most of north america hasn't peaked yet. it's starting to pick up in mexico now, but remember that they have that low life expectancy card to play, and much lower levels of obesity as well. in the end, you should probably expect the mortality rate in mexico to actually be quite a bit lower for that reason. they're seeing it ramp up there now, though...
(actually, strangely, mexico is now the most obese country in the world. i should have checked that before posting; i thought it was obvious. but, no - they've recently even passed the united states as most obese country, flat out.
so, it could actually be relatively bad there, then, and you might see a mortality curve that it's actually skewed a little younger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Mexico)
but, is a second wave inevitable?
it depends on if it substantively mutates.
that's what these historical waves are - different mutations.
so, it's not inevitable, no, and it really has little to do with government, except in the sense of the importance of actually tracking the thing. the only thing the government can really do to stop a second wave is to overtest as much as possible, and be ready to do extremely aggressive contact tracing if it finds a more vicious mutation.
but, if the thing stays relatively stable, or if we've already seen the most substantive mutations, then a second wave isn't likely at all.
the thing you really need to be worried about is how flu-like it really is, and the little bit of evidence i've seen suggests that it is recombining, and that this might make vaccines fleeting - they may need to be updated quite frequently. in that case, you're going to be looking at waves pretty much every year, and they're no longer waves but seasons. that's probably the most likely outcome, in the long run.
see, you think that we're here:
and you're worried about this coming up, in the future:
...but we're actually only here.
....meaning we have to get to vitalogy before this starts to slow down, still.
sorry.
