Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Thursday that in the next two or three months, the daily death toll from the coronavirus will likely exceed the number of people killed during the attacks on Sept. 11 and Pearl Harbor.
''We are in the timeframe now that probably for the next 60 to 90 days we're going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor,'' Redfield said while speaking at an event for the Council on Foreign Relations, according to The Hill.
About 2,900 people died as a result of the 9/11 attacks, while about 2,400 people died during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. recently set a record for the most deaths in a single day from the coronavirus with 3,054. Redfield said on Thursday that the death toll will continue to surpass both those attacks in the coming weeks, even if a vaccine is widely available.
''The reality is the vaccine approval this week's not going to really impact that I think to any degree for the next 60 days,'' Redfield said.
He added that Americans need to ''double down'' on precautions, especially masks.
Redfield said masks in particular are ''where I think we could have done better as a nation [and] actually had more consistency in messaging, among all the American public, not just our political leaders, not just our governors, but all the public.''
He added, ''It's very disappointing when I have governors who basically feel that masks don’t work.''
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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