The time may come when Americans look back at Wednesday's record-shattering reports of more than 3,000 people dead in one day of COVID-19 and wish the numbers were still at that level, Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of Joe Biden's coronavirus advisory board, says he fears.
"We may look back in the next six to 12 weeks and say, 'Boy, wouldn't it be great if we could just be back at 3,000 deaths a day or 250,000 new cases,'" Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on CNN's "New Day" Thursday. "That's what I fear right now and I don't think that America is understanding that message."
The American people must be told in "hard language" what is happening, Osterholm said, but "far too often, I think we have tried to, we might say, split the middle."
Osterholm said he agrees with the projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations could skyrocket the week after the Christmas holidays, and he called for Americans to cancel holiday gatherings that include anyone that has not been in their own immediate households.
According to the CDC, citing forecasts from 12 modeling groups, "forecasts estimate 2,300 to 23,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per day" for Dec. 28, reports Newsweek.
Osterholm added that he doesn't care if he has to be the "Grinch that stole Christmas" with his warnings.
"I want you to be around for next Christmas and the Christmas after that," said Osterholm. "We should be having a very hard discussion about why we can't have Christmas 2020 like we had in '19 or we hope to have in 2021, and we are not doing that right now. We are not having that kind of discussion in this country."
He recommends no gatherings with anyone outside their own immediate family or inner circle, meaning people that "you have been with, who haven't had outside exposures."
That means that sons and daughters coming home from college don't count, unless they quarantine for 10 to 14 days before being with their other family members, said Osterholm.
He also said he thinks it's "happy talk" for his colleagues to call for limiting gatherings to 10 people.
"We have to say the next three to six weeks at minimum, longer, are our COVID weeks. We have to get through this," said Osterholm. "It won't end after that, but that's the period right now where we could have a surge upon a surge upon a surge."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.