Coronavirus: Donald Trump scales down US toll projection to 65K; backs, instigates protestors

President Donald Trump on Friday said he expects US fatalities from the coronavirus to be much lower than projected earlier because of a “lot of work” done by his administration and came out in support of protestors seeking removal of social-distancing restrictions in Democratic-ruled states.

“Right now, we’re heading at probably around 60-, maybe 65,000,” the president told reporters at the daily White House briefing about his assessment of the state of the epidemic in the United States, where 37,079 people had died till Saturday morning, with 706,779 confirmed cases of infections.

The president’s assessment is much in line with revised projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been routinely cited by White House experts and others. It has lowered its projection of COVID-19 deaths in the United States from 80,000 at the start of the crisis to 60,308 Covid-19 deaths in the United States based on the current social-distancing measures in force.

Experts of the president’s White House task force had a more dire projection of up to $2.2 million if no mitigation efforts were undertaken and to 240,000 even if mitigation efforts such as social-distancing were enforced “perfectly”.

There is much more optimism now based on an assessment that the United States has past its peak, a vast number of counties have not reported new cases in the last seven days, hospitalization numbers have dropped in New York state, the epicentre of the US epidemic, and there has been a flattening of the curve on other metrics.

President Trump unveiled a set of federal guidelines Thursday for states to follow, at the discretion of the governors, to begin reopening the country based on the growing optimism among his experts and, equally, frustration among businesses, employers and employees ruined by the lockdown.

Protestors have taken to the streets in varying numbers across the country demanding an end to the restrictions. Most of them have been identified as supporters of the president, who has backed them and acknowledged being in agreement with them.

On Friday however, the president fired off a series of tweets supporting protests only in states ruled by Democratic governors. The language used in the posts was both supportive and incendiary. “Liberate Virginia”, “Liberate Michigan” and “Liberate Minnesota”, he wrote in separate posts.

Michigan is among the worst hit states with more than 30,000 cases and 2,200 fatalities. Virginia has fared far better with a little more than 7,400 cases and 230 deaths. But neither state has reported declining numbers, a key “gatekeeping” criteria laid down by his administration’s reopening guidelines.

The president justified his tweets when asked about them at the briefing and said the restrictions in these states were “very powerful” and “you can get the same result out of doing a little bit less”.

The president has been eager to reopen the country and put it back to work as the epidemic has devastated the economy, shut down small and medium businesses such as restaurants, theaters and all other non-essential services, crippled large corporations specially in the aviation sector, and left 22 million people jobless.

Disbursement of loans, grants and direct cash payments are underway to businesses and families from a $2.2 trillion relief package announced last month to mitigate the hardship.

On Friday, the American president announced $18 billion in relief for farmers and ranchers, which include direct cash payments and farm purchases to be delivered to food banks.

Grocery stores have limped back to normalcy from the early days of the epidemic when people cleaned up shelves fearing shortages. Food products are available in plenty now (not toilet rolls or sanitizers), but shopping is now subject to social-distancing guidelines, in varying degrees of severity.

The use of face coverings such as masks are mandatory in public settings where social-distancing is not possible in some states, such as Florida. A man was arrested last week there for posting online a threat to open fire at a grocery store because not enough customers ere using face coverings there.

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