Dr. Gupta on Coronavirus Deaths Surge: ‘This Is a Humanitarian Disaster’

EXCERPT:

GUPTA: "You look at the numbers and they're already so bad. I mean, it's hard to get inured to sort of thing, but 240,000 people have died. I was listening to Peter Hotez, talked earlier. Peter and I communicate quite a bit, and the idea that this is a humanitarian disaster, probably the worst story sort of I've covered, I think, in my career here at CNN. Before this was Haiti. And in Haiti, 240,000 people have died. Obviously, it was to a natural disaster, different circumstance, but it was just -- it was awful. And now 240,000 people have died here. It's hard to get your head around. And then, as you point out, we're going into this period where you know so many more people are going to die. I was looking at the models from the IHME last night just to give you an idea. What they're saying is, look, if we do nothing different from right now, by the end of the year. In fact, on December 31st, they think we're going to be close to 300,000 people becoming infected every day, diagnosed with the infection every day, 300,000. They think that by February 1st, 400,000 people will have died. They think that hospitalizations -- right now, they're, what, 62,000, they think it will double to 131,000 by sort of mid-January. So, peaking sort of early January, hospitalizations a few weeks after that, at an unbelievably -- you know, just hard to imagine level of hospitalizations, again, for a disease that didn't even exist a year ago. And then, obviously, the deaths, 2,200, 2,300 people per day. So, you know, COVID hell, yes, and I think some of this is now becoming preordained. I mean, we can still make significant interventions. But this is like a really fast-moving ship now through the sea that we've got to try and stop somehow."