You may have noticed a market rally yesterday based on "vaccine news." The below is it. Way way way too early if you ask me. For anyone who's taken a course in statistics, sample size is something that is important to keep in mind - 45 people is *not* a significant number here. Success in the next step they mention (600-person trial) would be big news, though.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/moderna-reports-positive-data-on-early-stage-coronavirus-vaccine-trial.html
In other news, my state has begun its first tentative steps towards reopening. As anticipated, they basically mirrored New York's (which is our "coalition partner") - construction and manufacturing can begin immediately, and churches/mosques/temples can reopen at greatly reduced capacity. I am pretty sure almost all manufacturing counted as "essential" before so I'm not sure what actually changes here. It also seems like each phase of our reopening is set to take at least three weeks, so we're looking at end of July at the earliest for Massachusetts to be open. I haven't seen news on Pennsylvania but I'd imagine they're in line with us. Most of our neighbors seem to be opening various sectors of their economy in the next week or so.
On the plus side, Massachusetts is planning to build out testing capacity to 45,000 tests per day. That's much higher than most states (and countries) on a per-capita basis, but is obviously not universal testing (it would take ~156 days for every person to be tested once at that rate). That's still worrying, but apparently tests are being developed that are based on cheek swabs (less intrusive/quicker) that may help further increase the rate. Until there is a vaccine or real treatment, expect life to be shitty for a long while.