Congressional Doctor Predicts Roughly One-Third of U.S. Population Will Contract Coronavirus 

Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, told Senate administrative office staff that he expects 70 million to 150 million people in the United States, roughly 1/3 of the population, will contract the coronavirus.

According to Axios, Monahan made the comments during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, which included personnel from both parties, but did not include any senators.

Although Monahan presented a jarring statistic, he later explained to staffers that 80% of people who are infected with the coronavirus will recover.

During a congressional hearing on Wednesday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci also said, “things will get worse than they are right now,” adding, “We’ve gotta assume that it’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”

Fauci also clarified that Covid-19 is far more lethal than the flu, “This is a really serious problem that we have to take seriously. I mean people always say, ‘well the flu, the flu does this, the flu does that.’ The flu has a mortality of 0.1%, this has a mortality of 10 times that.”

Other predictions, including those from Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, say that between 20% and 60% of all adults worldwide might catch the virus:

Because I am now less certain of where the R0 will end up (and how it may vary geographically) I am going to revise downward the range of outcomes I consider plausible to 20%-60% of adults infected. This involves subjectivity about what range of R0 may turn out to be true.

— Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch) March 3, 2020

Watch Dr. Fauci’s remarks above, via MSNBC.