Grim projection: 200,000 dead by Election Day

Source: Politico | July 8, 2020 | Dan Goldberg and Adam Cancryn

Recent surge in infections and Trump policies prompt a serious reassessment by forecasters, who now see no end in sight for coronavirus crisis.

As the United States surpasses 3 million coronavirus infections, forecasters are updating their models to account for the recent resurgence and reaching a grim consensus: the next few months are going to be bad.

The national death toll is now expected eclipse 200,000 by Election Day, according to the latest models.

It’s a clear signal that, six months into the worst public health crisis in a century, the coronavirus pandemic remains as disruptive as ever. The disease has tested American leaders’ patience and political will, and outlasted efforts to contain it — swamping any hopes of a summer lull and leaving the nation’s top public health experts resigned to several more months of crushing outbreaks.

“I am despairing for the future,” said David Eisenman, the director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters. “I don’t see anything happening to indicate that [the future] will be much better.”

It took just four weeks for the U.S. to jump from 2 million coronavirus infections to the 3 million mark. Most forecasters now say that, as case counts accelerate at a record pace, it will likely take even less time to surpass 4 million.

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While the mortality rate has decreased since April as testing has improved and older Americans are more likely to remain cautious, Pence’s outlook runs counter to the growing ranks of health researchers and scientists who have charted the pandemic’s progression across the U.S. for months, and concluded that the nation’s attempts to rein in the virus have fallen well short of what was needed to secure any significant and lasting progress.

Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, on Tuesday predicted more than 208,000 people could be dead from the virus by November. The IHME model, favored by the White House, has generally offered rosier forecasts than most, but Murray now is factoring in a greater reluctance to impose new restrictions and increased transmissions from having schools and universities reopen in the fall.

“Many states are expected to experience significant increases in cases and deaths in September and October,” he said of his modeling.

With the nation now reporting more than 50,000 new infections every day, most experts say the concept of a second wave is outdated. The first wave is likely to continue for months, with spikes popping up in various states. That could be followed by a possible surge in the fall when the weather turns, Murray said.

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Public health modelers initially envisioned a summer of progress, where tools refined during the nation’s lockdown — testing, contact tracing, social distancing — would be widely used, and Americans chastened by the severity of the pandemic’s early months would collectively work toward keeping the virus in check.

Yet little of that has happened. The Trump administration failed to take advantage of the time to ramp up its defenses, public health experts said — and instead of becoming a moment of national solidarity, the pandemic response has been fractured and disorganized.

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Models are only as good as their assumptions and human behavior; political changes and dumb luck are all variables that could affect the outcome. IHME’s Murray believes that high levels of mask wearing, for example, could save more than 45,000 lives over the next four months.

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