Predicting the state of Covid and government regulation and how they'll affect the AT this year is challenging, but there are promising trends, apart even from the vaccine.
Transmission rates suddenly began dropping in most states about a few weeks ago. See:
Rt: Effective Reproduction Number. As of today, 37 states are below the critical 1.0 threshhold, which is up from about 5 a few weeks ago. The numbers are the most encouraging I've seen since last summer. The key IHME model (
COVID-19 (healthdata.org) shows the rate of infection peaking in the US right now and just at the threshold of a rather steep decline. Mortality, which lags by a few weeks, is tapering off and projected to begin a sharp decline by the end of the month.
It is possible the vaccine will only add to this good news; it is also possible that new strains or other new factors will affect the trends, positively or negatively, so that there are no certainties.
Finally, it remains to be seen how the new administration perceives everything - whether there's a move for enhanced lockdowns or whether an improving environment (assuming models and trends are accurate) allows easing at some not-too-distant point in the future.
Overall, the trends look promising for a much less worrisome situation by March or April. I'm pretty optimistic about my planned section hike in late April.