I think you are missing a zero. 1,000 cases a day nationally would be 0.3 cases per 100,000 people. Even Fauci earlier this month said that a reasonable estimate for reducing restrictions and getting rid of masks would be under 10,000 cases a day. 1,000 would be great, but there will likely be a lot of movement before that level.
Kids are at practically zero risk from COVID. If the adult population is 70% vaccinated they will be at even lower risk because there will be far fewer infected adults to potentially infect the kids.
Mitigation measures should not continue just because kids can't be vaccinated.
I agree there will be a level we need to get to before all mitigation measures go away. My only point is that 1,000 is not likely going to be that number. Under 10,000 cases per day nationally is about 3 cases per 100,000 people.
Right. So I am still wondering about what target we are looking for. For example, if we are still seeing those "1,000" or whatever cases a day, but hospitalizations are extremely low..... does that mean it is safe? Or are we looking for almost no cases? At some point, do we need to say that yes, people are getting ill with COVID, but it is ok to resume normal lives since they are simply ill and not in the hospital? Anyways those are my thoughts for whatever they are worth.
How many daily cases nationally line up with 150 daily deaths nationally? What's the math from 150 deaths back to cases, roughly? A case number that can increase some as those infected become less likely to die.
My theory is, that's the number. That as a country, we can live with 150/day (50,000/year). A number small enough to not be outrageous but still large enough that it's a statistic and not a news story when it happens to one person. A number we could apply to all kinds of things. For instance, run of the mill auto accidents are just under that statistic and it's barely news. However, if there's a one off particularly rare incident, it makes the national news. We don't like one offs that we feel can be prevented. We don't like huge outrageous impacts. Somewhere in the middle, it'll just be ignored.
Today, at 1,000+ a day, we're not there yet. We are worlds better than 3,000 a day and hence have less active mitigations than we did then. We could probably graph out the numbers, as long as we're moving from 1,000 to 900 to 800 to 700, different mitigations removed at every level. Added back if we slip and move up.
It doesn't really matter who's able to get the vaccine or how many have been vaccinated. If that number isn't moving down, it's all a waste. Enough people vaccinated should drive that number down, possibly even lower. But, it's that impact number, not the vaccine availability that will drive the changes. If the impact get's low enough even without any kids vaccinated, we'll stop mitigating. If it doesn't, then we're not going to stop.
It's really that simple. Things aren't going to go back to the old normal when 1,000 people die daily (365,000 yearly). Even if we removed all mandated mitigations, enough people still wouldn't go back to normal. As a group, they don't really care what's mandated or not. It's the impacts that matter.
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