VICTOR JOECKS: King Sisolak predicted a coronavirus surge from holiday gatherings. It never came.

King Steve Sisolak and state health officials have all the credibility of Chicken Little.

For weeks, Sisolak and state health officials warned that holiday gatherings would cause a surge in coronavirus cases. Crowds gathering around The Bellagio fountains on New Year’s Eve caused specific alarm. Caleb Cage, who’s leading Nevada’s coronavirus response efforts, called those gatherings “a collective failure.” Families daring to get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas also drew the ire of His Majesty.

Last week, Sisolak justified extending statewide restrictions another month based on this impending avalanche of cases. The sky, he claimed, was falling.

“At the time I announced these measures, I called it a ‘pause,’ because I truly hoped they would only have to last for a short period,” Sisolak said last week. “However, we remained at an all-time high, and due to Christmas and New Year’s, our case numbers are likely to increase over the coming weeks.”

Just one problem. It didn’t happen. Confirmed cases have been plummeting. In late November and early December, the state regularly reported more than 2,500 new positive tests a day. Occasionally, it hit 3,000. On Thursday, Nevada reported just 1,200 new cases reported. The 14-day moving average of confirmed cases also declined for a sixth consecutive day and was at 1,433. It peaked around 2,700 in mid-December.

Remember positive tests reflect infections that happened up to two weeks earlier. This means that Christmas and New Year’s Eve gatherings weren’t superspreader events. The evidence is so overwhelming that even Kyra Morgan, Nevada’s biostatistician, had to acknowledge it.

“I’m pretty confident that we’ve seen the full impact of Christmas at this point,” she said Thursday. In what could qualify as the understatement of the year so far, she admitted, “The impact of these holidays is less than we anticipated.”

You don’t say.

“My best guess is that we’re going to continue to see those trends decline in the future,” she added.

There are plenty of reasons not to trust her predictions, but at least this one fits the trend line.

Nevada is experiencing a record high number of deaths, but that is another lagging indicator. It likely reflects the record high cases Nevada experienced in early December.

The problem isn’t that Sisolak and his staff made a mistake. It’s a new virus. Lots of people have gotten it wrong. But other people haven’t amassed kingly amounts of power for themselves.

With the stroke of his pen, Sisolak has limited who can come to your house. If other people come to your house, he requires you to wear a mask. That’s to say nothing of the restrictions he’s placed on religious gatherings and businesses.

Accumulating this much authority would be bad enough if Sisolak knew how to stop the virus. He obviously doesn’t. He’s guessing. But being honest about this uncertainty would remove his justification for exercising royal authority.

“We will remain flexible, and if situations change, there is always the ability to adjust,” Sisolak said last week.

The situation has changed. Sisolak’s dire prediction didn’t come to pass. He should end the “pause.”

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.