> I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks.
All sources I've seen before say something different about those two things (i.e. supposedly effective R will maybe go a bit down in summer but in all likelihood not by much; and herd immunity is in most (or all) places still very far away), but I'm not following the science very close so I might very well be wrong. I'd be very grateful if you could dig up those references!
There isn't much completed research about the seasonality of COVID-19 itself (understandably), the "cliff" is mostly an educated guess based on the strong seasonal pattern we see with every other respiratory virus. Here are a couple papers:
All sources I've seen before say something different about those two things (i.e. supposedly effective R will maybe go a bit down in summer but in all likelihood not by much; and herd immunity is in most (or all) places still very far away), but I'm not following the science very close so I might very well be wrong. I'd be very grateful if you could dig up those references!