About 3,000 Americans are dying every day

They reflect infections from mid-January

Given dropping infections since, we'll see dramatic drops in deaths over next few weeks

This is great

It'll also tempt policymakers to relax restrictions...just at riskiest moment

Thread

Current 7-day moving avg about 3000 deaths/day

In a week, that'll be down to 2500

2000 daily deaths a week later

And 1500 a week after that..3 weeks from now

Best guess based on infection numbers

Nearly 20K fewer deaths over next 3 wks than if infections had stayed flat

2/4

And if infections continue falling, we might even get under a 1000 deaths a day by Mid March!

Which would be amazing!

With one challenge:

Dropping deaths will put pressure on political leaders to substantially lift restrictions

Just as the variants will be taking off

3/4

And disinformationists will argue variants are benign because deaths are falling

So what should we do over next month?

Remember life will be much better by summer

Be thankful of falling deaths now

And stay the course on public health measures until more folks vaccinated

Fin