Suzanne Judd, Ph.D., Epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to break down the latest coronavirus developments as hopes of a vaccine continue to rise.

Video Transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: I want to start the show, however, on the coronavirus pandemic. There's now more than 13.9 million cases of coronavirus in the country, so we're definitely going to be hitting more than 14 million positive cases in just a day or so. And the death toll has now risen to roughly 274,000 people. This is all according to the tracker at Johns Hopkins University.

Now this is a huge leap in the number of case totals. If you guys remember, just yesterday, we were hovering around 13.7 million, a little bit under 13.7 million. So this means that for the first time, the United States has hit a case count of 200,000 positive cases of the virus. That is in just one day.

Hospitalizations are also soaring. 100,000 people were hospitalized with the virus just yesterday. So this is some very tragic and very sobering records that we have been hitting when it comes to this pandemic. I want to dive more into this.

Now we're joined by Suzanne Judd, an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. Dr. Judd, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to start-- given those statistics, with what CDC Director Robert Redfield said, the next three months are going to be, and I'm quoting him here, "the most difficult in public health."

I'm wondering, for you-- you're an epidemiologist, you work in public health; this is your area of expertise-- what does that mean exactly? And why will the next three months be so difficult and so deadly?

SUZANNE JUDD: So we're used to this in public health. It's always a dark time in terms of infectious diseases. People are getting together for the holidays. They're indoors. They are coming in contact with lots of different folks. Kids are getting out of school and going to see grandparents. So this is a normal time that you would see a rise in things like stomach bugs, the cold, flu.

But this disease is so different, and we know that. So it's very scary that we already see such high-circulating numbers in November. And we know we're going into a time when it's going to be even higher, so that's one of the reasons you keep hearing public health people raise the alarm and say, this is serious. This is going to get worse.

Our hospitals are already full. This is going to force our health care workers to have to make really difficult decisions about who gets hospitalized, who goes to a different type of care. And it's just going to be very difficult for the public health and hospital systems.

KRISTIN MYERS: Now another update from the CDC is also that they're forecasting-- I want to get the numbers right here-- up to nearly 20,000-- yeah, 20,000-- deaths the week of Christmas from coronavirus, roughly 9,500 up to 20,000 for that week. I'm wondering if you-- when you hear numbers like that, do you view that as a peak? Or do you think it could actually even get worse beyond that?

SUZANNE JUDD: My guess is it could get worse beyond that. Again, people are going to start getting together that week, those last few weeks of December. They're going to get together for the new year, and they're going to think they're safe.

And so cases-- we'd expect them to rise in January beyond where they are right now, which means that deaths will rise beyond where they are in December. Actually, I think the peak deaths will occur closer to February or March.

KRISTIN MYERS: You know, a lot of folks have been doing quarantining. They've been doing tests to get out of quarantine. Here in New York, in order to leave a quarantine, you have to test negative four days after you arrive into the state after previously showing a negative test.

And, you know, myself and a lot of the producers were chatting about it a little bit earlier, and it seemed as if perhaps some of these, you know, testing day numbers are a little bit arbitrary or that there's a lot of wiggle room, really, for people to kind of slip through these cracks and still actually be positive, even though they've tested on certain days and therefore are appearing negative.

Do you see these kind of testing days as arbitrary? Is there a science behind it? Or are you seeing, as well, that there's a lot of problems with the way we've been approaching testing and receiving negative test results-- people thinking they're negative, when in reality they're not?

SUZANNE JUDD: Yeah, you and your producers are spot on. It's not that it's arbitrary. There is data behind it. But you remember from high school math, if you're looking at an average, which is what we use, that means there are a lot of people that are either above or below the average. It may take them longer to become symptomatic or they may not develop symptoms at all. So we go with what works for the bulk of the population. And generally, in public health, that keeps people safe.

That's why we don't need everyone to get vaccinated. Because if the bulk of people get vaccinated, then everybody else stays safe. But like you said, that does mean it's possible for a few people to fall through the cracks. But again, our hope is if we can keep 80% of the population safe, we can manage cases in the other 20%.

KRISTIN MYERS: Well, it seems as if they're surging all around the country.

SUZANNE JUDD: They are.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I'm not entirely sure--

SUZANNE JUDD: They are.

KRISTIN MYERS: --how well we are doing on that front. To that point, you know, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti said that the city was nearing its tipping point, ordering people to stay home. I'm wondering, from your perspective, how hard is it to fight the spread when big urban centers like Los Angeles are on a knife's edge and really-- into what, really? When we say a tipping point-- he said tipping point.

I'm wondering, when you hear that, what does that mean? What does it mean when you tip over? If this is where we are now-- 200,000 cases, 100,000 hospitalizations, almost up to 20,000 deaths we're looking at for the week of Christmas-- well, then what's on the other side of that if this is before we've tipped over?

