Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Death Forecast Baffles Experts

The Trump administration’s estimate of U.S. deaths from Covid-19 has confused experts, according to a slew of new reports. The White House has said that anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die, but scientists are questioning where these figures come from.

The White House has not released the details of how they arrived at these figures. Importantly, they have not revealed what inputs they took into consideration or what type of modeling they used to reach the estimate. This has left experts in the field mystified.

“The White House number was in the range of the best models I have seen, but they did not say how they came to it,” Georgetown Professor Lawrence Gostin told the Financial Times. “I fear they may have only succeeded in confusing the public.”

It’s important to note that the experts aren’t saying definitively that the administration has under estimated or overestimated deaths. Rather, there are serious questions about the methodology used. Without providing details, it’s impossible to know how accurate the administration’s projections are.

One estimate from Imperial College said 2.2 million people could die – a figure that appears to have alarmed President Donald Trump and his advisers. Trump has been saying that around 100,000 deaths would be evidence of his success in handling the crisis. This casts further doubt on the reliability of the administration’s numbers.