On Thursday, the US passed a grim milestone: it surpassed China as the country with the largest number of confirmed Coronavirus cases. The milestone was reached during what appears to be a growing public tug-of-war between senior Trump administration officials, who wish to see restrictions lifted as quickly as possible, and public health experts, who argue they’re clearly still required for the time being. That tension may end up playing out in the implementation of a new plan being developed to guide states through their response to the pandemic.

One casualty in this fight: the work of epidemiologists. As these researchers continue to test the impact of different restrictions on the spread of infections, their models are necessarily producing different numbers. Those differences are now being dragged into the intensely political arguments about how best to respond to the pandemic.

Grim numbers

As of this writing, the world has seen slightly under 560,000 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Of those, 86,000 (about 15 percent) are in the US. China, where the pandemic originated, is near 82,000 cases, followed by Italy with a bit over 80,000. All of the other countries with over 10,000 confirmed cases are European, with the exception of Iran.