COVID19 Update - Day 282

US Tests: 193,608,849*

US Cases: 17,004,147*

US Deaths: 302,261*

Worldwide Cases: 74,887,390*

Worldwide Deaths: 1,660,132*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

A couple of unfortunate milestones tonight.  For one thing, America has recorded more than 1 million new #TrumpVirus (1,047,712, to be exact) in just the past 5 days.  This is the largest number of new infections for any 5-day stretch of the pandemic.

For another, the United States has now recorded more than 300,000 deaths from the pandemic.  It seems like now would be a good time to recall that back in February, the U.S. Army projected that we *might* see half as many deaths --- 150,000 --- in an absolute worst-case, 'black swan' scenario.

This week, the Daily Beast viewed an Army briefing memo drafted on Feb. 3 predicting “between 80,000 and 150,000” coronavirus deaths in the United States. At the time, this was filed as a “Black Swan” report, usually a label reserved for extreme, unlikely scenarios. Even still, it prompted Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to order the military to begin “prudent planning” to prepare for a response to the pandemic.

As of Thursday, coronavirus deaths across the country surged towards 5,000. This came with dire new projections that show as many as 240,000 could die during the pandemic. In less than two months, the Army’s worst-case scenario memo appeared to have severely underestimated the potential danger.

Of course, the Army was likely operating under the mistaken assumption that the Trump administration would actually *try* to contain the virus.  Apparently emails were released today showing that their strategy was in fact the exact opposite. 

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a "herd immunity" approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…" Alexander added.

"[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" in order to get "natural immunity…natural exposure," Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee's select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that “we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had...younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread.”

The stupidity of this approach should be all too obvious now.  This is precisely analogous to a fire chief demanding that we put the fire out by allowing it to consume all available fuel --- i.e. burn the house down.

Of course there's no good way to know how widely the virus would have spread and how many people would have died if the Trump administration had ACTUALLY TRIED TO STOP IT.  But it seems fair to lay the blame at their feet for every death above the 'black swan' estimate of 150,000.