According to the nation’s most watched prediction model, the U.S. is projected to record nearly 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 more by December 1. But health experts say the toll could be halved if almost everyone wore a mask in public spaces.
“Behavior will really determine if, when and how the current wave is sustainably maintained,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas. “We can’t stop the delta, but we can change our behavior overnight.”
That means doubling masks, limiting social gatherings, staying home when you’re sick, and getting vaccinated. “These things are under our control,” Meyers said.
The United States is facing a fourth wave of infection this summer, driven by the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases, hospitalizations and deaths back, flooded medical centers, burned nurses and wiped out months of progress against the virus.
Deaths exceed 1,100 daily on average, so the clock returns in mid-March. An influential model, from the University of Washington, projects that an additional 98,000 Americans will die in early December, for a total of about 730,000 deaths.
Projection says deaths will rise to nearly 1,400 a day by mid-September and then slowly decline.
But the model also says many of these deaths can be prevented if Americans change their ways.
“We can save 50,000 lives simply with masks. Behaviors are so important, ”said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is involved in the projections.
There are already indications that Americans are taking the threat more seriously.
Amid alarm over the delta variant in recent weeks, falling demand for COVID-19 shots reversed course. The number of vaccines given per day has increased by about 80% over the last month to an average of about 900,000.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday that in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, “more people received their first shots last month than in the previous two months together.”
In addition, millions of students are required to wear masks. A growing number of employers are demanding that their workers receive the vaccine after earlier this week the federal government fully approved the firing of Pfizer. And cities like New York and New Orleans insist that people get vaccinated if they want to eat at a restaurant.
Half of American workers are in favor of vaccination requirements in their workplaces, according to a new survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Early signs suggest that behavioral changes may already be flattening the curve in some places where the virus ran this summer.
An Associated Press analysis shows that the rate of new cases is declining in Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas, some of the same states where the first shots are rising. In Florida, requests from hospitals and the fury of masks in schools may have pushed some to take more precautions.
However, worrying trends persist in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming, where new infections continue to rise steadily.
Mokdad said he is frustrated that Americans “are not doing what is necessary to control this virus.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “We have a fire and no one wants to deploy a fire truck.”
One explanation: the good news in the spring (increased vaccinations, decreased cases) gave people an insight into how things were, said Elizabeth Stuart of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and that went make it difficult to resume precautions they believed they had left behind.
“We don’t need to fall completely,” he said, “but we can make some decisions that reduce risk.”
Even vaccinated people should stay alert, said Dr. Gaby Sauza, 30, of Seattle, who was inoculated during the winter but tested positive for COVID-19 along with other guests days after ‘an August 14 wedding in Vermont, even though the parties were mostly outdoors and attendees had to send photos of their vaccination cards.
“In retrospect, I wish I had worn a mask,” he said.
Sauza, a resident in pediatrics, will miss two weeks of work at the hospital and has struggled with guilt to charge his teammates. She credits the vaccine for keeping her infection manageable, even though she suffered several days of body aches, fevers, night sweats, fatigue, coughing and chest pain.
“If we behave, we can contain this virus. If we don’t behave, this virus is waiting for us, “Mokdad said.” He will find the weak among us. “
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.