Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Welcome to the club! Halfway through the four weeks until my second shot on March 5.

 

At this point, I don't see the math on a variant-induced large 4th wave in the United States. A 50% increase over our current transmission rates would barely take it higher than 1, and that would get almost immediately driven back down below 1 with vaccines, and with a few more weeks of vaccination it might not even get above 1 at all. And our cases are getting low enough that even a bump doesn't get us up to anything like the third wave was.

For the United States, the range of plausible outcomes based on what we currently have range from "things get a lot better but not quite better enough and it lingers until May or June" at the worst to "holy crap this thing actually did end in late March" at best. This could be derailed by something like a supervariant so surprising it is effectively a new virus, or an evil wizard turns all our vaccines to placebo, or I dunno. But just with the information currently in hand, the trajectory is locked in.

 

So basically there’s a strong chance we all get told we can get off the ride right around Easter (April 4). I’m sure that would be greeted with sober, dispassionate logic by many.

 

I fear something like that around Memorial Day or July 4. We have to agree as a country to curb our enthusiasm and not let loose until we've run through the tape.

 

I hate making positive predictions because if you are wrong people get doubly mad at you. If you predict doom and you're wrong, that's not so bad. And I hate predictions in general, I'd rather talk about possibilities and ranges of outcomes.

We are in a collective society-wide depression because some real bad shit happened in the last year, shit that seemed unlikely at first but turned out to happen anyway, and it's hard not to feel burned by that. So we aren't emotionally ready for good news. And our politicians are scared to give it to us because it was so hard to get people to take it seriously the whole time, for no good reason other than some dumb fascist's ego.

But sometimes you don't lose. Sometimes you just win (to whatever degree you can describe it as winning when you've already had 500k people die).

COVID is in free fall and it doesn't have much room left to fall farther, we've got 40+% of the population immune either through infection or vaccination, and we're pumping out millions more vaccines every week. This is what winning looks like.

 

Remember all those quotes about how people don't decide when the pandemic ends, the virus does?

That cuts both ways. The virus isn't a moral agent. It isn't here to punish us for not behaving right.

If the virus has decided to just go away (or less poetically, if the situation has turned such that the epidemic can no longer sustain itself through new infections), then it won't hang in there an extra two months just because we have to feel like we earned it.

 

You misunderstand. I visualize getting the all clear during Holy Week and the Q and Q-adjacent types absolutely losing their shit convinced the timing proves this was a ploy to wreck Trump all along.

Me, I will be doing the Snoopy dance all the way to my favorite steakhouse.

 

The Q-believing klan will be sorely disappointed that vaccines and not bleach-chugging prove to be the undoing of the Trumpandemic.

 

That orgasmic sound you heard billowing like Gabriel’s trumpet about 25 minutes ago was me finally getting to a toilet.

 

These posts are really helpful, Rick. Thanks for doing it. My mother-in-law is absolutely terrified of this thing and anytime I can shuffle some positive news her way, it helps our entire family. Seriously, thanks again.

 

Oohhhh. well, the thing about cults based around vague predictions is that they can claim victory on almost anything. That's the whole point.