You're just (whether you're conscious of it or not) expecting that because it would vindicate your political beliefs.
It means that you have a flawed grasp of whats going on.
If Texas drops the "crucial" regulations on public life and numbers trend downwards, there's something wrong in your analysis.
This isn’t a hard lockdown, it’s a mask mandate? What’s the big issue?
You'd say the same thing regardless of outcome, which is why I'm saying there's an asymmetry where the other side will never admit their hubris or even possibility of fallibility.
There's a certain commitment to doom, as though they can't imagine a world where things just fizzle out - as we'd expect due to seasonality and rising immunity - and society moves on.