us response on covid 19

 

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) - USA Response

The US led the globe with over 100,000 COVID-19 fatalities as of 27 May 2020, and around 1.7 million coronavirus infections. US presidential hopeful Joe Biden said the milestone "could have been avoided." Biden, who is set to run as the Democratic candidate against Donald Trump in November, cited a recent Columbia University study that said 36,000 lives could have been saved if the government had imposed social distancing and lockdown measures just a week earlier than March 13.

Coronavirus can cause debilitating pneumonia in severe cases. Many of the deaths attributed to pneumonia most likely are COVID-19 related. Pneumonia kills an estimated 30,000–60,000 people every year in the US. But from February to mid-May 2020 there were 89,555 recorded pneumonia deaths. In Illinois, the CDC reported 4,856 COVID-19 deaths while reporting 2,149 pneumonia deaths, more than five times the five-year average. In Ohio, the coronavirus caused 1,969 deaths and pneumonia had killed 2,327, which is 1,507 higher than the five-year average. And in Florida, which recently fired a state employee who developed its coronavirus tracking database, the number of COVID-19 deaths stood at 1,762, while pneumonia deaths were currently 5,185. The five-year average deaths over the same time period was 918.

The Trump Administration restricted travel from China, except for US citizens, green card holders, HKSAR, RAEM and Taiwan on 31 January 2020. The Europe ban followed 12 March 2020. Based on the Ebola experience, WHO had deprecated such travel bans, but this mis-understood the scope of the problem. The bans were too little too late with too many exceptions. Most of the infections in New York City were from Europe. Laurie Garrett noted that a genetic study of 1000s of viruses led by Worobey showed that the 1st Wuhan-2-Seattle case did NOT spawn the epidemic. That case infected few people. Rather, a later traveler from China, arriving AFTER the #Trump travel ban, started the WA State #COVID19 outbreak.

The US became the first country to record more than 2,000 #coronavirus deaths in one day, with 2,108 fatalities in the past 24 hours, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally 10 April 2020, which also reported the US recorded more than 500,000 coronavirus cases. The United States recorded nearly 1,500 deaths from COVID-19 on 03 April 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the worst 24-hour death toll globally since the pandemic began. With 1,480 deaths counted between 8:30 pm (0030 GMT) 02 April 2020 and the same time 03 April 2020, according to the university's continuously updated figures, the total number of people who died since the start of the pandemic in the United States was now 7,406.

Donald Trump was a loud, xenophobic, anti-science critic of the 2014 Ebola response (calling Pres. Obama a "dope" and urging him to leave behind in Africa any Americans who contracted the disease). His instincts seemed wrong for the novel coronavirus challenge -- and his distrust of government experts was paricularly worrisome. In July 2018, President Trump reversed President Obama's decision (made after the Ebola epidemic) to create a special unit within the National Security Council to address such issues; Trump disbanded this team. Congress also had not kept up with key investments in research and preparedness. The special hospital network set up in 2014 to deal with challenges like the coronavirus was set to run out of money in May 2020.

The US' first COVID-19 case was confirmed on January 21, and US President Donald Trump announced a ban on travel from China on February 2. But for a long time after that, the US had been preventing China-imported cases, not community spread. Starting from Trump, US politicians openly downplayed the risk of community spread. The COVID-19 test in the US had been backward until the end of February. The CDC also set a very high standard for the COVID-19 diagnosis, in which all confirmed cases must have the experience of traveling to China recently. This meant refusing to monitor community spread.

Trump could have blunted the diseasae by heeding advanced warnings from the World Health Organization, from the Centers for Disease Control, and from the Obama administration, making preparations and taking action. Trump could have mitigated the crisis but he failed miserably, opting first for denial, declaring the COVID-19 warnings the Democrats' "new hoax". The federal government never mobilised its authority and resources to provide kits for testing the potentially and actually infected. Little was done to take its spread across the US seriously. It was all business as usual for the White House, for Congress, and for so many elected officials until the beginning of March.

