Politico has a warning for President Donald Trump.
There's echoes of electoral doom for Trump in their Monday story, "A Sun Belt time bomb threatens Trump’s reelection."
The explosion of Covid-19 cases in Sun Belt states is becoming another albatross for President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes — and creating a new opening for Joe Biden and Democrats in November.
Republican governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas followed Trump’s lead by quickly reopening their states while taking a lax approach to social distancing and mask-wearing. Now, each of them is seeing skyrocketing coronavirus caseloads and rising hospitalizations, and Republican leaders are in retreat.
This could be trouble for Trump, but the death rate is steadily declining. A fact very conveniently overlooked by Politico.
Florida’s official coronavirus death toll stood at 3,419 as of Sunday, compared with New York’s 24,835. Texas’ official death toll is 2,366 and Arizona’s is 1,588.
For the United States as a whole, the toll is dramatically decreasing with the actual number of daily deaths rapidly falling even during the past month during the reported rise in cases.
According to Worldometers, the seven day moving average of daily deaths fell steeply from 1041 on May 27 to just 594 on June 27. Since the number of reported cases increased during this time, this means the death rate fell even more dramatically.
As for the Sun Belt states cited by Politico, in all three the daily deaths have pretty much flatlined for the past month. The largest of those states, Texas, had a rise in cases starting in the final week of May yet on May 27 according to the graph the number of daily deaths was 39 and exactly a month later on June 27, the number of daily deaths was... also 39.
In the months before the election, the pandemic could grow dramatically, or it might fade. But the media seem deeply invested in painting the darkest picture they can paint....and leaving out the facts that might balance out the doom.
