(PresidentialWire.Com)- Just as things seemed to be getting better, it’s been revealed that it was all actually worse than originally thought.
One of the leading U.S. models of the coronavirus death toll increased its projected total to 66,000 by August, which represents a 10% increase from its earlier prediction. This was done because states are now updating their death tallies to include residents of nursing homes who are now considered “presumptive positives.”
This all means that states need to be extending stay-at-home orders and timelines for relaxing social distancing, according to Dr. Chris Murray, who is the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. As he told CNN:
“If people start to go back to normal social interaction or even progressively go back, the risk of transmission will go up … and then you go back to the sort of exponential rise that was happening before we put in social distancing. The risk is very great for resurgence from these early openings.”
In addition to this news, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said a possible second wave of coronavirus that could happen in the winter could be even worse than this first one. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said:
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through. We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time.”
Most people say that in order for the U.S. to re-open successfully and avoid a brutal second wave, millions of coronavirus tests need to be conducted each week. Even economics and health experts, who have often been at odds on this topic, are in alignment.
One estimate suggests that up to 30 million tests need to be conducted each week, while another suggests the U.S. should do 20 million per day. As of today, the country as conducted about 4 million tests total.
The problem thus far has been an absence of readily-available tests, but that could change in the near future. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration said it approved a new test that could allow people to mail in samples to be tested remotely. But the key, as before, is making sure states have the tests available, “so that they can actually unlock that capacity,” Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the FDA, said. “We believe that based upon that information that we could double the number of tests that are done in a very short period of time.”
All of this data hasn’t led to much thus far except fear and confusion. The White House released new guidelines last week that paved the way for how states could slowly phase in a re-opening of life. But only a few days later, three southern states announced plans to re-open parts of the economy this week, even though they didn’t yet meet the milestones suggested by President Donald Trump and the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
