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