President Donald Trump is falsely suggesting to Americans it is not dangerous to report to work as normal if they have the deadly coronavirus that has already killed 11 people in this country and about 3200 people worldwide. Speaking on Fox News Wednesday night Trump called the new novel coronavirus the "corona flu," and challenged the World Health Organization's assessment that the death rate for COVID-19 is 3.4%. Trump claimed it is less than 1%, which is provably false and a dangerous claim to make.
"Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number," the President told the conservative cable network's Sean Hannity. "Now, this is just my hunch, and, but based on a lot of conversation with a lot of people who do this, because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people, so you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu, and, or virus, so you just can’t do that," Trump said, clearly trying to minimize the danger and the numbers of people infected.
"So we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that just get better, by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of 'em go to work – but they get better," Trump claimed, which is dangerous, given how highly-contagious COVID-19 is.
"And then when you do have a death, like you've had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like three or four percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of one percent."
"But then again they don't know about the easy cases, the easy cases don't go to the hospital, they don't report to doctors or the hospital in many cases, so I think that number is very high. Personally I would say the number is way under 1%.
Medical experts including from the U.S. government warn anyone who thinks they may have been infected with COVID-19 should self-quarantine, definitely not go to work, and call their doctor.
Watch:
In this clip, Trump:
1. Denies WHO's coronavirus death rate based on “hunch"
2. Calls coronavirus "corona flu"
3. Suggests it's fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work
4. Compares coronavirus to "the regular flu," indicating he doesn't get the difference pic.twitter.com/uC9c03zX31
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2020