[M T]

They should postpone the season until the spring.  Things are likely to be much better by then.

I see little basis for that optimistic dream.  For sure, college students won't be vaccinated.  The fans won't be vaccinated. 

The first 20M vaccines (originally claimed for December) won't be in the states' hands until mid January.  The CDC estimates 24M in group 1A.  I'm very certain their estimate for their current recommendation of 1B as being 49M will be under-estimated by 10 or 20M as more people are treated as if they are frontline essential workers (such as Dr. Fauci).   But even with the CDC's estimate of 69M people in 1A + 1B, OWS wasn't estimating that many vaccines available to ship until mid-February for first doses, mid-March for 2nd doses.   Optimistically, you might expect those to be administered in 2 weeks, putting them into arms of 75+ by early April.  

For many schools, end of classes will be early May. (Stanford's last day is in June)

The latest word (Dec. 24) was that OWS expect to allocate the rest of the claimed 20M on Dec. 30, for the states to ask for shipments a week later.  

If we're having trouble getting the first 9M doses into arms, what's going to happen in March when 100M shots (50M second & 50M first) may be given.   I don't think we'll be very efficient at that.  (For comparison, in 2019-2020 170M flu shots were given in the entire season.)

75+ represent 59% of the deaths and 6.7% of the cases.  If all cases & deaths of 75+ stop in late March, then we'll be at 1000 deaths/day in the US and 205K cases/day, based on current levels.  There will also be decrease due to vaccinating the 50M non-older people but it is unclear what that will be.  Reducing the remaining cases by 17% (~ 50/(330-30)), that will bring deaths down to 830 per day and cases down to 170K new cases per day.

[M T]

They should postpone the season until the spring.  Things are likely to be much better by then.

I see little basis for that optimistic dream.  For sure, college students won't be vaccinated.  The fans won't be vaccinated. 

The first 20M vaccines (originally claimed for December) won't be in the states' hands until mid January.  The CDC estimates 24M in group 1A.  I'm very certain their estimate for their current recommendation of 1B as being 49M will be under-estimated by 10 or 20M as more people are treated as if they are frontline essential workers (such as Dr. Fauci).   But even with the CDC's estimate of 69M people in 1A + 1B, OWS wasn't estimating that many vaccines available to ship until mid-February for first doses, mid-March for 2nd doses.   Optimistically, you might expect those to be administered in 2 weeks, putting them into arms of 75+ by early April.  

For many schools, end of classes will be early May. (Stanford's last day is in June)

The latest word (Dec. 24) was that OWS expect to allocate the rest of the claimed 20M on Dec. 30, for the states to ask for shipments a week later.  

If we're having trouble getting the first 9M doses into arms, what's going to happen in March when 100M shots (50M second & 50M first) may be given.   I don't think we'll be very efficient at that.  (For comparison, in 2019-2020 170M flu shots were given in the entire season.)

75+ represent 59% of the deaths and 6.7% of the cases.  If all cases & deaths of 75+ stop in late March, then we'll be at 1000 deaths/day in the US and 205K cases/day, based on current levels.  There will also be decrease due to vaccinating the 50M non-older people but it is unclear what that will be.  Reducing the remaining cases by 17% (~ 50/(330-30)), that will bring deaths down to 830 per day and cases down to 170K new cases per day.