A Look Back as United States COVID-19 Deaths are Over 200,000

Today the United States number of COVID-19 deaths has reached over 200,000. We look back on reports and segments of AP news beginning March 31, 2020 through September 13, 2020. 

In March, the Trump Administration projected number of coronavirus deaths were 100,000 to 240,000 AP News March 31, 2020 "White House Projects 100K 240K Deaths From Virus.

“We really believe we can do a lot better than that,” said Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. That would require all Americans to take seriously their role in preventing the spread of disease, she said.

Trump called it “a matter of life and death” for Americans to heed his administration’s guidelines and predicted the country would soon see a “light at the end of the tunnel” in a pandemic that has killed more than 3,500 Americans and infected 170,000 more.

“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” Trump said.

“This is going to be one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country,” Trump added. “We’re going to lose thousands of people.”

Fauci called the numbers “sobering” and urged Americans to “step on the accelerator” with their collective mitigation efforts.

“We are continuing to see things go up,” Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work.”

Birx said pandemic forecasts initially predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. But that was a worst-case scenario, without efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus through social distancing. She added that states that have not yet seen a spike in cases as New York has could take action to flatten the curve of rising hospitalizations and deaths.

“This could be hell of a bad two weeks,’” Trump said. He added: “You know 100,000 is, according to modeling, a very low number. In fact, when I first saw the number ... they said it was unlikely you’ll be able to attain that. We have to see but I think we’re doing better than that.”

Trump spoke after another troubling day for the stock market, which has been in a free fall as the cononavirus ground the economy to a near-halt and left millions unemployed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 400 points, or roughly 1.9%, to seal the worst first-quarter finish of its 135-year history.

AP -- May 25, 2020 Can Trump feel your pain? US nears haunting virus milestone

 — In the rubble of buildings and lives, modern U.S. presidents have met national trauma with words such as these: “I can hear you.” “You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything.” “We have wept with you; we’ve pulled our children tight.”

As diverse as they were in eloquence and empathy, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each had his own way of piercing the noise of catastrophe and reaching people.

But now, the known U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is fast approaching 100,000 on the watch of a president whose communication skills, potent in a political brawl, are not made for this moment.

Impeachment placed one indelible mark on Donald Trump’s time in the White House. Now there is another, a still-growing American casualty list that has exceeded deaths from the Vietnam and Korean wars combined. U.S. fatalities from the most lethal hurricanes and earthquakes pale by comparison. This is the deadliest pandemic in a century.

Actual deaths from COVID-19 are almost certainly higher than the numbers show, an undercount to be corrected in time.

At every turn Trump has asserted the numbers would be worse without his leadership. Yet the toll keeps climbing. It is well beyond what he told people to expect even as his public-health authorities started bracing the country in early April for at least 100,000 deaths.

“I think we’ll be substantially under that number,” he said April 10.“ Ten days later: ”We’re going toward 50- or 60,000 people.” Ten days after that: “We’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.” Though critics have said the toll shot up because he was slow to respond, he contended Tuesday it could have been 25 times higher without his actions.

The scale and swiftness of the pandemic’s killing are unlike anything that confronted Trump’s recent predecessors. Yet the calamity offers no where-were-you moment — no flashpoint turning blue skies black, no fusillade at an elementary school. Instead the toll unfolds in stages of sickness.

The pandemic is playing out in a divided country under a president who thrives on rousing his supporters and getting a rise out of those who don’t like him, whether that means forgoing a mask, playing golf while millions hunker down or thrashing opponents on Twitter. He lowered flags to half staff to recognize those who have died from the virus but had them back up days before the 100,000 marker was reached.

His feelings on Tuesday? He tweeted to “all the political hacks out there” that without his leadership the lives lost would be far worse than the “100,000 plus that looks like will be the number.”

Early on, when only a few hundred had died, Trump was asked at a briefing what message he had for Americans who were scared. “You’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say,” he responded. “I think it’s a very nasty question.”

AP News July 8, 2020 Health Official: Trump rally 'likely source of virus surge'

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa in late June that drew thousands of participants and large protests “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.

Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. By comparison, during the week before the June 20 Trump rally, there were 76 cases on Monday and 96 on Tuesday.

Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely” contributed to the spike.

“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,” Dart said.

Statewide, Oklahoma health officials on Wednesday reported 673 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, the state’s second-highest daily total since the start of the pandemic.

The new cases reported by the Oklahoma State Department of Health follow a record high of 858 cases that were reported on Tuesday and bring the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 17,893. The actual number of infections is thought to be much higher because many people haven’t been tested and some who get the disease don’t show symptoms.

AP News -- August 28, 2020 Trump lases Biden, defies pandemic on White House stage

“We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years,” Trump said, referring to the former senator and vice president’s career in Washington.

When Trump finished, a massive fireworks display went off by the Washington Monument, complete with explosions that spelled out “Trump 2020.”

His acceptance speech kicked off the final stretch of the campaign, a race now fully joined and, despite the pandemic, soon to begin crisscrossing the country. Trump’s pace of travel will pick up to a near daily pace while Biden, who has largely weathered the pandemic from this Delaware home, announced Thursday that he will soon resume campaign travel.

 Teasing once more that a vaccine could arrive soon, the president promised victory over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 people, left millions unemployed and rewritten the rules of society. And, in the setting for his speech, Trump sought to project a sense of normalcy by throwing caution about the coronavirus aside.

All week long, Republicans at the nonconvention convention tried to create the illusion that the pandemic is largely a thing of the past. The rows of chairs on the South Lawn were inches apart. Protective masks were not required, and COVID-19 tests were not administered to everyone.

