So I'm going to be using mid-June as a benchmark to make a determination on where this pandemic is heading in the US. A majority of Americans are going to be treating this holiday weekend as "normal." It will, in fact, probably be worse than most previous Memorial Day weekends because people have been cooped up and restricted for almost 18 months now. People are already acting crazy according to the police calls I hear every night. Calls that I would normally expect on Friday and Saturday nights are happening every night now, and they're getting weirder. Cabin fever is in full play.

By the way, Indianapolis is allowing 135,000 people in the stands for the Indianapolis 500, being advertised as "the largest attended sporting event in the world since Covid began."

Any consequences from this weekend will begin to show up by June 15th, give or take a few days. US numbers as of yesterday were at ~22,000 new reported cases daily and continuing to fall. The numbers haven't been this low since March 30, 2020. If the numbers continue to fall or at minimum remain steady for the first and second week of June, I will be satisfied that the pandemic is possibly "under control" in the United States and that the virus is burning out, vaccinations are working, or a combination of both. I would be more inclined to get the J&J shot at the end of June in this scenario.

If, however, numbers take a huge spike around that time, I will be seriously questioning the efficacy of vaccines and the odds of actually getting the virus under control. I would be much less inclined to get vaccinated under this scenario since it would be apparent that vaccinations are not entirely responsible for the recent downward trend in numbers.

Note I am only talking raw numbers here. I am not taking into account potential long-term health effects of either Covid or the vaccines. I am going to start treating those issues as a different disaster than the pandemic itself.

Sound reasonable? Anyone have any holes they can poke in my logic?