A cemetery in the Staten Island borough of New York, April 2020.
Timeline: Tracking Trump's rising coronavirus death toll estimates
By
Daniel Dale and Christopher Hickey, CNN
Updated 5:34 PM ET, Mon May 4, 2020
Washington (CNN)President
Donald Trump's coronavirus death toll estimate keeps rising.
Trump
said during a Fox News "virtual town hall"
event at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday night that the final US total could be as high as 100,000 deaths. At a press briefing on April 20, conversely, he predicted a total between 50,000 and 60,000.
It's difficult even for experts to predict the death toll from a pandemic; statistical models produce new forecasts as new information comes in. (The people behind one prominent University of Washington model
announced Monday that they were adjusting their modeling strategy and that their estimated death toll would be revised upward to about 135,000 deaths from a previous estimate of 72,433.) Still, the regular increases in the President's own estimate -- even as he and his aides
continue to tout their response as a success -- are noteworthy.
A more conventional president might avoid making any estimate to avoid future criticism if they turned out to be wrong. Trump, who often seems more concerned with shaping perceptions in the current moment than with how something might be perceived in the future, instead keeps offering projections that seem unrealistically low from the moment he utters them.
Trump
claimed in March that his previous rosy rhetoric was an attempt to "give people hope." Whatever his intentions, he has been reliably incorrect.
Trump has been issuing lowball estimates
since February, the month he
declared that the number of people in the US known to have the virus, then 15, was going to be "close to 0" within days. He said then that the reduction from 15 to 0 would show how good a job his team had done.
Similarly, his argument in April and May has been that the final total would have been far higher -- far higher than whatever his latest estimate is -- had his administration not taken the steps it did. He has pointed to Dr. Deborah Birx's March 31
statement that expert analysis showed 2.2 million could die if there were no "mitigation" efforts and that at least 100,000 were likely to die even with good mitigation.
Here's a timeline of Trump's death toll estimates since April 10 -- and the real death toll as of the end of each day he offered these predictions. All of the real death toll figures below are from Johns Hopkins University
data; the university's figures may not capture all actual coronavirus deaths, since it is
hard to count all of them in real time.
April 10
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: There could be 55,000 to 75,000 deaths
“Hard to believe that if you had 60,000 -- you could never be happy, but that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. So they said between 100- and 220,000 lives on the minimum side, and then up to 2.2 million lives if we didn’t do anything. But it showed a just tremendous resolve by the people of this country. So we’ll see what it ends up being, but it looks like we’re headed to a number substantially below the 100,000.”
Trump also said: “And we did the right thing, because maybe it would have been 2 million people died instead of whatever that final number will be, which could be 60 (thousand), could be 70 (thousand), could be 75 (thousand), could be 55 (thousand).”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 18,758
April 17
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: The death toll is heading to “probably” 60,000 or “maybe” 65,000 deaths
“A minimum, if we did nothing, would have been 1.6 [million]. If you cut that in half, you’re talking about 800,000, 900,000, a million people dying. But we did a lot of work, and the people of this country were incredible, I have to say. And I think we’re heading to the other category, and that would be if we did work and if it was successful, they had between 100,000 and 220,000 to 240,000 on the upside. And I think we’ll be substantially, hopefully, below the hundred number. And I think, right now, we’re heading at probably around 60-, maybe 65,000.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 37,054
April 20
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: The total “could” be 50,000 to 60,000 deaths
“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 low number was supposed to be 100,000 people. We -- we could end up at 50 to 60.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 42,308
April 27
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: We are “probably heading to” 60,000 or 70,000 deaths
“So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were -- 2.2 million -- we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 56,245
April 29
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: The “final number” could be 60,000, 65,000 or 70,000 deaths
“If we didn’t do what we did, you would’ve had a million people die, maybe more. Maybe 2 million people die. 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.”
Trump also said: “But if we lost -- so if we lose 65,000 people -- it’s so crazy to say it. It’s just so horrible. But if we lose 65,000 people, and instead of that going the other route, we would have lost a million or a million and a half or 2 million.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 63,006
May 1
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: We will “hopefully” finish under 100,000 deaths
“People were thinking in terms of 1.5 million lives lost to 2.2 without the mitigation. And hopefully, we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 64,943
May 3
WHAT TRUMP SAID
Trump: There will be “anywhere from” 75,000 to 100,000 deaths
“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75-, 80-, to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing.”
Trump also said: “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.”
THE REAL DEATH TOLL AT THE END OF THAT DAY
At least 67,682
President Donald Trump's coronavirus death toll estimate keeps rising.
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