Joe Biden wrongly claims Trump could’ve prevented every COVID-19 death

Speaking about the coronavirus during a CNN town hall less than two months away from Election Day, former Vice President Joe Biden said every one of the nearly 200,000 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the U.S. can be laid at President Donald Trump’s feet.

"If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive," Biden said at the CNN town hall in Moosic, Pa. "All the people. I'm not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data."

The Democratic presidential nominee’s remark came as Trump faces criticism for downplaying the threat of the coronavirus early on and admitting on tape that he did so. The U.S. leads the world in confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, and experts say a fall surge in cases could put fatalities at more than double their current number by the year’s end.

A more robust handling of the pandemic would likely have seen the country’s death count significantly reduced, experts said. But Biden’s claim that a different response from Trump would have prevented every coronavirus death goes too far.

"I think it’s impossible to say every life could have been saved," said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

Keeping COVID-19 at zero deaths would have been a difficult achievement "regardless of who is in charge," said Brooke Nichols, an assistant professor of global health at Boston University. 

"If we had developed testing capacity as soon as we knew of the pathogen, and could rapidly test every one arriving from abroad, then I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but unlikely," Nichols said.

Even countries that have found relative success managing the coronavirus — such as South Korea and New Zealand — have seen some deaths. 

Experts said that faster, more robust measures taken by the federal government could have put the U.S. on par with those countries and others that responded similarly. 

The right actions in January, February and March would likely have prevented "a substantial number" of deaths, Adalja said, and could have put the U.S. on "a trajectory more like Taiwan," which has recorded just 503 confirmed cases and seven deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Those actions might have included a national coordinated strategy across state lines, rapidly scaled up testing, the ramped up production and mobilization of resources, and more clear communications of what was known about the virus and how to prevent it, experts said.

"Obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN in April. "Obviously, no one is going to deny that."

RELATED: Timeline: How Donald Trump responded to the coronavirus pandemic

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One May study from Columbia University estimated that the U.S. could have averted roughly 36,000 COVID-19 deaths before May if sweeping mitigation measures imposed on March 15 had instead gone into effect a week earlier. 

Almost 54,000 deaths would have been avoided in that timeframe had the same interventions started two weeks earlier, the study said.

"Had we mustered the political and public will to act as we did two weeks earlier, 90% of deaths through the beginning of May would have been averted," said study author Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences. 

But the study "doesn’t blame Trump," Shaman said, although he added that "the country has witnessed a complete lack of federal leadership."

Other experts have also made estimates. A pair of epidemiologists wrote in an April op-ed for the New York Times that "an estimated 90% of deaths" from the first wave of U.S. cases "might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier." 

Op-ed co-author Nicholas Jewell, a professor of biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley, said it would be "magical thinking" to suggest 100% of COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented. "I haven’t seen any country really succeed to that extent," Jewell said.

In a June op-ed for Stat, researchers compared the U.S. response to similar nations. Accounting for differences in population and the different timings of the outbreaks in each country, they concluded that the U.S. could have prevented many deaths. 

If, for example, the U.S. "had acted as effectively as Germany, 70% of U.S. coronavirus deaths might have been prevented" in the four months after the U.S. recorded its first 15 cases of the coronavirus, the researchers wrote. More lives would have been saved had the U.S. mirrored the responses of other countries such as South Korea, they said.

The picture hasn’t been much rosier of late. "If you look at May and June 1, since then, we’ve done dreadfully in the U.S.," Jewell said.

Still, Biden’s claim that "all the people would still be alive" had Trump responded differently is an overstatement. "I don’t see how there is any truth to that," Nichols said.

The Biden campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Biden said, "If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people. I'm not making this up. Just look at the data."

Experts disagreed with that assessment. A stronger U.S. response could have saved many lives, experts said, but not every one.

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