For anyone feeling hopeless, here's your daily dose of COVID good news: one way or another, COVID mortality and hospitalizations should drop fairly substantially in Q1 2020.

Why? 1/

2/ We have multiple shots on goal that make this more likely than not. I suspect that some paths will be quite controversial to some subset of people, but together they paint an optimistic scenario.

3/ First, if you believe in the "lower-HIT" hypothesis - which generally seems to be supported, even in winter, by data from countries like South Africa and Brazil - then it is only a matter of time before, even in winter conditions, COVID naturally peaks.

4/ Second, there are multiple vaccine candidates based on different technologies that have demonstrated good efficacy (in reducing severity) and reasonable safety so far. Any one may fail, but there is a very high likelihood we will have at least one vaccine soon. @cardinalcap12

5/ Initial dose availability will obviously not be sufficient for the population at large - however, considering the high heterogeneity of COVID burden, just getting it to some of the vulnerable will help a lot (ex nursing homes - 0.5% pop, sometimes 40% deaths)

6/ A final pathway is broader availability of therapeutics, ex. Regeneron antibodies.

In summary, while things may seem hopeless, COVID will not dominate the headlines forever... there is light at the end of the tunnel, fast approaching, even if it doesn't feel that way.

7/ Take care, all! Thus ends my first attempt at being more positive/uplifting rather than angry/rabblerousing on twitter.

8/ As an addendum, these paths are obviously not mutually exclusive: the best-case scenario is an effective vaccine, PLUS a low natural HIT, PLUS effective treatments. But any one or two will do to make a big difference...