Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, began Monday’s Covid-19 briefing with a reminder that the country was on the verge of reaching a “grim milestone.”
“Everyone who is lost is someone whose life and gifts have been cut short,” he said. Slavitt said. “Our hearts go out to all who are sad for loved ones who are so deeply missed. For those of us in government, the opportunity makes us more determined to turn the tide on Covid-19 so that the losses can decrease and the healing can begin. ”
With him was dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s leading specialist in infectious diseases, who predicted at the end of last March, at a time when just over 2,000 Americans had lost Covid-19, that as many as 200,000 Americans would die from the disease – a number that seemed astronomical at the time. Today it would look like a blessing.
“As a sober number as it is, we must be prepared for it,” said Dr. Fauci said at the time.
In an interview Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, dr. Fauci said that while some of the devastation was inevitable, much of it could have been avoided.
‘It’s so hard to just go back and try, and you know, do a metaphorical autopsy on how things went. It was just bad. It’s bad now, ‘said dr. Fauci said, adding: ‘Looking back historically, we have fared worse than most other countries, and we are a highly developed, rich country. ‘
The last public health disaster of similar magnitude was the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Nancy K. Bristow, chair of the Department of History at Puget Sound University and author of ‘American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic’, learned a lesson.
“There will be a real drive to say, ‘Look how well we’re doing,’ ‘she said, warning against the tendency to rewrite this story into another story of American triumph. “