US intelligence agencies repeatedly warned President Donald Trump about the threat of the novel coronavirus outbreak in more than a dozen classified briefings earlier this year, according to the Washington Post. In a report published on 27 April 2020, the US newspaper cited current and former US officials, who revealed that Trump had been alerted in January and February, even as he continued to downplay the threat of the contagion that was first reported in China in December. The repeated warnings were included in the president's daily brief, which for weeks tracked the worldwide spread of the virus, raising the alarm about its potential consequences,

Peter Navarro, the trade adviser to Donald Trump, warned in two newly disclosed White House memos in January and February of the dire consequences of an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus in the United States, but Trump for weeks continued to publicly downplay concerns. Navarro wrote in his 29 January 2020 memo, "The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans."

An unclassified briefing document on the novel coronavirus prepared on 03 February 2020 by U.S. Army-North projected that “between 80,000 and 150,000 could die.” The army estimate correctly stated that asymptomatic people can “easily” transmit the virus—a finding it presented as outside the contemporary medical consensus. Trump received briefings in January from intelligence agencies, and from Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, that warned COVID-19 could be a top-tier threat. Similarly, the Senate Health Committee received one on Jan. 24, a little over a week before the Army assessment.

From the outset, Trump misled the nation about the imminent danger of a coronavirus outbreak. In February, a month into the epidemic, he was reassuring the public that there was nothing to worry about, that all was under control. And although he now denies it, Trump is on the record repeatedly underestimating the virus's contagion, deadliness and disruption. By 26 February 2020 Trump assured that 15 known cases of coronavirus inside the U.S. “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

During a press conference Feb. 26, Donald Trump downplayed the 2019 coronavirus’s threat to the United States - "This is a flu. This is like a flu.". At one point, Trump said the virus might not hit the United States. Trump claimed that 15 Americans had contracted the new virus, even though the CDC's total count was then at 60. Trump insisted that the number of cases in the United States is "going very substantially down, not up." Trump said the United States is "rapidly developing a vaccine" for the coronavirus and would "essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."

“We are totally prepared,” Trump said at his campaign rally. “The press is in hysteria mode.” Donald Trump Jr., one of Trump's sons, accused members of the Democratic Party of wanting the coronavirus to kill “millions of people,” which he told Fox News Channel was a “new level of sickness” among opposition politicians.

Donald Trump accused Democrats of a new “hoax” over criticism of his handling of the coronavirus threat. “They're doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it's ridiculous, and I think they're very disreputable,” he told reporters. "They tried the impeachment hoax. ... This is their new hoax,'' Trump said of Democratic denunciations of his administration's coronavirus response. Trump called for the media and politicians “not do anything to incite a panic because there's no reason to panic at all.” Trump said, “If you’re healthy, you’ll probably go through a process and you’ll be fine.” Other health officials stressed that they expect most of the of COVID-19 fatalities will be older people with existing serious health problems.

Over 430,000 travelled into the US from China including from Wuhan, after Beijing made the coronavirus outbreak public, including 40,000 who arrived in the country after the US travel ban was enforced.

Investors did not regard it as a hoax. By 27 February 2020 US stock prices dropped for sixth straight session in a rout that wiped out nearly $5 trillion in value, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 10 percent from highs achieved earlier in the month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,191 points -- the largest single-day drop in history - a 4% single-day decline on the value of the stocks on the list. Terminal operations in Chinese ports were not going smoothly because truck drivers and port workers were missing. Container ships' round trips through Chinese ports were being increasingly cancelled because of low load levels. Crews were not being swapped in China. Saudi Arabia temporarily suspended entry for individuals seeking to perform Umrah pilgrimage in Mecca or visiting the Prophet's Mosque in Madina.

The Trump administration barred a top US disease expert from speaking freely to the public after he warned the coronavirus might be impossible to contain. The Trump administration has barred Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), from speaking publicly about the novel coronavirus without approval. Among the first steps Pence took was to institute measures to coordinate messaging, which would require top officials to seek clearance before making public statements on the illness.

Trump persisted 02 March 2020 in making false assurances about U.S. preparedness for the coronavirus outbreak and the prospects for a quick vaccine, or even cure. “We’re talking about a vaccine. Maybe a cure is possible. But we’re talking about a vaccine and they’re moving along very quickly, all of the pharmaceutical companies, are moving along very quickly.” [remarks before a meeting with Colombian President Iván Duque] The U.S. may have a vaccine “relatively soon” and “something that makes you feel better ... sooner” [evening rally in North Carolina].

