Here are some definitions of "normal" I came up with for the US.

Please offer predictions. There's going to be high variance in predictions from person to person - that's the whole point of this thread. Don't **** on someone's predictions without offering one yourself.

And there's obviously some dependencies here. If you're wrong about N3, you're likely wrong about N3-N6.

"Version 1" definitions (in case we revise this):

N1: All but maybe a few states lift stay-at-home orders. Shops and restaurants reopen.

N2: Remote workers return to the office.

N3: Large group events reopen, e.g. amusement parks, conferences, live sports.

N4: Schools and universities reopen.

N5: Employment returns to pre-shutdown levels.

N6: S&P back to ATH

Version 1

N1: May with provisions, e.g. tables are distantly placed, perhaps temperature checks.
N2: June
N3: Aug
N4: Aug
N5: Spring 2021?
N6: Spring 2021?

N1:June
N2:June
N3:Summer 2021
N4: primary schools:June. Uni:Sep
N5:winter 2021
N5: winter 2022

Grimreaper, are you assuming there won't be a second wave with your timelines? If so, why do you assume that?

Two most likely scenarios in my eyes:

1)

N1 - Very late May/June
N2 - Possibly Late June/July

~July 2nd wave and we go back to N0/N1 as we realize we pushed it way too far too fast.

2)

N1 - 2nd half May/early June

~Late May/June we go back to N0/N1 as this backfires and don't yet have trace and tracking + protocols in place to pull this off.

N3 I feel is <2% chance this year. Let's see N1 be successful before I even look past that. By the way, I do expect US to potentially open up this "stay at home" order sometime in late May or early June. However, I think when they do that, the most likely scenario is to have to go back to "stay at home" 80% of the time. OP, your post basically implies once you progress from N1->N2 there is no backtracking basically. I am saying once/if we try to do N2, the most likely next step is N1 and definitely not N3. The only way this logically ends is through two ways: 1) Herd immunity or 2) vaccine.

I put vaccine happening this year at <3%. I put us getting full herd immunity this year at <3%. I basically see us toggling between N0/N1, with maybe some N2 in ~6+ months down the road until we eventually get to a vaccine, which if I had to guess today is somewhere between 14-20 months down the road (this is going off what I've read to date). I cannot see how we get past N2 comfortably without 1) or 2). And if we somehow can pull off N2, it will be a watered down version that is nowhere near the productivity of what you would think.

For why I'm perhaps more bearish than most on this. One podcast I put a lot of weight into is Peter Attia - The drive (host and name of podcast) with guest Michael Osterholm. I feel this podcast/guest specifically is well worth a listen for anyone who wants what I think is a likely baseline of reality/how things are unfolding.

N1: June 1 - But with social distancing plans in place. Longer spacing in checkout lines. Sit-down restaurants open, but tables spaced out. This is much easier in flyover/suburbia since the buildings are larger. Some restaurants will never re-open.

N2: June 1 - But some companies may allow their employees to work from home indefinitely. Interestingly I've found that many of my employees are more productive than before (because they know they are actively being monitored on productivity -- I mean they always were being monitored, but now they "feel" it.)

N3: July 4 - Trump going to make a big deal out of this. Throw out the first pitch at some baseball game, the first game with fans. I think baseball will start back up in June but without fans.

N4: Fall Semester 2020.

N5: June 2023

N6: July 2021


FYI: Laughable if you think we're going to shut down the economy for 12+ months. We will be seeing a lot of homemade masks out in the public tho. Maybe mandatory to go to an event, etc. Maybe handing them out for free at entrances to public places.

Why is shutting down the economy that long laughable? because you want your shitty business to go back to normal? we need to be careful based on how contagious this is.

If they attempt N3 before we have a vaccine, we will be right back where we are now. Unfortunately, we are stupid enough, selfish enough, and think only in the short term, and have a leader who has mastered those traits, so I'm sure they will try it too early. I'm sure Casinos and theme parks will be fighting in court to open their doors at some point.

Well I'm a pharmacist so my business is fine.

But it's laughable because others' will be begin to riot when their livelihood's are being taken from them because of this shutdown.

Maybe you're not American so you don't understand.

Back to normal in about 20 years. I'm thinking like 1929-1949 is how long it took for society to go back to a more peaceful normal. There won't be wars between major world powers because of nukes, instead we will have the first global civil war between the rich and the poor.

For anyone who thinks restaurants are going to reopen next month,

Are you and a group of 6-8 of your friends going to be there for the grand reopening? Are you going to start dining out again regularly, only a few weeks after we're projected to have 200k people die?

Having restaurants open with restrictions such as less diners allowed at any given time isn't feasible. Most restaurants are barely profitable during the good times. If you limit the amount of customers, and combine that with a large % of the population being scared enough not to go out, restaurants will be closing back down in a matter of weeks.

If you add in the fact that most everyone has stockpiled what food they can afford, and everyone is going to be flat broke next month, even if restaurants are allowed to reopen they're going to be completely empty.

I am american and I am an essential employee on front lines(not in medicine). I know people are greedy. Invite your employees back and make them sick when they could all work from home.

Nukes will be obsolete in 15-20 years. Robotics + AI + hypersonics + increasingly sophisticated global surveillance means nukes will be a thing of the past, unable to get past defenses. The largest economy with the most advanced tech can take over the world at will in 20 years.

