I'm only going to say this once.
It's no coincidence that COVID cases have plummeted. We've been in hell for the past three months because people did not heed recommendations and got together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc. Large indoor gatherings in enclosed areas are ripe for transmission for this thing, especially if people aren't doing anything to prevent the spread of respiratory droplets. Think that the whole extended family of 20 to 25 people gathering at Grandma and Grandpa's 1500 square foot home for Thanksgiving and Christmas wearing no masks without a prayer of social distancing has a prayer of getting away from it even if only one person is sick? No way Jose. Then all those newly infected people go to work the next Monday and the following week go out to dinner somewhere, and everyone else they come across at those places gets sick. It's not rocket science.
Massive indoor gatherings with no ventilation=no bueno for COVID cases. If people stop gathering in large numbers and stay home except for doing the necessities, transmission and replication of the virus is going to slow down. If transmission and replication slow down, there's less of a likelihood of having to worry about new mutations like we're already seeing. The good news is that vaccines that are out now help to reduce the intensity of the illness even if someone vaccinated is exposed to a new mutation. Getting vaccinated can be the literal difference between life and death. It will make a potentially severe and deadly infection into a much more mild one because vaccinations bolster the immune response towards a specific microbe.
Another piece of good news is that cases are decreasing and that does not have anything remotely to do with vaccinations, IMO. Once more people are vaccinated and vaccines become more widely available, we're really going to be able to stomp this thing on the throat. This will only happen if people roll up their sleeves though.
As of last week, I've gone back to playing in person after almost 4 months off. When the pandemic started, the last live game I played in was March 7, and the last game I hosted was March 1. I started hosting again July 5 with mandatory face masks, no food at the table, hand sanitizer compulsory before sitting back down at the table, etc. and continued to host once or twice a month again until November 7, after which we stopped again after cases started to climb again. My regular group consists of guys in their 20's and 30's, and while we ourselves aren't generally high risk, most of us work pretty high risk for exposure jobs. I'm a nurse practitioner, two of the other guys work at schools, another is a lawyer that's gone back to the office to work, and while the other regular doesn't have a particularly high exposure job (he's a one man show mechanic), he takes care of his elderly parents. One of the other guys has Crohn's Disease and is on Humira and at a pretty high risk for severe illness. He hasn't been back at all since before the pandemic started but everyone else has.
That said, between cases going down (with R transmission numbers below 1 and a test positivity rate of 10%) and being fully vaccinated myself, I put out a feeler to the guys to start hosting again with the same precautions as last summer. I'm still going to require face masks and common sense. It's 50/50 right now on whether there's a game next week. Three (including me) have said they're 100% coming, three others are on the fence, and only the Crohn's guy is still holding out because he hasn't gotten his vaccine yet. If I can get just one of the 50/50 guys to come, I'll have a game. I'll play with 4. I'd just make it a dealer's choice cash game instead of a tournament or regular NLHE/PLO cash game.
Get vaccinated!