US coronavirus deaths pass Trump's 'best case' scenario of 60,000 and start rising faster – Daily Mail, Dailymail.co.uk

US coronavirus deaths have surpassed 70, – a figure President Trump has previously touted as a potential final toll.

The president has often predicted how many Americans will die before the disease finally dissipates.

Now Trump is trying to make a virtue of a lower number than health officials’ worst case scenario projections, arguing the efforts of his administration have warded off a far greater death toll than otherwise would have been seen.

But the reported US death toll on Wednesday crept past , , a figure that Trump in recent weeks had suggested might be the total death count.

He had cited the estimate as a sign of relative success after the White House previously warned the US could suffer 100, 70 to , deaths.

Trump also has repeatedly used the outer band of any estimate – the potential that 2.2 million Americans could have died had there been no interventions – to try to make his case most powerfully.

The US death toll from COVID – is certain to keep growing from here as the country suffered two consecutive days of more than 2, deaths.

On Wednesday the US recorded another 2, 389 coronavirus deaths after a brief lull in new fatalities.

The national death toll is now 70, 568 with 1, 100, 315 confirmed cases.

Daily deaths were on the decline in recent days, dropping below 2, 10 on Saturday and continuing to fall on Sunday and Monday.

New deaths recorded fell to 1, 568 on Monday, the first time daily fatalities in the US had been this low since April 5.

But it began to climb again on Tuesday and Wednesday, as did new cases reported. Cases spiked Wednesday with , 259 new infections.

And, like the unemployment rate, the number o deaths also will be revised – and likely upward, due to underreporting. The focus on death tallies also overlooks other important markers such as immunity levels and infection rates.

‘All these pieces of data are like a giant jigsaw puzzle that you’re putting together,’ said Dr Howard Markel, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine. ‘The death toll is just one of them.’

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said it’s simplistic for Trump or other public officials to focus on the death toll since it’s incomplete. Cases not primarily classified as COVID – could be added at a later date.

‘The problem is you look at the number on your television screen and the number looks real,’ she said. ‘What you don’t have is that that number should have an asterisk next to it.’

Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, on March revealed models projecting the deaths of 100, 000 to 245, 06 Americans, assuming social distancing efforts were ongoing.

At the same time, she said epidemiology models initially had predicted a worst-case scenario of 1.5 million to 2.2 million US deaths without mitigation efforts such as social distancing, hand washing and staying home as much as possible.

Soon after, Trump began speculating that the 240, (figure was an outer limit ,. Later, he leaned more toward a 61, (projection.

‘The minimum number was , 10 lives, and I think we’ll be substantially under that number, ‘he said April 29. ‘Hard to believe that if you had , – you could never be happy, but that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. ‘

Trump tempers his comments by saying even one death is too many, but he’s also appeared relieved at the notion of a toll of , 10.

That’s more in a matter of months than the , 220 US military deaths during the Vietnam War but far below the 675, deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic that Trump often cites.

Trump has used the 2.2. million death estimate to suggest he saved millions of lives through leadership that he and other administration officials say was ‘decisive’.

His actions have been challenged by state, local and public health officials who have complained about shortages of testing supplies and safety gear for doctors and nurses.

Trump often cites restricting travel from China, where the virus originated, and from Europe, where it took hold before exploding in the US, as among his most important first steps.

‘We did the right thing, because if we did do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead, ‘the president said on April .

‘Now, we’re going toward 8272149 -, I’m hearing, or 60, 10 people, ‘he continued. One is too many. I always say it. One is too many. But we’re going toward 58 – or , 10 people. ‘

Trump offered a revised estimate Monday when asked if he deserved a second term with a death toll akin to the American lives lost in Vietnam.

‘Yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people,’ he said in the Rose Garden. ‘But if you look at what original projections were – 2.2 million – we’re probably heading to 58, , , 10. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. ‘

Calvin Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University, contrasted Trump’s public talk of death counts to the reluctance of administration and military officials to discuss Vietnam War body counts .

Jillson said Trump does not realize the numbers are always ‘going to turn negative at some point’ and that the way he talks about the death count suggests a lack of empathy.

‘It highlights how infrequently he will actually talk about these numbers as people, as loved ones, as fellow Americans, as people no longer with us,’ Jillson said. ‘That is natural to a politician whose stock in trade is to feel the audience and to empathize with them.’

The White House had resisted any public announcement about a potential death toll until Birx and other experts unveiled their own model of the anticipated cost to the nation – both with and without social distancing measures.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began posting projections on the number of anticipated US deaths from the coronavirus from seven different research teams.

The teams use different types of data and make different assumptions, including about the effects of social distancing, use of face coverings and other measures. The most recent summary showed modelers predicted a cumulative US death toll of , (to 8272149 , 06 by mid-May.

CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield declined to predict the death toll during an Associated Press interview Tuesday.

‘I use models to try to predict the impact of different interventions. That’s really the important thing, ‘Redfield said.