I don’t want to post much about the virus. Maybe once a month, taking a more long-term perspective. Take these predictions not as “I believe these are highly probable” but instead as “I find these less improbable than others are currently seeing them.”

1. We will find that regional differences in the impact of the virus depend very little on differences in government interventions. We will down-rate the importance of lockdowns or track-and-trace. Instead, we will up-rate genetic differences and lifestyle differences that affect the immune system in general (take this WSJ essay as a portent). The significance of vitamin D will receive more attention. In addition, we may find that someone’s previous exposure to other viruses affects the immune response to this virus, so that the history of other viruses in a population matters. Sunlight and/or temperature may prove to be important factors affecting the severity of the virus. Finally, we may find that some of the regional variation is due to different mixes of virus strains that prevail in different areas.

2. We will quietly give up on a vaccine. Instead, the focus will shift toward general enhancement of our immune systems. Also, there will be strong social shaming of people who fail to self-isolate when they have fever or other symptoms of illness. The common cold will be as unwelcome in public as leprosy or measles.

3. In years to come, tourism will be highest in the summer months of the country visited. The conventional wisdom will be that you visit Brazil only in January-February, and you visit Italy only in July-August. Even if this virus is no longer salient, people will carry with them a generic perception that you incur health risk if you visit a place during the “unsafe season.”

4. Ventilators will be mothballed. Instead, the treatment of choice for severe cases of the virus will be antiviral cocktails.

5. Student life at colleges this fall will be heavily regulated, to the point where the on-campus experience feels hardly more interesting than staying at home. Among students, deaths from the virus will be much rarer than deaths of despair (suicide will be higher than normal), but where virus deaths do occur the institutions will be forced to close temporarily, and in some instances permanently.

6. In the early fall, the media will be filled with stories, including many false alarms, about a second wave of the virus, particularly in Red states. A realistic picture will emerge only after the election.

7. Florida may do worse in the summer than in the winter, because summer is the season where Floridians spend all day inside.