Why daily COVID-19 infections may not be the best pandemic bellwether going forward

Scott Gottlieb.
(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/CBS)

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Sunday suggested that it's time to process information about the coronavirus pandemic in the United States a little differently.

For example, he explained why 10,000 cases — a daily infection number he thinks the U.S. may plateau at over the summer — right now is not the same thing as 10,000 cases a year ago. "We need to think about the overall vulnerability of the population and not just the cases we're accruing on a daily basis," Gottlieb told CBS News' John Dickerson. "The vulnerability of the population has been reduced substantially because of vaccination. A lot of older Americans and people ... who are most likely to be hospitalized or succumb to the disease have now been protected" when they weren't a year ago.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.