China had 3,300 Covid-19 Deaths, Italy is Near 13,000, so why does the U.S. Predict 100,000?
by Kara Machowski
A few weeks ago Americans heard from our leader that this virus was going to go away on its own. Then we continued to see the numbers rise after President Trump announced that he would like to see the country open for Easter, which would have been great if we weren’t spiraling ourselves deeper into a pandemic. This week the president announced that we will have done a “good job” if we see 100,000 deaths, but to expect more. Where did this shift in numbers come from, were they always there and what changed the presidents mind? Because he must have at least seen those numbers earlier on.
There were so many mistakes trailing back to the week before we say the first coronavirus death in America, March 1st. When the nursing home saw its first coronavirus case in late February, already a patient had passed away, but wasn’t tested until after the first reported death. Because 'someone higher up' had opted that the CDC manufacture their own testing kits instead of using the already available WHO coronavirus tests. They were said to be faulty, but the very first batch of tests that were sent out by the CDC ended up being faulty and they were forced to re-manufacture a new one, delaying testing further.
Since there was such a delay in available testing kits America lacked in testing possible sick patients as well as incoming travelers from China, who had been to China and traveled through another country to return, or those returning from Italy when the virus first began to take hold there. Had we had earlier available testing kits we would have also had the availability to test more people who had come into contact with those individuals who had come in contact with someone with coronavirus.
If we had a better handle on testing, scientists would have been able to better estimate the spread of the virus as well as the trajectory of deaths. Perhaps then, we could have shut down the country earlier and possibly taken control of the spread much sooner. Additionally, if the federal government had been aware of the impending pandemic, they could’ve cancelled events such as Mardis Gras, celebrations in New York, and so many more precautions that would have saved tens of thousands of lives. Some wonder why do journalists and reporters keep highlighting all of the negative? The things that could have been done? Because we had proper planning, headed the warnings, we had better modeled scientist predictions (even I made a graph in early February that accurately tracked the virus, if we did this) we would’ve saved more lives than we lost in wars.
"at a current estimate of a mortality rate of 0.66%, that means that they project around 9.9 million Americans will contract coronavirus, possibly more"
So, where did scientists come up with 100,000 deaths or more? Well, they were able to predict how many people may actually be infected and how many people such as grocers, nurses, janitors will contract the illness later on and spread it to families. The white house task force, including Dr. Fauci and Debbie Birx, said that they went back to the drawing board, unknowingly alongside Professor Chris Murray of the University of Michigan, both used HIV and other pandemic models to aid their estimates, and came up with the same numbers. We don’t have those current numbers, but one could estimate that at a current estimate of a mortality rate of 0.66%, that means that they project around 9.9 million Americans will contract coronavirus, possibly more. As of four days ago, graphs showed that America had close to 3 million citizens infected with the coronavirus. Which is a stunning number when compared to where China left off with the virus, being the origin country.
"One positive to note is that current numbers do show that less Americans are dying from the disease"
One positive to note is that current numbers do show that less Americans are dying from the disease compared to other countries like Italy, where the mortality rate is near 10%. But scientist do warn that those numbers in Italy are skewed because America has actually ramped up testing, amid states still having a shortage.
There are still passengers who's fate remains unknown who are stuck on the cruise ship Zaandam off the coast of Florida. Passengers who were known to not have coronavirus were removed, but those who are sick and have tested positive and are asymptomatic, remain on board while Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis is reluctant to let passengers off. Again, we are stuck with a cruise ship that holds infected passengers and no real plan as to how to aid them. Some argue that since there are citizens of other origin, then we shouldn't allow them to disembark, but many are American citizens, and with so many crew members sick, there is no way they'd be able to take them home.
So when we ask "why so many people?" We have to look back to find the answers to where we went wrong. Unfortunately we still are behind on testing, and can only estimate how many people in the United States have the virus. In my state, Arizona, at the current moment physicians are actually discouraged from running coronavirus tests because there is such a shortage. Right now, Governor Cuomo of NY is fighting tirelessly day and night to help find aid for his state, and amidst all of his struggle, his own brother and CNN’s Chris Cuomo, has tested positive. He will be continuing his nightly news from his basement as long as he remains healthy.
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