Coronavirus Quick Hits: Don’t Go to the Grocery Store, Do Wear a Face Mask, and Know the Peak Is Coming

Here are some of the major coronavirus developments that are making headlines right now . . .

1.  Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House’s coronavirus task force is warning people that the next two weeks are extremely important and, quote, “This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store and not going to the pharmacy.”

The CDC has now officially recommended that we all wear a cloth face mask when we go outside.  But President Trump says he won’t wear one.

2.  Italy, France, and Spain all finally saw their daily fatalities drop in the past week, which offers a degree of hope for the U.S. . . . but the peak here is still to come.The University of Washington’s predictive model sees the peak in the U.S. coming on April 15th, or one week from Wednesday, which could bring more than 2,600 deaths in a single day.  Whether that’s correct or not, the peak IS coming in the next few weeks.

3.  Bill Gates believes there will be fewer deaths in the U.S. than the White House’s projection of 100,000 to 240,000.  He says, quote, “If we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with a death number well short of that.”

4.  Dr. Anthony Fauci says it’s likely that coronavirus will become a seasonal occurrence, like the flu.  But in the future, we’ll be way more prepared for it . . . hopefully.

He also said it would be a, quote, “false statement” to say the U.S. government has the pandemic under control.

And public health experts are worried that Americans are underestimating just how long life is going to be disrupted.

5.  Captain Brett Crozier, the Navy aircraft carrier captain who was fired for sending a letter to try to protect his crew from an onboard coronavirus outbreak, has now tested positive.

6.  The federal government will pay hospitals for treating uninsured patients with coronavirus.  The money comes from the $2.2 trillion stimulus package.

7.  Coronavirus isn’t just something that people in big cities or older people need to worry about.

The outbreak is really starting to affect small towns in the U.S., not just big cities.  While the big cities have the most total cases, there are clusters appearing in smaller towns and states like Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

And the WHO says more and more of the people who are becoming critically ill from the virus worldwide are people in their 30s and 40s . . . even people with no underlying health conditions.

8.  A TIGER at the Bronx Zoo in New York City has become the first tiger in the world to test positive for COVID-19.  It’s believed she got it from someone caring for her . . . but there’s no evidence that a cat can infect a person.

9.  Here’s new information on just how badly the federal government wasted the months between when it was clear the virus could be a threat and when it finally began to take hold in the U.S.