Fmr FDA Chief Gottlieb: ‘We’re Right Back Where We Were at the Peak of the Epidemic’ During NY Outbreak

Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner who has regularly appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation during the coronavirus pandemic, again sounded the alarm bells Sunday about the virus spreading.

Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb where the U.S. is heading right now and he answered, “We’re right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak. The difference now is that we really had one epicenter of spread when New York was going through its hardship, now we really have four major epicenters of spread: Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida, and Arizona.”

He said that the case fatality rate is going down but the number of deaths will “start going up again as the number of hospitalizations starts to spike again,” even offering the grim assessment that “I wouldn’t be surprised in the next two weeks to see deaths go over a thousand.”

“That doesn’t mean the case fatality rate, the actual death rate isn’t declining. But when you have more infections, even if the death rate’s declining, you’re going to get more deaths tragically. So if we cut the death rate in half, if we make this half less lethal than it was, but we double the number of infections, we’re going to get more deaths. And I think we’re going to start to see that,” he added.

Brennan asked Gottlieb about the president’s comments that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless,” something that the current head of the FDA did not give a direct answer on when confronted on in two interviews Sunday. “When the president said of the increase in cases that 99 percent of which are totally harmless, is he confused?”

“I’m not really sure what he’s referring to,” Gottlieb said. “He might be referring to the number of people who get hospitalized based on the number of people who get infected, which is probably less than five percent when you count all the asymptomatic infection and infection in young people that might not be getting diagnosed. But certainly more than one percent of people get serious illness from this. About 60 percent of people who get infected become symptomatic. About 10 to 15 percent of them will develop some form of covid pneumonia and somewhere around two to five percent might get hospitalized, depending on what the age mix is of the people who are getting infected.”

You can watch above, via CBS.