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Will We be Prepared For the 2nd  COVID-19 wave?

Three Possible Scenarios: How bad can it be?

Small waves as far as the eye can see

The current peak in Covid-19 cases is followed over the next two years by crest and dip, crest and dip.

The crests will be less than half the size of this spring’s outbreak, with some of the highest numbers coinciding with flu season next fall and troughs this summer and next.

Many people will take that as a signal that it is safe to let down their guard. Social distancing will be less strict. The next wave will hit … over and over until so many people have been infected, or a vaccine succeeds, to produce herd immunity.

History redux

Rather than reappearing throughout the year as the crests and troughs of the first scenario, Covid-19 would return with more ferocity in the late summer and fall and then dissipate, settling into a small but near-constant number of cases.

The precipitous, and lasting, fall-off would have two causes.

So many people would be infected in the moderate first wave (now) and the gargantuan second wave (peaking around October) that the population might approach herd immunity.

Second, the second wave would absolutely take the health system down.

The worst Groundhog Day

The waves keep coming because the size of the outbreaks that follow the current one are smaller than in the monster-wave second scenario.

It therefore takes longer for population immunity to build up.

Local outbreaks occur, worse in some places than others due to, among things, different capacity to conduct widespread, regular testing and contact-tracing.

This has historically not been seen.