The U.S. Is on Track for the Worst Coronavirus Outbreak in the World
Donald Trump has set an end date for the coronavirus outbreak. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, he announced that he wanted the country "opened up and just raring to go by Easter." The president—who said in late February that the cases would go down "close to zero" within a couple days—evidently decided that it would only take two more weeks for it to be safe enough for people in nonessential jobs to return to business as usual, saying, "I guess by Monday or Tuesday, it's about two weeks. We will assess at that time and give it more time if we need a little more time. We have to open this country up." Trump specifically wants people to start gathering en masse on Easter Sunday, so they can go to church and then return to work the following Monday, telling reporters he chose the date because "I thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful timeline."
However, the available evidence shows that the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. is only going to accelerate in the foreseeable future. An estimated 65,000 cases have been confirmed so far, and Wednesday saw the highest domestic death toll from COVID-19 yet. In California, the number of cases is doubling every three to four days, and governor Gavin Newsom predicts that more than half of the state will be infected at some point. Louisiana meanwhile has one of the highest per capita infection rates in the country, with 1,800 confirmed cases in a population of 4.6 million. Medical workers are making masks out of office supplies and governor John Bel Edwards warns that the state's trajectory looks similar the infection rate in Italy and Spain, where doctors are forced to ration care because hospitals are overwhelmed.
In fact, the U.S. as a whole seems to be on pace to have the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the world, eclipsing even Italy which currently has more than 74,000 cases and 7,500 deaths. The U.S. only lags behind by a few thousand cases currently. The population of Italy is also less than a fifth the size of the U.S., so a direct comparison like this doesn't give a full picture—but the scope of the outbreak in the U.S. may certainly be worse than the current numbers suggest. Testing here has been slow, inconsistent, and often available only to people who are almost certainly sick already (or a sitting U.S. senator).
Looking at where both countries are relative to when each had its first 100 confirmed case paints an even bleaker picture. Currently, the U.S. is a little more than 20 days past that point, and according to data compiled by Statista, at the same 21-day mark Italy had confirmed 20,000 cases of COVID-19. The U.S. had more than 60,000. According to Newsweek, the number of cases was doubling in Italy every three days—in the U.S., they are doubling every two and three days. That seemingly tiny margin can have exponential repercussions. Health care workers in the U.S. are already being forced to reuse face masks and all major hospitals in Atlanta already have coronavirus patients in every ICU bed.
The good news for Italy is that the number of new cases there seem to be falling, but the Italian government also took more drastic and effective measures than anything the U.S. has done yet, including a nationwide lockdown enacted on March 9. If current trends continue, without more significant intervention, then the number of U.S cases could overtake Italy's by the time Trump wants Americans to gather at church and work.
Trump's concerns about the coronavirus outbreak aren't confined to public health. By all accounts, he's most worried about the impact it will have on the stock market and how that might affect his reelection chances. Mike Konczal, who researches financial reform and unemployment at the Roosevelt Institute, recently told Mother Jones that the economy will most certainly "look like a depression" by the third quarter of 2020. And unemployment news out Thursday morning likely won't help: a record shattering 3.2 million people applied for unemployment benefits last week alone. Trump has been trying to downplay the severity of the pandemic by saying it's no worse than the flu, but as desperate as he may be to nudge the stock market up, the reality of COVID-19 is that it is unlikely to conform to any of our hopes.
Spending all day at home is not exactly conducive to mental health, so we asked psychologists for advice.
Originally Appeared on GQ
