IHME projection: Without more masks, U.S. on track for 300K COVID-19 deaths

The latest projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has been modeling the pandemic since COVID-19 first entered the United States, forecast nearly 300,000 U.S. deaths from the disease this year if current conditions persist. Were 95% of U.S. residents were to wear masks in public, the IHME model predicts that 66,000 of those deaths could be averted. Members of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association, 12,000 in all, asked Vice President Mike Pence last week to impose a federal mask-wearing mandate, saying “unified national action is again urgently needed to save lives.” In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, legal and global scholars describe state-level policies on mask wearing and discuss the potential downsides of a federal mandate. (CNN story, 8/7/20)