As for predictions (not sure what the N is about?):

N1 Stay at home: Lifted April and May
N1 Restaurants: May, but slower in some states, as late as November
N2 Workers return: Same as stay at home, April and May
N3 Large group events: June to July, maybe longer
N4 Schools/Unis: August (after summer break)
N5 Employment pre-shutdown: 2027
N6 S&P back to ATH : 2027 with the caveat that the fed doesn't go wild with injection/inflation.

Normal won't be normal either. Normal levels of activity won't be seen for years across all industries. 2027 estimates for N5 & N6 are based on the normal recession cycle for unemployment and new ATH - it's about 7 years from peak to next new ATH. This is quite likely to be a major recession.

Former Goldman Sachs fund manager Raoul Pal has said this will be the largest insolvency event in world history - and he's correct, of course. He says:

And he's correct. I think people are still completely delusional that things will get back to normal soon. This delusion has happened in every big recession - they were delusional in 1929, in 2000, in 2008. There was a lot more correction after the initial shock. We haven't bottomed in the markets until the permabulls like grimReaper - who thought this virus would be nothing and are now bullish - get out denial and start to despair. That takes a while.

So sporting events are a "go" for September and October? Normal crowds, or will they look different?

I am in the camp that this virus hasn't been as deadly as people once thought it was. If that is true, then things will go back to normal much more quickly.

Obviously the qualifier is that I could be completely wrong, and we are in for a year or two of people being terrified to go outside, and that brings on a decade of economic misery that makes the Great Depression look like a mild inconvenience.

A lot depends on testing to see how many people actually have or had this virus and how many people died/got seriously sick.

Who do you believe the infection fatality rate is, jsb?
Everything depends on how competently this is managed and how effective the initial lockdown is. Wuhan is slowly going back to normal after two months, so it's doable.

If we come out in May with not many cases left and blanket testing up and running + 300 million masks, semi normal life can resume.

The Spanish Influenza had a mortality rate of 2-3 percent, The flu has a mortality rate of .1 percent. H1N1 was .02 percent.

My best guess (which again, is just a guess) is that the final number for this will be about .5 percent, so deadlier than the flu but less deadly than the 2018-19 pandemic by a large margin.

That number seems to support the increase in deaths/overwhelming of hospitals that we have seen in places with outbreaks, while explaining why more people aren't dead from this, which I would have expected by now.

I am not a believer that social distancing has done a lot to avoid the spread of the virus. To me, it was more of a case of closing the barn door after the horses ran away, or in this case locking all the infected horses into the barn together to prevent them from getting infected. But again, that depends a lot on how widespread this disease was before those measures went into place, which we won't know until testing gets ramped up.

Every country is incentivized to classify fringe cases as non-corona deaths. I think the death rate has to be higher than .5% unless the percentage of
asymptomatic cases is much higher than we realize.

Yes, because of precautions.

I have looked at this chart a hundred times, and I am still not exactly sure what it tells me.

http://www.euromomo.eu/

My best guess is that, if this virus were as deadly as the Spanish Flu, then there would be a much higher spike in total deaths. But as far as I can tell, the spike from the coronavirus is, so far, much lower than other periods over the last four years.

Maybe there is a huge spike coming in this chart from this virus, but I don't see it happening as the number of deaths in Europe have seemed to leveled off. Perhaps that is from social distancing, but that won't be known until a lot more tests have been conducted to see how widespread this actually is.

I am completely open to the fact that I could be completely wrong about this, and I also know that it is a pretty likely outcome based on the fact that my view is definitely outside of the scientific norm. But my gut just keeps telling me that this wasn't as serious as many scientists first thought, and so I am holding the hill for now, though I am certainly not willing to die on it, or even go outside right now for that matter.

N1: All but maybe a few states lift stay-at-home orders. Shops and restaurants reopen.

Mid May - Late June. Limited capacity, of course


N2: Remote workers return to the office.

Partial and staggered shifts probably begin June


N3: Large group events reopen, e.g. amusement parks, conferences, live sports.

Baby steps begin in August


N4: Schools and universities reopen.

Late August


N5: Employment returns to pre-shutdown levels.

Maybe never


N6: S&P back to ATH

2026

We are kind of in an odd spot right now. If fewer people die, people can say its because of the precautions that were put in place. But if it wasn't as dangerous as people first thought, then the precautions weren't the primary reason more people didn't get seriously sick/die.

We just don't know right now.

But we will. Once the serologic tests become widely available, scientists will be able to quickly get a handle on how deadly this virus was.

He also stated on March 19: "I can not express how bullish I am on bitcoin", this was after stating on March 18 on twitter "The Dollar and Bitcoin is all I got right now. Im adding to bitcoin and Im max long dollars."

Are you also backing him on his response to this huge insolvency event and thereby changing your views on bitcoin?

We know right now.
Also, keep in mind that the lockdowns lower all kinds of risky behaviour leading to deaths.

i like that expression "societal change"....

and i think we will see it after this....

i live where they are tons of chinese immigrants and dual chinese/canadian residents.... a small number wore masks before this virus..... do i now want to go to shopping mall where so many will wear masks? it's depressing and unsightly. and i mean, lots will wear masks after this episode ends.

do shopping addicts pick up new better habits with this episode? or is it back to the mall when this is all over?

as per predictions, saying "may" is very inexact.