President Donald Trump on Tuesday night told an ABC News town hall audience that the novel coronavirus would eventually disappear even without a vaccine due to what he described as the "herd mentality."
Most observers believe that the president was actually referring to beating the virus by achieving herd immunity, which would require tens of millions more Americans to contract the virus so that it eventually runs out of the potential hosts that it needs to reproduce at an exponential rate.
However, a video of the president from five months ago shows that he knows pursuing herd immunity without a vaccine would put millions of lives at risk.
"If we did follow that approach, I think we'd have 2 million people dead," Trump said of herd immunity during a COVID-19 press briefing earlier this year, according to an official White House transcript. "The UK tried it — the herd approach, okay? Herd. And they tried it, and you saw what happened in UK. It set them back a lot -- a lot of time. It’s been — you know, they’re having a tough time. Other countries have tried it. And Sweden is suffering greatly. I mean, Sweden is suffering greatly."
Watch the video below.