In the video below from Thursday March 26th, Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, makes some very important points.
1.) She specifically notes that a recent report, which had predicted 500,000 deaths in the UK and estimated 2.2 million deaths in the United States, just scaled back its estimate from 500,000 UK deaths to 20,000. That’s a big change.
2.) Models or simulations predicting very high mortality rates, Birx said, don’t match the reality of what they’ve seen on the ground in China, South Korea or Italy. Birx said if you did the divisions according to the models, Italy should have 400,000 deaths. But she says, they’re not even close to that. Indeed, they are at 8,215 deaths and they appear to have started flattening their curve, with five successive days down below their peak on March 21.
3.) Dr. Birx also corrected another concern, saying there were enough ICU beds and “significant” ventilators available (even in NY state). She says that while the cases may be concentrated now in urban areas, there were other areas where it was not, and they can adjust to get equipment or patients to where they need to be.
4.) There is “no reality on the ground” where 60% to 70% of Americans will be infected in the next 8 – 12 weeks.
While everyone needs to be careful and be on guard, panic does no good. Please consider what Dr. Birx is saying.