Tucker: Experts can't predict when coronavirus pandemic will end

so those are the numbers as of tonight, the question is what happens next. Well, yesterday a New York Times article asked what seems to be a pretty simple question: When

will

New York City reach the peak of its outbreak? New York City, of course, is the place with the most cases in this country and you would think that epidemiologists could answer that question with some precision, but it turns out that they can't. Governor Andrew Cuomo

predict

ed the peak

will

come this week, the head of New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

predict

ed on April 15, the state's health commissioner, meanwhile, thought that in late April or perhaps early May the predictions would differ by as much as a full month at a time

when

New Yorkers are quarantined and people are still dying, that's a very wide range of answers Howard Markel, medical professor at the University of Michigan summarized the current state of knowledge this way quote we don't really know, we don't know, in fact, a close look at the data suggests that The peak of the epidemic in New York may have already passed five days.

On April 2nd, 1,420 people were hospitalized for

coronavirus

in New York, it is the highest number recorded so far, the next day the total fell to 1,095 and then on Sunday it fell to just 358 in the last two days, new hospitalizations have increased once again. but they are still well below last Thursday's peak, if this trend continues, we do not know if it will, but if it does, it is possible that the worst is already over in New York. All of this has been a surprise to our public health authorities and a pleasant surprise to those of us who watch the Institute of Health metrics and evaluations.

The IHM E is a well-regarded research center run by the University of Washington. The IHM E has produced detailed predictions that chart the expected course of this epidemic here in the United States. As in other countries, their model has done perhaps more than any other academic research to shape our response to the

coronavirus

crisis, so how accurate has that model been? Here are some numbers that the IHM initially predicted that on April 4, New York State would need 65,000 hospital beds to care for infected patients; the minimum estimate of what the state would need was almost 48,000 beds; In fact, on April 4, New York had fewer than 16,000 coronavirus hospitalizations and many other states fell far short of the model's projections.

Also, over the weekend, IHM II updated its model in many states, its projections across the country have been drastically reduced and yet they are still significantly overstated, for example today, which is April 7, the model Updated IHM predicts New York will need 25,000 hospitals. beds as of this morning the actual number was just under 17,500 the new model also predicted that as of today almost 6,600 people would be in intensive care and the actual number is just under 4,600 in Florida the new model predicted that 4,000 people would be The reality on the floor tonight is that not even 2,000 are hospitalized and it wasn't just Florida and New York, I was wrong in state after state, by the way, for the United States, this is great news and we should celebrate it, it is much better than What I thought was that, unfortunately, the question of total deaths, the model has been more accurate, although it still tends to overshoot, for example, yesterday the group predicted 784 deaths for New York, the state ended the day with approximately 600 for all the country, the model predicts around 2,000 deaths. today and unfortunately it looks like we will end up somewhere around that number, but that may not be the whole story, there are nuances within those numbers, as there always are in social science, for many years the CDC has tracked the total number of Americans who die each year. week for pneumonia for the last few weeks that number has been much lower than at the same time in previous years, how could that be?

It seems entirely possible that doctors are classifying deaths from conventional pneumonia as deaths from 19 kovat, which would mean that this epidemic is being attributed to thousands of deaths that would have occurred if the virus had never appeared here, we don't know for sure, but it's certainly worth considering that something is skewing those numbers and we also don't know exactly why the model predicted so many more hospitalizations than we actually have. If you were to hear people now say, you're hearing them say now that this is evidence that the lockdown and social distancing should be working, but not so fast, those measures were built into the model in the first place, they've already been taken into account. . and we're still doing much better than what epidemiologists believed was the best-case scenario, so the question is, and it's an essential question as we move forward, how did this happen?

Well, the virus may be less deadly than we feared, or it's less likely. sending people to the hospital maybe it spreads less easily than we thought maybe it spreads more easily than we thought and the number of asymptomatic carriers is higher than we knew those are all reasonable theories, we have no idea which one might If it is right, so there's this in a new draft. MIT economist Jeffrey Harris suggests that Americans are following social distancing guidelines more effectively than authorities ever imagined and that's another possible explanation, whatever is happening, this epidemic seems to be doing Less damage than anticipated and it is receding more quickly Not long ago, some of our leaders seemed on the verge of panic on March 24, for example, Governor Cuomo of New York fell into a state of frenzy during his daily press conference .

Cuomo dismissed the federal assistance New York had received as grossly inefficient. tens of thousands of innocent New Yorkers were going to die, he said they would suffocate while doctors do nothing to help them. FEMA says we will send 400 Grantha later, really what am I going to do with 400 ventilators

when

I need them? 30,000 you chose the 26 thousand people who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators you chose the people who are going to die it was effective theater but it was horrible what a horrifying thought that was as recently as last Friday April 3rd Governor Cuomo He was threatened with using the National Guard to confiscate ventilators from facilities in the north of the state.

