Dr. Anthony Fauci said the coronavirus death toll projections are a “moving target,” but the United States could see between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from the virus.
“There are things called models, and when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions. And the model is only as good and as accurate as your assumptions,” Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union, adding that he would predict up to 200,000 U.S. deaths and “millions of cases.”
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases did caution, however, that models tend to have a worst-case scenario built-in but that he has never seen such a scenario play out.
“Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I’ve never seen a model of the diseases that I’ve dealt which the worst-case scenario actually came out. They always overshoot,” he said.
So far, almost 125,000 people in the U.S. have been infected, and over 2,000 people have died from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
