Is it time to start getting a little relieved about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic? I've been struck with a cautious case of optimism while doomscrolling over the past few weeks, and I now tend to think the country will likely return to the same sort of semi-normalcy we all experienced in July, probably right after the year-end holidays. I think January and February are going to be very good months, to put this another way.

I really have two reasons to be even cautiously optimistic that this will turn out to be the case. The first is the increasing level of both vaccinations and the (at least partial) natural immunity from those who have already contracted the coronavirus. To put it more plainly, I think we are within a few months of at least some degree of herd immunity.

The second reason is I don't expect any winter surge in new cases to be as large a spike as the Delta mutation was. Now, I fully admit I could be wrong about this one -- there could always be a new Greek-lettered variant that proves to be more virulent than even Delta. If one appears and spreads in the United States, then we could indeed see another sharp spike upwards, so I realize I'm on shaky ground here.

These two reasons are really intertwined. The more people there are who are vaccinated, the harder it will be for any variant to wreak havoc. And we're just as the start of the rollout of the booster shots, which weren't available during the Delta crisis.

There will be some important decisions made within the next week or so. The first will be approval for booster shots from both Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. If both boosters are approved along the same lines as the Pfizer one, it will mean a large portion of the already-vaccinated will become even more resistant to "breakthrough" infections. That will help the overall picture. And the people who will be eligible before the holiday season will be those who were in the first few groups who got the initial vaccination -- groups who were eager to be vaccinated, to put it another way. These were the people who jumped at the chance to be vaccinated in the first place, so there won't be much in the way of "vaccine hesitancy" for the boosters, one would assume.

The second big decision will be approval of vaccines for children ages 5 to 11. This means approximately 30 million Americans will be newly-eligible. Just like with adults, there will be an initial wave of kids getting their "Fauci ouchie" shots, which will only serve to boost the overall numbers for the whole population. Indeed, this could be what does push us all above that herd immunity threshold. Which will be good news for everyone, obviously.

Let's look at some numbers (from the two Washington Post pandemic-tracking data pages). The rolling average of new cases reported each day has now dropped below 90,000. Delta peaked at the start of September at over 165,000 per day, so this has dropped by almost half (down to 53 percent of the crest). The slope downward from the fourth wave's peak has not been as steep as the one which followed the third wave, but it's pretty close (it's still dropping pretty fast, in other words). Hopefully this metric will be at a much more manageable level right before we hit Thanksgiving.

The percentage of adults who have gotten at least their first vaccine shot is now up to 78.5 percent (this was the metric President Joe Biden was shooting to hit 70 percent on by Independence Day, just to remind you). In raw numbers, 217.4 million Americans have gotten their first shot, and 187.7 million of them have been fully vaccinated. There are 280 million Americans eligible for vaccinations right now (age 12 and above), out of a total 332 million population. And the number of those who are eligible will increase to around 310 million when the vaccine is approved for kids age 5-11.

Using the whole population as a denominator, 65.5 percent of all Americans (including those who are not yet eligible) have gotten their first shot, while 56.5 percent have been fully vaccinated. That's fairly good, but not quite good enough for herd immunity. There have been over 45 million reported cases of COVID in this country, but it is impossible to know how many of these people have been vaccinated and how many are just relying on natural immunity. Either way, this has to add to the total at least in part, when attempting to figure out how close we are to herd immunity.

If two-thirds of newly-eligible schoolchildren get vaccinated fairly quickly (this is probably far too optimistic an estimate, I do realize), then the total numbers vaccinated would get boosted by an extra 20 million. That would certainly help get the population at large over the 70 percent mark. Also, vaccine mandates are becoming a reality for millions of workers, which so far has done a great job at getting people to get their shots (most companies report 90-plus-percent rates after instituting mandates). So very slowly, the non-vaccinated are becoming vaccinated. Perhaps everything together (non-vaccinated adults getting their shots, schoolchildren newly-eligible, and the people with some degree of natural immunity after surviving the virus) will push the whole American population as high as 75 percent immune. That's pretty good, and will at least be within the ballpark of herd immunity (it's impossible to know exactly what percentage will achieve this, I should mention).

Since the last time I wrote about the pandemic a few weeks back (which was also a cautiously optimistic column), things have improved greatly. The Delta surge did crest. The South ceased to be such a hotspot as their rates of infection fell (and the crisis of overflowing hospitals eased). There was no Labor Day surge (following all the holiday travel and gatherings). And the trend has continued downward ever since. This is all good news.

Because it is good news, however, it has all largely disappeared from the nightly news on television. They are much more geared towards: "Crisis! Calamity! Be very afraid!" then they are at informing everyone that things have actually gotten better. Perhaps when the decisions for boosters and younger schoolchildren are announced, they'll at least marginally cover the improving trends.

The bad news is how far Republican politicians have doubled down on aiding and abetting the viral pandemic. It's like being pro-COVID is now a major plank in the party's platform. But all of this dangerous nonsense is truly swimming against the tide, as the vaccination numbers prove.

If things continue as they have for the past month, we will all be in a much better place by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. Not as good a place as we were in July quite yet, but at least solidly heading in that direction. Then we'll have the two holidays to get through, which simply are not going to be anywhere near as bad as they were last year. Last year, the vaccine didn't even exist by Thanksgiving, and only a tiny amount of people had gotten it by New Year's Day. This time, the population should be over 70 percent vaccinated (perhaps even as high as 75 percent by January). This means even if there is a spike with holiday travel it should be far smaller than before. Hopefully, it will also be far smaller than the Delta spike as well.

By January, massive holiday travel won't be an issue anymore. And any holiday spikes should be burning out. With any luck, the country might get back to where we were last July by perhaps next February. To state it all another way: we could be a lot closer to the functional end of the pandemic than now seems possible. Which is why I am indeed cautiously optimistic, at this point.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant