Category Archives: Misleading

The coronavirus and a $12 billion motorcycle rally

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https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-9f3757d6-dde4-4b75-a994-9572837e9d3f.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

The coronavirus outbreak tied to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, ended up generating more than $12 billion in public health costs, according to a new discussion paper.

Why it matters: The analysis puts a point on just how bad these superspreader events can be — and the difficulty of preventing them solely with voluntary policies.

Background: The annual rally was held this year over 10 days in August, and included a Smash Mouth concert. The nearly 500,000 attendees came from all over the country, and social distancing and mask-wearing were mostly optional.

By the numbers: The rally led to 266,796 additional cases, or 19% of the new cases in the U.S. between Aug. 2 and Sept. 2., the paper found.

  • The event led to a 35% increase in cases in South Dakota. In counties that are home to the highest number of rally attendees, cases rose by 10.7% compared to counties without any attendees.
  • If each coronavirus case costs $46,000, that’s an additional $12.2 billion added on to the pandemic’s price tag.

The other side: “Overall, I think the ‘Sturgis Effect’ that the authors document is in large part just a Midwest surge that took place during this time period. There is likely still a small Sturgis Effect … but the results are likely biased upward,” tweeted Devin Pope, a professor at the University of Chicago.

The big picture: Given the state of contact tracing in the U.S. (bad), we’ll never know how many coronavirus cases were actually tied to the Sturgis rally.

  • But it’s a reminder that it takes collective action to contain the virus: As Sturgis revelers head back home, this South Dakota-centered outbreak has the potential to infect people who never went anywhere near Sturgis and thought they were doing everything right.

 

 

 

 

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Now Linked to More Than 250,000 Coronavirus Cases

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Superspreader, Superspreader Event, Superspreader Facilities, Superspreading Events • Leave a comment

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Now Linked to More Than 250,000 Coronavirus Cases

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Now Linked to More Than 250,000 Coronavirus Cases – Mother Jones

One study estimates the public health cost of the super-spreading event is near $12 billion.

The inevitable fallout from last month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an annual event that packed nearly 500,000 people into a small town in South Dakota, is becoming clear, and the emerging picture is grim.

According to a new study, which tracked anonymized cellphone data from the rally, over 250,000 coronavirus cases have now been tied to the 10-day event, one of the largest to be held since the start of the pandemic. It drew motorcycle enthusiasts from around the country, many of whom were seen without face coverings inside crowded bars, restaurants, and other indoor establishments.

The explosion in cases, the study from the Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics finds, is expected to reach $12 billion in public health costs.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for super-spreading occurred simultaneously,” the researchers wrote, “the event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population, and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks.”

The conclusion, while staggering, is unlikely to surprise to public health officials who warned that proceeding with the rally could be disastrous, particularly given the region’s relaxed attitude towards social distancing guidelines and some of the attendees’ mockery of the pandemic. “Screw COVID. I went to Sturgis,” read one t-shirt from the rally, where overwhelming support for President Trump was the norm.

The study comes on the heels of the first reported death from the event, a Minnesota man in his 60’s who attended the rally who died last week. South Dakota now has one of the country’s highest rates of coronavirus cases. 

 

 

 

 

Administration claim that only 6% of dead from Covid-19

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Comorbidity, Coronavirus, Credibility, Data Interpretation, Death Toll, Honesty, Integrity, Leadership Culture, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, Pandemic, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

President Donald Trump has repeatedly spread a false claim that COVID-19 is not as deadly as his own public health agencies have reported. That’s Pants on Fire! https://bit.ly/3jG7mpJ

INTRODUCING: PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter Minute. A fact-checker’s guide to the headlines. For more COVID-19 fact-checks, visit https://politifact.com/coronavirus

 

Cartoon – Federal Coronavirus Testing Guidelines

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Don't Ask Don't Tell, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Silencing, Silencing Speech, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

This company boasted to Trump about its COVID-19 vaccine. Experts are skeptical. - Hartford Courant

Cartoon – Something that would greatly Prevent Covid 19

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U.S. sets record for new coronavirus cases, surpassing 53,000 - The Washington Post

Cartoon – Federal Coronavirus Response

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10 Dilbert Cartoons That Get Project Management Just Right

ANALYSIS: ADMINISTRATION’S CORONAVIRUS ADVICE IS SECRET, FRAGMENTED AND CONTRADICTORY

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Contradictory, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Failed, Failed Repeatedly, Failure, False Hope, False Narrative, Fragmentation, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Secret, Silencing, Silencing Speech, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

