- the pandemic would just burn itself out, so they could point and say "See? We went ahead with business-as-usual, keeping gubmint from stepping in and fucking it up, and everything's just peachy now - coulda been a lot worse, y'know"
- the pain caused by all that shittiness would be sufficient to make us more willing to accept the crumbs they've been offering. ie: more willing to submit to plutocratic rule.
Of course it hasn't worked out for them (yet), partly because in spite of their best efforts, even Stoopid Americans haven't been stoopid enough for long enough to let that shit play out. We do wise up on occasion.
Also, in spite of the GOP's best efforts, we're making some progress towards getting the monster beat down enough that the threat is beginning to wane, and we should be able to start concentrating more directly on beating back the Daddy State - the guys who're always pimping a crisis du jour in order to gain and consolidate power.
WaPo: (freebie, I think)
The delta wave is subsiding but deaths are still high
The summer coronavirus surge is waning in Southern states where the infectious delta variant hit hard.
In the past week, newly reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths fell nationwide. Yet deaths are still hovering around 1,500 daily – levels last seen on the back end of the winter surge, before vaccines were widely available.
What the fall and winter will bring is an open question. No one knows for sure — a reality public health experts and even Biden administration officials acknowledge publicly and privately.
“We’re kind of in a moment of uncertainty. … Over the next three to six weeks, I think we’re going to have a sense of where this is going,” said David Rubin, head of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“I think we’ve all been here before, and we’ve all been humbled in the past,” a senior Biden official said.
What we know
On July Fourth, Biden said the country was “closer than ever” to becoming independent from the virus. Shortly after, the highly contagious delta variant began sweeping through states like Missouri, Arkansas and Florida.
Now, some epidemiologists say it appears the virus has largely reached the susceptible hosts in those areas and run out of fuel.
Not out of the woods:
Experts closely monitoring coronavirus trends are quick to point to areas in the Upper Midwest and Mountain States, where cases and death rates haven’t leveled off. In places like Colorado, Montana and Minnesota, caseloads are generally increasing without clear indicators of when they’ll slow down. Others — like former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb — have also said a delta wave could still impact the northeast, though likely not as bad as in states with lower vaccination rates.
But while cases may drop or plateau, conditions on the ground can still be uncertain. Take Alaska, where the state's chief medical officer says reporting delays mean it could take weeks to know whether deaths have subsided.
“Alaska’s cases are extremely high,” said Anne Zink. “Unfortunately we have a lot of people who are requiring hospitalization; our limited hospital capacity is beyond what it can comfortably care for.”
A reminder: The virus is local.
A state’s overall covid cases may dwindle, but substantial spread can still occur in smaller pockets of the state.
“There's a national epidemic, but your local situation varies a lot, particularly when we get into this kind of stage,” said Justin Lessler, a University of North Carolina epidemiology professor who helps coordinate a separate coronavirus modeling hub.
‘A long way to descend’
New infections averaged around 150,000 daily in the first half of September, but have now dipped below 100,000. But still, that’s a far cry from June, when case counts almost fell to 10,000.
“We have a long way to descend to get back to where our best picture was in June before Delta took hold,” said Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research.
There are a few main variables.
The cooler weather could drive people indoors, and that may fuel the spread of the virus, particularly among those who aren’t vaccinated. The delta variant is the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States, but experts haven’t discounted the possibility that the virus could further evolve. Meanwhile, the politicization of public health measures, like masking, aren’t going away.
Biden officials say stemming those variables hinges on vaccinations. Just over 56 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, a number experts say is too low to knock out the virus. The effort may get a boost later this fall when regulators are expected to greenlight vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11 and extra doses for those who received Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
“On the one hand, we do want to celebrate and look forward to the fact that we are going in the right direction,” Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical officer, said on CNN Sunday. "But if you look at the history of the surges and the diminutions in cases over a period of time, they can bounce back."
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