Far from over

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, the virus was as of Nov. 17 spreading—and fast—in virtually every part of the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data. This coast-to-coast surge is pushing hospitals across the country to the edge of catastrophe, their doctors and nurses exhausted and their intensive-care units running dangerously low on beds. Some cities are already playing out their dystopian worst-case scenarios; in El Paso, Texas, the dead have been shunted to mobile morgues partially staffed by the incarcerated.

But the U.S. public