«It’s going up.»
Gotta be fair to Trump here. He didn’t come up with the 60,000 figure himself; that was the projection made by the IHME model in early April, when the curve began to bend thanks to Americans staying home from coast to coast. Even Anthony Fauci, who’s grumbled behind closed doors about the imperfection and variability of models, blessed the 60,000 figure on April 9:
“The real data are telling us that it is highly likely that we’re having a definite positive effect by this mitigation things that we’re doing – this physical separation – so I believe we are gonna see a downturn in that,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s “Today” show.
“And it looks more like the 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000,” he said.
The IHME model has been rapped all along for being too optimistic. (About the death toll, I mean. It was far too pessimistic in projecting the number of hospitalizations.) In reality, we passed 60,000 deaths in the U. S. a few days ago. The model currently foresees 72,000 U. S. deaths by August 4, a ludicrous underestimate. If we average the same number of daily deaths this week as we did last week we stand a chance of passing 72,000 just seven days from now.
All of which is to say: (1) We should stop paying attention to IHME, at least when it comes to forecasting deaths, and (2) Trump lowballed the death toll initially only because the experts around him were doing so as well.
That said, I don’t know why he’d lowball it *again* by predicting 80-90,000 deaths in his townhall last night with Fox News, as you’ll see below. There’s a chance we’ll pass that number by the end of *this month,* especially with many states beginning to relax restrictions. All he’s doing by continuing to offer forecasts is handing Democrats’ attack-ad material. The script writes itself: First shot is of him projecting 60,000 deaths, then the second shot is of him in this Fox segment projecting 80-90,000, then the third shot is of him later this month saying, “It looks more like 100-120,000 deaths,” then the fourth shot…
You get the point. Dems will use it as a microcosm of incompetence. “The administration bungled its response so badly it had to keep raising its estimates of how many would die.”
Trump: That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80k-90k people successfulBret: That number has changed Mr. President. You said 60Trump: I used to say 65k and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly pic.twitter.com/v4FbbygF5Q
Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) May 3,2020
Birx was asked about the projections yesterday on Fox News as well and wisely played it conservative, reminding viewers that the White House model projected 100-240,000 deaths, and that was with “full mitigation,” i.
