On Sunday, President Donald Trump said the US coronavirus death toll could reach up to 90,000, a significant upward shift from what he previously estimated.
While praising the US response to the pandemic, Trump said, “That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90,000 people successful. But it’s one of the reasons we’re not at the high end of that plane as opposed to the low end of the plane.”
Upon pressing on his upward shifting estimate, Trump admitted, “I used to say 65,000 and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly. But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the very lower end of the plane if we did the shutdown.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, estimated different figures of the US coronavirus death toll from Trump’s estimation.
Interacting with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” Dr. Birx said, “Our projections have always been between 100-240,000 American lives lost and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance.”
Previously, Trump estimated around 50,000 to 60,000 US deaths from the virus at a White House press briefing two weeks ago.
At the time, the president said, “Now we’re going toward 50 — I’m hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say it. One is too many, but we’re going toward 50 or 60,000 people. That’s at the lower — as you know the lower (end of the projections) was supposed to be 100,000 people.”
On April 27, Trump estimated the death toll was “probably heading to 60,000, 70,000” and predicted a similar outcome two days later. He said, “And if you think that we’d be at 65 or 70 or 60 or whatever the final number will be — one is too many.”
In March, Trump said the US death toll due to the virus could reach up to 100,000 or more. He said if the death toll stays under 100,000, “we all together have done a very good job.” So far, the United States reported more than 1,188,420 confirmed cases and over 68,600 deaths, according to the worldometer.info.