Analysis: Trump administration’s coronavirus advice is secret, fragmented and contradictory

Analysis: Trump administration's coronavirus advice is secret, fragmented and contradictory – Center for Public Integrity

ANALYSIS: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S CORONAVIRUS ADVICE IS SECRET, FRAGMENTED AND CONTRADICTORY

Dr. Deborah Birx speaks to reporters in the rotunda of the State Capitol in Lincoln, Neb., Aug. 14, 2020, after meeting with Gov. Pete Ricketts and community and state health officials. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Private calls and unpublished reports leave many Americans and local officials in the dark.

 

This is a news analysis from the Center for Public Integrity.

From behind a podium and a black mask, Tulsa mayor G.T. Bynum faced the press. It was late July, and one percent of his city had tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

 

A reporter had a question: What did Bynum have to say about the newly leaked White House Coronavirus Task Force document that recommended Tulsa close bars and limit gatherings to 10 people?

The “alleged White House document” was “never officially presented to us … by either the federal government or the state government,” the mayor said. But he was familiar with the document’s recommendations, having read them online. “All of that remains very much on the table.” 

Fast-forward a month, at a press conference that looked exactly like the last, and Bynum still hadn’t received any of the weekly reports from the White House. “It was news to me that there had been eight different reports. I only knew about the one that was leaked to the media,” he said. “That’s all data that, of course, we would like to know.”

Indeed, the White House reports — chock full of local data and recommendations — would be useful for many city leaders, many of whom still don’t know what percentage of coronavirus tests in their metro areas are positive. But Bynum and others didn’t have that information. The White House was sending each state’s report directly to its governor and a select group of other officials instead of distributing the documents widely or posting them publicly.

The nation’s coronavirus response must be “locally executed, state managed, federally supported,” White House officials have said repeatedly. In fact, much of their public health advice has been secret, segmented and inconsistent. Federal guidance isn’t always reaching the local officials it’s meant to support. And scattershot messages mean that average citizens weighing visits to grandparents or countless other daily risks have limited  — and sometimes conflicting — information from the officials they are expected to trust.

 

THE SUMMER OF SECRET WARNINGS

In late June, the White House Coronavirus Task Force began sending reports to governors showing how their states were faring in the pandemic. Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of the task force, held the documents aloft at a press conference July 8, but they weren’t distributed to reporters. Birx said several states were in the coronavirus “red zone” — with high numbers of cases — and should take special precautions, but Vice President Mike Pence delivered the primary message of the press conference: Reopen schools.

Later that month, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of the compiled report for all 50 states and published it, revealing that 18 states were in the red zone. The next morning, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway suggested Public Integrity, a  30-year-old nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom, had nefarious motives for disclosing public information: “I don’t know about that particular document, and respectfully the Center for Public Integrity is an outside organization that I’m sure doesn’t support the president’s election,” she told reporters.

A spokesman for Pence, Devin O’Malley, later acknowledged the document’s authenticity. But the White House still didn’t release the reports and stayed mum on why it was keeping them secret. Weeks later, White House spokesman Judd Deere sent an email to Public Integrity that didn’t quite answer the question: “The White House Coronavirus Task Force is providing tailored recommendations weekly to every governor and health commissioner for their states and counties,” he wrote. “Local leaders are best positioned to make on-the-ground decisions for their communities … The United States will not be shut down again.”

Meanwhile, Birx hit the road, zigzagging across the country to meet with governors in person and privately urge some of them to ratchet up virus precautions. On closed-to-the-press conference calls with state and local officials, Birx warned individual cities that they should take “aggressive action” to curb the coronavirus, according to recordings obtained by Public Integrity.

But officials from those cities weren’t always on the calls: Baltimore and Cleveland leaders missed a call in which Birx pinpointed them. And some of them weren’t getting the reports she was referencing. In late August, the most recent White House report the Arkansas Department of Health had was three weeks old. 

Public health experts say the reports should be public. “This is a pandemic,” Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage told Public Integrity in July. “You cannot hide it under the carpet.”

Dr. David Rubin, who has provided epidemiological modeling to the task force as director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, is also befuddled as to why the reports are secret. “I think we’d be in a lot different place today if we had national standards around certain things,” he said. But he doesn’t blame Birx or other scientists working with the White House. “They’re playing the hand that they were dealt.”

 

CUSTOM-MADE OR CONFUSING?

