During the April 24 status conference, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz referenced a line from Scottish Poet Robert Burns: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” No truer sentence could be said in 2020. The only thing certain this year has been uncertainty.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s No Sail Order will either expire or be extended on Sept. 30. A coronavirus vaccine is still a hypothetical today, though advances in candidate vaccines have been made globally. Once a vaccine is available, there will be additional wait time depending on its efficacy and the logistics of delivering hundreds of millions of doses.

Aly McDevitt is Data & Research Journalist at Compliance Week. She has a background in education and college consulting. Prior to teaching, she was an editor/author at Thomson Reuters, where she reported...