I saw an article in Business Insider today which reported that the death rate is expected to double from 1,750 daily to about 3,000 by June 1st. I thought we were already at 3,000 so I guess 6,000 then.
The report also stated that social distancing hasn't had the expected impact upon the infection and death rate that officials were looking for. They didn't really elaborate on it. This is from the White House by the way.
I don't know what they were expecting. While yes, the day to day social distancing outside of your residence isn't very good for a variety of reasons I figured the shelter in place was helping tremendously. New York is down to 300 deaths per day compared to 900 a couple of weeks ago so something is working. This is a large country with a large population and it's going to work it's way through and some areas will be hit harder than others. I don't think we'll see another NY/NJ but people have to be realistic here, this was never going to go away in two weeks if everyone is just good little boys and girls. We need to stop comparing ourselves to countries with populations that might equal to two highly populous states.
I'm still waiting for an example of a western country where social distancing was actually implemented competently and resulted in the significant loss of life advertised without major social and economic disruptions. All I can think of is Germany........maybe.
If it's barely working in western European countries with smaller, more responsible and intelligent populations, better leadership and better institutions and slightly less Capitalistic bent how the hell did they really expect it to perform here?
So more death. More economic hardships. You won't have to debate about one or the other soon enough, looking like we'll all get to experience both. Such is life.