Donald Trump confessed on Sunday that the White House has overestimated the number of hospital beds required to handle the growing number of coronavirus cases.
Trump’s admission is a shocking reversal of dire predictions originally put forth estimating that 65,400 beds in New York State would be filled with COVID-19 cases by April 4th.
Flawed model
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation produced a model predicting how many hospitalizations and deaths would result from the coronavirus outbreak in the US.
The White House coronavirus task force has cited this model in many of its policy decisions, but it turns out that the need for more hospital beds may be drastically overstated.
According to the most recent data, there were 15,905 coronavirus patients occupying hospital beds in New York state.
Trump noted this fact during the Sunday coronavirus briefing, admitting that “It’s turning out that we need less hospital beds. We may have models, but we’ve been sort of saying that. In New York, we were saying we think you’re gonna need less.”
Breitbart News noted that although the hospitalization rate is vastly overestimated in the IHME model, “current projections of COVID-19 deaths as of April 2 is in line with the actual number of reported deaths on that date.”
Light at the end of the tunnel
Trump’s tone during Sunday’s briefing was one of optimism, remarking that “we see light at the end of the tunnel. Things are happening … And hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll be very proud of the job we all did.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo adopted a similar tone in his own briefing on Sunday, highlighting the fact that the state experienced a dip in coronavirus deaths and hospital admissions for the first time since the beginning of the outbreak.
“The apex could be a plateau and we could be on that plateau now,” Cuomo said, adding that the next several days would determine whether the speculation was true or not.
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Surgeon General Jerome Adams appear to not be on the same page as Trump and Cuomo in optimism about a downturn in the not-too-distant future. Adams said during a “Fox News Sunday” interview that “this is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” likening it to this generation’s Pearl Habor or 9/11.
Fauci also cautioned during a CBS interview that “What you’re hearing about potential light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t take away from the fact that tomorrow or the next day is going to look really bad”
No comments: