish and not only that that our government just doesn't care about us the United States government which is the richest country in the world responded to this pandemic as you'd expect a failed state to respond to it I mean think about how insane it is that with all of the economic ruin that this pandemic has caused Americans got one payment just one of $1200 they expect Americans to survive on that so it's gonna get worse it's going to get worse having said that though I do think that there is some room for optimism we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel because we have two vaccines that are very effective and on top of that the University of Oxford found that AstraZeneca's vaccine is very effective at stopping someone from contracting COVID-19 and on top of that the FDA has authorized Regeneron's antibody cocktail for emergency use on high-risk patients with mild to moderate symptoms and the government is apparently subsidizing some of the treatment so that way there's no out-of-pocket costs I think that the devil is in the details there but you know it's getting worse but at the same time we're starting to see a glimmer of hope with regard to vaccines and therapeutics so the question is you know as it gets worse and we start to see you know a cure basically in the form of a vaccine how long is this gonna go on for I mean everyone has quarantine fatigue myself included nobody likes wearing masks we just begrudgingly do it because we we want to protect others so how long until things start to get back to normal and there is some encouraging news with regard to when we might start to see some normality again as the pandemic goes away but there's a lot of caveats so according to one vaccine expert it could be as early as may of next year that things could get back to normal meaning we could actually have a relatively normal summer so as the guardians Joanna Walters explains as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States past 12 million the Trump administration's vaccine program advisor predicted that life in America could be back to normal around May of 2021 as immunization is set to begin the note of optimism came even as millions of Americans were expected to travel for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday this week and many appear to be ignoring warnings from health officials about furthering the spread of the infectious disease Monsef Slaoui chief scientific advisor of the government's operation warp speed vaccine development and distribution program which involves the military and the private sector as well as government health experts said that pending regulatory approval for the first vaccine means that first Americans could be vaccinated outside of clinical trial by mid December and Slaoui said that if the vaccination distribution and immunization plan goes well enough Americans should be vaccinated by May or something like that of 2021 to allow life to go back to normal the first application to the US government for vaccine approval was made on Friday by the pharmaceutical team of Pfizer and its partner bio and tech the food and drug administration regulatory body is scheduled to hold a key meeting on December 10th that could award the team emergency authorization for the vaccine by December 11th or 12th I'm hopeful the first people will be immunized across the United States in all states Slaoui told CNN State of the Union politics show on Sunday morning the administration plans to vaccinate 20 million people in December and another 30 million per month thereafter health care workers and the most vulnerable populations such as residents of nursing homes are expected to be the first in line Slaoui said that with the first vaccines the US pharmaceutical firm Moderna is expected to apply for regulatory authorization soon on its vaccine need to be given to at least 70% of the US population for true herd immunity to take place so if he's right and you know we could have 70% of the population vaccinated by May this is this is really good news I will admit though you know I'm not that optimistic and there's a million different caveats and when Dr. Fauci was asked about this timeline he was a little bit more skeptical because the next task that we're going to have as a country is getting people to take vaccines because as we know there's been increasing anti-vax sentiment in this country although when it comes to COVID-19 it doesn't seem to be as prevalent as normal vaccines and Gallup shows that support for a COVID-19 vaccination is that 58% meaning that 58% of Americans would take a vaccine and when you control for party affiliation unsurprisingly more Democrats would take the vaccine than Republicans so if it is the case that 58% of Americans in total take this vaccine you know when you factor in that as well as all of the people who have antibody responses generated from having COVID-19 we could be close to 70% to reach herd immunity but it's going to be tough to convince people because Joe Biden will be president and Trump supporters will be more conspiratorial and think that it's unsafe it's going to be I think a really huge struggle so I'm kind of more in line with what Dr. Fauci says and that it's probably a little bit too optimistic to think may is when things are going to return to normal but to me I take this as sometime in 2021 things will return to normal most likely now there's there's some reason to want Donald Trump to take credit for the vaccine at least some credit for the vaccine because if Donald Trump doesn't give it his stamp of approval will his supporters take it we need people to take the vaccine in order to have herd immunity in order to protect ourselves and the world from the virus so just getting people to take this vaccine is going to be tough in and of itself now the good news is that if a lot of people don't want to take it immediately you know others will have access to the vaccine assuming it's affordable or accessible at all who knows that's a different story for a different day or discussion for a different day I should say but I mean look we're gonna have to wait and see but you know there is I think cause for optimism there's a glimmer of hope we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel just a little bit but to get to that point where we see you know a more normal country and world again what we have to go through to get there is gonna be tough we still have to take precautions and I mean given how Americans have responded they're probably going to celebrate Thanksgiving a lot of people at least as if there isn't a pandemic which is worrisome because you know it's not like these celebrations you know will occur in a vacuum society doesn't exist in a vacuum so if you you know travel and you see your family and you contract COVID-19 you could give that to others your grocery store clerks and whatnot so it's just it's exhausting and this is just it's gonna take a long time but I think that if there's some cause for optimism we should try to hang on to that because it's gonna be a really really rough couple of months