Dr. Scott Gottlieb, President Trump's former FDA commissioner, just predicted when Americans can start enjoying their normal lives again and finally say goodbye to the 2020 coronavirus nightmare. Sit tight, he said, it's going to be awhile.
The majority of the country is largely on the same curve, about two weeks behind New York, and will "light up" around the same time, Gottlieb explained.
With H1N1, we have precedent that COVID-19 will become an epidemic in the U.S., the epidemic will run it course and will then "collapse" in July and August. He doesn't expect the coronavirus to circulate in the summer.
"We should have some natural backstop as we get in to the really hot, humid months," Gottlieb said. "We're likely to see the peak in late April or early May and wait a couple weeks before we start contemplating slowly withdrawing these mitigation steps."
He then detailed just exactly what's in store for the next few months.
"We are likely to see the peak based on the models we are looking at sometime in late April or early May," says @ScottGottliebMD on #COVID19. "In July and August we should be coming back to some element of our normal lives." pic.twitter.com/DQEKZzcQA1
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) March 31, 2020
"April's going to be a difficult month, being in our homes," he warned. "May is going to be a transition. As we get into June, we're going to start coming back again and in July and August we should be coming back with some element of our normal lives with a lot of new introductions of features to try to prevent this from happening again.
It's true that some regions of the country aren't as hard hit as others. With that in mind Trump said he asked his his coronavirus task force whether or not they could start loosening travel or stay-at-home restrictions for those areas. He said the experts "didn't like the idea."
Dr. Gottlieb said it's crucial that we have a much different tool box and be better prepared come fall, when the virus has a risk of returning.
"We need to start preparing in March and April, for August and September," he said.