Aside from covid of course…
My prediction is a texas-style grid failure but with a wider scale. Where I live, the electrical infrastructure is crumbling and there were a number of 1-2 day long outages this year which is new. Also a generally very poor area so little resources or motivation to fix or reinforce anything.
The supply chain disruptions start creating crises from events that would normally be handled easily. A number of “perfect storm” events actually end up very likely and happen across the country (US).
Last year it was a massive winter storm and the power went out due to Texas’ already fucked electrical systems. Add on top of that a lack of first responders due to staffing shortages and a lack of equipment to handle the catastrophe, a fuel shortage just hundreds of miles from massive refineries due to a breakdown in transportation systems, a shortage of tires capable of handling the storm, inadequate PPE creating a new surge in COVID cases, tripled food prices in the area because nobody regulates them, mirroring the approach to electricity, a huge death toll that traumatizes the populace and leads to key positions being unfilled and difficult to train, as the system has removed essential redundancy via neoliberalization, etc.
It doesn’t have to be Texas but there are multiplier effects in a failing system that can chain into an incredible catastrophe. We’re already dealing with one in the pandemic response where the government has taken on a role of funding private research and cheerleading rather than actually managing the crisis and prioritizing human life and stability. It could have been effectively “over” within a few months but instead it’s dragging on for years.
I think that hospitals being at capacity will be making a hefty contribution this winter as emergency rooms / ICUs effectively cease to exist for large swaths of the country. Privileged segments of the United States dying of easily cured/treated diseases will bring the violence to an unignorable vantage. A change will be demanded - but what will it actually entail in a system that only knows how to role out funds to private industries that asystematicallyre now failing? You can’t rapidly create safe hospital conditions when supply chains are stressed or an army of doctors and nurses. The US will be full of undirected populism clashing with die-hard believers in the system who still try to believe that these are temporary aberrations, but the balance will shift to the former so long as conditions deteriorate. Without an effective and organized left (maybe we can absorb a lot of this disaffection?), this group is liable to put any number of monsters into power, and not just obvious fascists.
Hospitals are really only failing in red states and this point. With more vaccine mandates by companies I can’t see too many unvaccinated this winter. There’s no violence from the right over lack of hospital care and the liberals are vaccinated and aren’t seeing triage level care.
The only people out in the streets are the anti-CRT types and anti-maskers. People on the side of the “status quo” would be Biden supporters. I don’t see that happening but people in against the anti-vaxxers is insanely high. Like 70% of the US would prefer some sort of vaccine or mask mandates.
I don’t think there will be any more supplychain disruptions. It’s built into the system now and covid won’t cause companies to shut down or work in a limited capacity now that we have vaccines and an ability to mandate them. I don’t see any sort of populism showing up. Just Q types
The supply chain is still in a horrible state with lead times that are on the scale of months to years when they used to be days to weeks. Essentials have been prioritized so that you don’t see it (as much) at the grocery store, but industries are in a pretty fucky state. The system is very much at risk from further disruptions and sudden increases in demand.
Hospitals are still at high capacity in blue states/cities, just not the immediate crisis level in red states/rural areas. We’re approaching winter and have at least two challenging variants to consider - delta for its rapid spread and moderate/unclear level of breakthrough infections and the mu variant that’s much less contagious but potentially much better able to infect the vaccinated. The balance of selective pressures could shift once delta immunity among the unvaccinated starts to take hold, putting the (more vaccinated) blue areas beyond the tipping point. The delta peak in my fairly vaccinated lib city has already been higher than last year’s winter peak and ICUs were full several times.
Your point about partisan/class cruelty is well-taken. The threshold for action is high due to mutual animosity and the fact that right wingers don’t even care about their own side dying like flies because it runs counter to their belief system. This serves as a pretty huge buffer to recognizing the systemic failures and making any demands and it’s hard to predict where the floor is or if a floor even exists for the American populace.