As the infections grew in number, Trump decided to personally dominate the evening news with his regular prime-time press conferences, and succeeded in dictating the news agenda despite his mixed messages, mumbled utterances, falsehoods, and overall poor performance. While thi bump in the polls was still lower than the double-digit bumps gained by other Western leaders, which is expected in a time of crisis, it was more than sufficient to overshadow the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a news conference 28 March 2020 that data projections indicate the coronavirus outbreak in New York will peak in "14 to 21 days." During a White House press conference on 30 March 2020, Trump said data indicates that the US death rate will likely peak in two weeks. He also remarked that limiting the number of deaths to 100,000 would constitute a "good job," and that his administration has lowered the number of potential deaths from earlier estimates of more than 2 million. "If we could hold that down as we're saying to 100,000, that's a horrible number, maybe even less ... So we have between 100,000 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job."

There are more than 2.2 million people behind bars in the US – the highest number in the world. Health officials and criminal justice activists fear the virus could spread rampantly in the US prison system, thanks to dense living conditions, poor sanitation and restricted access to health services. Many prisoners fall into the high-risk category due to age or underlying health conditions. Prison workers, who travel in and out of the facilities daily, are also at risk of contracting and spreading the disease.

People experiencing unsheltered homelessness (those sleeping outside or in places not meant for human habitation) may be at risk for infection when there is community spread of COVID-19. The risks associated with sleeping outdoors in an encampment setting are different than with staying indoors in a congregate setting such as an emergency shelter or other congregate living facility. Outdoor settings may allow people to increase distance between themselves and others.

Richard N. Haass [CFR President] noted 31 March 2020 "More Americans have lost their lives to #COVID19 than in Afghanistan or on 9/11. In days it will be more than in Iraq. In weeks it will be more than in all 3 combined. Tragic, but also infuriating, as it was largely avoidable. Little is inevitable. Policy & policymakers matter."

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 on 27 March 2020, doubling in just three days as the pandemic accelerates and the U.S. rolled out broader testing measures. Confirmed US cases passed 50,000 on 24 March 2020, up from 5,000 the previous week. At the beginning of the month, there were roughly 100 confirmed cases in the US. Some of the increse is due to transmission of the disease, while much of the increase is due to increased testing. With 44,635 confirmed cases, New York state accounted for almost half of all cases in the US.

The number of coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 200,000 on 01 April 2020 as officials warned spikes in confirmed cases may soon be seen outside of large city centers. More than 4,400 people had died from the virus nationwide. New York City's ambulance system and police department were under increasing stress from the pandemic, with nearly a quarter of the city's emergency medical service workers out sick. Nearly 16 percent of the New York Police Department's uniformed force was out sick.

Emily Maitilis noted "Those who have been on the front line right now, bus drivers, shelf stackers, nurses, care home workers, hospital staff and shopkeepers are disproportionately the lower paid members of our workforce. They are more likely to catch the disease because they are more exposed. Those who live in tower blocks and small flats will find the lockdown tougher. Those in manual jobs will be unable to work from home."

In Chicago more than half of the city's 6,100 cases were African American, despite only the group only accounting for 30 percent of the city's 2.7 million residents. Seven in 10 patients who died from COVID-19 in the city were African American. In Louisiana, where 32 percent of the population is African American, that group accounted for 70 percent of COVID-19-related deaths. In Michigan, 40 percent of those who died were African American even though the group accounts for 13 percent of the population statewide. In both states, the largest and predominantly black cities - Detroit and New Orleans - were hardest hit. In New York, the epicentre of the pandemic in the US, the coronavirus is killing African Americans and Hispanics at twice the rate of white people.

“We do not think people of color are biologically or genetically predisposed to get COVID-19,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said 10 April 2020, practically sounding a warning siren that he was about to say something demeaning. “There is nothing inherently wrong with you,” the doctor said, “but they are socially predisposed to coronavirus exposure and to have a higher incidence of the very diseases that put you at risk for severe complications of coronavirus.”

"We need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your big mama. Do it for your pop pop," Adams said. “We need you to understand especially in communities of color. We need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable.”

