We have a Turk-Palau trip for end of November-December. Not that confident that it will happen. Interesting conversation with my Dr. this morning...saw him on another matter. He pointed out that we were unable to create a strong vaccine for SARS or MERS and doubts we will for Covid19 because coronavirus is much different from the flu in its makeup and mutation ability. His best hope is that we work like mad to create medications that can ease the patient from a likely mortality to just being quite sick. His belief is that if the world (and our country) figures out how to ventilate seriously sick people in vast numbers, we will adjust and learn to live with this virus and its return engagements by cutting down mortality rates to a level that is awful but not horrendous. He was quite sad that our leadership spend all of February and even the first week of March pretending this was not any different that the seasonal flu. If we had ramped up ventilator production and research on treatment in February, we'd be in much better shape. I know, hindsight is 20/20, but other friends who are doctors have been saying the same thing since mid-February.
Back to the question, "When will we return to "normalcy"? We might have to redefine that and move forward with all aspects of life after this initial surge by being in a position to not have people who are very sick die because we don't have enough medical supplies. There will be a mortality rate that we wish didn't exist but we will have saved those that could recover with treatment.
Stay safe and sane to all of you in our wonderful dive community.
Rob