21 Times Experts Warned It Would Get This Bad
3,000 daily U.S. deaths is no surprise to those who’ve been studying the Covid-19 pandemic
Graphic: Covid Tracking Project
The skyrocketing U.S. Covid-19 death toll — more than 3,000 yesterday alone, or about two per minute — is exactly what experts expected would happen given the lack of any coordinated federal effort to rein in the pandemic. And, yes, the ever-increasing, grim tidal wave of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths could have been largely avoided.
While many Americans willingly mask up, avoid indoor crowds, and practice the suggested six-feet or more of social distancing, the White House and many federal and state political leaders have long downplayed the seriousness of the disease and its impact on lives and loved ones, while simultaneously spreading Covid misinformation and falsely suggesting the death toll is inflated (if anything, it’s an undercount, the data reveal).
In the meantime, with new cases continuing to soar in the wake of Thanksgiving gatherings and ahead of another wave of expected holiday get-togethers, daily deaths are nowhere near their peak, sure to push above 3,000 on average, then beyond. Deaths lag new cases and hospitalizations (which are also rising dramatically) by weeks, and will only begin to come down a few weeks after the daily case count curve begins to decline.
To get a sense of how frequently and consistently scientists and health experts have been in predicting the exact scenario unfolding right now, I sifted through my own article archives. Here are just a handful of the many warnings that were offered up across the months:
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Deaths likely to double
November 13: Deaths will continue to rise on the heels of any growth in new cases, after a weeks-long lag (it typically takes two to eight weeks for a person to die after the onset of Covid-19 symptoms). A projection published recently in the journal Nature on October 23 — based on a pace of infections that’s now way out of date — projected that the total Covid-19 deaths in America would exceed 500,000 by the end of February. “We’ve really painted ourselves into a corner as a nation,” said Michael Mina, MD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The people should be in an uproar for not having a strategy.” Read more about the projections here.
The pandemic is about to get much worse
October 18: “We face rapidly accelerating increase in Covid-19 cases across much of Europe, the USA, and many other countries across the world,” reads an October 14 open letter published in The Lancet journal and signed initially by about 80 of the top infectious-disease experts in the United States and around the world, and hundreds more since. “It is critical to act decisively and urgently.” Read about 10 signs it will worsen.
Please don’t have big Thanksgiving gatherings
October 12: “The last thing we want to do is put people at risk during the holidays because we were so hell-bent on having a large gathering,” said Saskia Popescu, PhD, an assistant professor at George Mason University. “It’s risky. So I would say, really, don’t do it.” Read about how to make gatherings safer, if you must have them.
Where the coronavirus hasn’t been, it will go
October 7: Think of the coronavirus as a wave that went into a pool and now it’s sloshing around, likely to move into every untouched corner of the country and flow back into places it’s already been, pushing the number of daily new infections back up near the highs seen during summer, possibly higher. “The places where it hasn’t been, it will go,” said Roger Shapiro, MD, an associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The places where it has already been, it can go back.” Read about this slosh model.
Avoid indoor dining, please
September 28: “Restaurants are among the higher-risk activities because you’re indoors with other people without masks for some of the time at least,” said Linsey Marr, PhD, is a scientist at Virginia Tech and an expert on the transmission of the coronavirus through the air. Read about safety tips, if you must dine in .
Now’s a lousy time for Covid fatigue
September 27: While the growing and horrific U.S. coronavirus death toll exceeds 200,000, Covid-19 fatigue is spreading even among people least affected by the pandemic, according to more than a half-dozen experts interviewed for this article… Amid all this fatigue, trust in government and health officials has been eroded by the lack of federal leadership on the pandemic, President Trump’s repeated slap-downs of health experts, and pandemic rules that are wildly different from one state or city to the next… The rate of new infections could rise to unprecedented levels this fall, “if we do nothing,” said Stephen Kissler, PhD, an expert in immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. Read about how to deal with your fatigue.
Please ignore Covid-19 B.S.
August 30: There are so many false Covid-19 claims floating around — more than 2,000, according to a recent study — that even the sharpest minds can be excused for a little coronavirus confusion amid this great global infodemic, fueled by hucksters and pranksters and facilitated by social media. “The stuff that gets shared by people makes people walk away thinking this is no big deal, that the virus is trivial, and most people do fine, and for 99% of people it’s harmless,” said Ashish Jha, MD, then a practicing internist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Read about 13 of them.
Wishful thinking isn’t working
August 17: “Wishful thinking just doesn’t help,” said Marc Lipsitch, PhD, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “And I think that’s been a big part of the issue, a notion in some states in particular, that somehow we can be different from all the other experiences with this virus and other viruses and we can just hope that it won’t spread when we have high levels of contact.” Read what he says does work .
