Millions of daily COVID cases possible in the United States

Francis Collins, retiring from the NIH, warns of his COVID fears in the coming weeks..

As the omicron variant threatens record-breaking rates of infections in the U.S., Collins departs with a fear. If Americans don’t take COVID-19 seriously, the country could see 1 million daily infections, he said.

“We cannot afford to let down our guard,” Collins told NPR’s Scott Detrow in an interview with Weekend Edition.

“I know people are tired of this,” he said, acknowledging Americans’ fatigue of having weathered almost three pandemic-stunted years. “I’m tired of it too, believe me. But the virus is not tired of us. It’s having a great old time changing its shape every couple of months, coming up with new variants and figuring out ways to be even more contagious.”

While his number may sound dramatic, there are others in medical circles who actually believe the REAL daily infection number will be between 3 and 8 million by some point in the next several weeks.

South Africa hopes it is peaking now.. Europe is two weeks behind.. and the United States will be mid-January for the peak.

There are now talks in various governmental circles as to how to respond: Flatten the curve 2.0 and extend the lifetime of omicron longer? Or … let it be?

Humanity faces an uncertain dark winter..