That's how badly New York needed them, except it didn't, since it turned out that New York has many more beds and ventilators than it needs. We're hustling and moving, but every hospital has what it needs today, which is why miscalculations like the ones you just saw occurred across the country, state after state, on March 14, for example, the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown warned that her state's 688 ventilators would not work. It won't be enough to handle the next surge in coronavirus cases, but it turns out she recovered. Oregon had more ventilators than it needed, so on April 4, Governor Brown sent 50 of the machines to New York, which, based on current trends, may not need them either.

Now, once again, we must celebrate all of this. Fewer hospitalizations are a blessing for this country, and as terrible as this epidemic has been and will be, at least so far it hasn't been the disaster we feared our healthcare system wouldn't be. collapsed, that was the main concern, except in a handful of places it hasn't really come close, patients aren't dying alone in emergency room hallways with doctors too overwhelmed to treat them, that was the concern, it happens in others countries, it is not happening here, thank God for that, all this means is that the short-term crisis, the ones we were so fervently concerned about, in which the pressure on hospitals grew so exponentially day by day with no end in sight , that short-term crisis may have passed.

Look, but it looks like it may have, now is the time to look forward, if the virus is causing less systemic damage to our system than expected, then presumably we can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest of the countless Americans who have been seriously affected. hurt by our response to this, how can we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That is our task. Other countries are already working hard to make it adjusted to the population. The Crona virus outbreak in Denmark has been almost as serious as ours. been here in the US in Denmark schools and daycares are scheduled to open next week the government plans to lift more restrictions on May 10 the outbreak in Austria has also been similar in scope to that of the United States per capita there the government plans to allow small stores to reopen on April 14 followed by large stores on May 1 and then potentially restaurants and schools in mid-May, so that's what they're doing, we're not doing that here, we're not even talking about doing it because we're not allowed. to any discussion about how we could get out of the lockdown and return to normal life has for some reason become taboo in this country, go ahead and ask the question, you will be denounced as a tool of Wall Street that doesn't care about human beings humans. life often denounced by pro-choice activists we are happy to accept cash from American corporations, but the layers of irony are of course bottomless, but we should not be surprised by any of this, this is what happens when the debate public is replaced by healthy public debate.

Mindless partisans on social media define the permissible terms of conversation as they have and so we plod along as if the flawed models have no flaws, that is, if the reality of what is actually happening in our hospitals should not play no role. in the decisions we make in the future dr. Anthony Fauci has announced, for example, that Americans should prepare for 18 months of lockdowns at the absolute minimum and if a vaccine is not found, it could last forever if returning to normal means acting as if there was never a coronavirus problem. I don't think so. that will happen until we have a situation where the population can be fully protected, if you want to get to the pre-corona virus, you know that may never happen in the sense that the threat is there, so it is possible that life never returns.

It is normal that in this country we never recover what we have lost. You're hearing a lot of people say that suddenly last night is becoming kind of conventional wisdom on MSNBC, where conventional wisdom is often born. UPenn professor Zeke Emanuel explained that the United States may be shut down for 18 months, at least realistically, kovat 19 will be here for the next 18 months or more, we won't be able to get back to normal until we find a vaccine or drugs effective. I know it's terrible news to hear how people are supposed to find jobs if this continues in some form for a year and a half it's all that economic pain worth trying to stop kovat 19 the truth is we have no choice If we prematurely end that physical distancing and the other measures that keep it at bay deaths could skyrocket to hundreds of thousands, if not a million, we cannot return to normal until there is a vaccine conferences concerts sporting events religious services dinners in a restaurant nothing of that will resume until we find a vaccine a treatment or a cure you can't go to church until we have a vaccine the truth is we have no choice hearing that before that's a familiar phrase in Washington it should make you nervous do what I tell you follow my orders without questioning or complaining or a million people will die the oceans will rise polar bears will perish the human race itself will become extinct okay maybe they are smart people we should listen to them but these are also big life changing decisions history with consequences we can't even begin to anticipate so far before moving forward and altering our lives and our country forever it's fair to ask about the numbers their numbers we acted on the first time turned out to be completely wrong how they screwed it up so completely that's a fair question if you can answer that question, answer it slowly, rationally, in a way that makes sense and suggests deeper humility in the future as you make more decisions, then that's appropriate, that's enough, that's enough. it allows them to make more public policy decisions, but if they can't answer that question, whether to dissemble or dodge or attack the people who asked for it, then you know they are forever disqualified from influencing our lives, let's see if they can do it, they should do it .