Been thinking a lot lately about that "light at the end of the tunnel" feeling, & how it may actually be an oncoming train. I'm still optimistic re: vaccines & resuming normal life in the spring. I continue to plan & prepare for ongoing disruption. https://twitter.com/JeremyFarrar/status/1343625694048378880

Regarding the UK variant in particular, we could already have it or worse circulating here not know it. AFAIK we're not doing the same type & level of surveillance they are in the UK, so if/when something else pops up here it may be widespread before we can take any measures.

Everywhere I look, people who consider themselves very "covid safe" & careful are doing things that mystify me. Even most of the ppl who don't think they're "over the pandemic" are over functionally over the pandemic.

Here is what I'm thinking is next, in no particular order:

- Best-case scenario: we will stay on the roller coaster until warmer weather brings some relief again.

- Worst-case scenario: UK variant wipes out the current case count peak & we return to strong uptrend.

- Supply chain weirdness will continue, as shippers have no incentive to bring pre-pandemic capacity back online until it's clear that the downstream machinery (demand + rest of supply chain) is working again.

- Increased food supply weirdness starting mid- or late January.

(January & February are when the disruption from the destruction of milk, pork, soybeans, etc. that featured at the start of the pandemic will start to pop out the other end of the consumer-facing food supply chain).

- If you have a medical emergency, the healthcare system will be either intermittently (best-case) or consistently (worst-case) unavailable to you until spring. Now is not the time to buy a motorbike. If your kids jump on a trampoline, maybe don't let them.

- Lockdowns are done, definitely in the US & also in many other places. The link btwn gov't lockdown orders & cessation of economic activity & travel is tenuous at best, anyway. All the orders do is make people angry. So that is not a tool that's available to us, if it ever was.

Anyone who thinks lockdowns are still viable is kidding themselves. I believe that if Biden really goes for it w/ some big effort at a nationwide lockdown, especially backed by some EO or emergency powers, all it'll do is add deaths from domestic conflict to deaths from COVID.

- If you manage to get through the next year w/out catching COVID, it'll be because you had the money & job/lifestyle flexibility to mostly stay locked down, & to be psycho about wearing properly fitted PPE at all times in public (including eye coverings) + handwashing.

- COVID is already so widespread in many places that you were safer going out maskless in the summer than you are w/ the vaccine now. And this is before the more transmissible UK variant takes hold here. So staying COVID-free will be down to pure chance for most ppl in 2021.

- This continues to be my most prescient tweet: https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1232359087825936385

- I think we'll pass 1M US deaths from COVID in 2021, & no lockdown orders or vaccine will stop us. With this number, I'm ballparking a 1% CFR (separate thread to unpack that, esp vs IFR) and ~30% attack rate. I think both are conservative.

- A 1M US body count from a communicable disease will create all kinds of weird feedback loops, ripple effects, ruptures, & assorted other totally unpredictable surprises in many different areas of our society. The more self-sufficient you can be, the better.

- The best thing you can do for yourself right now is to disabuse yourself of the notion that a combo of a vaccine + a Biden admin will bring about the end of the emergency we're all in. In 2021 we'll enter a new phase of it, & it may be weirder than the first phase.

- As I said, I hold out hope for a return to normal life in 2021. But I'm not making any plans based on that hope. Not a one. I'm making plans for even more crazy in the new year.