Researchers: Covid-19 death toll could double this winter to World War 2 levels
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...h-toll-could-double-winter-world-war-n1247726
Covid-19 could kill as many Americans this winter as the Germans and Japanese did during World War 2, a research outfit that the Trump administration once relied on warned Friday.
The death toll in the United States, currently at 244,250, could nearly double by March 1 to 438,971, the
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine forecasted in its latest projection.
Add Europe, which is in the midst of a second wave of infections, and the rest of the world, and the global death toll could reach a staggering 2.8 million by March 1,
the IMHE projected.
“When you see that Europe is already up to 4,000-plus deaths a day, and it just keeps growing. We’re on a similar trajectory,” Dr. Christopher Murray, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington and director of the IHME, told NBC News. “We’re just about four weeks behind."
January in America could be especially grim, the IMHE forecasted, echoing the warnings of
Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top U.S. infectious disease experts who have repeatedly urged Americans to mask-up and be more vigilant about social distancing with the
holiday season fast approaching.
The daily death rate from Covid-19, which rose to 910 last week, could hit 2,200-a-week by the middle of that month, the IMHE projected.
Murray said the IHME’s projection of more than 438,000 deaths by March could climb even higher if Americans are not diligent about wearing masks, exercising social distancing and avoiding large gatherings.
“It depends on what we do as citizens and what state governments do,” Murray said. “Our numbers are what we think will happen, but they can certainly be worse."
As of Friday, the U.S. led the world with more than 10.5 million cases and record numbers of new infections were
being reported every day, while the Pfizer vaccine is
still months away from being distributed.
The IMHE estimates about 12 percent of the U.S. population has already been infected, ranging from 1 percent of the population in Vermont to 24 percent in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, the daily death rate is greater than four per million in Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming, the IMHE reported.
The IMHE’s dire projections were released as President Donald Trump had less than 10 weeks left to his presidency and was preoccupied with overturning the results of an election that Joe Biden appears to have won and
not focusing on the accelerating Covid-19 crisis.
The IMHE was criticized in the early days of the pandemic
for providing overly optimistic projections that turned out to be wrong, but which Trump and his team nevertheless promoted as proof that they had the coronavirus spread under control.
But in September, the IMHE released
a “best case” scenario that projected 257,286 to 327,775 Covid-19 fatalities by the end of the year.
