Trump Lies About Covid-19 Death Rate

Donald Trump has been attempting to reduce the reported covid-19 deaths with outright lies. His latest con is that the U.S. deaths are overstated by a factor of 16. He claims that the number of deaths are only 6% of the reported numbers. According to the CDC, covid-19 was listed as the only cause of death in 6% of the cases and that, on average, for the remaining deaths, "there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death." By Trump's logic, if he shot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue and then the man had a heart attack and died, the cause of death would not be the gun shot.

 

He conveniently ignores that the 7 day averages for U.S. death rates of approximately 2% from covid-19 is consistent with that of other countries. None report death rates 16 times lower. The CDC also reports that U.S. excess deaths from covid-19 since February 1st range from approximately 202,000 to 263,000. These figures are in direct conflict with Trump's lies and agree with reality.

 

Trump is attempting to achieve herd immunity. This is when enough people get infected and become immune so that the infection rate falls dramatically or stops. He wants people to ignore the virus, go out, and get infected. This would require that approximately 230 million people be infected and result in a death count of over 4 million people at current case fatality rates.

There are unknowns. The case fatality is calculated as the ratio of reported deaths to reported cases. There are most definitely unreported cases of infection which would result in a lower number for the infection fatality rate which is the ratio of the reported deaths to the number of infections. But the number of infections isn't known. It may be 10% more than the reported cases, 50% more, 100% more, or 500% more. Thus the death rate would be a lower number but the number of deaths would still be over a million to achieve herd immunity.

 

There are more unknowns. It is not certain that infected and recovered people are immune. The percentage of people required for herd immunity is unknown. The death rate if our health system is overwhelmed is unknown. What is known is the if the virus runs wild, millions will die -- unnecessarily -- because of the utter stupidity, inhumanity, and lack of decency of Trump and his enablers.

(updated 9/26/200

John L. Ferri

jlferri@epix.net