But overall, for this moment, anyway, there appears to be a lull. The death count on Sunday was the lowest it has been in weeks. And that could easily accelerate at some point, maybe soon, and some people are predicting it will.
But the question remains for policymakers what to do next. Have mass quarantines successfully contained this virus? Growing scientific evidence suggests that they have not contained this virus very successfully.
Now, there are some leaders in America who are closely following the science on this, and in the communities they run, restrictions are beginning to lift in response to this reality. Life is slowly returning to normal for them.
But many other politicians seem gravely disappointed by this development. Seeing Americans live freely for the first time in months enrages them. It means their own power is dissipating; it is slipping away.
And so they stomp their feet in frustration as they watch it. They pour their venom onto social media and red-faced hits on cable news. They love this pandemic, this tragedy -- every sad minute of it. It makes them feel indispensable, omnipotent, like gods. They desperately don't want it to end. They're saying that out loud in effect.
Now, you may find their attitude baffling because, of course, for the rest of us, a return to life is the greatest possible blessing. We have a lot to look forward to. And it's spring.
But that doesn't mean we should forget what happened and how. We shouldn't forget; we should remember. And as we do remember, we ought to work to prevent it from ever happening again, and that means being very clear about how this began.
We know a lot more about that than we did six weeks ago. This new information is not thanks to our press corps. Reporters are supposed to be open-minded and curious -- that was once their job description. But our media are no longer interested in learning what they don't know. They're not journalists anymore. They're gatekeepers. They're heavies for the professional class.
They believe their job is to make sure that no prole in America, ever, has an unauthorized thought. Wherever free-thinking emerges, our media are there to slap it down and suppress it.
So, for months, they demanded we not think about where this virus came from. "Stop thinking!" Any suggestion that it may have come from China, they told us, was dangerously racist.