NYT: Internal Trump Administration Says Daily U.S. Death Toll Will Increase To 3,000 By June
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Are we better off now for having done that mitigation? The experts I'm talking to say, yes, but we still are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. What these numbers also tell us is that as we start to open back up, despite the fact that things aren't as good as we would like them to be, we are starting to open back up the country. And that's where you get the numbers that you just mentioned from the CDC modelers. It really is just simple logic. When you tell people, hey, you can go to bars, you can go to get your nails done, you can sit in a restaurant, those numbers are going to go up. The closer people get to one another, the more cases we're going to see, the more cases we see, the more deaths we're going to see.</s>JOHN KING, CNN HOST: And I wonder if we have this chart, if we do if we could put it up from this document the projected deaths per day because they have a red line, which is their projection and then you see the lighter red space around it there. That's essentially the range of the projection. So the red line is the projected deaths and you see it going up by June 1st from where it is today, significantly up. But then you see the blue dots, those are the actual reported deaths. So Elizabeth, looking at this chart, reported deaths right now are running higher than the model. That doesn't mean that will continue to be so. But the reported deaths right now this was their model, you would have to say right now, the reported deaths are coming in on the high side even a little above the model.</s>COHEN: Right. And so one thing we need to remember here, John, is that all of this when we look into the future is modeling. And modeling is based on assumptions and basically educated guesses, but they're pretty well educated guesses. And so these guesses always will have margins, kind of like in a political poll, it could be anywhere from here to here. And here's sort of the middle that we're arriving at. And so we have to keep that in mind. And so when you relate it to what's already happened, what's already happened, happened, those are those are facts. When we look out into the future, we're making educated guesses.</s>KING: Educated guesses, looking at those numbers. That's a little frightening as think about it. Elizabeth Cohen, really appreciate it. Let's go straight now like to the White House in CNN's Kaitlan Collins. Kaitlan, this playing out, you know, the President last night revised his death total, he had to. It's obvious. He was saying it would be 60 something. It's already past that. The President now says 80,000 or 90,000, maybe 100,000. If you look at this document put out by his own Centers for Disease Control and FEMA, and other agencies helping there this reopening that the President continues to push even pushing states that have not met his own guidelines right now like Virginia last night, when you look at this document and the medical projections, the case projections, the death projections, this is a giant political risk for the President to being -- to be so aggressive when his own people are telling them these numbers are going to get worse.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a really sobering document. And you've got to look back at what the President was saying last night when he was revising that death toll upward. It's so strikingly different than what the President was saying even just two weeks ago when he was predicting that the death toll was going to be substantially under 100,000. He said maybe even as low as 50,000. Of course we have blown past that now. Last night he was telling "Fox News" in that town hall, it could go anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000. And now this document and you've got to look at the fact that there is this document now being circulated, put together by FEMA and HHS. You've got the president revising the death toll upward yet, John. He is still pushing for reopening. And last night, he made that clear, saying that he still thinks that many states should be moving toward reopening their economies. He talked about people going back to school in the fall, saying that he was competent that could happen. And then of course, saying that he feels confident there will be a vaccine by the end of this year, which is incredibly optimistic, even if you're listening to his health experts who say if everything goes right, then potentially they could have a vaccine ready by January which of course is hinting on a lot. But it is notable that even in the face of a document like this, where it's so sobering talking about with these deaths, this death toll could look like and how much higher it could get. They are still pushing for the reopening that health experts have said can make this death toll even worse.</s>KING: Kaitlan Collins with reporting from the White House. Let's bring into the conversation, CNN medical analysts and primary care doctor, Saju Mathew. Sir, thanks so much for being here. Dr. Mathew, when you read these numbers, the forecast says we could get to 200,000 new cases each day, 200,000 cases each day by the end of this month, it's about 25,000 a day. Now, number one, is that a projection that tracks with the way you would analyze this. And number two, I don't know the right words for it. But if pushing a reopening at a time when you see a projection, then we're going to go from 25,000 cases a day to 200,000 cases a day. Wow.