Happy New Year 2021!

Can you imagine getting back to normal post-Covid life?

As we finish our first full week of 2021, there’s renewed hope that over the coming months we will find ourselves re-emerging from our Covid nightmare. We will never go back to our exact lives, but if these vaccines actually work, the reemergence seems within sight.

While the vaccines are slowly making their way to more people globally, I’m watching a number of online dashboards and indicators to show how much we are headed back to normal.

Check out the video below for my take on these measures, as well as links to the websites so you can track for yourself. You can also expect more on investment ramifications in the coming weeks.

The reemergence indicators to watch in 2021

Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker – percentage of US population vaccinated by state

Outside-the-Home Tracker – Harvard University, Brown University, and the Gates Foundation put together comprehensive, and they say anonymous, data tracking people’s behaviors outside the home. You can see in real time the decrease of time spent doing various activities by location, as glandular as county and by activity.

OpenTable’s State of the Restaurant Industry page offers a look of real time restaurant reservations compared to prior year data. (You can search globally or by country.)

College Crisis Initiative Reopening Dashboard (most recent semester and four-year college data appear on the left-hand side of the dashboard)

TSA Checkpoint Data – travel numbers compared to prior year

The best indicators of them all? Mask-less smiles and hugs from loved ones!