Will Europe’s COVID-19 Death Toll Soar by 300,000?

A new study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine presents an admittedly worst case scenario—i.e., if all European governments relax COVID restrictions—in which the current wave of COVID sweeping Europe could cause 300,000 new deaths and 1 million hospitalizations. According to the U.S. Sun, “the report’s authors stressed this was a `worst-case scenario’ that looked at what would happen if governments across Europe relaxed all Covid restrictions and allowed people to mingle at pre-pandemic levels.… [One of the authors] said the numbers were `very much the upper limit of what could occur’.… However, the study did not take into account what would happen if a new, more infectious variant emerged or the effects of waning immunity over time, researchers said.” (The study is a pre-print and not yet peer reviewed: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.10.21266166v1.full-text)