</s>DR. SAJU MATHEW, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: John, I'm actually not surprised. You know, if you look at the basic model of the way this virus behaves, it's all down to just a mathematical model. There are theories out there about how to kill the virus in four to six weeks. And guess what we have to do, John, in order to kill a virus in four to six weeks, the entire world, technically would have to go into a shutdown at the same time. And I'm talking about shelter and places with no run to the grocery store. You can't go to the park. That is what it will take to kill this virus. Obviously that's not realistic. We didn't shut down at the same time in the U.S. with all states, we can reopen at the same time. I'm in Georgia, John, and we're opening too early. I mean, I'm being honest about that. We're not ready to go to the bars. We're not ready to go to the salon. So to be honest with you, I'm not surprised at the projection. It's really based on how exponentially this virus can grow. One person can spread the virus to three people. And you can imagine in a week's time, we're talking about hundreds and thousands of new cases.</s>KING: And so walk through this with me in the sense that you say you're in Georgia, you're in Georgia and you don't like it. You think the governor is being too aggressive. We will know in 10 days, two weeks, when we start to see the case reports in Georgia, when we start to see the case reports in Texas, the states that have been more aggressive in 10 days, two weeks, maybe 20 days. You'll see how it will go up. The question is how much is it going up. Are you convinced that the governors, the President is pushing reopen right now? Again, he pushed Virginia last night even though it's nowhere near the President's own reopening guidelines. The President put out these guidelines said, the governor should follow them. Virginia is not even close. And the President saying, hey, you're going to slow reopening your state. Are you convinced this is a political opinion I guess as much as a medical opinion, that will there be circuit breakers in place? The governor of New York was just talking about, when you start to reopen, if the rate of transmission starts to spike, if hospitalizations start to spike, you close the valve. Do you have confidence in your state, for example, that would happen?</s>MATHEW: You know, John, I can speak as a physician, I'm a public health specialist as well. And if you look at the numbers, the numbers don't lie. Our cases are going up. Our death rates are going up. We are not even following the minimal White House guidelines of a downward trend of two weeks. So if you look at the numbers, it's fairly easy. I've got the numbers just like anybody else can look up the numbers. So when the governor made the announcement, yes. I mean, I'm respectful of our leaders. And I realized that I can just speak as a physician. And politicians have to worry about so many other things. I'm not envious of the decisions they have to make. But as a physician, yes, John, I'm very concerned. And we are not ready. This is not a victory lap. As Elizabeth Cohen mentioned, we have made some efforts to quieten the virus, that's the word that I would use, not kill the virus, but quieting the virus. And we're going to see in two to four weeks what really is going to end up happening with the virus in Georgia and other states that are opening too early.</s>KING: Right. It's hard to see when you hold this up, but this is the projected cases per day. I'll move it over a little bit if I can. You just see it going up and up and up. I just want you, doctor, you're a medical professional, so I want you to answer, give your response to somebody out there who is saying, look, you cannot keep an economy closed down for this law, as long as we shelter the vulnerable, senior citizens, people who are immunocompromised, shelter the vulnerable, then we're going to get back to this and yes. Yes, healthy people like you and me, one of us is going to get sick. It's going to be a couple miserable weeks of our life, but we'll be OK. And that that is the course to take. That is the course to take, shelter the vulnerable, learn the lessons, do more testing, but then take the risk, if you will. What's your answer?</s>MATHEW: You know, you don't want to find out what COVID-19 does to you. As a physician, we know we're all taught to be risk averse. There's no way, John, that as a doctor that I could say, yes, you know, hey, go out there and see what happens. That's gambling. You know, one more life lost is one too many more lives lost. We have, you know, lost too many Americans and too many people in the world. So as a physician, John, I have to speak from a very conservative approach because I am in the business of saving lives. That's the Hippocratic oath that I took. And once again, the numbers don't lie. We're not ready to open back up. And I think that slowly opening up people economy makes sense. I realized that people are hurting, people who have lost jobs. You can't survive on a $30,000 income if you're four people in a household. I completely get that, John. But as a physician, I have to still express my caution about opening up too early.</s>KING: Dr. Mathew, thank you for your insights. More importantly, thank you for your work and for your hustle to help us understand this breaking news, again, a document presented circulating in the Trump administration now projecting that by the end of the month, the number of cases on a daily basis, the number of deaths on a daily basis are going to go up and significantly. Dr. Mathew, thank you so much for your time. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.