Coronavirus: “We are in the time frame now that probably for the next 60 to 90 days we’re going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor,” Dr. Redfield said during an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, 2,977 people were killed. The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, killed 2,403 Americans.
On Wednesday, at least 3,055 new coronavirus deaths in the U.S. were reported, according to a database maintained by The New York Times. On Thursday, at least 2,923 people died.
Although a vaccine should be available soon, Dr. Redfield said that it is unlikely to reduce the numbers of deaths over the next few months. He urged Americans to “double down” on precautions and protect themselves by wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, avoiding indoor social gatherings and keeping their guard up, even among friends and family members. He also implored Americans not to travel and to reconsider travel plans if they have already made them.
“We are turning a corner, but I want to come back to the reality that this is going to be a brutal time for us,” Dr. Redfield said.
Health officials across the country share that same grim assessment.
“The worst is yet to come in the next week or two or three,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. “What happens after that is going to depend on our behavior today.”
Dr. Troisi said she expected the death toll to accelerate in part because current numbers most likely do not reflect infections from Thanksgiving gatherings.
The virus has taken the lives of the young and the old, the healthy and the sick, the prominent and the ordinary people known best by those who loved them.
Linda Azani, the assistant manager of Perches Funeral Homes in El Paso, said the toll the virus has taken there is so steep that “there’s not enough of us to go around.”
“Not enough directors to see families,” she added. “Not enough facilities to have funerals. Not enough chapels.”
— Roni Caryn Rabin, Sarah Mervosh, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Neil MacFarquhar
The New York Times