The Unthinkable -- SARS/CoV-2 Deaths

"A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. 'What if?' became 'Now what'?"
"'No matter what, a virus [like SARS-CoV-2] was going to test the resilience of even the most well-equipped health systems', says Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious-diseases physician at the Boston University School of Medicine. More transmissible and fatal than seasonal influenza, the new coronavirus is also stealthier, spreading from one host to another for several days before triggering obvious symptoms. To contain such a pathogen, nations must develop a test and use it to identify infected people, isolate them, and trace those they’ve had contact with. That is what South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong did to tremendous effect. It is what the United States did not."
Ed Yong, The Atlantic 

"Looking at what we're seeing now, we're looking at 100,000 to 200,000 deaths."
"But I don't just think that we need to make a projection when it's such a moving target, that you could so easily be wrong."
"[Measures like the travel advisory to residents of the greater New York area] will ultimately help stop the virus."
"The original proposal was to consider seriously an enforceable quarantine. After discussions with the president, we made it clear, and he agreed, that it would be much better to do what's called a strong advisory." 
"I think it's entirely conceivable that if we do not mitigate to the extent we are trying to do is that you could reach that number."
"I'm not against releasing the restrictions. I'm actually for it in an appropriate place. But I don't recommend it unless we have the tools in place in real time." 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, Anthony Fauci 

"We are asking every single governor and every single mayor to prepare like New York is preparing now."
"What we're trying to say to everyone is: when this virus comes to your metro area, please stay in your metro area where your care can be provided, because it's spreading virus more quickly around the United States." 
"This virus, we think, can spread with a lot of asymptomatic and mild cases. It's not until it gets into the vulnerable groups that you start to see the hospitalizations. If you wait for that, if the metros and rural areas don't take care now, by the time you see it, it has penetrated your community pretty significantly. And that's what we're concerned about. And that's why you have to prepare, even though you think it's not there."
Dr.Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response co-ordinator 

"[There is a 15-page 'road map' outlining ways to transition from [sweeping mitigation strategies] to new approaches."
"A sustained reduction in the number of daily cases [over 14 days would be a trigger for lifting some of the measures in specific places]."
"It is too early to lift these measures [two weeks from the present]."
Dr.Scott Gottlieb, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute

A Samaritan's Purse crew works on building an emergency field hospital equipped with a respiratory unit in New York's Central Park across from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunday, March 29, 2020.

Formerly head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr.Gottlieb, now with the American Enterprise Institute. introduced a "road map in reopening" the United States in distinct phases. This, at a time when the infection rate in the U.S. is rising toward its peak, and at present stands at 164,121 infections and 3,153 deaths. U.S.President Donald Trump, conscious of the drain on American business spoke optimistically last week of the current situation in the pause of business-as-usual as the novel coronavirus cuts a swath through the U.S., with plans to launch by Easter.

Dr.Gottlieb and his colleagues expressed their expert opinion that various states have little requirement to be ordered to loosen restrictions by the White House. The recently released AEI report outlines steps that could be chosen once COVID-19 transmission comes under control in various regions, steps that were specifically linked to both the federal government and the states and health-care partners, public and private, working together for the common goal of restoring normalcy.

In the very midst of the pandemic's devastatingly-wide infectious rate, along with the deaths of so many Americans, a total of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths at peak is envisaged, and this toll is viewed by the president as a modest success in that government action has ensured that infinitely greater numbers of deaths -- some spoke of up to a million and beyond -- had been averted under his guidance. A stroke of good fortune whose personal perceptions and touted results are obviously not shared by all experts and commentators.

The reality is that a death toll spoken of by Dr.Fauci extends far beyond anything experienced by China, where the pandemic originated, and which has a population four times that of the United States. Even Italy's dread death rate and galloping infection rate that has swamped its hospitals and overwhelmed the capacity of its health-care community, which has seen a death rate over that which China experienced is set to be outpaced by the U.S.

Yet according to Dr.Fauci and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, discussions with the White House coronavirus task force led to President Trump's ultimate decision to set aside a quarantine for parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, in stark contrast to the strict lockdowns seen in Singapore, Hong Kong and China itself which succeeded in halting the internal spread of the coronavirus. As a result, South Korea, China, Singapore and Hong Kong are returning to normal, stamping out embers of the virus, while looking out for recurrences.

The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort passes lower Manhattan on its way to docking in New York, Monday, March 30, 2020.