Higher COVID-19 death toll under Biden than Trump reflects longer presidential term spent managing the COVID-19 pandemic

The U.S. faced a change in leadership amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president on 20 January 2021. This transition prompted comparisons about how well each administration managed the pandemic. One frequent comparison addressed the pandemic’s death toll under each administration, with many attempting to link changes in mortality rates to the leadership of either president.

As the 2024 presidential race approaches, comparisons of COVID-19 mortality between the Trump and Biden administrations have resurfaced.

One instance of such comparisons is the claim that more people died from COVID-19 during Biden’s administration than during Trump’s tenure. This argument already circulated in 2021 and was also used by Trump during his 2024 debate with Biden. The claim also appeared on social media again in September 2024, as seen in this Threads post, with the implication that the Biden administration handled COVID-19 poorly compared to the Trump administration.

Analysis of COVID-19 mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indeed showed that more COVID-19 deaths occurred under Biden than under Trump. However, using this comparison alone to imply one administration performed worse than another is misleading because it doesn’t take into account key contextual factors that change the takeaway.

For example, the number of deaths during a pandemic is influenced by multiple factors that are independent of who is managing the crisis, such as the virus’ evolution, and changes to the population immunity over time.

In particular, the post overlooked the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic affected Biden’s presidential term for a longer period compared to Trump’s. Failing to take this into consideration introduced a bias that skewed the interpretation of mortality data. We provide details below.

CDC statistics show more COVID-19 deaths occurred under Biden’s term compared to Trump’s term

We retrieved COVID-19 mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System, maintained by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. This dataset contains the cumulative number of deaths that have occurred in the U.S. since January 2020 where COVID-19 was registered as the “underlying or contributing cause of death on the death certificate”.

We then calculated the number of COVID-19 deaths that occurred before and after the week of 20 January 2021, the day of Biden’s inauguration. Because 20 January 2021 fell on a Wednesday, the middle of the week, we decided to count half of the deaths from that week as occurring during Trump’s tenure and the other half as occurring under Biden’s tenure.

This analysis showed that more COVID-19 deaths indeed occurred during Biden’s term. The number of COVID-19 deaths was 455,563 at the end of Trump’s term. By comparison, the number of deaths that occurred during Biden’s term was 746,619 as of the week of 7 September 2024, the latest week available in the dataset.

While the claim is numerically accurate, it’s misleading. The Trump administration faced the COVID-19 pandemic during its final year, for a total of approximately 12 months from the first registered deaths in January 2020 to the change of administration in January 2021. In contrast, COVID-19 has been present for the entirety of the Biden administration—to date, approximately three and a half years, from January 2021 to September 2024. This longer time frame allowed more COVID-19 deaths to accumulate, skewing the comparison.

We can illustrate this using COVID-19 mortality data, representing the number of COVID-19 deaths that occurred during the Trump and Biden administrations on a graph (Figure 1). Trump was president for 54 and a half weeks, from the first registered COVID-19 in January 2020 until the end of his term in January 2021. Biden has been president for 189 and a half weeks, from January 2021 until the latest available data of 7 September 2024. The graph illustrates that there was more time for COVID-19 deaths to accumulate during Biden’s term because it covered most of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To account for the difference in the amount of time the Trump and Biden administration managed the COVID-19 pandemic, we can calculate the average number of deaths per week. Based on the number of deaths and term durations mentioned above, we found that there was an average of 8,359 COVID-19 deaths per week when Trump was president (455,563 deaths divided by 54 weeks), and an average of 3,940 deaths per week during Biden’s presidency.

Thus fewer people died of COVID-19 per week on average during Biden’s presidency. But because COVID-19 has been present during a longer period in Biden’s term, the total number of deaths that have occurred is indeed higher than during Trump’s term. In other words, the higher cumulative COVID-19 death toll under Biden is a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic being managed for the most of his term rather than a higher mortality rate.

Another way to look at the data is to ask the question: how long did it take for the same number of COVID-19 deaths to occur during Biden’s term compared to during Trump’s term? If the mortality rate were higher during Biden’s term than during Trump’s, one would expect the death toll to reach the numbers that occurred during Trump’s term faster during Biden’s ter

As explained above, it took 54 weeks to reach 455,563 deaths during Trump’s term. After Biden’s inauguration, it took another 54 weeks to reach another 455,563 deaths (Figure 1). Thus, COVID-19 mortality rate didn’t increase during Biden’s term. This data shows that the death toll rose at a consistent pace under both administrations, before sharply slowing down around February 2022.

In conclusion, more COVID-19 deaths occurred during Biden’s presidential term than Trump’s, but this claim is potentially misleading without context. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Trump administration for one year. In contrast, it impacted the entirety of Biden’s presidential term, which to date is approximately three and a half years.

The post’s suggestion that the higher total COVID-19 death toll under Biden compared to Trump reflects a difference in their ability to manage the pandemic is misleading, as it fails to account for how long the pandemic affected each administration. Our analysis showed that accounting for this factor paints a different picture. The higher COVID-19 death toll under Biden mainly reflects the fact that the entirety of the Biden administration was affected by the pandemic, whereas the Trump administration was affected only in the first year. However, average weekly COVID-19 deaths have been overall lower during Biden’s term compared to Trump’s, indicating that the COVID-19 mortality rate fell during his term.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that looking at the death toll alone doesn’t capture a full picture of what affects e mortality. Various factors, including increasing population immunity and a virus evolving into less deadly variants, can influence mortality rates and should be taken into account.