US Elections: Donald Trump Jr Claims Coronavirus Deaths Down To ‘Next To Nothing’

US President Donald Trump has claimed that coronavirus deaths in the United States are “very low,” while his son Donald Jr says the deaths are now “next to nothing.”

Neither statement is true.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the United States reported 88,521 new confirmed infections yesterday, which is the highest daily total since the pandemic began.

It also recorded another 971 deaths, roughly in line with the daily average for recent weeks.

For context, the US currently averages more deaths each day than Australia has suffered during the entire pandemic.

More than 40,000 Americans are currently hospitalized, and it is feared that the death rate is about to rise, as deaths are known to lag several weeks behind cases.

Donald Jr appeared last night on Fox News, where he was interviewed by Laura Ingraham.

She asked the president’s son to react to comments from CNN’s chief medical commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who yesterday reported that 82 percent of Trump’s campaign rallies had been followed by an increase in infections in the local area.

Each demonstration attracts thousands of supporters of the president, who are very close to each other without social distancing. The vast majority of attendees do not wear masks.

“These rallies shouldn’t be happening,” Dr. Gupta said.

“Do not go. Do not go to these rallies. Anywhere in the country now, if you go to a meeting of several hundred people, it is without a doubt that the virus is attending that demonstration with you. If you are grouped closely together, it is not known who is a carrier of the virus and it is not known how many people carry the virus.

“You are putting yourself at risk.”

He advised everyone who had already attended one of Trump’s rallies to assume they had been exposed to the virus and self-quarantined for 14 days.

“You go home with your family, with your friends. You can infect the members of the community. If you go to an event like that, right now, with the amount of virus that is spreading in this country, you have to assume that I have had some kind of exposure, “Gupta said.

Donald Jr. didn’t think much of that advice.

“These people are truly idiots. Do you know what I mean?” he told Ingraham.

“I like how they go after Scott Atlas because he’s not an epidemiologist, but Sanjay Gupta is magically now. I mean, give me a break.”

Gupta is a neurosurgeon and has been involved in medical journalism since 2003.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist, is a controversial member of the White House coronavirus task force. He has questioned the effectiveness of face masks and argued in favor of a herd immunity strategy, alarming other experts on the task force.

Such a strategy would involve allowing the virus to spread throughout most of the community while trying to protect the most vulnerable, such as the elderly.

“I mean, the reality is this. If you look, I put it on my Instagram a couple of days ago, because I checked the CDC data, because I kept hearing about new infections. But I was like, why not? speaking of deaths? “Donald Jr continued.

“Oh, because the number is next to nothing, because we are in control of this. We understand how it works. We have the therapy. If you look at this, look at my Instagram, it’s down to next to nothing.”

In his Instagram post, Donald Jr posted a CDC chart showing Covid death rates. He wrote: “Why is the CDC REAL data not being discussed? Why is the media only talking about the cases increasing (because we are testing) more, but the real numbers that matter, that is, the rate mortality, have they gone down? “

Forgot to mention, or perhaps did not notice, multiple warnings on the CDC website that their recent death data is incomplete as, unlike other organizations, they must wait for formal death certificates to be completed and processed . That can sometimes take months.

“The number of deaths reported in this table is the total number of deaths received and coded as of the date of the analysis and does not represent all the deaths that occurred in that period,” the agency warns.

“The data during this period is incomplete due to the lag between the time the death occurred and the time the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS, and processed for reporting purposes.

“This delay can range from one week to eight weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction and cause of death.”

The upshot is that CDC data always shows that the death rate has dropped dramatically in recent weeks, and has done so throughout the entire pandemic. It is a mirage.

President Trump backed up his son’s false claims on Twitter this morning, saying that deaths from the virus were “very low.”

Meanwhile, critics of the Trumps online criticized them for spreading misinformation.

“Don Jr is an idiot,” said epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding.

“Bastardizing mortality statistics that have a well-known lag is very accurate for him.”

Donald Jr.’s comments sparked an angry reaction on the US cable network MSNBC. Early morning host Kasie Hunt portrayed them after returning from a publicity break on her Way Too Early show.

“That was Donald Trump Jr, falsely claiming that the death toll dropped to, citing, almost nothing, the same day the United States saw one of the highest levels of coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic,” he said Hunt.

“We would like to tell you here that, for those of you who lost your loved ones to Covid yesterday, your loved ones are nothing to us.”

Dr. Vin Gupta, a lung specialist and intensive care physician, also responded scathingly. He cited a grim prognosis from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“My institute has really been on point with its role models, sadly for the country,” Gupta told MSNBC.

“We are anticipating up to 2,300 deaths every day for the calendar year turnaround. We expect, and this worries me as an ICU physician, 18 states will exhibit extreme stress when it comes to their ICU capabilities.

“Either they won’t have the staff or they won’t have the beds. And I think you know what that means. It means people will die.”