In mid-March, a 4×6” blue-and-white postcard appeared in mailboxes across the nation, emblazoned with “President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America” and both the White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logos. On the back were a dozen lines of advice, including: “Even if you are young, or otherwise healthy, you are at risk and your activities can increase the risk for others.”

The postcard appeared in the days when the president, vice president, Birx and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci together updated the nation daily on television about the state of the coronavirus. The administration had already pressed the mute button on the CDC (though the agency posted guidance online, it wasn’t giving the regular briefings it had in past epidemics), but the White House was still attempting to send out a cohesive public health message.  

Then, as the economy cratered, Trump shifted gears to reopening and pushed responsibility for the pandemic response to the states. After decades of relying on national entities for public health advice and regulation — the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the surgeon general and others — America handed responsibility for infectious-disease containment to the states. 

Doing so allows governors to respond to their unique virus conditions, defenders of the administration said. The U.S. needs “a decentralized approach” said Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Doug Badger, because states have police powers to enforce lockdowns and because they are “better suited to responding to this pandemic, where there is great variation between and within states. […] There’s no one-size-fits-all policy.” Indeed, epidemics unfold at different rates in different geographies, and it makes sense to adjust advice based on whether people live close together or far apart, and how widely the virus is spreading in their communities.

But experts say that even though some public health warnings should be specific to local areas, many messages, such as the need to wear masks, should be nationally consistent. Contradictory guidance undermines trust, and the virus exploits the communities with weakest defenses. “Diseases don’t care about national or state borders,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, Science Communication Lead at the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer organization collecting pandemic data. “You can’t look at this in a fragmented way otherwise we’re going to continue this fragmented progress.”

 

“Diseases don’t care about national or state borders.”

JESSICA MALATY RIVERA, SCIENCE COMMUNICATION LEAD AT THE COVID TRACKING PROJECT

 

And some think the Trump administration’s advice isn’t as tailored or helpful as it should be. “For weeks, the Trump Administration has been issuing these cookie-cutter reports based on little or no review of existing regulations or conditions on the ground, while failing to pull together a national strategy for COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and response,” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, wrote in an email. “None of the recommendations in these weekly reports have been paired with the resources or the federal support to implement them.”

In addition, Trump’s desire for state leadership has been selective. After weeks of insisting on a governor-led response, in July Trump Tweeted, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” and threatened to withhold federal funding from school districts that did not open their doors. 

 

WHO DO YOU LISTEN TO?

Splitting public health advice into pieces means that some of those fragments don’t line up. On a private call with state and local leaders earlier this month, Birx said colleges should be testing students as they return to campus, and even be prepared to do 5,000 or 10,000 tests in one day. But the CDC hasn’t endorsed such testing because its effectiveness hasn’t been “systematically studied.”

Nowhere has the fractured advice been more evident than on the topic of how to reopen K-12 schools. The CDC in May issued guidelines, but later replaced them with a more lenient version after the president objected. After insisting schools open their doors, Trump acknowledged that some hot spots may need to delay opening. CDC director Robert Redfield said that schools should go virtual if their areas have more than 5 percent test positivity — a threshold that only 17 states and the District of Columbia met as of Aug. 26 according to a New York Times tracker. Birx has stayed noticeably quiet on the topic. The secret reports from her task force recently endorsed West Virginia’s school reopening guidelines, which say schools must switch to virtual learning if daily new cases in a county exceed 25 per 100,000 residents.

All this leaves local officials with a dizzying set of choices and advice, stuck making the decisions others don’t want blame for.

“This really stinks for local health departments,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “Everybody wants to relinquish authority to the local health department. The authority ends up coming and going depending on how hard it is to address the issue. And it just is not fair to them.”

In addition, perhaps due in part to the mixed messaging, whatever advice the White House does have isn’t always followed. In Arkansas, where the task force has recommended that bars close, they remain open. In Georgia, where the task force recommended a state mask mandate, Gov. Brian Kemp sued to block Atlanta from requiring face coverings, though he later relented. In Tennessee in July, Gov. Bill Lee ignored Birx’s suggestion that he close bars, limit indoor dining and mandate masks.

All this has meant that in the first major pandemic in a century, despite the feeble and disjointed efforts of the White House to corral them, the United States were not united, not even in the messages sent to citizens. That has some experts worried about what’s to come in the fall, when the reluctance of some to be vaccinated could mean the nation fails to reach the threshold for herd immunity that would protect everyone. Rivera, of the Covid Tracking Project, is “absolutely terrified” about that possibility; united messaging is key when trying to help people understand the scientific rigor behind a vaccine, she said. “All it takes is one rumor to completely shift public health behavior.”

