US President Donald Trump recently said that the Covid-19 pandemic could kill between 100,000 and 200,000 people in the United States.
As of April 1, data from Johns Hopkins University has recorded more than 870,000 cases of Covid-19 worldwide, and recorded more than 43,000 deaths. With more than 190,000 cases and 4,000 deaths reported, the United States has become in just a few days the new epicenter of the pandemic ahead of China and Italy. The city of New York, which alone has more than 70,000 positive cases, is also considered by specialists to be a real time bomb.
And the situation is not going to improve. Using statistical models based on the behavior of the virus in New York and abroad, a group of White House experts, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has just estimated that in the best case , the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the USA. The number of deaths is also expected to peak in the next two weeks, we learned.
The announcement was made this Tuesday by President Trump himself, during a press conference. "It's going to be a very painful, very very painful two weeks “, he told the hearing.
Another Donald Trump adviser on the coronavirus, Dr. Deborah Birx, also warned that the whole country must prepare for the worst. “No state will be spared , she explained on NBC, adding that every metropolis should now consider the possibility of a crisis equivalent to that of New York, and do everything now that they can to prevent it “.
New "hot spots" are starting to appear across the country. The states of New Jersey, Florida, or Louisiana are beginning to be particularly hard hit.
Independent researchers also said the models used by White House experts were robust. Like Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, who estimated the projection (between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths) "reasonable".
Models are obviously not ironclad predictions. "Unlike the weather, here we have the power to influence the outcome , told Vox Caitlin Rivers, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Our collective actions over the next few weeks – such as enforcing social distancing, or strengthening health systems – could affect outcomes for the better “.
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