For over a year, Covid-19 has been the central fact of life.

The goal now is to make that no longer true.

If you’re reading this, chances are very high you are vaccinated. If you’re not reading this, but you live in the United States, chances are still pretty good you’re vaccinated.

The question everyone is asking is now, can life return fully to normal?

Yes.

Well, almost. We’ll never be psychologically quite the same. We’ll never unlearn the lessons we’ve learned over the past year – nor would we want to – about the way our civilization and its institutions work, or about what matters in life. And at least for now, we’ll need to continue to worry about how others will interact with us and how to navigate people’s concerns and various governmental restrictions, as well as the Covid-19 conversations that they’ll doubtless want to have for a long time. If others don’t return to normal, there’s no fully normal to return to yourself.

And that doesn’t mean quite fully normal quite yet, in the sense that there’s an amount of indoor crowding I’d still be inclined to avoid for the next few weeks or months.

And of course, things may be going well in America and most other highly vaccinated places, but the worldwide pandemic is far from over. Things in many other places remain quite bad, and will be quite bad for some time.

But… mostly? Yes. For those who are fully vaccinated, life can safely return to normal.

This column can also, events willing, start winding down or transitioning to other matters. If things go as planned, there will steadily be less Covid-19 news to talk about each week, and I can shift my blogging time into other, longer-term pursuits once more.

For now, let’s run the numbers.

The Numbers

Predictions

Prediction from last week: Positivity rate of 3.5% (down 0.4%) and deaths decline by 7%.

Result:

Things improved faster than I expected, which is great. The fall in deaths makes perfect sense, as I was adjusting for strangely small drops in deaths from previous weeks. The fall in cases is mostly in line with expectations.

Prediction for Next Week: Positivity rate of 3.0% (down 0.4%) and deaths decline by 10%.

This looks like the endgame. The control system is the potential threat to that, as we’re likely not near full herd immunity if everyone went fully back to the old normal, but I do not expect people to return to the full old no...