Thanksgiving via Zoom? Summer could give way to a bleaker fall

As the Summer of COVID-19 draws to a close, many experts fear an even bleaker fall and suggest that American families should start planning for Thanksgiving by Zoom.

Because of the many uncertainties, public health scientists say it’s easier to forecast the weather on Thanksgiving Day than to predict how the U.S. coronavirus pandemic will play out this autumn. But school reopenings, holiday travel and more indoor activity because of colder weather could all separately increase transmission of the virus and combine in ways that could multiply the threat, they say.

Here’s one way it could go: As more schools open for in-person instruction and more college students return to campuses, small clusters of cases could widen into outbreaks in late September. Public fatigue over mask rules and other restrictions could stymie efforts to slow these infections.

A few weeks later, widening outbreaks could start to strain hospitals. If a bad flu season peaks in October, as happened in 2009, the pressure on the health care system could result in higher daily death tolls from the coronavirus. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said that scenario is his biggest fear.

One certainty is that the virus will still be around, said Jarad Niemi, a disease-modeling expert at Iowa State University.

“We will not have a vaccine yet and we will not have enough infected individuals for herd immunity to be helpful,” Niemi said.

Fall may feel like a roller-coaster of stop-and-start restrictions, as communities react to climbing hospital cases, said University of Texas disease modeler Lauren Ancel Meyers. Everyone should get a flu shot, she said, because if flu spreads widely, hospitals will begin to buckle and “that will compound the threat of COVID.”

“The decisions we make today will fundamentally impact the safety and feasibility of what we can do next month and by Thanksgiving,” Meyers said.

The virus is blamed for over 180,000 deaths and 6 million confirmed infections in the U.S. Worldwide, the death toll is put at almost 850,000, with over 25 million cases.