Covid-19 in the United States

Assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

18 Feb 2022 3 3

Peter Hoetz

Inserted 2 years ago

“We have to be really careful about being too dismissive of Omicron. Rising hospitalizations as healthcare workers are sidelined with their own COVID cases is also concerning, as are fewer effective therapeutics. We're in for a pretty serious time.”

Infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine

30 Dec 2021 4 5

Michael Osterholm

Inserted 2 years ago

“We are going to see the number of cases in this country rise so dramatically, we are going to have a hard time keeping everyday life operating. The next month is going to be a viral blizzard. All of society is going to be pressured by this.”

American epidemiologist, Regents Professor, and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota

30 Dec 2021 3 3

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“When you are talking about a New Year's Eve party, where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you do not know the status of the vaccination - I would recommend strongly, stay away from that this year. There will be other years to do that, but not this year.”

Top US infectious disease expert

27 Dec 2021 3 2

Kimberly Halkett

Inserted 2 years ago

“With many Americans travelling and gathering with family and friends over the holidays, the fear is that this will get worse before it gets better. Record seven-day infection numbers have been reported in several states, including New York, Hawaii, Delaware, and New Jersey, to rival rates not seen since the early days of the pandemic. This is a grave concern to public health officials because what this means is there's a strain on hospitals.”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Washington, DC

27 Dec 2021 8 2

Abdullah Shihipar

Inserted 2 years ago

“How exactly did the richest country in the world get here? There are a number of reasons, but the primary one is that the United States does not have a free, universal health care system. The lack of a national health insurance program affects everything from vaccine hesitancy to the ability to get a test to how we manage the virus going forward.”

Thenation

Writer who focuses on public health, race, class, and other social justice issues

23 Dec 2021 5 4

Joe Biden

Inserted 2 years ago

“If you're not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned. Your choice can be the difference between life and death.”

President of the United States

21 Dec 2021 2 3

Francis Collins

Inserted 2 years ago

“We've got to remember [COVID-19] is the enemy. It's not the other people in the other political party. It's not the people on Facebook or posting all sorts of craziest conspiracies. We in this country have somehow gotten all fractured into a hyper-polarized, politicized view that never should have been mixed with public health. It's been ruinous and history will judge harshly those people who have continued to defocus the effort and focus on conspiracies and things that are demonstrably false. Shame on all of us that we've gotten into this kind of pickle.”

Outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health

19 Dec 2021 6 4

Michael Osterholm

Inserted 2 years ago

“I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard. I think in the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out. What you have here right now is a potential perfect storm. I've been very concerned about the fact that we could easily see a quarter or a third of our health care workers quickly becoming cases themselves.”

American epidemiologist, Regents Professor, and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota

17 Dec 2021 5 3

Jennifer Morse

Inserted 2 years ago

“Concern over COVID in general is pretty much gone, which is unfortunate. I feel strange going into a store masked. I'm a minority. It's very different. It's just a really unusual atmosphere right now.”

Apnews

Medical director at health departments in 20 central and northern Michigan counties

11 Nov 2021 1 1

Julian Zelizer

Inserted 2 years ago

“What you're seeing is him [Joe Biden] confronting the reality of ... vaccine resistance. It's a little bit like his early views of Republicans on Capitol Hill, that you can persuade them through the right words and right demeanor. I think the administration has woken up to the reality that this isn't true. Everything flows from his ability to manage the pandemic, from our economic health to our physical health and to his political standing.”

Princeton University presidential historian

10 Sep 2021 5 5

Andrew Noymer

Inserted 2 years ago

“What worries me the most is not where we're at, although that's bad enough, but where we're headed. I think the U.S. is still in for a doozy of a next six months. We haven't seen the effects yet of school reopening.”

Nytimes

Associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine

05 Sep 2021 3 2

Elizabeth Groenweghe

Inserted 2 years ago

“People ask us sometimes, 'What's the end goal here? You're not going to conquer Covid, and it's not going to go away forever.' And I think that really it's to get to a point where the level of community transmission is at least sustainable and not impacting our daily lives so negatively.”

Nytimes

Chief epidemiologist for the public health department in Kansas City

05 Sep 2021 2 2

John Swartzberg

Inserted 2 years ago

“The irony is that things got so good in May and most of June that all of us, including me, were talking about the end game. We started to enjoy life again. Within a very few weeks, it all came crashing down.”

Nytimes

Infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Berkeley

05 Sep 2021 2 1

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“We believe sooner or later you will need a booster for durability. We are evaluating this on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month basis, looking at any of a number of studies - both international and domestic studies. We are preparing for the eventuality of doing that.”

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

12 Aug 2021 4 3

Rochelle Walensky

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our models show that if we don't [vaccinate people], we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January.”

Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

07 Aug 2021 3 1

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“We're going in the wrong direction. If you look at the inflection of the curve of new infections… it is among the unvaccinated and since we have 50 percent of the country is not fully vaccinated, that's a problem - particularly when you have a variant like Delta which has this extraordinary characteristic of being able to spread very efficiently and very easily from person to person. If you are vaccinated, the vaccine is highly protective against the Delta variant, particularly against severe disease leading to hospitalisation and sometimes ultimately to death. It's really an outbreak among the unvaccinated … which is the reason why we're out there practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated.”

Top US infectious disease expert

25 Jul 2021 4 4

Joe Biden

Inserted 3 years ago

“Now that we have the vaccine supply, we're focused on convincing even more Americans to show up and get the vaccine that is available to them. If we succeed in this effort ... then Americans will have taken a serious step towards a return to normal. There are a lot of younger people, especially those in their 20s and 30s who believe they don't need it. Well, I want to be absolutely clear: You do need to get vaccinated.”

President of the United States

04 May 2021 3 2

Jodie Guest

Inserted 3 years ago

“What you're seeing there is exactly what we hoped and wanted to see: As really high rates of vaccinations happen, hospitalizations and death rates come down. My concern is whether the vaccine uptake will be as strong in these younger age groups. If it's not, we will not see the positive impact for vaccines in these younger age groups that we've seen in our older population.”

Apnews

Public health researcher at Emory University

22 Apr 2021 3 3

Rochelle Walensky

Inserted 3 years ago

“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now, I'm scared.”