Dr. Anthony Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As an immunologist he has dealt with some of the world’s most vexing health crises: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola and Zika, as well as hard-to-treat immune system disorders. He has served six presidents. The COVID-19 pandemic is not his first rodeo. That’s why we were so surprised to hear him predict how many people may come down with the coronavirus in the coming weeks. Increasing deaths from COVID-19 will inevitably follow.
100,000 People Per Day…Really?
Dr. Fauci told the Congress this week that if we are unable to control the spread of the coronavirus though effective physical distancing, hand-washing and face covering, it could lead to huge numbers of Americans becoming infected. He cautioned the legislators that up to 100,000 people a day could catch the coronavirus if they don’t follow the guidelines. That was on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
Here were his precise words to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions:
“When you have an outbreak in one part of the country, even though in other parts of the country they’re doing well, they are vulnerable. We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk. We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.”
We had a hard time imagining that many people will come down with COVID-19 day in and day out. It just seemed way too pessimistic. Then, two days later on Thursday, July 2, 2020, we learned that the U.S. had surged past 50,000 cases in one day.
Are There Really That Many Cases of COVID-19?
Many people believe this is bogus because the pandemic has become so politicized and polarizing. The Wall Street Journal is not perceived as a liberal newspaper.
Here is what it reported on Thursday morning, July 2, 2020:
“New coronavirus cases in the U.S. passed 50,000 for the first time to reach a single-day record, as some states and businesses reversed course on reopenings and hospitals were hit by a surge of patients.
“The U.S. accounts for about a quarter of more than 10.6 million coronavirus cases world-wide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. A total of 50,655 cases were reported in the U.S. on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins data. The nation’s death toll climbed above 128,000.”
Deaths from COVID-19: The Ultimate Metric:
We have received a great many messages from people who believe that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. A lot of people believe that many of the reports of deaths from COVID-19 are not really related to the coronavirus. They think that many deaths have been improperly included in the daily tallies. These folks are certain that these are unrelated deaths and they have falsely raised the COVID-19 death toll.
One way to compare apples to apples is to look at the normal death toll during prior years and assess it in light of what has happened this year. That is what researchers just did. Their results were published in JAMA Internal Medicine (July 1, 2020).
Here is the question the investigators asked:
“Did more all-cause deaths occur during the first months of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States compared with the same months during previous years?”
The researchers analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics. In particular, they were looking for data on deaths caused by pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 as well as deaths due to all causes over the past five years.
The Envelope Please!
The total number of deaths in the U.S. between March 1 and May 30, 2020 was approximately 781,000. That was 122,300 “more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year.” The authors go on to note:
“There were 95,235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period.”
In other words, there were likely more deaths due to the coronavirus than were included in the official tally. If people died from blood clots in their lungs, the cause of death would probably have been recorded as pulmonary embolisms. But because COVID-19 often triggers blood clots, the actual cause of death would have been brought on by the virus, even though it would not have been officially counted as such.
The Bottom Line on Deaths from COVID-19:
The authors looked back in time and reported:
“Monitoring excess deaths has been used as a method for tracking influenza mortality for more than a century. Herein, we used a similar strategy to capture COVID-19 deaths that had not been attributed specifically to the pandemic coronavirus.”
Their Conclusion:
“Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus.”
How Many Deaths from COVID-19 Down the Road?
We have heard from a substantial number of readers that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is declining. As of today, that is indeed true. We have seen a steady decline in deaths for over two months. On July 1, 2020, there were 642 deaths. On April 14, there were 2,705 deaths from COVID-19. That’s a huge difference.
We won’t speculate on why the death rate has dropped so consistently over the last couple of months. But we will share one startling prediction. Dr. Scott Gottlieb served as FDA Commissioner from May 11, 2017, until April 5, 2019. He is affiliated with the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Gottlieb estimates that half the U.S. population could become infected with the coronavirus before the end of the year. That could equal over 150 million people.
As we write this, there are 128,463 “official” deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. But if we believe the researchers who shared their data in JAMA Internal Medicine, the actual number may be quite a bit higher. Regardless of the true number of deaths from COVID-19, if half the population catches SARS-CoV-2, there will doubtless be a lot more deaths over the coming months.
Final Words:
As if these numbers are not grim enough, Dr. Fauci offered one last warning. He said that he was hopeful a vaccine would be ready to go sometime early in 2021. But he added a dire caveat. He cautioned that there is no guarantee a safe vaccine will ever be developed.
Like Dr. Fauci, we hope that there will be a safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. We also hope that there will be effective medications to either prevent people from catching the disease or speed their recovery. Until then, we caution people to please be careful. Even if people survive a bout of COVID-19, many will be left with long-term health problems from this virus.
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