While Media Promotes COVID Deaths, New Cases of Virus Appear To Have Quietly Peaked in US
There aren’t any numbers on the coronavirus that are particularly good, but the number of new cases being reported in the United States may provide a glimmer of hope in the COVID-19 crisis.
According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cases of the novel coronavirus seem to have peaked in the United States, having leveled off since the middle of March.
The data show a peak on March 26, with 15,274 new cases reported.
No other day since has come within 1,000 of that total. Without counting any of the days within the 10-day period that the CDC counts as the incubation period of the virus, the highest day post March 26 was … March 27, which had 14,274 cases.
April 2 was the only day with a number higher than 14,000 with 14,183 cases.
CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told Fox News on Monday that cases have stabilized in the United States and will soon decline.
In a Monday appearance, he said that in terms of the ravages caused by the virus, “we are still not reached the peak, but we’re close.”
“I think we’ve really stabilized across the country,” Redfield said.
“We’re still seeing a small rate of increase in the range of 5 to 6 percent, as opposed to where we were before when it was 20 percent, 30 percent per day; but we are close.”
“We’re stabilized and I anticipate that we will begin to see a decline in the days ahead, but we have got to just continue to take it day by day and look at the data,” he added.
And yes — while we’re seeing a lot of death in the headlines now, Dr. Anthony Fauci noted that’s a lagging indicator during an appearance on Fox News last week.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also expressed hope on “America’s Newsroom” that the peak had come during the appearance, Breitbart reported.
Fauci said that “seemingly paradoxically but not, we’re saying that we’re starting to see some glimmers of hope because the deaths generally lag by a couple of weeks behind what’s fueling the outbreak, namely the number of new cases and the number of hospitalizations.”
“So at the same time as we’re seeing an increase in death, like typically what we’re seeing now from New York, over the last few days, there’s been a stabilization and a decrease in the hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care and the requirements for intubations,” he said, according to Breitbart. “That means that as we get further on, beyond this week, we should start to see the beginning of a turnaround, which is a good sign.”
And that’s not the only good news. In the epicenter of the virus, hospitalizations are falling even as deaths rise.
According to Politico, data just made public Monday showed coronavirus hospitalizations in New York City were down, as were the number of patients in an intensive care unit.
On Saturday, 383 people were admitted with coronavirus symptoms across public hospitals in the city, compared to 463 people on Friday. Meanwhile, the number of those in intensive care was 835, down from 857 on Friday. For whatever it’s worth, the number of patients who tested positive for coronavirus went down from 59.3 percent to 58.1 percent. It’s the same thing across the state, meanwhile; according to the Epoch Times, New York is recording the lowest number of hospitalizations since the middle of March.
“That’s a really meaningful improvement. That’s a step in the right direction,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to Politico.
“We do see all the indicators moving in the right direction, moving downward together,” added de Blasio, whose public statements during the crisis haven’t always been helpful. “We’ve got to see them all move down in unison over a prolonged period of time to be able to get to that next phase, where we have low-level transmission and we can start on the path to a more normal life.”
These are numbers to be hopeful about. No, we’re not out of the woods yet. However, the media endlessly promotes COVID-19 deaths without noting they’re a lagging indicator.
Those deaths might be the loudest noise out there, and for good reason, but it’s not the only thing we should be listening to — particularly when hospitalizations seem to have quietly peaked.
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