We can tame this thing
July 28: “We truly have great knowledge [of] how we can control the virus,” said Yonatan Grad, MD, an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Read about 9 things learned already by early summer.
The virus is airborne
July 12: The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can be passed along by handshakes or after landing on surfaces, and maybe even through human feces. But the primary means of spread is thought to be through the air, especially in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, and especially within six feet. “In a poorly ventilated indoor environment where you need to shout to be heard, the six-foot separation rule will not be effective,” said Dr. Donald Milton, an environmental health professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on airborne infections. Read why outdoors is safer than indoors.
Well into the 5 stages of a pandemic
June 30: The explosion in Covid-19 cases across much of the United States is no surprise to the scientists who study infectious diseases and how they spread. “This is really the beginning,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, ‘Hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this,’ and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.” Read about the stages.
‘Headed in the wrong direction at top speed’
June 26: Scientists who know what will happen next, if something serious isn’t done soon to slow the spread, are sounding alarm bells like never before. “The acceleration of outbreaks in a number of states is very serious. This should be our number one national priority right now,” said Caitlin Rivers, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We are headed in the wrong direction at top speed.” Read about what went wrong.
Surge in younger infections portends poorly
June 25: While new U.S. cases of Covid-19 spike to record highs, a worrying trend is emerging: Diagnosed infections are soaring among younger people, with the majority of new cases in several regions now being seen among people under age 50, with significant increases among teens and young adults. Without new or renewed efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus, the skew to younger carriers will likely initially cause the death rate to fall, since the virus is deadlier for older people, explained Thomas Tsai, MD, a surgeon and health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But the overall rising number of infections will likely drive the daily death toll back up again eventually, due to sheer numbers of infections. Read why younger people unwittingly made things worse.
Summer will be bad
June 10: The nationwide decline in “the curve” of daily new cases, from a peak of 35,000 in early April to around 20,000 in recent weeks, has been obfuscated by the fact that four states with 40% of the nationwide case total — New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — experienced significant declines. “That is hiding the fact that the majority of other states are either increasing their numbers or fluctuating in fits and starts around a peak,” said Mark Cameron, PhD, an immunologist and medical researcher in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. “Our victory lap has started too quickly.” Read about the many signs of what was to come.
False sense of security in middle America
June 4: “Most of America’s rural counties have had just a sprinkling of Covid-19 cases, and I worry it is giving residents a false sense of security,” said Rodney E. Rohde, PhD, a professor of clinical laboratory science and an infectious disease specialist at Texas State University. “Complacency and a false sense of security are a microbe’s best friend.” Read about the known risk of superspreaders.
Inviting a 2nd wave
May 3: “We have not bent the curve enough to travel down the other side of this pandemic and release precautions in a rapid manner,” Mark Cameron, PhD, an immunologist and medical researcher in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said. “I share some of the optimism in planning a return to some everyday activities, but to do this at the peak of an outbreak, no matter how flat the curve has become in some states, is inviting a second wave.” And if the virus is unleashed in a second wave, whether now or this fall, Cameron says the ramp-up could be much quicker. “It would be crushing. We won’t have the slower city-by-city spread pattern we experienced this spring as the first wave of the pandemic ran its course. It will seem like it is hitting us from all directions. … The clock would be reset to zero, and the same precautions would need to be put back in place. It will feel like a bad game of Whac-A-Mole.” Read about fears for fall, in spring.
It’s only just begun
April 4: While the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the United States so far have occurred in a relative handful of large cities and other locales, experts say the steep rise in cases — the curve — will come to communities large and small across the country in coming days and weeks. Read what scientists saw looming, even in the spring.
We’ve known since 1918…
March 18: Early studies find that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 spreads easily between humans. One historian suggests we learn from the 1918–19 flu pandemic. “The Spanish Flu lesson that has not been applied effectively with Covid-19 is the essential need for government officials to tell the full truth, backed by medical facts, regardless of the political fallout. Read what else we learned from 1918 .
Finally, three separate warnings from the very early days, before the CDC was largely silenced by the White House…
Time for Americans to prepare
February 25: “I had a conversation with my family over breakfast this morning,” Nancy Messonnier, MD, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters. “And I told my children that while I didn’t think that they were at risk right now, we as a family need to be preparing for significant disruption to our lives.”
‘The next pandemic’
February 3: “We are preparing as if this were the next pandemic,” Messonnier said.
‘Unprecedented public health threat’
January 31: “We are facing an unprecedented public health threat,” Messonnier said. “We are preparing as if this were the next pandemic, but we are hopeful still that this is not and will not be the case.”