The president spoke from a setting that was both familiar and controversial. Despite tradition and regulation to not use the White House for purely political events, a huge stage was set up outside the executive mansion, dwarfing the trappings for some of the most important moments of past presidencies. The speaker’s stand was flanked by dozens of American flags and two large video screens.

Trying to run as an insurgent as well as incumbent, Trump rarely includes calls for unity, even in a time of national uncertainty. Presenting himself as the last barrier protecting an American way of life under siege from radical forces, Trump has repeatedly, if not always effectively, tried to portray Biden — who is considered a moderate Democrat — as a tool of extreme leftists.

He mockedd his opponent’s record and famous empathy, suggesting that “laid off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania” don’t “want Joe Biden’s hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back.”

 Along with Biden, running mate Kamala Harris offered counter-programming for Trump’s prime-time speech. She delivered a speech a half mile from the White House, declaring, “Donald Trump has failed at the most basic and important job of a president of the United States: He failed to protect the American people, plain and simple.”

Most of the convention has been aimed at former Trump supporters or nonvoters, and has tried to drive up negative impressions of Biden so that some of his possible backers stay home. Many of the messages were aimed squarely at seniors and suburban women.

Four years ago, Trump declared in his acceptance speech that “I alone can fix” the nation’s woes, but he has found himself asking voters for another term at the nadir of his presidency, amid the devastating pandemic, crushing unemployment and real uncertainties about schools and businesses reopening.

Another one million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, in numbers released Thursday. And the U.S. economy shrank at an alarming annual rate of 31.7% during the April-June quarter as it struggled under the weight of the viral pandemic. It was sharpest quarterly drop on record.

WASHINGTON (AP) — September 13, 2020 As Trump played down virus, health experts’ alarm grew

Public health officials were already warning Americans about the need to prepare for the coronavirus threat in early February when President Donald Trump called it “deadly stuff” in a private conversation that has only now has come to light.

At the time, the virus was mostly a problem in China, with just 11 cases confirmed in the United States.

There was uncertainty about how the U.S. ultimately would be affected, and top U.S. officials would deliver some mixed messages along the way. But their overall thrust was to take the thing seriously.

“We’re preparing as if this is a pandemic,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters on Feb. 5. “This is just good commonsense public health.”

Trump, however, had a louder megaphone than his health experts, and in public he was playing down the threat. Three days after delivering his “deadly” assessment in a private call with journalist Bob Woodward, he told a New Hampshire rally on Feb. 10, “It’s going to be fine.”

Trump’s acknowledgment in Woodward’s new book “Rage” that he was minimizing the severity of the virus in public to avoid causing panic has triggered waves of criticism that he wasn’t leveling with the American people.

The White House has tried to answer that criticism by pointing to selected comments from U.S. health experts to suggest they were on the same page with Trump all along.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany highlighted comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, to try to make the case that Trump didn’t lie to the public. She cited a Feb. 17 interview in which Fauci focused his concern on the seasonal flu then playing out.

Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak
But a day later, Fauci had spoken of alarming potential implications from the new virus, saying, “Not only do we not have an appreciation of the magnitude, even more disturbing is that we don’t have an appreciation of where the magnitude is going.”

Mixed safety messages added to confusion. There was considerable discussion about mask-wearing in the early days of the pandemic, with leading experts advising the public against it, saying to leave the masks for health care workers.

“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted on Feb. 29. Officials later recommended that people wear face coverings in public and around people who don’t live in their household, based on a review of the latest evidence.

People could find different takeaways within Fauci’s pronouncements. He told the USA Today editorial board on Feb. 17 that the CDC would be testing people for the coronavirus in five major cities when they showed up at clinics with flu-like symptoms.

If that testing showed the virus had slipped into the country in places federal officials didn’t know about, “we’ve got a problem,” Fauci said. Still, the headline put the spotlight on his remark that the danger posed by the virus was slight. It read: “Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is ‘minuscule.’”

Larry Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations on public health issues, said there should be no confusing honest mistakes and expressions of uncertainty from public health officials with Trump’s effort to minimize the threat of COVID-19.

“It is irrefutable that he has played down the epidemic and sidelined trusted scientists, and in some cases, muzzled them,” Gostin said.

He added: “I categorically deny the idea that there wasn’t a strong consensus of public health experts at the time saying this was a very serious problem.”

Trump himself told Woodward on March 19 that he had deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Critics have long noted how Trump’s public comments failed to sync up with those of public health officials, contributing to confusion among Americans.

As Trump left for India on Feb. 23, he told reporters that the virus was “very much under control” and that the small number of infected people in the U.S. were “very well confined.”

But two days later, the CDC’s Messonnier told reporters, “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

Stocks plunged following her remarks and, soon after, Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the White House coronavirus task force. At the news conference announcing Pence’s selection, Trump was asked if he agreed with the inevitability of COVID-19 in the United States.

“Well, I don’t think it’s inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared,” Trump said.

Sandra Crouse Quinn, a University of Maryland professor who researches crisis communications during public health emergencies, said it’s critical not to overreassure people in a pandemic.

“You help the public anticipate what’s coming,” she said.

Dr. Howard Koh of Harvard’s school of public health said unflinchingly communicating what’s known as soon as possible helps build trust that will be necessary as the pandemic progresses.

Koh said the role of the White House in a pandemic is to galvanize national attention for public health officials and then step out of the way. But that hasn’t been the case under Trump, said Koh, who was at the Department of Health and Human Services under President Barack Obama.

As the fallout played out last week, Trump got some backup from Fauci, who told Fox News that he didn’t get the sense that Trump had distorted anything. But in an interview with MSNBC, Fauci noted the discrepancies between his own comments and the president’s.

“As you know, there were times when I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we’re having a really serious problem, you know, and the president was saying it’s something that’s going to disappear, which obviously is not the case,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report.