Remember back last year when the big issue was "Why are we shutting down? We should just go ahead and let it run its course!" Here's why we didn't: https://cov

Remember back last year when the big issue was "Why are we shutting down? We should just go ahead and let it run its course!" Here's why we didn't: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases The peak number of cases reported daily in 2020 was in mid-December, at about 200,000. As standardUser says, we were having about 800,000 cases per day last week. On the other hand, we have vaccines now, and the current variant seems to be less deadly. As a result: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_newhospitaladmissions https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths... Current new hospital admissions (right axis, completely different scale) are about 20,000 per day, versus 16,500 per day in early January 2021, and 1,700 deaths versus 3,000 last January.