'This is not a pandemic!' Fox News guest compares COVID-19 to flu -- even after 22K die in one month

Conservative Bill Bennett told "Fox & Friends" on Monday that the coronavirus isn't any worse than the seasonal flu, even though the disease has killed more than 22,000 Americans over the span of just one month.

During the segment, Bennett said that losing 60,000 Americans to COVID-19, which the University of Washington's model projects will happen even if the United States continues to implement social distancing restrictions, would be akin to a very bad flu season.

What Bennett failed to mention, however, is that this projected death toll would have been an order of magnitude higher if the U.S. hadn't placed any restrictions on social gatherings.

The conservative commentator then tore into everyone who said that COVID-19 should be taken seriously.

"We scared the hell out of the American people, we lost 17 million jobs, we put a major dent in the economy, we closed down the schools ... shut down the churches and so on," he said. "This was not and is not a pandemic."

Fox host Brian Kilmeade then informed Bennett that COVID-19 had, in fact, been labeled a pandemic.

Watch the video below.