SUZANNE JUDD: It's what we saw in Italy back in the spring, back in February and March. It's people going to the hospital and being unable to be admitted. That's the tipping point.

And a lot of Americans have a hard time imagining that because they think of themselves getting sick and being at home, and they can't even picture what it would be like to go to a hospital and have that hospital say, I'm sorry, we're full, and you're not sick enough to be admitted. That's what the tipping point looks like. It looks like hospitals that cannot admit people that need to be admitted.

KRISTIN MYERS: So Dr. Judd, you're kind of hitting or hinting at this, like, doomsday scenario I feel like we were talking about a lot back in March, back in April, back in May, where folks were saying, you know, doctors are now going to have to decide who quote, unquote, "lives and dies," you know? The hospitals are going to have to-- and you're kind of mentioning this, right, you know, that people are going to the hospital and they might be told, listen, you're not sick enough, and we just don't have any room for you. Do you think that some of those headlines, you know, that we had been seeing, those fearful headlines back in March, might actually become realities in December, realities in January?

SUZANNE JUDD: It's very possible. That's why cities like Los Angeles are saying they're on the knife's edge, because they are getting very close to that point that if they see a surge in cases, they can't manage all of those cases with the hospitals. And it's not just the hospitals.

It's doctors and nurses and the people that clean the hospitals. There's so many people that are needed to keep a hospital running. And if it's full at capacity, they're not able to do everything they need to do.

So yes, it's definitely-- I don't know about doomsday. I think that's a bit much. But it certainly gets into that situation where people have to make uncomfortable decisions that we don't like.

KRISTIN MYERS: I'm wondering-- you know, given that you work in public health and that kind of involves the public participating, obviously, with doctors, with epidemiologists like yourself to really all be in this together to fight something like a pandemic, I'm wondering what you make of this disconnect that we seem to be having, where, on the one hand, we keep repeatedly saying-- I know I keep repeatedly saying-- how many case counts we have, how many death counts we have, and yet, on the other hand, it seems as if, if you were to walk out on the street, you might not even know sometimes a really deadly pandemic is going on.

What do you make of that disconnect? And how do public health officials and public health researchers and folks that are working in this field navigate that?

SUZANNE JUDD: It's really challenging. When you've got an invisible threat like a virus and, say, one in 100 people have it and are actively fighting it, the likelihood that you actually know somebody that has it and is fighting it is low. So people have for the last nine months been going around, living their lives. They say, oh, this hasn't impacted me. I must be fine. I'm going to go back to my normal life.

So we've been trying to actively combat that with messaging that's more simple, I would say. CDC has done a really good job at revising some of their guidelines so they make sense to people and trying to be a partner with the public.

But you're right. Right now, it's really challenging to communicate to the public in general, especially because this disease has become politicized, which is very normal for public health diseases. HIV was highly politicized in the '80s.

But it's a huge challenge. And we have to rely on our psychology colleagues and our health behavior colleagues to help us develop messages that explain what's going on and why even though you may not know somebody that has gotten COVID and been very sick, it doesn't mean that you still yourself couldn't get sick or someone else couldn't get sick.

Those are the messages we have to continue to repeat to people over and over again and let them know, wear a mask. Stay 6 feet apart. Don't go places where you're eating because your mask is going to come off. So try not to eat in public, in large gatherings. Those are the kind of messages we have to continue to repeat over and over again.

KRISTIN MYERS: You know, I only have about a minute left here with you, but this has been a pretty, I think, sobering conversation. So I'm going to try to inject a little bit of optimism here to at least end on, Dr. Judd.

So we obviously have this vaccine coming out. And, you know, there is that, you know, pretty glib phrase, however, it's always darkest before the dawn. I'm wondering if you do see the light at the end of this tunnel, if you do think that this might be the last, final painful push through before, you know, sunny skies up ahead, we have the vaccine, and we can really put this behind us?

SUZANNE JUDD: Without a doubt. I think that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's unfortunate it's falling right in the middle of our holiday season, because people would love to have the light right now when it's really turning into our darkest hour. But again, the light is there. There are several vaccines that look good.

And by summer, we should really have control of this virus, providing it doesn't mutate or do anything that we don't-- that is beyond what we expect. But we certainly can see the light. It's just that right now, we're going through the darkest part of the tunnel. So we can't focus on the light. We've got to focus on getting through this next three months.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, focus, indeed, but a little bit of a nice bit of optimism to end on there.

SUZANNE JUDD: Definitely.

KRISTIN MYERS: Dr. Suzanne Judd, epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, thank you so much for joining us.

SUZANNE JUDD: Thank you for having me.