Dr. Birx Expresses Hope US Death Toll Can Be Lower Than Models ‘If We Work as Hard as We Can’ Over Next Few Weeks

Dr. Deborah Birx shared some encouraging words at Monday’s coronavirus press briefing about how the U.S. death toll will be lower than the projections shown last week.

Last week Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke to reporters about modeling showing that with mitigation, the U.S. death toll from coronavirus could range between 100,000 and 240,000. Without that important mitigation, they estimated the death toll could rise to between 1.5 million and 2.2 million.

Today Birx said, “I think Dr. Fauci and I both strongly believe that if we work as hard as we can over the next several weeks, that we will see potential to go under the numbers that were predicted by the models.”

She commended the mitigation undertaken by Americans across the country thus far, and Fauci echoed that he is “cautiously optimistic.”

“If we do what I’ve been talking about over the past few minutes, we can make that number go down,” he said. “I don’t accept every day that we are going to have to have 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. I think we can really bring that down. No matter what a model says.”

You can watch above, via Fox News.