MARGARET BRENNAN: And you are looking at mobility through tracking cell phone data. Is this mobility because of loosened restrictions or is it just quarantine fatigue and people are going out and about more than they should?
CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, M.D.: You know, I think it is a bit of both. We’re seeing increases in mobility, even in anticipation of the relaxation of social distancing. But there’s definitely a correlation. The places that are taking off the social distancing mandate, the bump in mobility appears to be larger. So somewhere like Georgia, which was one of the first, we’re seeing, is in that category of– of a pretty big increase. So it’s definitely a mixture of both, we believe.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, we spoke just before you with one of the White House economic advisers who said one of the reasons they’re waiting on more emergency financial aid is because they want to see what happens in the states as they pull back restrictions and whether that leads to a new outbreak of the disease, as Kevin Hassett put it. Do you have any indication that that is happening?
CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, M.D.: Well, I think that the big challenge here is that when we model the relationship between mobility and transmission, most of the data that’s informing that is coming from when people reduce their mobility and we saw a reduction in transmission, you know, namely social distancing works. Now that we’re coming out, the big question mark is will people’s own behavior, acting responsibly, wearing a mask, avoiding physical– coming into physical close contact, will that be enough to counteract the effects of rising mobility? And so we really are going to have to wait and see. Our suspicion is that there will be about ten days from now in these places that have had these big increases in mobility, we are expecting to see a jump in cases.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And what– what places? What are the potential hotspots in the next ten days?
CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, M.D.: Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, the big increases in mobility, there’s five states at the top. Some of those have had modest epidemic so far. So they may not be huge numbers. But, you know, the top five in terms of increasing mobility are Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Georgia. But there’s another ten states or more where there’s been a ten to fifteen percentage point increase of mobility. So pretty– pretty diverse. So we may see quite a lot of states tipping towards increasing cases in the next two weeks.
NEWS: New #coronavirus models from @IHME_UW show 137,184 deaths projected by the beginning of August, IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray tells @margbrennan on @facethenation pic.twitter.com/ujPowbdMvV
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