Trump and some Republicans were openly willing to sacrifice Americans they consider to be "useless eaters". Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, told Fox News: "Let's get back to living... And those of us that are 70-plus, we'll take care of ourselves." Right-wing propagandist Glenn Beck told viewers of his BlazeTV show that Americans who are older should just go back to work and prepare to die: "Even if we all get sick, I would rather die than kill the country."

While the White House projected in early April 2020 that coronavirus cases in the nation’s capital would peak in late April, the local Washington, DC government was relying on a different computer model that said it won’t peak until late June or early July.

As the crisis deepened, America's commander-in-chief morphed into the blamer-in-chief, projecting his failures on anyone but himself or his administration. The first to be blamed were those journalists sitting in front of him and the "fake news" outlets they represent. The national press conferences that were meant to inform and clarify have turned into theatres of the absurd. He also blamed his predecessor, President Barack Obama and the "do-nothing Democrats". Trump went on a global blaming campaign, accusing Beijing of being responsible for the pandemic, his European allies of failing to stop the outbreak early, and the World Health Organization (WHO), of acting late and spreading wrong information.

Molina et al reported "Chloroquine analogs have been shown to inhibit the acidification of endosomes and to exhibit in vitro a non specific antiviral activity at high micromolar concentration against a broad range of emerging virus (HIV, dengue, hepatitis C, chikungunya, influenza, Ebola, SARS and MERS viruses) and more recently COVID-19... Repeated nasopharyngeal swabs in 10 patients (not done in the patient who died)... were still positive for SARS-CoV2 RNA in 8/10 patients (80%, 95% confidence interval: 49-94) at days 5 to 6 after treatment initiation."

While the number of coronavirus cases worldwide hit one million, the number of people who had lost their lives had almost touched fifty thousand. Outpacing all other countries in number of confirmed cases, the US became the major hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump warned Americans to brace for a “rough two-week period” ahead as the White House released new model projections that there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the US from Covid-19.

Some state governors, most notably that of New York, criticised the federal government and requested emergency assistance. The governor and mayor of New York are complaining almost daily about the lack of bed capacity, the insufficient number of ventilators, and the limited number of healthcare employees. The mayor of New York has emphasised the severity of the situation, claiming that he has only one week’s worth of medical supplies on hand.

In a daily press conference from White House, President Trump talked about the measures put in place. In particular, President Trump occasionally brings up the flaws in the US healthcare system. He even criticises state authorities, asking why they didn’t take precautions earlier.

The arrival of the Coronavirus brought a new season of need for many, and the Food Bank ramped up additional service to meet that additional need. The San Antonio Texas food bank distributed more than 1 million pounds of food to about 10,000 families, whose cars sat bumper to bumper in a parking lot for the record-setting distribution event amid the coronavirus crisis. About 6,000 households preregistered on the San Antonio Food Bank’s website for distribution held 09 April 2020 at Trader’s Village, Food Bank president and CEO Eric Cooper told the San Antonio Express-News. But thousands more showed up for the giveaway — and aerial photos show the parking lot chock-full of cars. Cooper called it the largest single-day distribution in the nonprofit’s 40-year history. The line to get the free food and the overwhelming demand were more than officials expected for San Antonio's fourth drive-thru food distribution giveaway. Some folks even got in line the night before the 10 AM event. Everyone was served and no one was turned away ... all they had to do was wait for hours in their cars in the sweltering Texas heat.

Hart Island, sometimes referred to as Hart's Island, is located at the western end of Long Island. Over a million people are buried in the city's potter's field on Hart Island. From 1980 to the year 2020, over 68,000 people had been buried in mass graves on Hart Island. Preparations for mass graves began at the end of March 2020. On 10 april 2020 new drone video showed a giant trench being dug at Hart Island to help handle the influx of unclaimed bodies due to the coronavirus pandemic. Normally, about 25 bodies are interred on the island in a week, for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or which go unclaimed by relatives. But recently, burial operations increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around two dozen burials each day. Investigations had exposed major problems in the way the remains of the impoverished and unidentified had been handled over the 150-plus years of Hart Island's existence. Hart Island is administered by the NYC DoC and is not accessible by the public.

