White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx warned the public not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic's spread.
"Models are models," she said. "When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't have data that matches that based on our experience."
She said the media should not "make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it's not going to be there, or a ventilator, it's not going to be there, we don't have evidence of that."
"It's our job collectively to assure the American people," she also said. "There is no model right now -- no reality on the ground where we can see that 60% to 70% of Americans are going to get infected in the next eight to 12 weeks. I want to be clear about that."
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