The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that if people practice social distancing, the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States will be lower than what health experts have projected.
“If we just social distance, we will see this virus and this outbreak basically decline, decline, decline. And I think that’s what you’re seeing,” said Robert Redfield, according to CBS News. “I think you’re going to see the numbers are, in fact, going to be much less than what would have been predicted by the models.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease doctor, has said modeling suggests 200,000 people in the U.S. could die before the end of the pandemic.
The U.S. surgeon general said this week will be the worst the country has seen in terms of numbers of confirmed cases and deaths.
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“This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only, it’s not going to be localized, it’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that,” Jerome Adams said.
Modeling from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, updated this week, suggests 80,000 people will die from the virus.
Redfield suggested people should not put much stock in modeling alone.
“Models are only as good as their assumptions, obviously there are a lot of unknowns about the virus,” he said. “A model should never be used to assume that we have a number.”
As of Tuesday morning, at least 367,000 people in the U.S. have contracted the virus, and 11,000 have died.
