Trump made similar claims during the summer increase in cases. They were wrong then, as we explained in a July fact check, and they are wrong now.
“To say that things are not really increasing is to deny reality,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, who served as president of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Barack Obama, said in an email.
“Not only do cases and infections increase, but hospitalizations – which follow the case increase by several weeks – and deaths – which follow hospitalization increase by a week or two – also increase. What’s more, the percentage of tests done have increased positively, and this correlates with increased actual spread of infection. “Frieden added:” The most reliable information is positivity, and it has increased in all regions of the country. “
The national positivity rate was 6.1% as of Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, up from 4.6% a month earlier.
“If the increase in reported cases” was due to a very high level of testing, we would expect the percentage of positive tests to be very low, certainly less than 3%. However, that is not what we see, “he said. said. Aubree Gordon, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan.
Weakening numbers
The U.S. set a new record for coronavirus daily cases on Friday: 83,757, according to Johns Hopkins data. Until Saturday, the seven-day average daily new cases were 66,970 – the
highest since the end of July.
The increase in daily cases is much greater than the increase in daily tests. The COVID Tracking Project, an initiative that collects and analyzes coronavirus data,
tweeted Saturday that “tests increased by 3.8% over a week ago, while cases increased by 20.6%.”
Trump has repeatedly suggested that the increase in confirmed cases occurs simply because tests capture issues such as those he experienced, according to his 14-year-old son Barron. Barron, he tells his crowd, recovered in ‘seconds’ without any significant problems.
But the hospitalization numbers prove that many new Covid-19 patients are getting quite sick. Eleven states set new records on Saturday or Sunday for the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus, according to COVID Tracking Project data.
According to the tracking project, the national number of hospitalizations on Saturday is 41882 at the highest level since the end of August.
Surgeon General dr. Jerome Adams said at a virtual conference on Friday that “we are starting to see hospitalizations increase in 75% of our jurisdictions across the country.”
“Since the week ending September 26, weekly hospitalization rates for all age groups have increased collectively, mainly driven by an increase in rates among adults aged 50 and older,” the CDC said in its report for the week ending October 17. .
You are already seeing the impact of the increase in hospitalization in communities across the country.
Amid a boom in El Paso, the Texas government has turned a conference center into a temporary hospital to free up space in regular hospitals. With the Wisconsin health care system “overwhelmed,” the state, according to Gov. Tony Evers, has opened a field hospital in the park where its state scholarship is held. Some hospitals in Utah had to overflow intensive care units because the permanent units were filled.
“Our hospitals are being overwhelmed and the tension they are experiencing is unsustainable,” said Gary Herbert.
tweeted on Thursday.
The good news that Trump accurately put forward is the fact that treatment for the coronavirus has improved, meaning that a smaller percentage of hospitalized people are dying today than at the beginning of the pandemic.
But as Frieden noted, the number of deaths is nonetheless
start rising. The seven-day average from Saturday was 800 deaths a day, up from 738 a month earlier.
Test does not create cases
Despite all the worrying data, Trump has continued to rely on the same false message that testing affairs matters. Trump said exactly the same thing during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday and in his “60 Minutes” interview: “If we had done half the test, we would have had half the cases.”
This, of course, is not true – in both obvious and less obvious ways.
The obvious: testing does not cause cases to exist. If the government does not record someone’s coronavirus infection, the person still has the coronavirus.
In addition, testing is a tool to combat pandemics that should help reduce the number of actual cases in the community over time. By testing, people are notified that they are infected, and should be asked to take steps to prevent the virus from spreading to others. (It is also essential for contact detection.)
Finally, the dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 2017 to 2019
noticed on Twitter that the demand for tests increases as more people experience symptoms of the virus. Thus, the amount of testing done is driven in part by the spread of the virus.
A pattern of downplaying
Trump’s efforts to blow away the increase in business are part of his months-long effort to keep the severity of the crisis to a minimum.
Rejecting the rising numbers of cases, he also continued to falsely claim that the country is turning a corner on the pandemic, although all major trends are increasing, and that the pandemic is ‘disappearing’, although he states the claim has been unfounded for more than eight months.
Experts were
apparent: the situation is likely to worsen and not improve in late autumn and winter as temperatures drop and people spend more time indoors.
“We will probably see a very dense epidemic. I think we are now at the point of exponential spread in parts of the country,” Gottlieb said.
said Monday morning on CNBC.
