Trump Sets an Extremely Low Bar: If Number of Coronavirus Deaths are ‘Substantially’ Under 100,000, We’ve Done a ‘Good Job’

At Wednesday’s daily press briefing, President Donald Trump offered up a radically different message from a few weeks ago when he dismissed the coronavirus outbreak and predicted it would quickly “disappear,” and instead is now claiming that the possibility of tens of thousands of Americans dying would be proof that his administration did a “good job.”

During the press Q & A section, Trump made a point of alluding to an Imperial College (U.K.) study that warned more than two million Americans could die from the COVID-19 outbreak (and more than half a million Britons).

“The big projection being 2.2 million people would die if we did nothing!” Trump said. “That was another decision we made. Close it up. That was a big decision that we made.”

But while Trump correctly cited the top-line number, he notably left out key context — that the massive death toll estimate was based on a huge, dubious assumption that the study’s authors acknowledged: “The (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.” In other words, if neither the U.S. government nor individual citizens attempted to stop the spread in any way, the virus could result in that many fatalities. But by the time the study came out in mid-March, both the federal and many state governments were already restricting the flow of people and commerce and millions of citizens had already chosen to shelter in place.

In other words, the 2.2 million figure was a worst-of-the-worst case scenario projection that had almost zero likelihood of ever occurring.

“If we can stay substantially under the 100,000 — which was the original projection — I think we did a very good job,” Trump said, clearly trying to positively reframe his administration’s response, even as the most recent CNN poll showed a majority now disapprove of the federal government’s response.

“Even though it’s a lot of people,” Trump added.

The current Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) estimate for the U.S. death toll stands at 61,000.

Watch above, via Fox News.