Thanks apparently to the those vaccines, this rise in positive tests has not yet caused a dangerous increase in hospitalizations, and absolutely no rise yet in the number of people currently dying with COVID (though expect that to begin to change, at least marginally, in the next week or two). In fact, for more than a month now, based on the 7-day average, Americans have had a less than a one-in-a-million chance of dying with COVID on any given day, and currently here in California daily “COVID deaths” are just barely outpacing automobile deaths (which, it should be pointed out, end the lives of people much younger and healthier on average than COVID does).

In short, unless the perceived effectiveness of the vaccines is one of the greatest frauds of all time, we are currently in no danger of seeing numbers that once again threaten to cause a catastrophe in our health-care system, which was the entire justification for the government usurping endless dictatorial powers due to this emergency. But here is where the purveyors of fear have masterfully won the expectations game, even when the facts indicate that they should have lost it.

The notion that cases were not going to significantly rise, especially among younger people, during a summer when most of America is back to “normalcy” and eager to make up for lost time is mystifying. If all restrictions had been lifted and there had been categorically no negative change in the data, it would have been a devastating blow to the already highly questionable premise that lockdowns are worth the collateral damage which they cause (though the news media would have done their very best to ignore such a development). For instance, it will be interesting to see how the United Kingdom spins it if their numbers continue to improve now that the worst of their lockdown has ended, at least for now.