On October 14, 2020, Fox News posted an article with the headline: “Trump and public health system have saved 2 million lives in coronavirus pandemic.” However, this statement raised our doubts and suspicions. Newt Gingrich, the author, did not provide any statistics: there are no illustrations or links.
Firstly, we decided to check the statistics: whether American scientists really predicted the death of 2 million US residents from the coronavirus. Then we traced the steps Trump took to fight the pandemic to find out whether he really saved 2 million lives.
The first cases of coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in the United States of America were recorded in January 2020.
On January 29, 2020, the US president Donald Trump announced the creation of a White House Coronavirus Task Force “to monitor, prevent, contain and mitigate” the spread of Covid-19.
Two days later, Donald Trump announced a public health emergency and banned travelling from China to the United States.
On March 16, 2020, the US government instructed Americans to avoid social gatherings of more than 10.
On March 26, 2020, the United States came out on top in the world in terms of the number of cases, ahead of China and Italy. On April 11, the United States officially had the highest death toll rate from COVID-19 in the world.
On April 22, Trump signed an order to suspend the issuance of green cards for 60 days.
After we had checked the statistics, we sent emails to Fox News and Newt Gingrich asking to specify information given in the article and provide us with links to researches that confirm the main statement of it. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any response.
During our research we came across an article on KHN (Kaiser Health News) and Politifact: “Trump Says He Saved 2 Million Lives From COVID. Really?”. The author Victoria Knight also checked this statement. She sent a request to the White House, but didn’t receive a response.
We decided to contact the author of that article and try to get information about statistics and applicants from her. But we didn’t get any response again.
We analyzed several articles and found out that Trump claimed in several interviews that he has saved 2 million lives, but he never once referred to any researches or statistics.
In Victoria Knight’s article, we find the reference of a mathematical model developed by Neil Ferguson. He made a prediction that 2.2 million people should have died due to the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. Trump himself never reffered to Neil Ferguson or his model.
From our analysis, we have concluded that the information provided in the Fox News article is not reliable as it is based on personal opinion and cannot be confirmed scientifically or statistically.
The epidemiological situation around the world at the moment doesn’t provide an opportunity to make categorical conclusions about the impact of coronavirus on humanity. For this reason, we consider it unprovable that Donald trump saved 2 million lives of the US residents.
RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Julia Bakaeva, Ksenia Golovina, Sofia Lishchinska, Lobachevsky University, RU
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