 

HELP FROM THE FOURTH ESTATE

In Tulsa, Bynum can now see all the White House reports. That’s because Public Integrity published a recent Oklahoma report, and local journalists pressed the governor on why he hadn’t handed it out. Last week he agreed to post all of the state’s White House reports.

In other parts of the country, people still don’t know what White House experts are saying about their states or counties. The federal map of red, yellow and green zones — an easy-to-understand stoplight that could help people quickly decide whether to cross state lines, for example — remains off limits to the public. President Trump resumed daily coronavirus briefings this month, but Birx remains relegated to private calls and local press briefings on her treks across states. The CDC continues its silence; Fauci is recovering from a vocal cord surgery and can’t speak.

For more than a century, Congress has given the federal government a prominent role in helping stop the spread of disease from state to state. Americans can debate whether governors or the president should make the big decisions in this particular pandemic. But neither statute nor scientific wisdom puts limits on the federal government’s ability to dole out health advice. And there is no national security reason to make such advice secret.

 

 

Covid-19 has killed more police officers this year than all other causes combined, data shows

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Employee Protections, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Workers, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Determinants of Health, Social Distancing, Social Protest, Social Unrest, Vulnerable Populations • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/02/coronavirus-deaths-police-officers-2020/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3KWZcuMmVXy_R7mDh_m58_BLdQkz6rw5iU9nsii950Bx46lwc0nbfC3p4

By one estimate, coronavirus deaths among law enforcement are likely to surpass those of 9/11.

In a speech this week in Pittsburgh, Joe Biden linked the Trump administration’s mismanagement of the coronavirus to its handling of protests and riots with a surprising statistic: “More cops have died from covid this year than have been killed on patrol,” he said.

The Democratic presidential nominee’s claim is true, according to data compiled by the Officer Down Memorial Page and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, two nonprofits that have tracked law enforcement fatalities for decades.

As of Sept. 2, on-the-job coronavirus infections were responsible for a least 100 officer deaths, more than gun violence, car accidents and all other causes combined, according to the Officer Down group. NLEOMF reported a nearly identical number of covid-related law enforcement deaths.

NLEOMF reported a nearly identical number of covid-related law enforcement deaths. It also noted that fatalities due to non-covid causes are actually down year-over-year, undermining President Trump’s claims that “law enforcement has become the target of a dangerous assault by the radical left.”

Both organizations only count covid deaths “if it is determined that the officer died as a result of exposure to the virus while performing official duties,” as the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund put it. “Substantive evidence will be required to show the death was more than likely due to the direct and proximate result of a duty-related incident.”

In addition to the 100 confirmed coronavirus fatalities listed on the Officer Down website, the nonprofit said it is in the process of verifying an additional 150 officer deaths due to covid-19 and presumed to have been contracted in the line of duty, said Chris Cosgriff, executive director of ODMP, in an email.

“By the end of this pandemic, it is very likely that COVID will surpass 9/11 as the single largest incident cause of death for law enforcement officers,” he wrote. Seventy-one officers were killed in the attacks on the twin towers, one officer was killed on United Flight 93, and more than 300 have passed away since then as a result of cancer contracted in the wake of the attacks, according to ODMP.

At the state level, Texas stands out for having the highest number of law enforcement covid fatalities with at least 21, according to NLEOMF. At least 16 of those represent officers with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which manages the state’s correctional facilities. Louisiana has 12 covid-related officer deaths. Florida, New Jersey and Illinois round out the top five with eight each.

According to both organizations, officers in correctional facilities account for a substantial number of covid-related law enforcement deaths, reflecting the dire epidemiological situation in many of the nation’s prisons and jails.

“Corrections officers and Corrections Departments have been hit harder than regular police agencies,” Cosgriff said. According to the Marshall Project, a nonprofit criminal justice news site, more than 100,000 U.S. prison inmates have tested positive for coronavirus and at least 928 have died. There have been an additional 24,000 cases and 72 deaths among prison staff.

ODMP’s tally includes police officers, sheriff’s deputies, correctional officers, federal law enforcement officers and military police officers killed outside of military conflict. NLEOMF’s inclusion criteria are similar.

