> if there weren't vaccines we would not be completely screwed? Probably not. The infection and death rates were plummeting even before general availability of

> if there weren't vaccines we would not be completely screwed? Probably not. The infection and death rates were plummeting even before general availability of the vaccine. States that locked down super hard, and states that barely locked down at all, have essentially the same infection/death rates as well. The US is a big country, with a lot of people. However, the average health of an individual in the US is far better than the East Asia area, and much of the world. That's before we even consider the vast young population in the US which mostly are asymptomatic infectees... The number of people who have been infected already and cannot become infected again with the same variant is likely massive in the US, making it quite possible the US would have weathered even the latest variants due to a lack of infectible people (ie. "herd immunity").