“This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting”, White House spokesman Judd Deere said Monday.
Deere was responding to a report from The New York Times, which cited internal government documents showing a projected steep increase in daily COVID-19 deaths by June 1.
According to a CDC model, as many as 3,000 Americans per day will succumb to the virus by the first of next month, up sharply from the current rate of between 1,750 – 2,000.
The document, embedded in full below, also appears to show new cases per day rising to some 200,000 (or more) by the first of June. That would represent a nearly tenfold increase in daily confirmed infections.
Obviously, the more you test, the more confirmed cases you’ll have. Nevertheless, the new figures underscore the inherent risks of reopening the economy, and in that regard, the news comes at an inopportune time.
Multiple states are currently in the process of implementing (or planning) the relaxation of lockdown protocols, something Trump has encouraged, going so far as to tweet in all-caps about the “liberation” of citizens living under stay-at-home orders.
On Sunday evening, during his “town hall” event hosted by Fox at the Lincoln Memorial, Trump appeared to raise his own estimate of projected fatalities to 100,000, double what he predicted just a short time ago, and more closely aligned to previous projections.
“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people”, he said. “That’s horrible”.
The Times puts things in stark terms. “The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system was overloaded”, the paper writes.
“The health of the American people remains President Trump’s top priority and that will continue as we monitor the efforts by states to ease restrictions”, Deere went on to remark Monday.
On the bright side, Andrew Cuomo said New York had “just” 2,538 new cases over the last 24 hours (orange line below). That’s the lowest since mid-March.
Hospitalizations continued to decline, but Cuomo sounded a characteristically cautious (and somber) tone while delivering the latest figures.
The state is still planning to reopen in four phases, beginning midway through this month, starting with the construction and manufacturing sectors in regions that weren’t as hard hit by the epidemic.
Among other notable virus milestones this week, Florida started the process of reopening, as restaurants and retail outlets opened their doors on the condition that seating inside be limited. Miami (the metropolitan area) is for now not participating given the prevalence of the virus in the area. The trajectory of infections and deaths in Texas appears to be moving in the right direction as well. California reported the fewest new deaths in three weeks.
Meanwhile, the Urban Institute warned that with tens of millions of Americans now newly jobless, the health insurance mix in the country will undergo a dramatic transformation.
“An estimated 25-43 million people could lose their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage”, the study says, adding that while “more than half of the newly jobless will obtain Medicaid coverage in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), only about one-third will receive Medicaid coverage in the 15 states that have not expanded the program”.
Seems like we’ll be taking off our parachutes halfway through the jump…
Knowing that the vast majority of the deaths, sadly, are among the elderly, who, presumably, are collecting Social Security, I wonder how much of the administration’s calculus is about taking the opportunity to cut Social Security and Medicare-related expenses. Entitlements, you know.
These are disproportionately Trump/Republican voters as well. So it seems they are killing the goose laying golden eggs as well. Deaths should be highest in those states that open up first therefore could mean a shifting of public opinion when they see body bags. Seems Trump and Republicans are taking the risk of the gamble. I guess if your risk is jail time then this gamble may be just fine.
And when the death rates start to skyrocket the pressure will start to rise to shut down again. Too bad we’re stuck with the idiot President until January … at best (thanks to that traitor McConnel). So many useless money-sucking members of congress with only their own personal interests and those of the rich at heart. Sad to see America crumbling like this. No peoples heroes in the GOP. Haven’t heard much from Mitt lately…
Those of us not in nursing homes and therefore more exposed to Covid-19 who depend on Social Security which we paid into all our working lives won’t take kindly to any attempt to cut our benefits (note not entitlements!).