In breaking news, we learn that on Monday the U. of Washington model was adjusted to predict that the virus will kill 81,766 people in the United States over the next four months, with just under 141,000 hospital beds being needed. That's about 12,000 fewer deaths -- and 121,000 fewer hospital beds -- than the model estimated last Thursday.
The model's maker, Dr. Christopher Murray, who serves as director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said the adjustments were warranted due to a massive infusion of new data.
Meanwhile, it should not escape notice that last week the White House projected 100,000 to 240,000 US deaths. And then followed up that projection with this political spin:
Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that a death toll of between 100,000 and 240,000 reflected the success of his administration in mitigating the worst of the disease.
In fact, Trump is already arguing that beating 240,000 deaths would be a victory for his administration.
As I argued in this diary last week, Trump’s strategy seemed pretty obvious. If you’re Donald Trump, and you now know that the crisis outcome will be worse than you originally hoped and projected, what’s your best rhetorical strategy to look good in the end?
Answer: Lower expectations.
Predict that the number of deaths will be an INFLATED number.
And then crow to the world how great you are when you BEAT that INFLATED number.
Whether this was his strategy or not, it appears that this is what he will be doing if the U.W. model plays out the way it is projected.
Democrats need to assimilate that there is an important difference between this crisis and the climate crisis. This is a short term crisis. The tendency of activists and scientists agitating for immediate action is to emphasize outcomes on the worst end of the spectrum in order to attempt to make their audience realize the potential magnitude of the problem. Climate activists do this in part because the high magnitude outcomes are in the relatively far future and immediate impacts are not seen.
In addition, someone in Dr. Fauci’s position also wants to emphasize worst outcomes in order to “scare straight” his audience in order to contain social spread.
BUT, the outcomes of this crisis will be known before the election. So there is a risk that in a few months, it will turn out that the outcomes fall short of the harsher predictions.
This benefits Trump.
Biden, to his credit, has not, to my knowledge, been pushing worst case outcomes. It is easy to attack Trump’s response without resorting to the need to push worst case outcomes. It’s time for all of us to back off, and not argue worst case outcomes in an attempt to make Trump look bad. In the end, it likely will just help him look good.
Can’t you picture it? Trump: “They said millions would die! People said there was no way we could keep the death toll below 100,000. But it is a great victory for me that we did!”