White House COVID-19 forecast show huge spike in deaths

As the U.S. begins to reopen after a history shutdown caused by the spreading coronavirus, new COVID-19 forecast models show a significant jump in infections and deaths related to the virus, but President Trump argues that the country needs to be “open soon.”

“Will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon,” Trump said in an interview with David Muir on ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

According to Trump, these polls have been mostly “wrong” but some of these polls are the same ones used by the administration in the past, even cited during the daily White House briefings on the matter.

An internal White House forecast shows that deaths could climb to 3,000 on June 1, and some 200,000 new cases will be reported, but Trump still believes that these projections are off because they don’t factor in all the social-distancing and quarantining that Americans have taken part of.

 “These models have been so wrong from day one. Both on the low side and the upside... They've been so out of whack. And they keep making new models, new models, and they’re wrong," said Trump.

Trump said that deciding to re-open the country was the most difficult decision of his presidency, saying that as the U.S. opens his administration was going to have to put out COVID-19 “embers” and “small fires,” as well as “some big fires.”

When asked to talk about the possibility of a higher death rate as the countries reopens, Trump said that the death toll was probably going “to be higher” than 70-80 thousand.

Trump also said that his decision to shut down the country was the right choice, quipping that “even the Democrats aren’t blaming me for” doing so.