A reporter for The New York Times wrote Monday he was surprised to find America’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic appears to be unfolding faster than experts initially anticipated.
In “A Dose of Optimism, as the Pandemic Rages On,” science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. argued the coronavirus death toll in the U.S., standing at around 250,000, is far below the initial 2.2 million Americans initially projected to die by mid-October.
“Since January, when I began covering the pandemic, I have been a consistently gloomy Cassandra, reporting on the catastrophe that experts saw coming: that the virus would go pandemic, that Americans were likely to die in large numbers, the national lockdown would last well beyond Easter and even past summer. No miracle cure was on the horizon; the record for developing a vaccine was four years,” McNeil wrote. “Events have moved faster than I thought possible. I have become cautiously optimistic. Experts are saying, with genuine confidence, that the pandemic in the United States will be over far sooner than they expected, possibly by the middle of next year.”
Citing a March 16 White House press briefing on the virus, McNeil recalled President Trump and the White House Coronavirus Task Force presenting their “15 Days to Slow the Spread” recommendations. They showed a chart from London’s Imperial College, which used a “sinuous blue line” to demonstrate what Dr. Deborah Birx called a “the blue mountain of deaths.”
To avoid the pandemic from relapsing, he urged Americans to follow Fauci’s advice to “hunker down.”
He also wrote that vaccine skepticism must fade, and that Congress must act to make the vaccine available around the world, as well as helping Americans recover economically from the virus.
Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on X: @danimwallace.
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