When will the United States reach herd immunity to COVID-19? Experts now say it might not — but that doesn't mean the virus has to remain a "society disrupter."

That's according to a new report in The New York Times, which says there is now a "widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts" that in the U.S., the "herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever."

The report explains that while experts once thought the U.S. may be able to reach this threshold when 60 to 70 percent of the population had immunity to COVID-19, it's now believed reaching 80 percent or more may actually be required due to the spread of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant. This level may be out of reach, experts say, in part due to vaccine hesitancy.

These experts think that COVID-19 may continue circulating in the United States for years, the Times reports, but that vaccines can help turn it into a "manageable threat" that could be "seasonal, like the flu, and affect mostly the young and healthy."

"The virus is unlikely to go away," Emory University evolutionary biologist Rustom Antia told the Times. "But we want to do all we can to check that it's likely to become a mild infection."

Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch also explained to the Times that by protecting those most at risk, COVID-19 can be turned "from a society disrupter to a regular infectious disease," while evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom said that a "very sensible target" would be getting "to a point where we have just really sporadic little flare-ups."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, acknowledged to the Times there's been a change in thinking on this among experts but noted that putting aside the "mystical level of herd immunity," if "you vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down." Read more at The New York Times. Brendan Morrow

The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech could become the first in the United States to receive full FDA approval.

The companies announced Friday they have initiated an application seeking full approval of the vaccine for people 16 and over from the Food and Drug Administration, CNN reports. The vaccine is now being administered under an emergency use authorization, a "mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of" vaccines "during public health emergencies," per the FDA.

Receiving full FDA approval requires six months of safety and efficacy data, as opposed the two months required for the emergency use authorization, according to NBC News. CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta stressed Friday this isn't to suggest that data didn't already show the vaccine to be safe and effective or that the process to get the emergency authorization wasn't rigorous, but the "bar of data that you now have to show" to get full approval is even higher, he said on New Day.

With that in mind, experts have said full FDA approval could help reduce vaccine hesitancy and further demonstrate that the vaccines are safe. Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote in The Washington Post that "many people who are lower risk" have expressed uncertainty over whether the "benefits justify taking a medication that has not received the full and traditional FDA stamp of approval." So full approval might provide a "boost of confidence to people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated," Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha said.

If the vaccine is fully approved, Pfizer can also start marketing and distributing it. Another key difference, CNN writes, is that full approval could "have an impact on vaccine mandates," as "some organizations say they expect to require the vaccine, but have opted not to while it's authorized and not yet fully approved." ABC News reports it's likely to take "several months" for the FDA to make a decision. Brendan Morrow

India set another global COVID-19 record Friday, reporting 414,188 new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours plus 3,915 new deaths. Both numbers are believed to be significant undercounts. With daily deaths remaining above 3,800 for the past 10 days and hospitals running out of beds, oxygen, and other critical supplies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing increasing pressure to put the country back under lockdown for 2-4 weeks or launch some other coordinated central response to the pandemic.

An earlier strict lockdown is credited with India's success, until March, in containing the coronavirus outbreaks, but it took a terrible economic toll on India and especially its poorest citizens. Modi so far has left it up to India's 28 states to set their own mitigation measures, and fewer than a dozen have instituted some lesser restrictions.

India isn't alone in battling new variant-driven waves of COVID-19, and Egypt, Turkey, and other countries are "trying to ensure they aren't hit by an India-style disaster," The Associated Press reports. "They face many of the same risks, including large populations that have shirked restrictions and fragile health systems shaken under the strain." In wealthier nations, aggressive vaccination campaigns have sent cases and deaths on downward trajectories.

Worldwide, however, there have been more COVID-19 cases reported over the past two weeks than in the first six months of the pandemic, World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom said. India and Brazil account for a large share of those numbers, "but there are many other countries all over the world that face a very fragile situation," he added. "What is happening in India and Brazil could happen elsewhere unless we all take these public health precautions." Peter Weber

The Federal Election Commission announced Thursday that it will not investigate possible campaign finance violations by former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, tied to a $130,000 hush payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen had paid Daniels right before the election to keep her from disclosing an extramarital affair she says she had with Trump.

The payment was not reported on Trump's campaign filings. Cohen, who said he paid off Daniels and another woman on Trump's behalf and on his orders, was jailed in 2018 for violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and lying to Congress.

The FEC deadlocked over investigating Trump in a closed-door meeting in February, with two Republican commissioners voting to drop the issue, two Democratic commissioners voting to push forward, one Republican commissioner recusing himself, and the sixth commissioner, an independent, absent. The FEC's nonpartisan general counsel's office had advised investigating Trump, reporting in December it found "reason to believe" his campaign had "knowingly and willfully" violated campaign finance laws.

The two voting GOP commissioners, Trey Trainor and Sean Cooksey, explained in a letter that they "voted to dismiss these matters as an exercise of our prosecutorial discretion," arguing that "the public record is complete" due to Cohen's punishment and "pursuing these matters further was not the best use of agency resources."

The two Democratic commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Chairwoman Shana Broussard, disagreed, noting that agency staff had recommended an investigation. "To conclude that a payment, made 13 days before Election Day to hush up a suddenly newsworthy 10-year-old story, was not campaign-related, without so much as conducting an investigation, defies reality," they wrote.

