Trump reportedly thinks coronavirus deaths are overcounted. Experts say the opposite.

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

A senior Trump administration official told Axios he expects President Trump to begin publicly questioning the coronavirus death toll in the United States.

Experts mostly agree the data isn't accurate, but for the opposite reason — the consensus is that deaths are being undercounted, while the official said Trump and some of his aides think the numbers are inflated. There's no evidence the number of fatalities has been exaggerated, but Axios reports Trump wasn't pleased when New York added 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its tally.

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Other officials told Axios that Trump doesn't think the numbers are fraudulent, but that the lack of "uniform reporting standards in the United States" means the data is murky. That may be true, but again the question among most experts is about how many coronavirus deaths have been missed due to lack of testing, rather than added unnecessarily. Read more at Axios.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.