CDC warns Jan and Feb 2021 will be the worst months for Covid.

[BigmanPigman]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/cdcs-redfield-says-the-most-difficult-months-in-health-history-loom.html

"CDC director warns the next few months could be ‘the most difficult in the public health history of this nation’"

The next few months of the Covid-19 pandemic will be among “the most difficult in the public health history of this nation,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday.

The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that’s going to be put on our health-care system.”

Redfield added that deaths caused by Covid-19 are already rising. He said the country is now in the range of reporting between 1,500 and 2,500 deaths everyday. The U.S. reported more than 1,500 deaths on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. And Covid-19 hospitalizations stand at an all-time high 98,600 across the country, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. Epidemiologists, emergency room physicians and public health specialists have warned for weeks that the latest surge of the virus could prove to be the deadliest yet.

One factor that makes this virus so dangerous, Redfield said, is that it spreads largely through people who don’t have symptoms, or spreads before patients develop symptoms. That makes it difficult to control what he called “the silent epidemic” without testing broadly throughout the population, including people without symptoms but who might have been exposed to the virus. The CDC is working on guidance for institutions and workplaces that will help them strategically deploy testing, he said.

[Warpy]

2. Redfield has solid medical credentials, but he's a religious nut given to wishful thinking

The pattern of previous epidemics, most notably the 1918 flu pandemic, is a peak in October-December, then a gradual drop in cases. That one came in three waves, the second in the fall of 1918 being the most deadly.

I'm seeing daily cases as well as transmission rates dropping quite a bit in the hardest hit states, including my own.

Redfield will likely be out of a job, so he's anticipating having the worst hung around the neck of his successor. This time last year, he was thinking it would be like SARSCov-1 and be gone by April. Instead, it seems to be using the 1918 playbook.