Obviously the two ideas are not mutually exclusive, since I myself agreed there was an excommunication. I even talked about how excom’ing the guy is itself evidence, in several ways, that Paul meant for the congregation not to consider his case hopeless.
Consequently, going on to discuss the excommunication I already acknowledged does not count against Paul expecting the SSG (and possibly Hym and Alex) to die from being handed over to Satan.
But say it is a metaphor (which I seem to recall also allowing): being immersed in depravity is not something which in itself has any inherent tendency to destroy a person’s sinful propensities, no more than Satan attack only the sinful propensity. The prodigal son doesn’t repent of his life of whoring away his father’s money until he has been reduced by painful starvation to eating the leftovers of swine, and “joining” himself to the owner of the pigs. (A euphamism often overlooked, but part of the shock value of the situation to a rigorous Jew no less than literally living with swine: there being no way surely the father would accept him back now.)
Until the evil passes a threshold of inconvenience in its results, the SSG would think being immersed in depravity was amenable! The phrase is much more likely to be a polite way of talking about being cursed with a painful and likely fatal result of his sins. Then being cut off from the church would be meaningful to the SSG; so would his horrific pain be explained if 2 Cor’s pity and reconciliation refers to him. So would the term, olethron, synch better with Paul’s OT citations of prophetic expectations of what will happen to people olethron’d by God (whether directly by divine power or indirectly by pagan armies).