Donald Trump says COVID-19 death toll could reach 100,000

President Donald Trump made a dire prediction about the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the United States. The POTUS said on Sunday that the total COVID-19 death toll could reach as high as 100,000, twice the amount of fatalities he forecasted just two weeks ago.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” President Trump said during a virtual “town hall” meeting, according to the New York Times. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

The figure is twice the previous estimate given by the President less than two weeks ago. During a previous White House briefing, Donald Trump said that the total death toll due to the coronavirus could reach 50,000.

“Now we're going toward 50 -- I'm hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say it,” Trump said at that time, CNN reported. “One is too many, but we're going toward 50 or 60,000 people. That's at the lower -- as you know the lower (end of the projections) was supposed to be 100,000 people.”

But by Sunday, the death toll due to COVID-19 already surpassed his previous projection. More than 67,000 Americans have already died due to the pandemic as of May 3.

To put this number in perspective, that’s more than the total American deaths in the Vietnam War. According to the National Archives, there were 58,220 American casualties during the Vietnam conflict.

What’s worrying is that there are still more than 1,000 deaths due to the virus daily since April 2. While the rate seems to have peaked, it has not significantly decreased as expected. The model used by the White House predicted that the number of deaths would decline substantially by mid-April.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been criticized for the way it responded to the coronavirus crisis. However, the POTUS feels that the press treated him worse than Abraham Lincoln.

“I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen,” the POTUS said, according to CNN. “The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” he added, pointing to Lincoln’s statue. “They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”