President Donald Trump and members of the White House task force on the CCP virus advised Americans to brace themselves for the worst days of the pandemic, citing a projection that the daily death toll may reach 2,214 by April 15 at the peak of the outbreak.
Trump struck a somber note at the opening of the daily briefing on the pandemic at the White House on Tuesday, praising front-line healthcare workers and lamenting the great loss of life.
“Our country is in the midst of a great national trial, unlike any we have ever faced before,” Trump said. “We’re all at war with a deadly virus. Success in this fight will require the full, absolute measure of our collective strength, love, and devotion.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci said that while there are some signs that mitigation measures are working, it will take time before the real impact of social distancing becomes apparent. A reduction in the number of confirmed cases will be the first sign of improvement, Fauci said. Meanwhile, the statistics on deaths, intensive care unit admissions, and hospitalizations will lag behind in time.
“So what we’re going to see and we’ve got to brace ourselves, in the next several days to a week or so, we’re going to continue to see things go up,” Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that, because the mitigation is actually working and will work.”
The White House released the latest projections days after extending federal social distancing guidelines through April 30. The president and the officials all called on Americans to do their part to defeat the virus.
“It’s communities that will do this. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic vaccine or therapy. It’s just behaviors. Each of our behaviors translating into something that will change the course of this pandemic over the next 30 days,” Birx said.
According to the model cited by Birx, had the United States not taken on social distancing measures, as many as 1.5 to 2.2 million people could have died from the disease. She said there is hope in the latest numbers from Italy, where confirmed case have begun to drop after the authorities imposed a nationwide lockdown.
The rapid increase in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents in New York and New Jersey makes the two states outliers from the rest of the country, another model referenced by Birx shows. The White House’s strategy is now to focus all resources on helping the two states while making sure similar outbreaks don’t happen in other places.
The United States had more than 186,000 confirmed cases of CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, at the time of the briefing. A total of 3,712 people have died from COVID-19 nationwide.
