quote:

An internal U.S. government document projects a surge in coronavirus cases and a sharp rise in daily deaths by June 1, the New York Times reported on Monday, even as President Donald Trump urged states to lift restrictions to quell the pandemic.

The document, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, projects that COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, will kill 3,000 Americans a day by the end of May, the Times said, up from a current daily toll that a Reuters tally places at around 2,000.

The projections, pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now, the Times said.

https://www.reuters.com/articl...s-says-idUSKBN22G1T3

NYT reported the story first:

quote:

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump’s former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0...in-email&login=email

The report

https://int.nyt.com/data/docum...ized/full.pdf#page=1

I predicted this a month ago.

https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-...ovid-19-outbreak/141

quote:

“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”

So... was the prediction wrong or did they underestimate enforcement and compliance?

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:

quote:

“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”

So... was the prediction wrong or did they underestimate enforcement and compliance?

From what I saw and read only a small percentage complied.

I think the prediction was wrong.

I don’t think our lockdowns were ever going to bring us below a reproductive rate of 1, as I explained in the first post of that link a month ago. I based that on the experience of Wuhan, where the lockdown came in phases.

Their first phase was stronger than ours, and didn’t get R below 1, at least according to on joint US-Chinese academic study. Their second, much tougher lock down rules finally took it to ~0.3.

At 0.3 you can go from 10k new cases a day to fewer than 100. We have been locked down for about 6 weeks.

OTOH what DOES seem to have succeeded is enough curve flattening so that available care facilities were not overwhelmed as feared (except for NYC).

However, that says nothing about what may lie ahead in terms of either a second wave occurring (probably in the Fall) and/or a new surge of cases owing to increased contagion as the country "opens up" largely for economic reasons.

No wonder Buffett is holding all bets regarding the future - and for the first time. I am afraid he's expecting (if that's the word) a downturn that won't be reversed for at least a generation. Hopefully, that won't take a war to resolve like last time (and one we would be doubtful to win, if indeed anyone can be considered to win* with our shared planet at stake!)

*Free associating from that thought - China comes up with a vaccine and does not share it with us, leading to calamity. That is, especially as Russia continues to successfully sow the winds of chaos here via social media through and after the election...

I've always wondered (idly - as I doubt I'll be here to see it happen) how the three great powers will play it out in a world in which Mass Destruction for one seems to lead inevitably to that for all.

But perhaps not. Hmm. Wonder if China would share their hypothetical vaccine with Russia...