A year after it began, the pandemic isn’t over yet, but we know how it’s going to end.

Borrowing a bad World War II analogy, we’re somewhere between the landings on the beaches of Normandy and the crossing of the Rhine. Or, borrowing a bad sports metaphor, it’s the start of the fourth quarter of a football game and the score is 31-9. Either way, though there’s still enough time for something dangerously interesting to happen — some especially pernicious viral variant could evade vaccination, increase lethality, increase transmissibility, or some combination thereof — it’s becoming increasingly likely that we’re significantly closer to the beginning of the end than we are the end of the beginning. 

That’s not to say people won’t get sick or die. They are and will. Even now, we’ve only just returned to infection and hospitalization levels last seen in September. There’s still a long road ahead before we can confidently return to normal — or, at least, whatever “normal” turns out to be after this is over — and plenty of ways we can throw ourselves off track, at least for a little while. 

However, the vaccines are working. A single shot of any of the approved vaccines appears to provide at least a 60 percent immunity. A study of British health care workers given the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine recorded a 75 percent lower infection rate among health care workers two weeks after they were first began inoculation. A study of individuals given the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, meanwhile, recorded a 61 percent lower infection rate (“possibly considerably more” according to the study) among half-inoculated individuals. This means a single shot of Pfizer or Moderna is roughly as effective at preventing COVID-19 infection as the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Receiving a second shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, of course, decreases infection rate by 95 percent, which is as good as any vaccine you received in childhood.

Most importantly, as Kelsey Piper recently pointed out for Vox, all three of the vaccines have demonstrated a 100 percent success rate at keeping infected vaccinated individuals out of the hospital after a single shot.

Our vaccine distribution system, meanwhile, is also finally working. At least 16 percent of Nevadans received a minimum of one shot (including The Nevada Independent’s staff) so far. After a rocky start at the beginning of the year, Nevada’s fluctuating between the ninth-highest vaccine utilization rate in the country in late February and the 25th-highest utilization rate this past week — any time our state is comfortably average at worst is a good time. If vaccine deliveries merely remain constant, half of Nevadans will be vaccinated by June.

Thankfully, vaccine deliveries will not remain constant. They’re about to increase — dramatically.

Now that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been approved, New York City expects to offer COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants one by late April. There’s no reason why Nevada would be any different. Elko County is already going to start offering vaccines to those between the ages of 16-64 (with “underlying conditions,” albeit with no supporting documentation of said conditions requested) on Monday — and good on them for doing so. With a smaller, more geographically diffuse population, there’s simply no point in waiting for septuagenarians in Jarbridge and Tuscarora to make their monthly trip to town before vaccinating the rest of the county. 

Finally, case counts and deaths have all reduced to levels last seen in September, and hospitalizations have reduced to levels last seen in June. Though there’s still clearly room for improvement, and positive test percentages have been going the wrong direction over the past few weeks, the pandemic overall appears to be going in the right direction. 

All of this is why, even though Assemblywoman Annie Black is clearly jumping several guns by bringing Assembly Concurrent Resolution 2 (which would terminate the state of emergency declared last March at the start of the pandemic) to the Assembly floor this past week, her instincts are not entirely unsound. By the time this legislative session is over at the end of May, there’s a non-zero chance ACR2 might be moot — or its passage will be seen as official recognition of the obvious. If we continue aggressively vaccinating ourselves and reducing our infection rate, the emergency will indeed be over, perhaps sooner than we dare to hope.

(The preceding paragraph might be the most complimentary thing anyone not actively on NPRI’s payroll will ever say about Assemblywoman Black in this publication. You’re welcome.)

So, once the pandemic and the corresponding state of emergency is over, what will life look like? 

COVID-19, like the bubonic plague, will still be with us — and that will be fine.

Bubonic plague, the disease which killed a third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, is still with us. If you get too close to a squirrel, there’s a chance you could contract it right here in Nevada.

Fortunately, we’ve learned a thing or two about the disease over the past six and a half centuries. Early treatment with antibiotics usually cures the plague pretty quickly, and effective pest management keeps flea-ridden squirrels from spreading the disease in our cities. Putting the two together keeps the number of annual plague victims few enough for toddlers to count comfortably. That’s why our doctors don’t dress like this anymore.

Like bubonic plague, which continues to live among flea-bitten rodents, COVID-19 also has animal reservoirs. Minks have proven especially susceptible — Europe culled millions of them last year due to a COVID-19 outbreak in European mink farms — and it’s increasingly likely the disease first spread to humans from bats. Consequently, we won’t be able to vaccinate it into extinction like we did smallpox (the only virus we’ve ever successfully eradicated). The virus will continue to survive, in some form or another, among animal populations for the rest of our lives. 