  

 

Hart's Island is long and narrow, extending about one mile from north to south ; its width varies from 500 feet to one-half mile. The Island is composed of about 77 acres at high tide and about 100 acres at low tide. The Island is situated about one-third of a mile from City Island, about two miles from Great Neck and about 18 miles from the 23rd Street docks in the East River. The Island originally consisted of twin islands, which were used for Federal troops during the Civil War. The island to the north was joined with the island to the south by fills made with ashes and refuse. The southern portion of Hart's Island was formerly used for housing the insane. About 15 years ago the insane were transferred to Ward's Island, and most of the buildings now used for prison dormitories and the industries were constructed about 50 years ago for housing the insane. The Reformatory Prison of the Department of Correction is located on Hart's Island and serves as a branch Workhouse and Penitentiary, as the center of the manufacturing industries of the Department and as a hospital for male prisoners afflicted with tuberculosis. Barracks on the hill had room for about 100 crippled prisoners and old men, who were committed mostly for vagrancy.

The Potter's Field occupied almost 20 acres of the central and northern portions of Hart's Island by around 1925. This cemetery was begun at the time of the Civil War when Union soldiers were buried there. It is estimated that by 1925 almost 5500 bodies were buried there yearly, which meant that about one additional acre yearly was being devoted for this purpose. The bodies were transported in boxes by boats of the Department of Plants and Structures and are delivered to the prison authorities at the Island docks. Inmates dig trenches and bury about 150 bodies of adults in each trench. Some of these boxes, which were not much longer than cigar boxes, contained bodies of babies, and some of the trenches contained hundreds of these boxes in addition to the larger boxes used for adults.

As of 10 April 2020, there had been more than 3,300 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US defense system, of which 60 percent are active-duty military personnel. The US Pacific Fleet and US Indo-Pacific Command Headquarters are most vulnerable to the coronavirus. Almost all US Pacific bases report personnel infected with COVID-19, including Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Yokosuka, Kitsap-Bangor, and Kadena. Confirmed cases have been detected on four aircraft carriers - USS Ronald Reagan, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Nimitz and USS Carl Vinson - with more than 400 confirmed cases on the Roosevelt. As the most powerful military force in the world, with the highest level of combat readiness, the US military's failure to contain the virus has been disappointing.

Trump caused confusion and anger on 20 April 2020 after saying in a late-night tweet that he will "temporarily suspend immigration" due to the coronavirus pandemic. Referring to the coronavirus, or "the Invisible Enemy", as well as "the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens", Trump tweeted that he will "be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!" The president offered no other details. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement on Tuesday echoing Trump's past comments about immigration. She provided no details on what the executive order would entail. "At a time when Americans are looking to get back to work, action is necessary," she said. National security adviser Robert O'Brien earlier on Tuesday cast the president's announcement as a move to protect the American people's health. O'Brien said the temporary immigration halt would not be "dissimilar" to limits on travel to the US from China that Trump put in place in January.

The push to "make China pay for the virus" by refusing to honor repayments on US bonds held by China came from US Senator Lindsay Graham and has been refuted by voices including Trump himself and his top economic advisor Larry Kudlow. Responding to the question of whether the US might not pay its debt obligation to China, Trump said that it's a "rough game" and said he "doesn't have to do that" and needs to protect "the sanctity of the dollar."

Trump [08 May 2020]: "I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine, it's gonna go away, and we're not going to see it again, hopefully.... There are some viruses or flus that came and they went for a vaccine, and they never found the vaccine... And they’ve disappeared. They never showed up again. They die, too, like everything else.... The question is will we need a vaccine. At some point it’s going to probably go away by itself. If we had a vaccine that would be very helpful."

Seniors overwhelmingly gave priority to defeating the coronavirus over getting back to work. The pandemic had driven a wedge between retirees and less educated middle-age workers, who cannot work remotely and depend on a regular paycheck.

Michigan closed down its capitol in Lansing on 14 May 2020 and canceled its legislative session rather than face the possibility of an armed protest and death threats against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The gathering, meant to advocate opening the state for business despite the coronavirus pandemic, followed one April 30 that resulted in pictures of protesters clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns crowding the statehouse. They confronted police and taunted lawmakers.

