Daily COVID Deaths Predicted to Climb Next Month

 From this morning's Slog:

The key question: Just how much did we fuck things up this weekend? Experts worried Labor Day weekend could cause a new surge in the virus. "The warnings came as a widely cited model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a worsening outbreak in the U.S. that will peak in early December at about 2,900 deaths per day, up from about 860 a day now, unless government officials take action," according to the AP. As county health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin told Slog: If we all made the same decisions on Labor Day weekend as on Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend, we will have trouble sending children back into school this fall. “You have to think, are these social activities and going out to eat more important right now than educating our children?”

Also, from today's WSWS:

Daily deaths are projected to start climbing after October 1 and then rise sharply after November 1. By December 1, current projections for the daily number of deaths stand at 26,870. Hospital resources expected in use in December include 1.87 million hospital beds, 399,463 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 340,307 ventilators. These projections are driven by dropping temperatures in the fall and winter season that drive people indoors, compounded by declining mask usage, which stands at around 60 percent, and declining social distancing measures.

COVID is already back on the rise in Europe. Spain and France have experienced a resurgence this summer. In the midst of this resurgence children are being sent back to school. The result is going to be an infection spike prior to the anticipated seasonal spike in October. Not a pretty picture.

Western governments have basically given up on the idea of developing a comprehensive diagnostic system of the sort you see practiced, for instance, by NFL teams: regular testing, quarantine and contact tracing. It's not even mentioned anymore, replaced by bullshit happy talk about a vaccine. 

Western governments have adopted a de facto policy of herd immunity, something that could prove to be illusory given that reinfections have now been documented.

New York City should give us a good idea. After the city's truly horrific spring, infections were reduced to such an extent that there has been speculation that it has achieved herd immunity. If this is true, there should be no spike when schools reopen on September 21.

As COVID deaths begin to tick back up markets are on their way down. The Fed's "QE forever" was able to buy all-time market highs for a spell, but the reality of long-term unemployment has finally appeared to have crashed the party.