Nothing to worry about, folks. No crisis. Fox News and the President tell me it’s all a hoax, a “liberal conspiracy”, that it’s no big deal. Fox News quotes the President saying we are “totally prepared.”
NBC News, yesterday:
Vice President Mike Pence went on Rush Limbaugh's radio show on Friday to assure Americans that threat posed by the coronavirus in the United States is "low" but "we're ready for whatever may come."
Limbaugh ... has previously compared the coronavirus to "the common cold" and complained that concerns about an outbreak in the U.S. were being "weaponized" by Democrats and the media.
Politico, yesterday
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.
He blamed the press for acting hysterically about the virus, which has now spread to China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy and the U.S, and he downplayed its dangers, saying against expert opinion it was on par with the flu.
NBC News, today
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Donald Trump accused Democrats of “politicizing” the deadly coronavirus during a campaign rally here on Friday, claiming that the outbreak is “their new hoax” as he continued to downplay the risk in the U.S. ... “Democrats will always say horrible things," Trump said. "Democrats want us to fail so badly.”
Various news sources:
The president said that the U.S. is “rapidly developing a vaccine” and “will essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”
No. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said a vaccine at best won’t be ready for “a year to a year-and-a-half” and won’t be available for the current epidemic.
Trump’s acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, falsely claimed this week that the influenza fatality rate was “right around 2% as well.” It’s not.
In making a comparison to a past outbreak, the president noted that Ebola is far more deadly than the novel coronavirus. But he neglected to mention that Ebola can only be transmitted via bodily fluids and is harder to catch.
President Trump, tweeting in the third person:
"So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of 'Trump.’”
(My question: borders closed? Ended flights? Did I miss that these past three days?)
As Steven says, Lord, have mercy.