Some in White House Question the Coronavirus Death Toll Math

The United States continues its advance towards 100,000 coronavirus deaths. It is projected that they will reach this grim milestone in the coming days. However, President Trump and members of his administration have started questioning the official coronavirus death toll. They have suggested that the numbers have been inflated.

Most experts are saying opposite is likely the case. In White House meetings, conversations with health officials have returned to similar suspicions. The suspicions that the data compiled by state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include people who have lost their lives with coronavirus but of other conditions.

Last Friday, Mr. Trump told reporters that he accepted the current death toll, but that the figures could be “lower than” the official count, which now totals more than 95,000. Trump is wrong, according to most statisticians and public health experts. They are saying that the death toll is probably much higher than what is publicly known.

The experts say people are dying in their homes and nursing homes without being ever tested. They say that early deaths this year were most likely misidentified as influenza or described only as pneumonia. American health care system incorporates a generous definition of a death caused by Covid-19, publicly said by Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.

“There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the I.C.U., and then have a heart or kidney problem — some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a Covid-19 death,” she said at a White House news conference last month.