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Dr Fauci warns against ‘complacency’ amid ‘false narrative’ of falling COVID-19 death rate in the US

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Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that “It's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death” as COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the US. He added that there are “many other things that are very dangerous and bad” about the virus and said people should not let themselves fall into “false complacency.” Dr. Fauci’s comments come as President Trump touts a “tenfold” decrease in the death rate.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that “It's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death” as COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the US. He added that there are “many other things that are very dangerous and bad” about the virus and said people should not let themselves fall into “false complacency.” Dr. Fauci’s comments come as President Trump touts a “tenfold” decrease in the death rate.

  1. 7 Jul 2020

    Another White House talking point touted by Press Sec. McEnany, VP Pence, and Trump himself is the U.S.' low COVID death rate. But Dr. Fauci today urged the public not to take comfort in this “false narrative.”

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  2. 7 Jul 2020

    Dr Fauci earlier today: “It's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death. There's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. Don't get yourself into false complacency.”

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  3. "It's a serious situation that we have to address immediately." In an online conference call with NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Fauci explains how "we're still knee-deep in the first wave of this" in the U.S.

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  4. 6 Jul 2020

    TONY FAUCI effectively agrees with those charts comparing U.S. and E.U. response on covid. FAUCI: If you look at the graphs from Europe, the European Union, it went up and then came down to baseline… We went up, and never went down to baseline, and now we’re surging back up.

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  5. 7 Jul 2020

    Fauci says he’s “strongly in favor of mandating” masks at local level. “I don’t like an authoritarian federal government, but at the local level, if governors and others mandate the use of masks when you have an outbreak, I think that would be important.”

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  6. President Trump’s claim that the COVID-19 mortality rate is "just about the lowest in the world" contradicts data collected by Johns Hopkins University — that data shows that the US has the sixth-highest mortality rate among the 20 most affected countries.

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  7. 7 Jul 2020

    As Trump tweets that the "Death Rate from Coronavirus is down tenfold," a quick reminder: Just hours ago, Dr. Fauci said that it is "a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death."

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  8. 7 Jul 2020

    Asked by Greta Van Susteren about Fauci saying (the obvious that) the country is not in a good place with the virus, Trump said, "Well, I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him." He said Fauci has been wrong on other things before, like in opposing travel restrictions.

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  9. In the past month, the U.S. has seen: 📈 More than a million new infections 📈 More than 30,000 people hospitalized The recent spike in Covid-19 infections has mercifully been accompanied by a declining death count

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  10. Confirmed case-fatality rate in the US is now 4.4% as US passes 3 million confirmed cases of . That means 1 out of every 23 ppl in US who has tested pos for has died. 132,009 🇺🇸 lives lost, & this is far from over. 😞 Graph via

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  11. Our daily update is published. Some of the numbers are coming back up after the dip over the holiday weekend. States reported about 52K new cases today. 653K new tests were reported today. 919 deaths were reported today, after several days of unusually low death figures.

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  12. We expect the data for new cases, tests, and deaths to continue to show the effects of the long weekend for at least another day or two. States that reported partial data or no data Friday through Sunday will be posting big numbers.

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  13. Meanwhile, even with partial data, the new-case curves continue to rise sharply in the South and West.

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  14. The national number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is still climbing, even without data from the big outbreak in Florida. (Last week, FL said current hospitalization data was on the way, but we haven’t seen it reported yet. )

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  15. Why are U.S. coronavirus cases surging, but the death rate remains low? asks doctors in areas hit hard by the pandemic.

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  16. 2 Jul 2020

    The trillion dollar question. Why are COVID cases increasing while deaths are decreasing? The answer is simple. It's called Simpson's paradox and it's the result of incorrectly pooling data and arriving at a false conclusion. A thread 1/9

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  17. 2 Jul 2020

    2/9 If you lump the data and look at the US as a whole, you'll observe: Cases are increasing, positivity rate is increasing, hospitalizations are increasing, and deaths are decreasing. Until recently, it also looked liked hospitalizations were decreasing and positivity was flat.

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  18. 2 Jul 2020

    3/9 It would be rational to come to the following conclusions. "Young people are getting it now, not old people." "We've gotten better at treating it, the death rate has fallen." "We're testing more people, so we're seeing more cases." Twitter is awash with these.

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  19. 2 Jul 2020

    4/9 There's some truth to these conclusions. Yes, more young people than old are getting it (for now). Yes, we have gotten better at treating it (a little). Yes, we are testing more people and finding more cases (somewhat). None of these conclusions explain the effect.

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  20. 2 Jul 2020

    5/9 Here's the truth. The COVID-19 outbreak, is not ONE outbreak spread evenly across the US. It is MANY outbreaks spread unevenly. You need to look at state data, or better, county data to really understand what's going on.

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  21. 2 Jul 2020

    6/9 For instance, take AZ and TX. Cases AND deaths have both been increasing for weeks. FL looks similar (except their data sucks, so it's hard to analyze precisely). If you cone in on Miami and Houston, it's much worse.

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  22. 2 Jul 2020

    7/9 This is the heart of Simpson's paradox. If you pool data without regard to the underlying causality, you'll get erroneous results.

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  23. 2 Jul 2020

    8/9 The truth is simple, and horrifying. We are about to have dozens of NYCs around the country. The next 8 weeks are going to brutal, no matter what we do. ICUs overflowing, ventilators rationed, hundreds of thousands of deaths.

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  24. 2 Jul 2020

    9/9 Unfortunately, the virus is still here and we've failed to manage it with mis-step after mis-step since the beginning. I have no agenda. I'm a doctor, a scientist, a tech founder, a husband, and a father. I'm simply sad that it's come to this. Stay safe.

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  25. Tuesday, July 7, 2020 in the United States - Total number of COVD-19 cases surpasses 3 million, according to NBC News - 60,000 new cases marks biggest single-day increase, Johns Hopkins University data shows

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  26. Check here for information on how to take care of yourself and others during the global pandemic.

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