‘The deaths are real deaths.’ Fauci rebuts Trump claim COVID numbers are ‘exaggerated’
Top health officials are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the coronavirus situation in the United States.
The president falsely tweeted Sunday morning that the number of cases and deaths reported in the country are “far exaggerated” because of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries.”
“’When in doubt, call it Covid,’” he tweeted. “Fake News!”
His claims were quickly shot down by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams.
“The deaths are real deaths,” Fauci said Sunday morning on ABC’S “This Week.” “All you need to do is to go out into the trenches. Go to the hospitals, see what the health care workers are dealing with. They are under very stressed situations. In many areas of the country, the hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel, who are exhausted right now. That’s real. That’s not fake. That’s real.”
Adams also contradicted Trump’s claims during an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” he said of the CDC’s COVID-19 death toll. “I think people need to be very aware that it’s not just about the deaths as we talked about earlier. It’s about the hospitalizations, the capacity. These cases are having an impact in an array of ways.”
As of Saturday afternoon, the CDC had reported more than 20 million COVID-19 cases and more than 346,000 deaths in the U.S. On Sunday, the numbers had increased to more than 20.4 million coronavirus cases and more than 350,000 deaths, per data from Johns Hopkins University, which tracks global coronavirus numbers.
Fauci told “This Week” that there’s “no running away from the numbers.”
“It’s something that we absolutely got to grasp and get our arms around and turn that inflection down by very intensive adherence to the public health measures uniformly throughout the country with no exception,” he said.
Trump has long been at odds with his public health officials and has previously touted other false information and conspiracy theories related to the pandemic.
In August he pushed a misleading claim that 94% of reported coronavirus deaths were caused by an underlying health issue and not the virus. The claim came after the CDC reported that in 6% of COVID-19 deaths, the virus was listed as the “only cause mentioned,” meaning 94% of the people who died from the coronavirus had at least one other health condition.
He’s also long said the U.S. should slow down testing for the virus so the country would show fewer cases. Health officials have said testing for the virus is key to preventing further spread.
The president has downplayed the severity of the virus — comparing it to the flu and telling Americans to not be afraid — and has contradicted the advice of his public health experts, including by questioning the effectiveness of mask use.
He’s called Fauci a “disaster” and said there’s a “bigger bomb if you fire him.”
The president’s Sunday tweet comes as the country continues to reel from the coronavirus pandemic, with cases surging following the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is getting off to a slower start than officials expected.
This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 11:46 AM with the headline "‘The deaths are real deaths.’ Fauci rebuts Trump claim COVID numbers are ‘exaggerated’."
