President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed widespread spikes in new COVID-19 cases as a “fake news media conspiracy,” despite data tracked by public health professionals and his own administration showing the rate of positive cases increasing in recent weeks in several states across the country.
Trump repeated assertions that cases were up only because “we TEST, TEST, TEST.”
“Corrupt media conspiracy at all time high,” he said, diverting to his Election Day battle with Joe Biden after claiming 99.9% of young people infected with COVID-19 heal quickly. “On Nov. 4, topic will totally change.”
“The Fake News Media is riding COVID, COVID, COVID, all the way to the Election,” Trump added later. “Losers!”
But Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that the percentage of positive cases has been steadily rising throughout October, undercutting the president’s message that the sheer number of tests could explain new spikes.
Trump’s tweet comes just days after the U.S. hit a single-day record of more than 83,000 new cases and as spikes in France, Italy and Spain have prompted new curfews and other mitigation measures across Europe.
At least 8.6 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 and more than 225,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins.
Biden on Sunday pounced on statements by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, asserting in a video ad that the Trump administration had “given up” in the fight against COVID-19. Meadows told CNN Sunday that “we’re not going to control the pandemic.”
“It’s a contagious virus just like the flu,” Meadows said, arguing that a vaccine and therapeutics are the way to deal with the virus.
Trump has pushed aggressively for reopening the economy and schools, and he has mocked masking and social distancing, despite recommendations from the CDC and his own health officials, while holding large campaign rallies in recent weeks.
The CDC and Trump have acknowledged that the novel coronavirus is severely more deadly than the flu. But the president has also compared the virus to the flu multiple times, despite infectious disease experts noting comparisons between COVID-19 and the seasonal flu are off base.
According to the CDC, counted and reported deaths during the peak week of flu seasons from 2013-2014 to 2019-2020 ranged from 351 to 1,626 — even on the high end, that’s still 9.5 times fewer deaths than COVID-19 in mid-April.
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