COVID, Holidays And Inauguration
This is nothing more than spitballing on my part, but I'm really curious as to how the pandemic plays out over the next couple of months.
1. Right Now - Worldometers has total US deaths at 244,811 at this writing, with 10,448,712 total cases. Yesterday was the sixth straight day of new case totals of 100,000 or more. Weekday death totals have been at or above 1,000 since late October, with lower weekend totals an artifact of the reporting process.
Infection rates and hospital capacity vary from state to state and region to region, depending on the public health response, government restrictions and public acceptance of quarantine measures. So, for example, in Wisconsin, 6 of the 7 regions reported increases in COVID hospitalization rates ranging from 18% to 55% between October 21st and November 3rd (one region did not report). North Dakota hospitals are at 100% capacity, and hospitals have canceled all elective surgeries thanks to staffing shortfalls. Vermont, OTOH, reports 46 new cases, 12 hospitalized and 3 in ICU statewide.
Obviously, where you are will determine much as 2020 draws to a close.
2. Thanksgiving - Since the conventional Republican wisdom is that COVID ceased to exist on November 4th since it's just a conspiracy anyway, I have little difficulty imagining that the virus did precisely that as far as denizens of the Deniosphere are concerned. Many of its residents will act accordingly two weeks from now as they head over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. We'll crack 250,000 total dead nationally well before that, but that probably won't make much of an impression. 2,000 daily fatalities during the spring pandemic peak couldn't change their minds, so less than that won't make a ripple. What will matter will be what we're looking at about a month later.
3. Christmas - With hundreds of millions of individual person-to-person contacts likely nationally over the long Thanksgiving weekend, a spike seems very possible by two weeks later, not quite to mid-December. Could daily death tolls surpass the spring spike centered in the Northeast? Potentially, particularly since COVID denial seems heavily concentrated in the Plains, the northern Rockies and the Deep South - all areas that are, if not sparsely populated, then sparsely equipped with hospital capacity. Something of an argument against that would be the improved nursing and medical skills for dealing with COVID gained at great cost in cities like New York and Boston early this year, with those skills providing better patient outcomes. But with multiple states' medical systems already straining under the COVID load, access will be more important than therapies or therapeutics. And, of course, since it's Christmas, at least a chunk of MAGA Nation will go right on pretending, though that wont' be enough for a cratering Christmas shopping season.
4. Inauguration - 350,000 dead by the time Biden takes the oath of office? 400,000? It seems entirely possible. The only rock-bottom confidence I have is that President Pantload and his administration will do nothing - zero - to take effective action on the pandemic between now and 1/20/21. It is, after all, far more important to distract Orange Julius Caesar with binky, rattle and porn than it is to remind him of his "responsibilities".
Come January 21st, of course, COVID will suddenly be remembered as the howler monkeys of the right scream about Biden's negligence in letting the virus wreck the economy of 'Murka and kill so many of us over the last four years, a scream that will continue for the next four years.