Monday, April 6, 2020

Health Experts: Americans Underestimate How Long COVID-19 Disruptions Will Last - STAT News

By the end of April shouldn’t be anyone’s consideration at this point. We have to assume at the very least this is going through May.

"The Trump administration has consistently shown a desire to underplay the severity of whatever is coming. And they’re constantly adjusting that — as it becomes harder to deny the reality will be worse than what they’ve conditioned people for," said Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development."

A former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, said this week that it’s understandable that people want to know when businesses can reopen and some facets of life can resume.

But he said the focus of public discourse now needs to be on the public health response, not the question of when restrictions can be lifted.

“Decisions to reopen society should not be about a date, but about the data,” said Frieden.

By the end of April shouldn’t be anyone’s consideration at this point. We have to assume at the very least this is going through May.

Experts are worried that if the current measures work, success could have a paradoxical downside: People who are still vulnerable to the virus will see the risk as over, leaving open the possibility of resurgent spread.

The full article is available here