Dr. Deborah Birx Says Coronavirus Would Have Killed 1.6 to 2.2 Million Americans if Top Health Officials Did Not Push Lockdown and Ruin US Economy (VIDEO)

Dr. Deborah Birx spoke at the daily White House coronavirus press conference on Sunday. 

Dr. Birx is the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force.  She followed Dr. Anthony Fauci who earlier today estimated the United States will see from 100,000 to 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the coming weeks and months.

Dr. Birx said the Task Force is reevaluating numbers and is in agreement with the Chris Murray study that was released last Thursday.

Dr. Birx said all of the flu models predicted somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2 million deaths if the government did not mitigate.  It is not clear where she came up this this excessive number. Dr Birx said some models predicted half of the United States would be infected.

This is the start of the government ‘s defense of destroying the US economy.  When the coronavirus numbers come in two months from now at a much lesser mortality rate Americans will not be so happy about losing their jobs and their savings.

The study Dr. Birx mentioned was the Christopher Murray study.

You can read it here.

And here are the results and conclusions from the study.

RESULTS

Compared to licensed capacity and average annual occupancy rates, excess demand from COVID-19 at the peak of the pandemic in the second week of April is predicted to be 64,175 (95% UI 7,977 to 251,059) total beds and 17,309 (95% UI 2,432 to 57,584) ICU beds. At the peak of the pandemic, ventilator use is predicted to be 19,481 (95% UI 9,767 to 39,674). The date of peak excess demand by state varies from the second week of April through May. We estimate that there will be a total of 81,114 deaths (95% UI 38,242 to 162,106) from COVID-19 over the next 4 months in the US. Deaths from COVID-19 are estimated to drop below 10 deaths per day between May 31 and June 6.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

In addition to a large number of deaths from COVID-19, the epidemic in the US will place a load well beyond the current capacity of hospitals to manage, especially for ICU care. These estimates can help inform the development and implementation of strategies to mitigate this gap, including reducing non-COVID-19 demand for services and temporarily increasing system capacity. These are urgently needed given that peak volumes are estimated to be only three weeks away. The estimated excess demand on hospital systems is predicated on the enactment of social distancing measures in all states that have not done so already within the next week and maintenance of these measures throughout the epidemic, emphasizing the importance of implementing, enforcing, and maintaining these measures to mitigate hospital system overload and prevent deaths.

Here is Dr. Deborah Birx today.

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