Trump Abandons Bogus COVID Death Toll Projection, Now Admits It Could Hit 100K

President Donald Trump hiked up his original projected death toll of 50,000 to 100,000 on Sunday.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1307200
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Donald Trump can only be characterized as having the behavior of a dry drunk.

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He shouldn’t have said this, it’ll hit that new mark by the end of May, possibly even a week or 1 1/2 weeks prior.

Next quote for the campaign videos.

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“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he told Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier during a virtual town hall. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

Why is he making this pronouncement in the present tense? He had access to the tools and technology to damped the virus’ effect, and just remember he chose to golf.
I don’t blame him for the virus getting here, I blame him, Azar, Pence, Kushner, and et al that they fucked up the response.

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“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,”

We passed 75 to 80 deads about 7 weeks ago…

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100,000 by May 20 could easily happen. This guy has no idea that 500,000 deaths by October is possible if social distancing becomes extremely lax.

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“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,”

Baghdad Trump

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Well we’re for sure going to lose more when armed nut jobs threaten clerks with guns over wearing masks in stores.
Maybe the response should be those who don’t wear masks are “gay”, and it’s their sincerely held belief is that they don’t have to service no “gays” in their establishments. It worked for bakers, right?

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So we’re back to Birx’s original projection of 100k-240k fatalities.

Here’s the problem (which Birx herself has acknowledged): it assumes social distancing is in place in a way that is much more uniform than we’ve practiced to date and longer than we have to date.

I don’t think people quite realize just how badly Trump screwed us even harder in April than he did in February.

By using the bogus IHME 60k threshold, which WAPO confirms his political appointees used as a basis to create a low fatality model to override Fauci and Birx, Trump exhorted the red half of this country to abandon social distancing and to challenge stay at home orders. That campaign has been successful as holdout states accelerated their removal of minimal distancing measures (e.g., IA) and other states lifted their measures or permitted local communities to decide.

Now, we’re in MAGA May, where the trend we saw in April–wide community spread from urban centers into the suburbs and rurals–will accelerate even as some urban centers get a real handle on this virus. We had 26k-28k cases on Sunday, which is high. Sundays are usually fairly light in terms of reporting.

What I think we’ve been set up for is continuing high caseloads and wider distribution, which may see some real sharp spikes given that we’re effectively using a MAGA control group to see how many people can be infected in MAGA land. Our overall caseload will be steady and may even drop as NY and other original hot spots drive numbers down, but underneath those numbers will be continuing infections and death. If you add cases, you will add fatalities. That’s because there is no cure for this virus. This suggests we may continue to average 800 to 2000 fatalities per day all the way through June and may be July unless this virus gets dramatically weaker. That would add another 100k deaths (at 1100 per day). So, if we don’t see an appreciable drop in fatalities and caseloads as we go through May, I think it’s fair to say that we’ll be pushing up on the higher end of Birx’s threshold. We may be looking at 300k fatalities this year.

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Anyone who thinks we will only have 100k deaths is seriously underestimating Trump and his base.

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Typical Trump, ALWAYS inflating his numbers…

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The thing is that 100k is already baked into the system. We have over 900k confirmed cases to resolve. If we average 1100 fatalities per day from now until May 31, we’ll reach that target (maybe sooner). But those cases entered the system in April. This debate about relaxing social distancing now is about whether we avoid thresholds like 200k, 300k or higher.

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If it’s legal to have a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” (although I always wondered if that meant you could go in without pants or underwear…), then a “no mask, no service” is totally legal.

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So this would equal roughly 25,000 Benghazi’s?

Cue the Republican outrage…

image

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Every day he shows that a guy who can’t read and can’t write can also not think. Words on top of words, faboo defense of his performance after predictions of death toll rising to 100K but probably more because of his moronic base.

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I took a COVID antibody test last week and it came back negative. I knew it would come back negative, but the truth is I should not have been negative. I live in an area with a lot of cases. I’ve been to all the same stores that those infected folks have been. I’ve been to mass gatherings in late Feb and very early March. That said, I do know of people who have had COVID.

The thing I’m recognizing about this virus is that it doesn’t spread quite like the flu or common cold. Most Americans have not been exposed, even in hot spot counties. You kinda have to go to the virus to catch it. But then it slowly expands to more and more rings of society. This is why relaxing social distancing w/out mass testing at a time when there are no cures are bad signs. Masks can actually save lives but MAGA isn’t going to buy into it. We’ll have to see how this virus progresses through May, but right now the signs aren’t that good.

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“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,”

Meaning, it will be much more than that. He keeps dashing about, trying to minimize the numbers. They get big, he slops in the ball parking.

“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people”

75,80,100,000. This is a man who has the experts, the models, the feedback. I doubt those experts scale up the numbers this way in a briefing.

What is curious is he keeps the jumps in small enough intervals that it works against him. His predictions get superseded in a week’s time while he is trying to say these numbers are what lie at the end. From today to 75,000 is likely in days.From 75,000 to 100,000 is not long after if things keep moving.

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Trump can rack up 100 Benghazis in one Scaramucci.

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Which is easier to enforce than to try and determine who is gay. The “no shirt, no shoes, no service” example was the argument that the deny the “gays” service people wanted to use, except for the fact that no shoes etc applied to everyone; male, female, young, old. each and every person.

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If you’ve taken an antibody test, no real reason to trust them right now…

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