so by January 20th say we have 350k deaths.
when Biden’s death count responsibly counter starts
Should I bet the over or under?
there's a lot of good stuff happening right now. For instance I just sent home a 70 something year old that would have been dead under my care for months ago. This is a combination of being better and more experienced but also access to certain drugs that I didn't have. None of these are silver bullets but you do see them work in certain populations.
but that guy was in the hospital for 18 days and now going to rehab and still won't be himself for at least 3 months from now.
There's a study that I read recently showing the mortality improvements in just the last 4 months. It's pretty dramatic in the sickest patients. Part of this is our treatment and experience and the other part is that we're not doing any system overruns right now. You can't really compare overrun New York with New York now.
Also it's very likely that everybody wearing mask is modulating viral load and participating in lowering disease severity. This is a working theory only born out in very small lab studies, but continues to have mounting evidence.
We are greatly expanding testing which is good but we are so far behind that it isn't that useful. you still have to come see me for your test and that's a cost in time barrier and that needs to stop. Even though we are expanding testing we simultaneously have leadership undermining what steps people should be taking to not get sick. In some areas virus infection density is so high that now it becomes very difficult to avoid being infected even if you're attempting all the right strategies. This majorly undermines the attempt to only protect the vulnerable for instance.
As to your direct question. No matter who is in charge for the next 60 to 120 days you can expect that the virus is going to surge significantly. We have already laid that time bomb for the last 2 months. Doubling rates are too fast and lots of areas that had very slow spread and low case densities. So now you have to start changing strategies. Some deaths are already guaranteed unfortunately because our cases are so high. Hospitalizations and deaths are starting to rise now. because of all of the things I talked about above there is a good chance they will not rise as much as the northeast and the spring or the south in the summer. but it's very unique depending on what resources you have for your area. A system overrun likely doubles deaths, and not just for covid19.
Bet on the virus until somebody starts talking about a significantly massive federal coordinated testing campaign and starts coordinated messaging so that we are all moving in the same direction. Until then the virus wins.