Despite the progress, COVID-19 numbers in the U.S. are still alarmingly high. Experts are cautioning that they could quickly climb even higher if Americans let up now, and don’t retain current masking and other precautions for at least several more months, especially as the incidence of variants is on the rise. Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who was a health adviser for the Obama White House and was a member of the Biden Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board, said, “We’re still having on average 2,000 deaths a day. We cannot become inured to that.”
