NOTHING ABOUT THE CURRENT COVID-19 EXPLOSION SHOULD COME AS A SURPRISE. AS THE VIRUS SPREAD THROUGHOUT SUMMER AND FALL, EXPERTS REPEATEDLY WARNED WINTER WOULD BE WORSE.
They cautioned that a cold-weather return to indoor socializing, particularly around the holidays, could turn a steady burn into a wildfire. Throw in a lame-duck President, wildly differing approaches by the states and a pervasive sense of quarantine fatigue, and the wildfire could easily become an inferno.
So it has. The U.S. is now locked in a deadly cycle of setting, then shattering, records for new cases and hospitalizations. On Nov. 13, a staggering 177,224 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with COVID-19. As of Nov. 17, more than 70,000 coronavirus patients were hospitalized nationwide. And unlike in earlier waves, which were fairly regionalized,…