Trump Telling Advisers the Covid-19 Death Toll May Be ‘Inflated’: Report

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There’s new reporting that in private, President Donald Trump has questioned the accuracy of the coronavirus death toll and may do so publicly soon.

Per Axios, the president and several of his advisers have been “suggesting the real numbers are actually lower” than the figures indicate, and one official said “he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.”

The official said Trump has vented that the numbers seem inflated and has brought up New York’s addition of more than 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its death toll… Some members of the president’s team believe the government has created a distorting financial incentive for hospitals to identify coronavirus cases, the official also said.”

The Axios report notes that “there is no evidence the death rate has been exaggerated, and experts believe coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are being undercounted — not over-counted.”

Another White House official said in response to the report, “Skepticism isn’t the right way to frame it. The numbers have been revised up to include presumptive cases — meaning deaths that are believed to be related to COVID but not known for sure… So he’s expressed the need to properly convey that to American people so they’re not startled by why numbers ticked up.”

UPDATE: The White House addressed the issue late this afternoon:

McEnany on whether Trump thinks the death toll is actually lower than reported:

"The president answered this, and he said no,"

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) May 6, 2020