This year, Trump signed the Safeguarding America’s First Responders Act of 2020, which guarantees law enforcement officers and their survivors federal benefits if the officer is killed or disabled by covid. For legal purposes, the legislation presumes that covid cases among officers were contracted in the line of duty.

 

 

 

 

Coronavirus Metric, The Case Fatality, Is Unreliable

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Case Fatality Rate, Coronavirus, Credibility, False Hope, False Narrative, Honesty, Integrity, Key Performance Indicators, Lagging Indicator, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Misleading Metric, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Transparency, Trust, Truth, Undermining, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/24/894818106/trumps-favorite-coronavirus-metric-the-case-fatality-is-unreliable?fbclid=IwAR3Zfo29Yhv49yu7ORp9ytjSc8f6uqlhXP0BEFvBGOBUcvXZH0dYrJha2Sc

blog | Teksten, Wijsheid

 

As the number of coronavirus cases started spiking again this month, the White House keyed in on a different number — one that paints a more rosy picture of the pandemic: the case fatality rate.

When asked about rising cases at a recent briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany quickly parried. “We’re seeing the fatality rate in this country come down,” said McEnany. “That is a very good thing.”

The case fatality rate is the result of a simple mathematical calculation: the number of deaths divided by the number of diagnosed coronavirus cases. But it’s also a moving target. Case numbers are rising fast; deaths are a lagging indicator, running several weeks behind.

“Measuring … mortality rates on any given day is not a reliable way of communicating about this pandemic,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

It is possible that innovations in treatment methods and therapeutic drugs have helped improve the survivability of COVID-19. It is also possible that with more young people being infected in this latest round, they are less likely to die. But medical experts warn it is also just too soon to be sure. And, they say, it’s an unreliable and misleading metric.

But that hasn’t stopped President Trump from boasting about the figure.

“Our case fatality rate has continued to decline and is lower than the European Union and almost everywhere else in the world,” Trump said Tuesday at his first White House coronavirus briefing in nearly three months.

In his interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Trump asked his staff to bring him the “death chart.” He said “the death chart is much more important” as Wallace ticked through 75,000 daily cases and 1,000 daily deaths.

Trump had that chart displayed behind him during the briefing. But this isn’t a metric public health experts have been using.

Inglesby says that by a more direct measure (the sheer number of deaths), and even adjusted for population size, the U.S. is not doing well compared to other countries around the world.

“What national leaders have the obligation to tell people is just the direct truth,” Inglesby said. “If we give them a false sense that things are getting better when they’re not, then they’re going to make decisions that increase the risk of transmission. And they’re also going to stop having confidence in the information they’re being given.”

Focusing on the fatality rate also glosses over other serious problems with the coronavirus, says Dr. David Relman, who specializes in immunology and infectious diseases at Stanford. He says about 20% of people get really sick with potential long-term health consequences. Plus, he says, the coronavirus is stressing the medical system. And as long as it is uncontained, the virus is holding the economy back. So, as he sees it, talking about the case fatality rate is counterproductive.

“What you do instead when you pull out one little piece and dangle it in front of people is to confuse and distract and undermine the overall message,” said Relman.

He says people need to take this virus seriously and take precautions, and that is a sacrifice that requires leaders to get the public on board. For Trump, accentuating the positive might have short-term political benefits, but there are longer-term risks.

“I think it was a mistake early on to be dismissive of the seriousness of it and that it was just going to go away,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist.

DuHaime gives Trump credit for coming out this week and treating the coronavirus more seriously than he has in the past, telling people to wear masks and avoid crowds. But he readily acknowledges that Trump has gone through other brief spurts urging the public to sacrifice to slow the spread of the virus, only to reverse himself, downplay the severity and pressure states to reopen.

“In order for him to succeed here politically, his credibility has to be as strong as possible,” said DuHaime, who now works at the firm Mercury.

Trump’s credibility has taken a major hit through this crisis. According to the latest Pew Poll, only 30% of Americans trust Trump to get the facts right on the virus. And Trump’s approval rating has tanked too, something he is attempting to repair with the resumed daily briefings.

“At the end of the day, he just needs to do a good job. I know that sounds simplistic, but when you’re an incumbent running for reelection, doing a good job is really the most important thing,” said DuHaime. “And to this point people haven’t seen him do a good job on what they think is the greatest challenge of his presidency.”

DuHaime points out that people are checking the numbers every day — the number of new cases in their city and state, the number of hospitalizations and deaths. Those numbers are all readily available and easier to find than the case fatality rate.