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Vice President Mike Pence, ignoring the experts, predicted on April 24 that the US would "have this coronavirus epidemic behind us" by Memorial Day weekend.

"If you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us," Pence, who is spearheading the administration's pandemic response, told conservative commentator Geraldo Rivera in April.

In fact, US deaths from the virus neared the devastating milestone of 100,000 over the holiday weekend, and US hospitalizations are ticking up again after two weeks of decline.

While new cases are on the decline in 14 states, they have plateaued in 28 states and are on the rise in eight states, according to data published by The New York Times. Puerto Rico is also seeing increasing case numbers, while Guam is seeing its numbers level off.

Scott Gottlieb, Trump's former Food and Drug Administration chief, noted on Twitter that hospitalizations have risen over the last week outside of the epicenters of the crisis in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

A White House Coronavirus Task Force official told Insider that the nation's overall declining daily death toll and infections, increased testing capacity, and overall downward trend in hospitalizations are evidence the pandemic is largely over.

Experts say the crisis is far from over and the World Health Organization on Tuesday warned that regions that reopen too quickly could experience an "immediate second peak" in infections.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert who is helping lead the administration's virus response, in late March warned against making predictions about the virus' future toll.

"I just don't think that we really need to make a projection when it's such a moving target that we could so easily be wrong and mislead people," he told CNN.

Many experts say they can't accurately predict what the US's infection rate and death toll will look like going forward, in part because much depends on how quickly and safely states reopen.

Pence's April statement is just one of a slew of predictions and declarations Trump administration officials have made downplaying the pandemic threat over the last few months.

Trump infamously predicted in late February that the US's virus cases would drop to zero "within a couple of days." On April 10, he said the total US death toll would be "substantially below" 100,000, predicting "50, 60, 65" thousand deaths. He repeatedly revised those numbers upwards in the following days, still putting the upper limit of deaths at 110,000.

Over the weekend, Trump misleadingly claimed "cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the Country."

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Mike Pence predicted the pandemic would be 'behind us' by Memorial Day - Business Insider - Business Insider