Our spring break trip was canceled and I'm hoping we get to take our make-up trip in August. I feel pretty good about the parks being open with a mostly normal experience by then, but it's really hard to guess at this point. One thing that keeps popping into my mind as I read through these boards about Disney not opening until there is a vaccine, not until 2021, etc. is that the whole point of the social distancing as we have heard many times is to "flatten the curve". In epidemiology, the purpose of flattening a curve is to spread the
rate of infection out over a greater period of time. The area under the curve is the same, meaning the number of actual cases of infection is expected to be the same, just over a longer period of time so as to not overwhelm the hospitals. Then, hospital staff would hopefully not have to make the life and death decisions we have seen taking place in Italy, of deciding who gets a ventilator and who doesn't. So, they are still expecting the same number of individuals to ultimately get this virus. The goal was to just prevent this from happening in our hospitals. This virus is something that we will have to learn to live with, even when/if there is an effective vaccine. There will be those who will refuse to be vaccinated, as well as those who still get it due to the vaccine not being 100% effective. As sad as it is, people will still die from COVID-19, as they still die from the flu, and other respiratory viruses. I have seen young, healthy patients without any underlying medical conditions get the common cold and end up in respiratory failure and die. The idea of shutting everything down for an extended time (not just Disney) to me sounds ridiculous. And this is coming from someone who works in a large hospital with critical care patients. I have always been extra paranoid about my children touching things and washing their hands because I know what can happen to even the healthiest of kids. So yes, we need to take precautions, especially with those who are at highest risk (which should have been done pre-COVID-19 anyway), but life has to get back to some semblance of normal soon.
As I said, I'm optimistic about our August trip to Disney, but really don't know much about how long it takes to get the parks back open after closure. If it's canceled, then I will be sad, but hopefully
Disneyland will be there next year (that's our current plan). And I'll spend August at the beach!