Dr. Fauci talked about the possibility of 1-2 million DEATHS, and everyone's missed it

[thesquanderer]

In the "State of the Union" interview that has gotten so much play over the last day or so (about the 100k-200k deaths he expects), Tapper asked about a projection of how many cases there would be, and Dr. Fauci started talking about estimates, but if you carefully follow his answer, those initial figures he discussed in the answer were all in the context of how many DEATHS, not about how many CASES. And while he said it was "very very unlikely" that we would see that 1-2 million deaths, he also said it was "not impossible." Follow carefully:

TAPPER: How many cases do you think the U.S. will reach? A million cases, 10 million cases? Or are these -- we -- or do we not even have any idea?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, the honest -- to be honest with you, we don't really have any firm idea. There are things called models. And when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions. And the model is only as good and as accurate as your assumptions. And whenever the modelers come in, they give a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario. Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I have never seen a model of the diseases that I have dealt with which the worst-case scenario actually came out. They always overshoot.

So, when you use numbers like a million, a million-and-a-half, two million, that almost certainly is off the chart. Now, it's not impossible, but very, very unlikely.

{Note that he is talking about the potential number of DEATHS here, not cases, because he later says that CASES will ABSOLUTELY hit these numbers. It would make no sense to say "very very unlikely" and then a few seconds later say that it actually IS going to happen, therefore the very-unlikely-but-not-impossible comment has to refer to deaths, not cases.}

FAUCI (continuing): So, it's difficult to present. I mean, looking at what we're seeing now, I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases. But I don't want to be held to that, because it's -- excuse me -- deaths {not cases}... I mean, we're going to have millions of cases.{making clear that we will certainly have millions of cases, but maybe only 100k-200k deaths, though he doesn't want to be held to a figure that low.}

You can see the video and hear it for yourself, halfway down this page:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/29/823517467/fauci-estimates-that-100-000-to-200-000-americans-could-die-from-the-coronavirus

[malaise]

1. As far as I remember, the 2 million came from the UK university model n/t

[thesquanderer]

2. 100k-200k is highly optimistic.

I don't know whether Dr. Fauci's reference to figures like 1, 1.5, 2 million American deaths was from that model or not, but it makes sense that he does not dismiss them as entirely impossible.

If 30% of the population gets it (that's within the realm of possibility... Cuomo has been projecting 40% to 80% for the state of New York), and 1% die from it (probably the low end on death rate), that's a million people. So these figures like 1, 1.5, or 2 million deaths are by no means out of the question.

[Alacritous Crier]

3. I take the fact...

that they're even beginning to acknowledge 100-200K as evidence of a probable much higher body count.