Covid 19 coronavirus: US in ‘deadliest stretch’ in history as death toll surpasses 2,500 for third day

America’s battle with Covid-19 is becoming a major upheaval, with the nation’s leading infectious disease expert warning that the nation is “on the brink” of total disaster.

The United States surpassed another morbid marker on Friday: The national daily death toll has surpassed 2,500 deaths in the past three days, its “deadliest stretch” since April.

What that new number of deaths means, 2,885, is that an American dies of coronavirus every 30 seconds, noted a reporter for The New York Times.

Hospitalizations and infections are also skyrocketing beyond already record levels in the vast majority of the nation’s 50 states. The cases have now exceeded 14 million and will only get worse.

And as healthcare workers prepare for the aftermath of Thanksgiving, when pleas to stay home and avoid travel fell on deaf ears, America’s leading expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that now faces a “crisis situation” in the coming months.

“The effect of Thanksgiving will be realized in two weeks, literally as we enter the travel season for Christmas and Hanukkah,” said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. MSNBC yesterday.

“I call on the American public to realize that this is real. This is not false, this is not a hoax. Literally another record is broken every day.”

The nation is now, Dr. Fauci said, “in a very, very difficult situation, if not crisis, when it comes to an explosion of cases,” warning that hospitals in many parts of the US of hospitalizations for Covid.

“In various areas of the country, the system is really stretching,” he said. “I know because we talk to these people on the phone.

“They call me, they say they are on the edge, on the cusp, that if we have this acceleration of cases, we will run out of beds, we will run out of personnel.”

In an equally harsh appeal Wednesday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Robert Redfield, predicted that the total of deaths in the United States could rise from 273,000 to 450,000 in February.

“The reality is that December, January and February are going to be tough times,” Dr. Redfield said at an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce.

“In fact, I think this is going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.

“We are potentially in that range now, starting to see 1,500 to 2,000 to 2,500 deaths per day from this virus. The mortality concerns are real, and I think, unfortunately, because we see February, we could be close to 450,000 Americans who they have died from this virus. “

An image shared on Twitter by a rural family physician / emergency room highlighted just how dire the situation has become in US hospitals.

The image shows a room in an ICU ward full of iPads that patients use to FaceTime their loved ones during their final moments.

“These are iPad stations being set up for virtual ICU end-of-life visits by a hospice physician I know. Jesus,” the man wrote.

Washington Post national political correspondent James Hohmann tweeted that the image “gives me the creeps.”

“So many wives who cannot hold their husband’s hand when he dies. So many children who cannot hold their parents’ hand when they die,” she wrote.

“It didn’t have to be this way.”

The only way America could get out of this hole, Dr. Redfield said, was for Americans to step up and take greater precautions in the months to come.

“It is not a fait accompli. We are not helpless,” he said.

“The truth is that mitigation works. But it won’t work if half of us do what we need to do. Probably not even if three-quarters do.”

What was needed for all residents to participate, he said in his address, was “clear, unified and reinforced messages.”

“The fact that we were still arguing in the summer about whether the masks work was a problem,” he said. “The time to debate whether the masks work or not is over.”