What will happen with the coronavirus in the next weeks/months?

It's funny how for months people, most vocally those of an extreme leftist persuasion, were all about the dangers of the coronavirus, and how it's the worst thing in the world and how people who don't obey the lockdown restrictions should be punished and how they are the worst people... and how they have all but forgotten about it. Suddenly the coronavirus doesn't matter.

Heck, there are even medical doctors making excuses about why the riots... I mean "protests" are more important than the pandemic. (Not surprisingly, all these doctors are heavily left-leaning.)

Anyway, putting all that aside, I am interested in what will happen with the pandemic from a somewhat academic perspective.

If social distancing and avoiding mass gatherings really are that important and effective in slowing down the spread of the pandemic, that ought to mean that in the next weeks and months there ought to be a huge raise in number of cases and deaths.

If, however, mass gatherings have little to no effect on how fast the pandemic spreads, there won't be any sudden spike.

Either way it will be interesting to see what the end result is. Either outcome will give interesting information about infectious diseases in general, and this one in particular.

I almost hope that there will be a humongous spike in number of infections in the next weeks, just to see the left (including all those doctors) try to rationalize and wriggle themselves out of having to take any responsibility, or trying to diminish the importance.

Of course the more rational part of my brain objects to this. The main reason is that the main victims of such a huge spike, ie. the people who would die from it, are mostly defenseless innocent bystanders who are not part of these riots, ie. mostly the elderly and those with a immune system weakening condition.

If the number of covid-19 cases, and thus deaths, spikes in the near future, it will be mostly because of these rioters, but they will for the most part not be the ones who will suffer from it (as covid-19 only presents mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all, in young healthy people). They will be killing who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of people because of their actions, but will have plausible deniability because it's impossible to trace who infected who.

That's why on one hand I almost hope that the number of cases spikes, but on the other hand hope it doesn't.