'We suspect COVID-19 is really going to hit us hard' this winter: Fmr. CDC Official

Dr. Rishi Desai, Chief Medical Officer at Osmosis & Former Center for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Officer, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to discuss the rise in COVID-19 cases as states weigh new lockdown measures.

Video transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, well, let's talk one of the biggest segments to the market right now, which, of course, is coronavirus. As I had mentioned, record high daily case figures here in the United States. So let's chat this now with Dr. Rishi Desai, chief medical officer at Osmosis. And Dr. Desai, just so everyone knows, formerly worked for the CDC.

So doctor, we're seeing record high case counts here at home. We added 1 million cases in just the last two weeks. That seems-- that already seems terrible. But do you think it's going to be getting worse?

RISHI DESAI: Yeah, I do. And in fact, if you noticed, the case counts have been going up for about five, six weeks now. And deaths have started going up for the last two weeks. And so this is all very predictable. Deaths usually lag behind case counts by about a month. So now that we're seeing the deaths start to creep back up, what you can kind of fit in between cases and deaths is hospitalizations.

So what we're about to see is hospitals are going to start being filled up again. And with flu season around the corner, it's definitely going to get a lot worse.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, so I guess I'm going to push here and try to get you to-- I don't know if you have a number in mind, but I mean, how bad? We had 90,000 cases yesterday. We had 70,000 cases last week, a leap of 20,000. I mean, to say if we perhaps have 150,000 cases in one day in a matter of a week or two, is that implausible? Or is that something that we absolutely could be looking at in the next couple of weeks?

RISHI DESAI: Absolutely, we could be looking at it in about a month. So if you look at the trend line, it's going up pretty aggressively. And in fact you know, you cited a couple of numbers, which are helpful. We were around 50,000 if you look back about a month. And now we're at close to 80,000, 90,000. So we've already jumped 40,000 in a month.

Could we jump again? Certainly, and it's going up very, very quickly. So that's very plausible. I would say maybe a month, six weeks out, that may be what we're looking at, unless we do something aggressive. And that would be essentially masks. You know, your former guest mentioned vaccines. That's not happening in the next four weeks. So let's be clear on that.

And so really, the only thing we have to look forward to is something like aggressive masks, a mask mandate, something that's really, really firm. And that just hasn't happened at the national level.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I'm really glad you mentioned that, Dr. Desai. I don't-- masks don't actually seem too aggressive to me. I think of lockdowns when I think of some really aggressive strategy. Of course, I'm not the doctor or public health official here. So we now have Belgium has just now imposed lockdowns. Germany.

So Europe already starting to reimpose these lockdowns and restrictions we had seen from a few months ago. El Paso had done it. Newark, New Jersey had actually imposed a curfew. But non-essential businesses had to close by 8:00 PM.

Do you think that we are approaching a scenario now where officials are going to say, listen, we are now in a state where we actually have to go back to that state of lockdowns like we had back in March, where flights have to be canceled, where people are going to have to stay indoors for several weeks? Are we reaching that breaking point, do you think?

RISHI DESAI: Yeah, very much. I mean, I think, essentially, if you can't trust the American people to do the right thing on their own, which is to wear a mask, then we're going to have to take more severe measures to make sure that we don't spread this to all the folks out there that are vulnerable.

And the vast majority of people, let's be clear, 90% or so plus people out there are all vulnerable to getting this. And so we're still a long, long, long way from saying, oh, enough of us have had this to where it's herd immunity and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that absolutely may be necessary, especially if hospitals start to fill up. I mean, what alternative is there?

KRISTIN MYERS: I'm wondering if-- what is the way to stem the tide? Is it-- can we do it just with wearing masks and imposing mask mandates or making sure everyone absolutely wears them?

So this 90,000, right, case count number that we have from yesterday, could we see that flip and reverse and go the other way, back down to 70, to 60, 50, et cetera, as long as everyone is wearing their mask around the country? Is it really that simple? I have to ask, because it seems as if no one seems to be doing it. So is it that simple? We could turn this around just by wearing a mask.

RISHI DESAI: Yes, it's that simple. I mean, if everyone wore a mask-- it's pretty straightforward-- the virus is dramatically affected by that. You just can't get the same transmission rate. So yeah, it's that simple. And the fact that we've, you know, basically banged our heads against walls for months now, trying to get this message across, it's pretty frustrating, right?

I mean, you've been out here trying to get people to do this. I've been trying to get people to do this. And here we are with case counts going up into winter with flu season coming upon us, yeah, it's pretty sad that it's that simple, and it's that hard to get done.

KRISTIN MYERS: OK, so as you mentioned-- you keep mentioning the next thing that I want to talk to you about-- winter is coming, to borrow the phrase from "Game of Thrones." We have flu season coming up. Everyone keeps talking about that. I'm hoping that you could maybe break down for us why that's going to impact this virus.

How does winter impact coronavirus? And how does the flu really play into it? Is it just because people think they might have a flu and not the coronavirus? Is it that so many people now are getting sick with both or have to go to the hospital? How is this going to play and factor into what we're seeing over the next few months?

RISHI DESAI: So there's a number of ideas around why viruses like the cold winter season so much. You know, I'll just throw out some of these concepts. And some of them are theoretical. Some seem kind of obvious and practical. But let me just go through them one by one.

One, viruses have to get from person A to person B. The more those two folks, A and B, are around each other and in close proximity, the easier that becomes. So that's usually household settings.

And if it's cold outside, where are you? Usually in a car or in your house. And so that's one big reason. People are closer to each other. And it's kind of basic statistics. The more you're around each other, the more chance it's going to go from person A to person B.

Number two, the virus generally thrives for a longer period of time outside when it's on objects, doorknobs, you know, cell phones, when it's cooler. So that's another reason why it kind of likes the winter months much more.

A third reason is that other viruses are doing the same thing. And so if they go and infect you, then all of a sudden, your immune system's hit already. It's not as capable of kind of warding off a second attack. And so the viruses like to kind of play off each other a bit. And so that's a third reason why this might be happening.

You know, there are a number of these reasons that are positive. But what we do see practically is that every winter season you see these viruses kind of uptick, many of them. And coronaviruses, in particular, do this. And so that's why we suspect COVID-19 is going to really hit us hard.

On the flipside, think about our healthcare system. You're already seeing a healthcare system that even before COVID-19, we were taxed 90%, 99% in some cases, of bed capacity. Now all of a sudden, you've got hundreds of thousands of new folks that have come to the hospital, looking for a bed. That's going to be really an untenable situation, right? So that's why winter is going to be so dramatic and why we're saying winter is coming.