As many have pointed out, Trump's basic appeal is FEAR and he's always drumming up stuff for Americans to panic about -- from migrant caravans to anarchists taking over cities, to riots coming to your suburbs or Biden going to crash the economy that Trump needs to rebuild from his own crash.
Trump wanted to prevent the stock market -- the investor class and financial players -- from panicking. So he swapped a couple hundred thousand dead Americans and millions of illnesses in order to keep the stock market up and the rich rich.
The funny thing about all this is it's been well-known that Trump downplayed the virus. Saying that there were 15 cases and it would be down to zero soon, or that it would go away on its own in April, etc.