Fox News’s Lisa Boothe: ‘How deadly is the coronavirus?’

Boothe reported earlier in the week that President Trump was considering implementing random coronavirus testing.

“The economic toll of shutting down nonessential businesses across the country is also real,” Boothe said. “A record-shattering 10 million Americans filing for unemployment in just two weeks and the largest bailout in United States history — $2.2 trillion — are sobering numbers that reflect the economic calamity we are facing. As government and public health officials make decisions of enormous magnitude, shouldn’t we know how infectious and lethal the coronavirus is?”

Boothe then mentioned two Stanford University scientists who penned a Wall Street Journal opinion piece (which the Washington Examiner has reported on) about how the virus’s mortality rate will not be known until more data are gathered.

“‘The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.’ They speculate that due to how infectious the coronavirus appears to be, and because tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to America in December, millions of Americans could have been infected,” she wrote, citing the WSJ article.

Boothe concluded by saying there is too much at stake for the data to be inconclusive.

“With so much at stake, we need to have the best data possible through random sampling — and it needs to be done now.”

Voices are growing wondering whether the economic damage of government shutdowns correlates with the death total models.

“The @IHME_UW model vs. reality for New York State, April 4: more of the same, 65,400 beds projected, 15,905 actually used (new hospitalizations fell notably day-over-day); 12,000 ICU beds projected, 4,100 used. Still basically fiction, but at least it’s not getting MORE wrong,” former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson wrote on Twitter Saturday.

“Small moment of relief yesterday when a local restaurant owner I know said he’s staying afloat with a limited staff & take-out orders, FOR NOW. He can’t handle much more of this, but he’s staying alive. We need an exit strategy, STAT,” conservative author Dan Bongino wrote.

That followed another tweet where Bongino asked, “What if the experts are all wrong? What do the numbers REALLY say? Don’t miss my show where we disregard liberal hysteria and talk about the FACTS.”

“How many of the 10 million Americans who filed for unemployment during the last 2 weeks were government bureaucrats?” radio host Mark Levin said. “How many were federal govt bureaucrats? You can bet the vast majority are private sector employees. Notice, also, that Congress hasn’t cut its own pay or benefits.”

“If we’re going to shut down the entire nation’s economy to “flatten the curve” based on the projections of a single model, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that the model approximate reality when it comes to hospitalizations,” Federalist co-founder Sean Davis tweeted.

“A lot of us would want to ask some questions about this, but I’ve been reliably informed by people who always listen to experts that to question the rapidly shifting expert consensus is to be a monster who doesn’t care about people dying,” conservative radio host and former CIA analyst Buck Sexton said on Twitter responding to a tweet about projected death counts.

“Dr. Faucky: ‘We’re shutting down the country because of my secret models.’ Reality: ‘[Your models are already off.’ Dr. Faucky: ‘Fine, I’ll shut down the models ALONG with the country. #FireFauci'” Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review, said about the government models.

More than 7,800 people in the United States have died from the coronavirus out of over 290,000 cases.