The coronavirus fatality goal posts are moving again. “We're gonna lose over 100,000 perhaps,” Donald Trump said on Fox News, still trying to make that look good by citing the worst-case, if-we’d-done-nothing scenario of a possible 2.2 million dead, and then moving quickly on to “but the economy” talk.
We’ve already lost 85,000 people in just a few months, and Trump keeps using the numbers—and his ever-changing predictions about the numbers—as political tools, not public health information or consistent benchmarks for what mitigation efforts can achieve.
It takes work to line up all of Trump’s predictions of COVID-19 death tolls. Back on Feb. 26, the number of people sick—not dead, but sick—was billed as: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to zero … that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” On March 9, he was downplaying likely COVID-19 deaths by comparing them with the annual death toll from the flu—37,000 in 2019 but up to 70,000 per year, he noted. Fast forward just over two months and the novel coronavirus has taken 85,000 lives. That’s true when using a more conservative counting method than is used for the flu, but which Trump wants to change to count fewer deaths.
On March 31, the White House task force was projecting 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. Weeks of hard-won mitigation later, on April 20, Trump was talking about 50,000 to 60,000 deaths. On April 29, it was “if you lose 65,000 people.” In early May, it was “anywhere from 75,000, 80,000, to 100,000 people.” Now it’s “over 100,000, perhaps,” but Trump is thinks it’s “not an acceptable answer” to suggest that schools should remain closed, as Dr. Anthony Fauci dared to do.
Trump is responsible for many of these deaths due to his long record of incompetence and refusal to act to stop the spread of the pandemic because admitting it was happening might make him look bad. And some of them he’s responsible for through direct action, like the big spike in COVID-19 cases at meatpacking plants he’d ordered to remain open—just as he’ll be responsible if he presses to open or keep open other industries when they aren’t operating safely.
So we’ve gone from “going to be down to zero” to not nearly as bad as the flu to 240,000 to 50,000 to hey, maaaybe 65,000 to 75,000 or possibly 100,000 to “over 100,000.” Not saying how much over 100,000, so be ready for that number to keep sliding around as deaths keep mounting.