Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled optimism on Thursday that new data were making the most dire coronavirus death prediction models obsolete.

He noted that early predictive models of 100,000 – 240,000 deaths were already down to about 60,000.

“That’s a sign when you take the data you have and you reinsert it into the model, the model modifies,” he said. “Data is real. The model is hypothesis.”

Fauci acknowledged the number of deaths continued to go up, but that other numbers, such as new hospitalizations and patient admittance into the ICU, were down.

“It is in the sense of deaths a bad week,” he said, acknowledging new record death rates in a single day. “At the same time, as we’re seeing an increase in deaths, we’re seeing a rather dramatic decrease in the need for hospitalizations.”

But Fauci said that the social distancing guidelines should remain in place.

“That means that what we are doing is working, and therefore it means we need to continue to do it,” he said.

He admitted that he kept repeating himself about the importance of the social distancing guidelines, and did not indicate that there were immediate signs of a reason to roll them back.

“I know I sound like a broken record, that’s good, I want to sound like a broken record,” he said. “Let’s just keep doing it.”