It's Monday, March one. I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. Pandemic numbers have been trending in the right direction, and the vaccine rollout has been ramping up. But when can we all get back to normal? The next few months will look just as they have been, but the summer could be the closest to normal that we have seen in a long time. Joe Pinsker, staff writer at The Atlantic previews with the next few seasons might look like
on a road back to pre pandemic normalcy. Thanks for joining us, Joe, Yeah, thanks so much for having me. We've been going through this pandemic for a long time now. Everybody is ready for things to get back to normal. Unfortunately, those answers are not always very clear. You know, what is normal now after this We can point out a timeline and hope for the best that it will follow that way. But you know, there's a lot of variables that come into play. Joe, you spoke to a few experts.
You kind of sketched out a timeline, reading some of the tea leaves, seeing what life will be like over the next year or so and beyond that, and you broke things up by seasons, which I loved how you did that. So let's talk about the likely timeline for how things will return to normal, and let's start off with the next season that we're ready to go through, about March to May. Spring one. What are we looking at? So, I think spring looks a lot like what people have
been doing for the past year. Of course, people have been doing all sorts of different things. Some people have been going to work, some people have been working from home, some people have been dining out, some people have been eating in every night. But whatever it is that people have been doing, I think we can expect them to have to do more of it for the next couple
of months. The big question mark that will determine a lot of how cautious people will need to be in these coming months is what happens with the variants that we've heard so much about. We don't really know how much damage they'll do, but they could end up circulating quite a bit and doing a lot of damage. They could also end up not playing much of a factor. So that's kind of the thing that we're looking out for on the scale of the next couple of months.
But in terms of daily life, daily life looks pretty similar to what it's been. The way you put it, I think was really put well cautious. We'll still have to be in this, in this mode of mask wearing, social distancing, doing all the same things we've been doing. As you mentioned, it's different for a lot of people, but that's where we're at right now. And beyond that, you know, as the vaccines start to roll out more to more Americans, people see other people getting the vaccine,
so that hesitancy will drop also. Summer one, what are we looking at? I have to say I've done a lot of interviews over the course of this pandemic with experts wondering what they're thinking about, and I came away from these so much more optimistic and even a bit surprised. After these interviews that I did summer, they were saying, really should be great. They widely expect things to just look so much better in a lot of different dimensions.
A lot of the things that we've not been able to do, like have friends and family over indoors, or dying inside restaurants safely, all these things that a lot of people have hesitated to do should become much much safer, and that includes the whole range of things like going into work and having people be in person at schools. Whether all of those things will phase in it once, it's probably not going to happen, but summer just should
look a lot better in a lot of ways. In a way that for me is somebody who's been reporting on this stuff for a year now, it just is so much more encouraging than it has been. And you can remember what it was like last summer. People were already getting that first inkling of COVID fatigue. You know, the summer months were here was hot outside, you can you know, it was safer to be outside, and people went out to the beaches. They went out and started doing a lot more stuff. In part that's why we
saw a couple of rises and cases and all. But yeah, I can definitely expect people to be in that mode again. Things of concerns still, you know, the timing for vaccinations for kids, you know, will that be in place by that time? And you also made mention, you know it won't be a full comeback. Maybe indoor concerts, full attendance
at sporting events might not be ready. Just yet then the expectation of the people I talked to is that summer looks quite a bit more like the summer of twenty nineteen than the summer of It won't be entirely summer of As you said, concerts probably won't be back packed,
sports stadiums probably won't be back. Also, international travel probably won't be back There are important limitations, but as far as how the summer should compare to what we've been through so far, it really should be a tremendous departure fall of one and winter, you know, the beginning of the year. What are we looking at there? Because the concern also is, you know, with the colder months, we see uh an increase in flu cases. Obviously other respiratory things,
COVID will be among them. You know, we'll really see kind of what these variants that we've been really worried about, how much more transmissible they'll be when it gets colder again. This is one of the things that I think people might struggle to wrap their minds around. I certainly did as I thought about it. There is a chance that we have a fantastic summer as I've just described, and at the same time fall and winter and the colder
months end up being not so great. Experts that I spoke with generally expect there to be some sort of uptick in cases and deaths in the coulder months. The big question is how much that would be. There's a chance that it really is quite small, in which case we get to start reintroducing things like concerts and other things that would represent sort of full quote unquote normalcy. There's also a chance, as you noted, that the variants end up doing something weird and unexpected. That seems like
a less likely possibility. But I would say in general that even if summer is excellent, there is this sort of chance that the fall and winter are not so great and represent a backslide. And then finally spring summer two so really a whole other year out will be kind of back to that quote unquote normal. You know,
what is going to be normal after the pandemic. It's still yet to be seen, but that's when will be a lot looser with our mask wearing and our social distancing, you know, will be in the habit now of being with family and friends again. So that's kind of the timeline for this to really resolve itself. We hope. Yeah, exactly. I think this is where, if we're making predictions, this is where we start to use the words maybe you're probably a lot less the spring and summer of two.
Once it starts getting warm next year, I think that's when people widely expect life to be very, very very similar to what it used to be, just in terms of what we're able to do. Obviously the world will be so much different in so many other ways, but it definitely looks very good at that point. I'm so hopeful. I saw the article that I was like, oh, right away, I gotta I have to read this because this is what everybody wants to know. When is it going to
go back to normal? I'm hopeful that this timeline would work, hopefully even a little quicker than that. But these are all the things we have to work towards and get those vaccines, continue the mask wearing, social distancing so we can get to that point. It's so important right now. But Joe Pinsker, staff writer at The Atlantic, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm right there hoping with you too. I'm oscar a
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