In the past month, America has seen Covid-19 cases double to 4 million. In short, we’re not flattening the curve. The curve is flattening us. That’s why so many of us are putting a lot of hope and faith in a vaccine. While most experts agree that a vaccine is possible and that it could be ready in a matter of several months, there’s still a long way to go before we’ll see normality without a telescope. The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang with a very interesting Vaccine Reality Check. “We may have to endure more months under the threat of the coronavirus than we have already survived. Without the measures that have beat back the virus in much of Europe and Asia, there will continue to be more outbreaks, more school closings, more loneliness, more deaths ahead. A vaccine, when it is available, will only mark the beginning of a long, slow ramp down. And how long that ramp down takes will depend on the efficacy of a vaccine, the success in delivering hundreds of millions of doses, and the willingness of people to get it at all.” (In other words, we don’t just need a vaccine. We need the government to be remarkably efficient and citizens to behave rationally. Uh oh.)

+ It won’t help that everything has been politicized, even the CDC. Their school reopening plan (coming just weeks before schools were scheduled to open, and long after most of them had enacted plans of their own) is short on new health straregies, and long on politics. NYT: A new CDC statement on schools calls for reopening and downplays the potential health risks.

+ Covid-19 doesn’t care about politics, false promises, or grand plans. Buzzfeed: Trump just canceled his GOP convention in Jacksonville. (Florida will be short one Florida Man.)