Beware the Coronavirus Truthers

Here’s a political analysis by Philip Bump from April 23, which was six days ago, about how Trump reveled in a downward projection of the coronavirus death toll in the U.S.

With 60,000 deaths, “you can never be happy,” Trump said at a briefing on April 10, shortly after the model revision. “But that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. So they said between [100,000] 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. That would be the low mark. And I hope that bears out.”

By Trump standards that wasn’t an outrageous thing to say, on April 10. But he didn’t keep up with revisions.

As recently as Monday [April 20], Trump again touted this number.

“We did the right thing, because if we didn’t do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead,” he said. “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.”

We passed the 60,000 deaths mark today. Models may show that the curve is flattening, but the numbers keep going up higher and faster than predictions said they would go up. It seems to me that unless there is a major slowdown, we’ll reach 100,000 dead sometime in June. That tragic number at least should blow the “it’s no worse than the flu” argument out of the water, although it probably won’t.

If anything, right-wing media seems to be doubling down on the claim that covid-19 is no more deadly than the flu. Chris Hayes went on a memorable rant about that last night.

Another example: An article by Joseph Curl dated April 28 in the Washington Times is headlined “COVID-19 turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated by media. Media hyped the virus and alarmed Americans to the point of shutting down the economy.” I am not going to link to it, because links just make it more visible to search engines, but it shouldn’t be hard to find if you want to read it. I wrote a takedown of it on Facebook. Curl repeats some of the same cherry-picked data to argue that covid-19 is no worse than the flu that I took apart on April 18 in Death by Stupid. The zombie arguments just won’t die.

Viral photo by Joshua A. Bickel, Columbus Dispatch, of Ohio anti-restriction protesters.

Curl also claims that a “major model relied on by the White House Coronavirus Task Force predicts about 70,000 dead by the end of August.” At the rate we’re going, we’ll pass 70,000 dead some time next week. Seriously. I notice Curl provides no links or other information on where this “major model” came from. It may be that this is the model Trump seized on to announce only 70,000 deaths two days ago. April 27:

President Donald Trump on Monday acknowledged more Americans would die of the coronavirus than he has recently predicted,now saying that the nationwide toll is likely to be between 60,000 and 70,000.

Yes, the nationwide toll for the coming week almost certainly will be between 60,000 and 70,000. Then it will be higher.

See Beware of studies claiming covid-19 death rates are smaller than expected. The authors are the dean of Harvard Medical School; a professor and researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; a professor and researcher at the Ragon Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital; and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. The studies they criticize, conducted in California, appear to be the same studies cited by Curl to argue that the covid-19 mortality rate “is likely 0.1% to 0.2%.”

And regarding Fox News, see also Sean Hannity’s self-own by Erik Wemple in today’s WaPo.

Even when they’re proven wrong, the coronavirus truthers don’t give up. Remember Richard Epstein, the highly esteemed “legal scholar” who made a complete ass of himself claiming that coronavirus would kill no more than 500 Americans? He then claimed that “500” was a typo; he meant to write “5,000.” Hah. Well, Epstein hasn’t given up. Jonathan Chait reported on April 21 that Epstein has another essay out arguing that the official coronavirus data is completely overblown and doesn’t justify the economic shutdown. See Chait, Richard Epstein Can’t Stop Being Wrong About the Coronavirus.

This pooh-poohing of the worst pandemic of our lifetimes — so far — unless you’re really, really old — of course is in service to Republican political interests. But I’ll have to rant about that tomorrow.