President Trump predicted during an interview on Sunday that the United States will lose between 75,000 to 100,000 people to the coronavirus, this was an inflated projection than the one he made just a few weeks ago when he estimated 60,000 fatalities.

He offered the new numbers during a Fox News virtual town hall, emphasizing nonetheless the need to get America back to work by easing measures intended to curb the spread of coronavirus. 

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75-, 80- to 100,000 people,” Trump said. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this. This should’ve been stopped in China.”

The president has, rather insensitively, consistently framed the deaths of tens of thousands as a silver lining compared to the death tolls in some models laid out if the administration had chosen not to impose any kind of social distancing or shelter-in-place orders. 

The administration allowed guidelines that called for Americans to avoid restaurants and bars and limit gatherings to fewer than ten people to quietly expire on April 30 as many states start reopening businesses.

“I really think the public has been incredible… that’s one of the reasons we’re successful,” Trump said. “If you call losing 80- or 90,000 people successful. But it’s one of the reasons that we’re not at the high end of the plane, as opposed to the low end of the plane.”

Bret Baier of Fox News noted the change in President Trump’s own prediction on the death toll of 60,000, a number that the US passed last week. 

“It’s going up,” Trump acknowledged. “I used to say 65,000. Now I’m saying 80 [thousand] or 90 [thousand], and it goes up, and it goes up rapidly. But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the lower end of the plane if we did the shutdown.”

Trump, however, did concede on Sunday that some states will have to remain shut longer than others but seemed supportive of opening up parks and beaches as long as visitors maintained proper distancing.