There came a point in the Chinese Wuhan Virus “pandemic” when President Trump spotted the game of the Leftists. So he played along.
At first President Trump rightfully downplayed the severity of the Chinese Wuhan Virus. He equated it to various flu bugs. He then cautioned people to stay away from sick people, wash their own hands and if sick, cough into their elbows.
If Trump were Obama, this advice would have been deemed yogiesque. Then you can bet some Leftist organization would have given Obama an award for potentially saving millions of lives. But since we live in the era of Trump, Leftists declared Trump unfit. They claimed that his cavalier attitude cost lives.
Trump got the message; a message that had been drilled into him for four years. He knew that nothing he does will satisfy Leftists unless he plays along. So he did.
Suddenly Trump shifted from bragging about what he’s done to curtail the dreaded Chinese Wuhan Virus to sounding alarm bells. Next, he displayed mad skills by allowing others to do his bidding. Enter Leftist Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The man who said on Newsmax TV in late Jan of this year that the Chinese Wuhan Virus was “not a major threat”:
"This is not a major threat…"
WATCH ?: Dr. Anthony Fauci's original thoughts about the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak are revisited from a January interview with Newsmax TV's @gregkellyusa. pic.twitter.com/0KmHxxkeBp
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) April 3, 2020
Suddenly Fauci changed his mind.
Not long ago he said that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die from the Chinese Wuhan Virus.
On March 29, Fauci announced that the Chinese Wuhan Virus, aka Covid-19 was going to infect millions in the U.S., with deaths from the disease reaching reach 100,000 to 200,000.
Fauci set the market rate for the Chinese Wuhan Virus. Trump rolled with it.
President Trump never backed off his original thoughts around the Chinese Wuhan Virus. So he knew the numbers could be contained and would be no worse than a flu. And Trump had pretty much stopped the bug from growing too crazy in the U.S. when he implemented the travel bans.
When Trump provided optimism, the media revolted. Check out what Reuters wrote of Trump’s optimism:
The numbers in the coronavirus outbreak in the United States are increasingly not going his way, but that has not stopped him from portraying them largely as a sign of success.
The United States had almost 550 confirmed cases of the respiratory virus as of Sunday night and 22 related deaths. The count could rise sharply as testing increases this week. More than 3,600 people have died globally.
From suggesting more optimistic time lines for a potential vaccine than scientists say is possible, to contradicting public health officials on the potential for cases to increase, to questioning the fatality rate cited by the World Health Organization, Trump has sought to present figures related to the virus that appear more favorable than reality.
But Trump recognized the game. So he made Fauci his tool.
The over-and-under for the Chinese Wuhan Virus deaths was now set; not by him, but by Fauci. 200,000 became the magic number.
Trump realized that under Obama, H1N1 infected many millions of Americans, hospitalized over 300,000 and killed over 12,000 (actually over 30,000 according to Fauci). Yet the world kept on spinning, and America continued to run.
Trump realized that keeping things under these numbers would be a win. So he began announcing Fauci’s numbers. Here’s what Yahoo News reported on Trump’s change:
At the first formal press briefing with his coronavirus task force on Feb. 26, President Trump said he didn’t agree with the assessment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that an outbreak was “inevitable” in the United States, noting that the country had just 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and no deaths attributed to the virus.
“When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump said at the time. “We have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job.”
Ever since, Trump has been moving the goalposts on the pandemic, and on Sunday, with coronavirus cases and deaths mounting, Trump said that keeping the U.S. death toll between 100,000 and 200,000 would be “a very good job.”
Way to go, Mr. President. Use their numbers against them. Flip the script.
And according to The Daily Caller, the president’s plan worked:
The researchers whose model the White House has used to help guide its coronavirus response lowered their estimate Sunday for the number of Americans projected to die during the first wave of the pandemic.
The model, from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, now projects 81,766 deaths in the United States through Aug. 1, with most of the fatalities occurring by the middle of May. The IHME team projected a range of between 49,431 and 136,401 for the same period.
Before Sunday, the researchers estimated a range of between 39,966 and 177,866 deaths in the United States from coronavirus, with a best-guess estimate of 93,531 deaths.
The 11,765 fewer deaths would mark a 14% decrease for the model’s target projection, and a 30% decrease for the worst-case scenario.
Game. Set. Match. Numbers all dropping.
And as the numbers continue to drop, Trump looks rather “trumpian”.
People will remember all the bad news that was expected, then feel the sigh of relief. The same is true of all the other doom and gloom projected. Like hospital beds.
The Daily Caller also reported that President Trump has said the number of hospital beds need was overestimated, as well:
“It’s turning out that we need less hospital beds,” Trump said at the coronavirus task force’s daily press briefing. “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.”
…
The model projected that New York would need 65,400 hospital beds by April 4, but only 15,905 were actually used, according to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.
Did anything the Leftists predicted turn out to be correct? Short answer: no.
So now as President Trump returns things to normal, he will get much less opposition. That’s because he shifted the game. Then he played it better than they did.
