Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden overshot the numbers of a study claiming that President Trump could have saved more lives if he acted sooner to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Speaking during a community meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Thursday, Biden struggled to remember a Columbia Law School study that assessed the effect of policy decisions on COVID-19 infections and deaths.
“We didn’t have to have over 6 million people contract COVID, over 186,000 people dead and climbing,” Biden said. “It’s been pointed out by the University of Columbia Law School that if he had acted just one week earlier, 37,000 more people would have been alive. If he had acted two weeks earlier, 51,000. Maybe 31 and 57 or 51, but the point is over 80,000 people would still be alive.”
The study, which was widely printed by the media, claimed that 54,000 people, not “over 80,000,” would still be alive if the Trump administration had acted sooner.
After months of downplaying the seriousness of the disease, the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic on March 11. Trump announced a national emergency two days later.
Much of the data collected for the study centered around the response by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, who declared a state of emergency in his state on March 7.
