CNN – President Donald Trump’s decision to extend social distancing guidelines until April 30 came after officials reviewed 12 different statistical models, said Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, during a Sunday press briefing.
But standing in the Rose Garden, Birx also mentioned another model, created independently, that “ended up at the same numbers.” That analysis, which is publicly available, paints a grim picture of what’s to come in the US, even with social distancing in place.
As of Monday morning, it estimates that more than 2,000 people could die each day in the United States in mid-April, when the virus is predicted to hit the country hardest. The model, which is updated regularly, predicts that 224,000 hospital beds — 61,000 more than we’ll have — will be needed on April 15, when the US is estimated to reach “peak resource use.”
