Half a million deaths by the end of February? Current COVID-19 strategies have the US headed in that direction, experts say

The nation's patchwork of COVID-19 mandates and the inconsistent use of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus could lead to the cumulative loss of more than half a million lives by the end of February, scientists say.

Researchers from the University of Washington's School of Medicine predicted that current state strategies surrounding social distancing, phased reopenings and mask mandates could lead to 511,373 deaths by Feb. 28, according to a study published Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine.

But scientists also predicted nearly 130,000 lives could be saved from the end of September through the end of February if at least 95% of the population wore masks in public. If only 85% wore masks, nearly 96,000 deaths could be prevented, they said.

"We are heading into a very substantial fall-winter surge," said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine. "We expect that surge to steadily grow throughout different states, and at the national level continue to increase as we head toward quite high levels of daily death in late December and January."

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The report comes as the U.S. surpassed 83,000 new cases two days in a row this weekend, the highest daily totals on record. The nation had nearly 8.6 million cases as of Sunday and hit 225,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

A USA TODAY analysis of the data through late Saturday shows 19 states set records for new cases in a week, and record numbers of deaths were reported in five states: Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and infectious disease expert at the University of California-San Francisco, said it's unfortunate that in the U.S. wearing a face mask has become a political or emotional issue rather than a scientific principle.

Minds aren't likely to be changed by modeling data forecasts, she said, but they can be a useful tool until enough virologic, epidemiological and ecological evidence is amassed to elevate masking to a definitive intervention.

“Short of taking humans, putting a mask on them and then spraying them with SARS-CoV-2, which would be absolutely unfeasible and unethical, this study is very thorough and nicely done,” Gandhi said.

Bob Bednarczyk, assistant professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said Americans may be getting lax as the pandemic drags on.

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"Pandemic fatigue is a real thing," he said. "(This model) is a good reminder of what can happen if we let our guard down and how this can really come back at us really quickly and really forcefully and lead to a lot of death and suffering."