CDC warning gets real: stay home
Thanksgiving gatherings likely mean 300,000 COVID-19 deaths by mid-December. This is going to get much worse before vaccines begin having any impact, and that is a best-case scenario.
We are speeding towards 300,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, and the data from the past week suggest that we are going to get to that grim point much faster than previous forecasts predicted.
There is a lot of COVID-19 related news today, including the dramatic tone shift in today’s message from the CDC.
While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been mostly reserved in its warnings throughout the year, today’s message was loud and clear: stay home for Thanksgiving.
"One of our concerns is people over the holiday season get together, and they may actually be bringing infection with them to that small gathering and not even know it," CDC COVID-19 incident manager Henry Walke told reporters, according to Axios.
The warning came as the CDC updated its COVID-19 death forecast.
As the chart below shows, the number of new cases in the past week is pushing the death rate even steeper. The CDC's forecast has been updated based on the worsening trend, predicting 5,200 more deaths by Dec. 5 than the agency's forecast published a week ago.
The CDC “ensemble” forecast now predicts 7,300-16,000 additional COVID-19 deaths by Dec. 12, 2020. (Data from CDC. Chart by Doug Levy.)
The University of Washington IHME forecast predicts an even sharper acceleration, with another 30,000 deaths possible in the next three weeks.
The CDC “ensemble” forecast predicts 7,300-16,000 additional COVID-19 deaths by Dec. 12, 2020, a 2% faster pace of increased deaths than predicted one week ago. (Data from CDC. Chart by Doug Levy.)
Hospitals in at least 25 states report staff shortages due to COVID-19, according to STATnews.
More than 100 hospital companies led by the Cleveland Clinic kicked off a #MaskUp campaign.
Duke University’s use of “pooled testing,” in which multiple samples are tested simultaneously to process tests faster appears to be an effective tool to detect COVID-19 infections on college campuses when used with other methods such as contact tracing, a CDC report says.
Hospitals in at least 25 states report staff shortages due to COVID-19, according to STATnews.
The White House continues to issue messages opposite what public health experts recommend.
For further thought:
The New York Times has done yet another outstanding data analysis and visualization. This one shows unequivocally how COVID-19 mitigation measures directly link with results. Simply put, places that seriously “locked down” were able to swiftly reduce COVID-19 spread, and the places that lifted restrictions before seeing reduced infection spread are the places that now suffer the most.
The map is worth spending time with. Here is an image. Click on the image to go to the interactive map at the New York Times website.
A few events worth watching:
Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and NPR are holding a webinar Friday at 12 noon EST about the COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Details at https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/events/race-for-the-covid-19-vaccine/.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health held a discussion earlier today: The Path to Reversing Troubling Trends, including some of the top epidemiologists. Watch the recording at https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/news-and-events/events/november-19.html
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