Cohen told The New York Times in a statement that "the hush money payment was done at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump," adding: "Like me, Trump should have been found guilty. How the FEC committee could rule any other way is confounding." Peter Weber

"The CDC just announced that they expect to see a sharp decline in COVID cases in the U.S. by July," Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday's Tonight Show. "So get ready for Etsy's newest item, bikinis made from recycled masks."

Meanwhile in Washington, "House Republicans want to kick Liz Cheney off of their leadership team because she refuses to side with Trump and say the election was stolen," Fallon said. "You could tell Republicans also upset Dick Cheney, because they were like, 'We should totally ditch Liz, she's such a....'" — and here he made a Darth Vader joke.

"I've got to give props to Liz Cheney for risking her political career to stand up for what she believes in," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. But "loyalty to Trump is a defining principle of the GOP right now, and if she doesn't agree with that, it doesn't make much sense for her to be one of the party's leaders." Most Republicans say they believe President Biden did steal the election, "and even now, there are still efforts going on to overturn the results in close states, including a big one in Arizona," he said. "And if you're wondering how a bunch of conspiracy nuts are going to turn a Biden win into a Trump win, the answer is, in the craziest way possible."

"The GOP is now so committed to the deranged lie that Trump actually won the election," they're punishing Liz Cheney "simply for living in reality," Late Night's Seth Meyers sighed Wednesday night. "You think I want to side with Liz Cheney? For one thing, she's never met a war she didn't support, and I'm afraid that if I'm too nice to her, her dad will invite me hunting and shoot me in the face. But this isn't about Liz Cheney.... it's about why she's being punished."

Jimmy Kimmel skipped Liz Cheney for Caitlyn Jenner, who sat down with Sean Hannity to discuss her gubernatorial bid. "This is how well Caitlyn Jenner understands the plight of everyday Californians here in L.A.," he said on Kimmel Live. "She mentions this airplane she flies, multiple times. They had this town hall in her own airplane hangar," the setting for an anecdote about rich friends fleeing in private jets to avoid seeing homeless people. "Is it transphobic to call a trans person an ignorant a-hole?" he pondered. Peter Weber

Zach Vraa turned his quarantine hobby of making ice cream into an actual business, with his one-of-a-kind creations regularly selling out in just one minute.

Vraa, 29, is the founder of A to Z Creamery in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. At the beginning of the pandemic, he was working in sales; while at home, he started using the ice cream machine his mom bought for his birthday. He came up with different flavor combinations, like Lucky Charms with black cherry frosting, and posted photos of his concoctions online. People asked if they could buy his ice cream, and Vraa started selling a few pints of each flavor. The demand was there: for every 10 pints he had available, Vraa received 100 messages from customers wanting the ice cream.

"That's when I kind of figured out, 'Wow, I need to start doing this full scale in a full commercial kitchen,'" Vraa told KARE 11. Now, he can make 300 pints a week, with the base and toppings all made from scratch. No flavor is too out there — Vraa has made an Everything Bagel ice cream, topped with a garlic cream cheese swirl — and none are ever repeated.

Vraa puts up one flavor for sale every week, and they typically sell out in a minute. The lucky people able to purchase a pint come down to the creamery to pick up their orders, and Vraa told KARE 11 that "every time I open the door and see the line wrapping around the corner, it's a feeling that never gets old." Catherine Garcia

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is almost certainly going to be ousted as No. 3 House Republican next week, even though she voted with former President Donald Trump more often (93 percent) than her likely replacement, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) — as Stefanik's conservative critics point out. While Stefanik has morphed from Trump skeptic to enthusiastic booster, Cheney has transformed from one of those "hold-their-noses-and-deal-with-him" establishment Republicans into, finally, Sen. John McCain's political "heir," Susan B. Glasser writes in The New Yorker.

After Trump tried to co-opt "the Big Lie" this week to refer to his false claims that he won the 2020 election, Cheney shot back that "the 2020 presidential election was not stolen," and "anyone who claims it was is spreading the big lie." Predictably, House Republicans turned against Cheney and sided with Trump, who "has learned the lesson of previous demagogues: the bigger and more flagrant the untruth, the better to prove the fealty of his party," Glasser writes.

"It's all got to do with fealty to Trump and the Big Lie and the fact that Liz is a living reproach to all these cowards," Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney's, told The New Yorker. Glasser continues:

Cheney's rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making. Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in The Washington Post by all 10 living former defense secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump's efforts to politicize the military. The congresswoman not only recruited her father but personally asked others, including Trump's first Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, to participate. ... The Post op-ed appeared on Jan. 3, just three days before the insurrection at the Capitol. [Susan Glasser, The New Yorker]

More quietly, Cheney and her husband circulated a 21-page memo among House Republicans on Jan. 3, debunking Trump's false election fraud claims and warning her colleagues about the "dangerous precedent" of voting to overturn the election, Glasser reports. Not even Cheney allies expect her to win this last stand, but "if Trump does manage to reinvent 'the Big Lie' in service of his own corrupt ends, Cheney will at least have forced members of her party into admitting, on the record, that they are making a choice between truth and Trump's untruth — and choosing the latter." Read the entire article at The New Yorker. Peter Weber