The report also summarized state-level forecasts and identified the areas that will need to be most vigilant in the coming four weeks. Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Utah are all currently seeing spikes in infection rates, and are poised to exceed the number of deaths reported over the last four weeks. In other states, the number of new deaths will likely be similar to the previous four weeks, or decrease slightly. While some members of the public have questioned the protocol for counting coronavirus deaths, suggesting that numbers could be inflated, Robert Anderson, who runs the CDC’s mortality statistics branch, has been quick to shut this down. As he recently told The New York Times, “Everything is so politically charged, people are looking for excuses to question the data.” To this point, The Washington Post and The New York Times have recently published articles explaining that if anything, the tally of total deaths has likely been underreported. All of this underscores the importance of staying the course with social distancing and other coronavirus precautions. “Many people are understandably fed up with being at home,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), recently said in a news conference. “Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible.“ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. Ultimately, we could be the deciding factor in how many lives are saved and whether our death count falls on the high or low end of the spectrum. So, keep wearing those masks, staying six feet apart, and washing your hands: this month alone, 26,000 lives depend on it. And finally there’s a coronavirus strategy we can all get behind: here’s the One Thing About Reopening That Most Democrats and Republicans Agree On.
