Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, former White House adviser for health policy, told MSNBC on Friday that at its current rate, the coronavirus outbreak could infect 100 million people in the U.S. within about four weeks.
“I think the front lines actually tell you what’s happening at the front lines, and politicians and people in Washington don’t want the country to panic,” Emanuel told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, according to Raw Story. “I mean, I think our Republican administration would have — what you’re seeing is major rationing in the country. Rationing is a word that they have used to beat up Democrats, but the fact is we are seeing rationing in parts of the country, and you have mentioned some of them, primarily in New York — but it’s not going to be exclusively New York.”
“This is not a virus that is just going to stay confined to New York,” he added. “Right now, if you look at the numbers we probably have a million COVID-19 cases in the country, and if this is doubling every three to four days, that means that we’ll have 100 million people who have COVID-19 in about four weeks. That’s a frightening thought.”
White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx on Thursday said at a press conference that, “When people start talking about 20 percent of a population getting infected, it is very scary but we don’t have data that matches that based on the experience,” adding, “There’s no … reality on the ground where we can see that 60 to 70 percent of Americans are going to get infected in the next eight to 12 weeks.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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