Have We Already Ruined Our Next COVID Summer?
Almost exactly 12 months ago, America’s pandemic curve hit a pivot point. Case counts peaked—and then dipped, and dipped, and dipped, on a slow but sure grade, until, somewhere around the end of May, the numbers flattened and settled, for several brief, wonderful weeks, into their lowest nadir so far.
I refuse to use the term hot vax summer (oops, just did), but its sentiment isn’t exactly wrong. A year ago, the shots were shiny and new, and a great match for the variants du jour; by the start of June, roughly half of the American population had received their first injections, all within the span of a few months—a remarkable “single buildup of immunity,” says Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at Yale. The winter surges had run their course; schools were letting out for the season; the warm weather was begging for outdoor gatherings, especially in the country’s northern parts. A confluence of factors came together in a stretch that, for a time, “really was great,” Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told me.
It’s now the spring of 2022, and at a glance, the stop-SARS-CoV-2 stars would seem to be aligning once more. Like last time, cases have dropped from a horrific winter peak; like last time, people have built up a is projecting that this summer could look about as stellar as the start of last.
