Coronavirus cases are off the charts, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has sounded the alarm. He discussed COVID-19 and the impact on the African-American community with Byron Allen on theGrio, and said we are, as a nation, in a bad place.. “We’re in a very precarious situation in that if you look at the slope, the trajectory of the curve, that’s gone up now in what I would consider the third surge that we’ve had,” said Fauci. “Yesterday we had 2,000 deaths, we’ve had quarter of a million deaths total, a bit more, more than 12 million cases approaching 13 million cases, more than 80,000 hospitalizations. That’s a bad situation to be in.” Read on to hear which states he’s worried about, and to ensure your health and the health of others, don’t miss these Sure Signs You’ve Already Had Coronavirus.
Dr. Fauci was asked about rumors of people dying in the streets. “The now classic iconic story,” says Dr. Fauci, “that was told on NPR just a couple of weeks ago, the largest health facility in Montana, in Billings, that has 25 ICU beds at one point at 40 plus ICU patients. So they had to put the patients, no, not on the street, but they had to put them in non-ICU rooms, you know, recovery rooms and things like that. And they had to get people taking care of people in ICU beds that were not specifically trained to take care of individuals in an ICU situation. So that’s the kind of thing that almost certainly is going to get rectified if resources centrally will be put in, but you shouldn’t even be in that risky situation. We shouldn’t have to be there.”
“Idaho’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 900 residents on Wednesday after 20 new deaths were added statewide,” reports the Idaho Statesman. “COVID-19 is the sixth-leading cause of death in Idaho in 2020, close to overtaking cerebrovascular disease (strokes and brain aneurysms) for fifth, according to the latest data from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Diseases of the heart rank No. 1 in Idaho.”
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“North and South Dakota, with a combined population of just over 1.5m, have become an unlikely hotbed of a global pandemic,” reports the Financial Times. “South Dakota has a positivity rate of more than 43 percent of those tested, according to Johns Hopkins University. That is among the highest in the nation and compared with about 3 percent in New York. North Dakota, meanwhile, was recently found to have the highest Covid death rate per capita in the world.”
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Fauci said the virus is “straining the system in some areas of the country. I mean, when you look at these areas that really got hit early on—the New Yorks, the Chicagos, the New Orleans, the Bostons, and those places that—they never were overrun, but they came close to it. So they have with the help of the federal government and what their own local help have gotten enough backlog and reserve of things like beds, and they can always expand and surge in personnel. The thing we’re worried about is in the States with a population that isn’t as dense as some of the States, particularly those in the Northeast.”
“I believe that we can turn things around,” Fauci told Allen. “And if you have a really good attention to the public health measures, I believe we can prevent the acceleration of that surge that we’re seeing.” So do things “like wearing masks, uniformly; keeping distance; avoiding crowds in congregate settings, particularly indoor; washing hands frequently” and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don’t miss these 35 Places You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID.