Donald Trump Jr and father play down Covid deaths as daily toll nears
1,000

President tweets that deaths are �way down� while Don Jr tells Fox News
deaths from coronavirus are �almost nothing�
.
Donald Trump Jr at a �Make American Great Again� event in Michigan on
Monday. The president�s eldest son called critics of the president�s virus
response �truly morons�. Photograph: Daniel Mears/AP
Guardian staff
Fri 30 Oct 2020 14.49 GMT

Last modified on Fri 30 Oct 2020 16.07 GMT

96

As coronavirus deaths in the US approach 1,000 a day in the current record
surge of infections, Donald Trump and his son, Don Jr, appear intent on
publicly disputing the lethality of the outbreak at repeated
opportunities.

Don Jr sat for an interview with Fox News on Thursday night during which
he called critics of the Trump administration�s approach to the pandemic
�truly morons� and said that deaths from Covid-19 in America right now are
�almost nothing�.

Don Jr. falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying
from the coronavirus amounts to �almost nothing.�

An average of 1,000 Americans a day are dying from Covid-19 right
now.pic.twitter.com/oHNzQtfDOS
� Bill Maxwell ?? #NeverTrump (@Bill_Maxwell_) October 30, 2020

Meanwhile, having said at a rally last weekend that �you don�t see death�
at this stage of the pandemic in the US, Donald Trump reiterated in a
tweet on Friday morning that deaths are �WAY DOWN� in the US, mass testing
is exaggerating the numbers of infections and hospitals are coping.

In fact, many hospitals across the US, especially the midwest and upper
midwest heartland and Texas are on the brink of being overwhelmed and are
setting up field hospitals and calling in the military and assistance from
state governors.

On Fox News, Don Jr said: �If you look at, I put it on my Instagram, I
went through the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] data
because I kept hearing about the new infections, [but] why aren�t they
talking about deaths? Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing,
because we have gotten control of this thing.�

Public health experts, such as the top public health official on the White
House�s own coronavirus taskforce, Anthony Fauci, just this week warned
that the US was in for �a whole lot of pain� this winter because it is not
controlling the pandemic, and that life probably will not return return to
normal until late 2021 or 2022, even with a successful vaccine likely to
emerge in the coming months.

Nearly 90,000 new coronavirus infections were reported in the US on
Thursday, the highest single-day total in the country since the pandemic
began, or about one new case every second.

In the recent surge deaths can lag cases by several weeks. But already
deaths are increasing in about half of states, the New York Times
reported.

And in the past month, about a third of US counties hit a daily record of
deaths in the pandemic.