The Ominous Day in the US Just Changed

A well-regarded coronavirus forecasting model now says the most ominous coronavirus day in the US won't be in a week's time but this Sunday—the date on which the daily death rate in the US is projected to peak at 2,212 deaths. The Tuesday night update to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model is yet again predicting far fewer American lives lost. Last Thursday, its model put the number at 93,531. The latest update dropped that count to 60,415 by Aug. 4.

There are some other positive downward adjustments, among them, a decrease in the projected number of ventilators needed here from nearly 32,000 to about 16,500, as well as the number of ICU beds needed at the virus' peak now down to 19,438, a drop of 10,000 from Sunday's projection. It's worth noting that the projections are accompanied by this label: "COVID-19 projections assuming full social distancing through May 2020." (More coronavirus stories.)