‘Hard days ... lie ahead’; deaths could exceed 100K
President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned Americans to brace for a “rough two-week period” ahead as the White House released new projections that there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
Public health officials stressed the number could be less if people change their behavior.
“We really believe we can do a lot better than that,” said Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. That would require all Americans to take seriously their role in preventing the spread of disease, she said.
Trump called American efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “a matter of life and death” and urged the public to heed his administration’s guidelines. He predicted the country would soon see a “light at the end of the tunnel” in the pandemic that has killed more than 3,800 Americans and infected
185,000 more.
“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” Trump said.
“We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said the numbers are “sobering” and called on Americans to “step on the accelerator” with their collective mitigation efforts.
“We are continue to see things go up,” Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work.”
Birx said pandemic forecasts initially predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. But that was a worst-case scenario, without efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus through social distancing.
Birx said states that have not yet seen a spike in cases, as New York has, could take action to flatten the curve of rising hospitalizations and deaths.
As for the projection of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, Fauci, of the National Institutes of Health, said: “We don’t accept that number, that that’s what it’s going to be . ... We want to do much better than that.”
The comments came after Trump announced Sunday that he was extending to April 30 the social distancing guidelines that urged Americans to cease social gatherings, work from home, suspend onsite learning at schools and more in a nationwide effort to stem the spread of the virus.