Americans have done a better-than-expected job of social distancing, but if they stop now, government projections estimate another 300,000 deaths -- five times what the White House expects now. And some outside experts think that's too rosy a model.
The estimated 300,000 cases without social distancing"would assume a very optimistic case fatality rate," Jha says."That's not where the best estimates are today."
"We have at this moment the finger on the spring," Gutierrez says."If we remove the finger, the spring jumps. So we will see a lot of cases."The updated HHS document revised a few of the earlier parameters, doubling the percentage of symptomatic people the coronavirus would likely kill, from 0.25 to 0.5. It also increased the percentage of symptomatic people who would need to be hospitalized and how long they would be expected to stay.
The early April document also used seasonal flu's impact on different age groups to suggest how the coronavirus might affect them. HHS amended that information in the more recent document, but the earlier use of the flu as a proxy for coronavirus alarmed some experts. The documents do not indicate the extent to which social distancing might alter the course of the virus from here on out. But a separate federal planning document obtained by Public Integrity, which used parameters similar to those in the"best guess" scenario, surmised that shelter-in-place orders would cut transmission of the virus by 75%.
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