Whistleblower Rick Bright testified to a U.S. House of Representatives panel on 14 May 2020 about readiness for the outbreak. Bright was removed in April 2020 as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responsible for developing drugs to fight the coronavirus. Bright testified to the subcommittee on health that he would "never forget" an e-mail he got in January from a U.S. supplier of medical-grade face masks warning of a dire shortage. "He said 'we are in deep shit. The world is. We need to act,'" Bright said. "And I pushed that forward to the highest level that I could of HHS and got no response."

"Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history ... we have the world's greatest scientists. Let us lead. Let us speak without fear of retribution ... we need a national testing strategy." Trump told reporters at the White House that he had watched some of Bright’s hearing. "To me he's nothing more than a really disgruntled, unhappy person," Trump said, adding that he did not know Bright.

Trump said: "When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."

A report released by the Australia Institute's Centre for Responsible Technology found that the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought about an "infodemic," a term the World Health Organization defines as spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus, after the research team analyzed 2.6 million tweets and 25.5 million retweets that used coronavirus-related hashtags on Twitter over 10 days from late March 2020.

The research revealed that twitter accounts of Trump supporters and infamous US conspiracy-mongers endorsing the QAnon movement are at the center of a coordinated astroturfing campaign to spread rumors about the coronavirus, particularly the conspiracy theory saying "China created the virus as a bioweapon," an unverified accusation repeatedly embraced by the US president and his administration, leading many to suspect the political purposes behind the coordinated retweeting campaign in promoting the interests of far-right US politicians.

The coordinated efforts to promote the "Chinese bioweapon" conspiracy theory focused on 882 original tweets, which were retweeted 18,498 times and liked 31,783 times, creating an estimated 5 million reaches on Twitter users. Similar research in January suggested there is a highly sustained and coordinated effort to promote this theory by pro-Trump, Republican and QAnon accounts, though highly suspected to be bot-like accounts, according to the research.

A model isn’t very useful if it’s not accurate. The popular model developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and commonly referred to by the White House and media. The covid19-projections.com website is made by Youyang Gu, an independent data scientist. The forecasts on Covid19-projections.com have closely matched reality. The C19pro team noted: "The IHME model, a model frequently cited by the White House and media, consistently performs in the bottom half of all models for both its US projections and state-by-state projections. ... On April 30, the director of the IHME, Dr. Chris Murray, appeared on CNN and continued to advocate their model’s 72,000 deaths projection by August. On that day, the US reported 63,000 deaths, with 13,000 deaths coming from the previous week alone. Four days later, IHME nearly doubled their projections to 135,000 deaths by August.... In their April 17 press release, IHME released estimates of when they believe each state will have a prevalence of fewer than 1 case per 1 million. ... it is likely that many individuals and policy-makers used IHME’s misguided reopening timelines to shape decisions with regards to reopening. Their reopening timelines were picked up and widely disseminated by many media outlets, both local and national. Any policies guided by these estimates can have repercussions weeks and months down the road.... their model is also inherently flawed from a mathematical perspective. They try to model COVID-19 infections using a Gaussian error function. The problem is that the Gaussian error function is by design symmetric, meaning that the curve comes down from the peak at the same rate as it goes up. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for COVID-19: we come down from the peak at a much slower pace. This leads to a significant under-projection in IHME’s model..."

New US coronavirus cases could more than double to 100,000 per day if the current surge spirals further out of control, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned on 30 June 2020, although he was "cautiously optimistic" a vaccine would be available early next year. California, Texas and Arizona haf emerged as new epicentres of the pandemic, each reporting record increases in Covid-19 cases, adding to pressure on scores of potential vaccines being rushed into trials. An additional 48,000 confirmed cases were reported on 30 June 2020, setting a new one-day record of infections. "Clearly we are not in total control right now," Fauci told a US Senate committee. "I am very concerned because it could get very bad."

Yhe principal deputy director of the CDC, Dr. Anne Schuchat, said 30 June 2020 “We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control.... We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.... This is really the beginning,” said the deputy director the CDC. “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country […] What we have in the United States, it’s hard to describe because it’s so many different outbreaks. [...] there’s more virus circulating than there was.”