More than 150 medical professionals and public health experts are calling on America’s political leaders to immediately shut the country down once more—and this time do it properly—in order to stop the spread of Covid-19, which has now infected more than four million people in the U.S. and taken at least 144,000 lives.
“More than 117,000 Americans had died of Covid-19 by mid-June,” the experts wrote. “If our response had been as effective as Germany’s, estimates show that we would have had only 36,000 Covid-19 deaths in that period in the United States. If our response had been as effective as South Korea, Australia, or Singapore’s, fewer than 2,000 Americans would have died. We could have prevented 99% of those Covid-19 deaths. But we didn’t.”
“Shut it down, start over, do it right,” the medical professionals demanded. “Unleash the resources needed to contain the virus: massively ramping up testing, building the necessary infrastructure for effective contact tracing, and providing a safety net for those who need it. Many of the actions of our government thus far have fallen short of what the moment demands.”
