Infectious Disease Experts Predict COVID-19 Will Continue To Spread For At Least 18 Months

Experts that have been analyzing the spread of COVID-19 are predicting the virus will continue to spread for least another 18 months.

The findings were detailed in an infectious disease report released on Friday by Mike Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and Public Health epidemiologist and top pandemic expert, Marc Lipsitch. In an interview with CNN, Osterholm said,” this thing’s not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70 percent of people.

Osterholm spent 20 years writing about the risk of pandemics, adding that the US needs to prepare for the second wave of COVID infections in the fall and winter months.

” The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology,” Osterholm concluded.

Lipsitch and Osterholm both warn government officials to refrain from telling the US population that the pandemic could be ending soon and instead prepare citizens for the second wave of infections.

” Government officials should develop concrete plans, including triggers for reinstituting mitigation measures, for dealing with disease peaks when they occur,” the two advised.

Lipsitch and Osterholm say they’re surprised that states are beginning to lift restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

” I think it’s an experiment. It’s an experiment that likely will cost lives, especially in places that do it without careful controls to try to figure out when to try to slow things down again,” Lipsitch said.

Adding,” it is hard even to understand the rationale,” that some states are choosing to lift restrictions even as a higher number of new infections are being recorded.