I watched or listened to two Sunday national news shows. In both cases, the information from the infectious medicine experts who were guests was sobering. I suppose they can't go on national TV and sing the "woe is me" song, so they keep reiterating the "wear a mask, masks work, where people wear them the case loads and hospitalizations drop" song instead. Tell that to the governor of Oklahoma, who is letting people make up their own mind on how to be safe and when to get sick.
Call them surges or waves, my prediction is that by Christmas our medical systems and hospitals will be in a big predicament. Not enough beds and certainly not enough staff. The death rate from infections/hospitalizations will spike again just because there are not enough resources to go around. People will be dying in the waiting rooms of hospitals.
Here is another prediction from Eric Holdeman the Kassandra. While the second half of December will be really bad, bad will go to even worse in mid to late January. Why? Who do you personally know who has had the coronavirus and was then hospitalized or died? I finally heard of my first case in which I had met the person who caught COVID-19 and was hospitalized in the last week — now out and on oxygen. And I've got 12,500 contacts!
Likely, many people will have celebrated Thanksgiving with friends and family and came away unscathed. No one got sick. This will embolden them to continue their risky behaviors at a time when the infection rate is continuing to spike. I'm betting we'll hit 200,000 infections per day in the next couple of weeks and deaths will be over 2,000-plus a day for the second half of December.
But they dodged a bullet and think they can pull that off again for Christmas...oh how I want to see the grandkids open their gifts! Risk perception continues to be our greatest enemy.
Troubled waters ahead and not ending until I'd say about the end of January when things will plateau or even decline.
