By Damon Linker, The Week

“Wake me when it’s over.”

I had that thought a lot during the hard lockdown of spring 2020, and then occasionally through America’s summer surge in COVID-19 cases, and then again as daily deaths spiked to horrifying heights between Nov. 2020 and Feb. 2021. But toward the end of that window the feeling waned. I no longer wanted to slumber through the present like Rip Van Winkle, to be roused only once a happier future had arrived — one where my children could go back to school, and I could travel, or go shopping for a loved one’s birthday present, without fear of contracting a potentially fatal illness. Vaccines had arrived, which meant the end was in sight. Soon the pandemic would be over. Soon the world would return to normal.

But when, exactly?

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