CDC's Nancy Messonnier warned Americans four months ago on Feb. 25 that "disruption to everyday life may be severe," and told businesses, hospitals, schools and people to begin preparing.

There were fewer than 60 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States at the time.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Messonnier warned.

Four months later, nearly 2.4 million U.S. infections have been confirmed.

The U.S. is better prepared than four months ago.

We are testing more than 500,000 people daily. We know wearing a mask in public can help protect those around us.

Our worst fears about health system capacity have not yet come to pass.

But we are not out of the woods.

The United States is now seeing a dramatic upswing in daily confirmed cases driven by many states in the South and West including Texas, Florida and California.

Yesterday, 38,672 new cases were tallied by the @COVID19Tracking Project – a record.

Media briefings by the CDC and the Coronavirus Task Force have largely ground to a halt despite the rise in new cases.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are still traveling around the country – including to emerging hot spots.

Public health experts remain steadfast in their advice: maintain caution, limit large gatherings and wear a mask when you must go outside.

We all can do our part to protect the vulnerable among us.

The virus isn’t going away.

I’ve said this before – I’m lucky. I can do the majority of my work from home. I’m still employed and have an income.

Many are not as fortunate. The pandemic has laid bare the inequalities in our society and Black and Hispanic Americans have borne the brunt of this disease.

About 122,000 people in the United States have already died from the virus.

Black people have been hospitalized at four times the rate of white people.

And people on Medicare and Medicaid contract the virus at a far higher rate than those on Medicare alone.

I’m eager to return to some semblance of normal life and I hope we will discover a vaccine sooner than later.

But I know maintaining my distance from people when possible is still the responsible thing to do until we have a better understanding of the coronavirus.

Messonnier warned in February “there’s no vaccine to protect against this new virus and no medications approved to treat it. Non-pharmaceutical interventions or NPIs will be the most important tools in our response to this virus.”

That’s still true.

While Remdesivir has gotten emergency use authorization and Dexamethasone is promising, FDA has not approved a treatment or vaccine for Covid.

The bottom line is that experts say social distancing, mask wearing, testing and contact tracing are the best tools we have today.