Though that might sound bleak at first blush, the example set by bubonic plague is illustrative. We don’t worry about the bubonic plague anymore because there’s frankly not a lot to worry about — we know how to control it and we know how to treat it during those rare moments when it escapes our control. Similarly, COVID-19 is increasingly becoming a manageable problem — between vaccines and more effective treatments, the likelihood of becoming debilitatingly ill or dead is already decreasing dramatically. 

Mask wearing probably won’t be routine, but may become increasingly common.

Once the state of emergency is over, some Nevadans will undoubtedly be quite happy to box up their masks and toss them in a burn barrel. Though understandable, they might want to reconsider and look across the Pacific. Masks have been a situationally normal part of East Asian life for decades. 

The reason? The cloth masks most of us now have are better at keeping outdoor allergens and pollutants out of our noses than just our poor, beleaguered sinuses alone. Consequently, they’ll remain handy once wildfire season kicks in once again, as it reliably has nearly every summer over the past decade. 

Additionally, as surgeons have known for over a century, though simple masks are not especially useful at keeping harmful germs out, they’re still a cheap and effective way of keeping your germs in your mouth when you’re not feeling well. This, in turn, makes wearing a mask an effective way to signal to others at a glance that you might not be feeling well and would appreciate it if everyone else kept their distance — a useful signal for those who would prefer to be left alone in high traffic public places. 

Finally, though most of us aren’t likely to die from influenza or the common cold, most of us also would prefer to avoid catching common infectious diseases entirely if we can help it. Having worked in indoor air conditioned offices with recycled air through most of my professional career, I can personally attest that starting the day with one sick coworker is an easy way to finish the day with every sick coworker, yourself included. Having the power to perhaps escape that fate — even if it’s just a 30 percent lower chance — beats having no chance at all. 

If looking a little weird potentially keeps me from feeling miserable for two weeks, well, I look a little weird whether I wear a mask or not — and I’m not alone. At least now we’d have an excuse. 

Nevada will never be the same — and that will be fine, too.

When it comes to gaming, I’m a bit of an ultracrepidarian — in other words, there are other, smarter, better qualified voices out there with better informed opinions on the subject, and you should probably listen to them. 

One voice you should listen to, for example, might be the owners of the Sands, who evacuated Nevada before Sheldon’s body finished cooling to room temperature. 

Last November, I pointed out that, if you check the numbers, tourism in Clark County never really recovered from the Great Recession. Visitor counts have been decreasing since 2016. Inflation-adjusted gaming revenue has been decreasing for more than a decade. Except for a few months in 2019, Nevada has had a persistently higher unemployment rate than California for more than 11 years now and COVID-19’s effect on our economy guarantees that won’t change anytime soon.

The numbers don’t lie. You don’t need to be a gaming industry expert to read them.

None of this means gaming in Clark County is going to disappear. There are still plenty of casinos in Reno, after all — one of them just bought Caesars Entertainment, in fact. However, just as several casinos in Reno eventually closed up shop and either turned into mounds of rubble or converted their towers into condominiums, Clark County residents might want to look around and ask themselves which towers will remain sources of jobs and which towers may become something else. 

This also doesn’t mean there won’t be vacationers visiting Nevada looking to blow off some steam. A lot of people didn’t use their vacation time in 2020, and the sort of people who have vacation time are the sort of people with the means to spend freely in any of Nevada’s resorts. On the other hand, a lot of people had a habit of visiting Nevada for recreation before the pandemic — as anyone who’s broken a diet or exercise habit can tell you, habits, once broken, are difficult to reestablish.

Even if people decide to come back, it’s going to take time for live shows and entertainment to return. Live shows require planning, rehearsals, and open venues, none of which have happened over the past year. That’s why, for example, Reno’s theaters don’t expect to reopen until 2022 — even if we fully vaccinate and beat COVID-19 back by July, it’ll take at least six months to get performers and productions back on stage. 

No matter how the future shakes out, however, we need to avoid romanticizing lost service sector jobs. Yes, they beat immiserating poverty and starvation, but let’s not kid ourselves — they usually don’t pay well and they reliably produce emotional abuse from entitled customers who think giving someone a single cent of fiat currency grants them the right to spit in the recipient’s face and shout obscenities. Until American culture rejects the notion that we are implicitly renting a servant — a human appliance, in other words, which can endure “percussive maintenance” like any other misbehaving appliance when it “malfunctions” — every time we spend money in person, these jobs are going to justifiably remain a source of employment of last resort for most.

That’s why, no matter which direction gaming and tourism goes in this state, we must diversify Nevada’s economy — not because we must to keep Nevadans employed (though now we absolutely do), but because nobody should have to work those jobs unless they actually want to. 

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].