According to Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are not going to go away anytime soon.
Host of CBS’ “Face the Nation” Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb on Sunday how he understands what is going on with death and mortality amid the outbreak.
Gottlieb explained how the number of deaths will ultimately increase.
“The total number of deaths is going to start going up again as the number of hospitalizations starts to spike again,” Gotttlieb said.
He added, “So we’re going to see deaths creep up and I wouldn’t be surprised in the next two weeks to see deaths go over a thousand.”
Check out his comments below:
GRIM WARNING: “The total number of deaths is going to start going up again,” @ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan as #COVID19 epidemics in places such as Florida and Arizona worsen and more Americans are hospitalized pic.twitter.com/lAR6CDu2Zx
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) July 5, 2020
Brennan pointed to tweets issued by President Donald Trump claiming if the United States did not do as much testing, there would not be as many cases.
“Cases, Cases, Cases! If we didn’t test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases,” Trump tweeted.
He added, “If you test 40,000,000 people, you are going to have many cases that, without the testing (like other countries), would not show up every night on the Fake Evening News…..”
Cases, Cases, Cases! If we didn’t test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. If you test 40,000,000 people, you are going to have many cases that, without the testing (like other countries), would not show up every night on the Fake Evening News…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2020
He also said the media does not pay attention to the decline in deaths and mortality rates.
“In a certain way, our tremendous Testing success gives the Fake News Media all they want, CASES. In the meantime, Deaths and the all important Mortality Rate goes down,” Trump said.
He continued, “You don’t hear about that from the Fake News, and you never will. Anybody need any Ventilators???”
Gottlieb responded to Trump’s tweets arguing for the separation of the number of deaths going down from the actual case fatality rate.
“We shouldn’t just focus on the crude mortality rate, the number of deaths, to tell the story of what’s happening medically,” Gottlieb said.
He continued, “Medically we are improving, but we just have so much infection around this country, we’re going to see unfortunately a lot of lethality.”