President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the press briefing room at the White House in Washington, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Wednesday evening, President Trump had an extended interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. In addition to talking about politics, they also discussed the hysteria du jour, Coronavirus, or Covid-19. This how that segment went:

I think the 3.4 percent [number] is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, but based on and lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild. They will get better very rapidly, they don’t even see a doctor or call doctor, you never hear about those people so you can’t put them down in the category, in overall population in terms of this corona flu, or virus. So you just can’t do that. So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent. But again, they don’t know about the easy cases because 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 [the WHO] number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent. Now, with the regular flu, we average from 27,000 to 77,000 deaths a year. Who would think that? I never knew that until six or eight weeks ago, I asked that question, I said, ‘How many people die of the flu?’ You know, you keep hearing about ‘flu shot, flu shot, take your flu shot,’ but how many people die of the flu? And they said, ‘sir, we lose between 27,000 and, you know, somewhere in the 70s’ — I think we went as high as 100,000 people died in 1990, if you can believe that, but a lot much people regardless. I think it averages about 36,000 people a year. So I said, ‘Wow, that is a percentage that is under 1 percent, very substantially.’ So it’d be interesting to see what difference is but again, a lot of people don’t report.

(See my post on the interview The Left’s Lies About Trump’s Hannity Interview Shows They Are Trying to Hoax America yet Again)

As regular as clockwork, Vox’s answer to Louise Mensch was on it like stink on poo.

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

Vox saying it is not a big deal. Outside of a smallish mutual masturbation society that wonders why there is no development west of Miami and believes the West Bank and Gaza are connected by a bridge that Israel arbitrarily blocks, no one believes much they see coming from Vox or its writers. Then Jim Sciutto jumped on it. Again, lack of editorial accountability is sort of a hallmark of CNN. If you watched their reporting on the Russia Hoax over the past three-plus years you know that their only policy is ‘if it might hurt Trump, run with it.’ It is basically how ‘kill them all, let God sort them out’ plays out in a newsroom.

Trump has misled before. He has not until now done so during a health crisis. Will federal institutions, such as CDC, Congress & friendly media challenge him? Or will roughly half the country take his word over the facts and experts? https://t.co/c7Z29o4jHn — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 5, 2020

You’re deliberately spreading misinformation. Trump suggests it’s okay to go to work if sick. CDC says explicitly stay home when you’re sick. Trump says he has a “hunch” the death rate is well below 1%. His NIH Director Fauci says it’s 2%. https://t.co/zxhGUwzay9 — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 5, 2020

Everything Sciutto says here is a lie. Trump, as I showed in my previous post, did NOT say it was alright to go to work with Covid-19. His point was that for most people the symptoms are so mild that they don’t know they have an infection. But the real issue is the mortality rate. Over and over public health officials have said that the WHO number is insanely high. Sciutto says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s preeminent expert in infectious diseases, says the mortality rate is 2%. That is a complete fabrication. In an editorial by Fauci in the New England Journal of Medicine, just a few days before Sciutto’s unhinged and counterfactual rant, this is what he says:

This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

This is what the Surgeon General said yesterday:

WATCH: "The best estimates now of the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.1% and 1%," Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at HHS, says. "That's lower than you heard probably in many reports … it's not likely in the range of 2 to 3%" pic.twitter.com/ATnMRBLXVy — NBC News (@NBCNews) March 6, 2020

it’s not likely in the range of 2 to 3%”

Here is Dr. Amesh Adalja, infectious disease physician and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference on Covid-19 earlier in the week.

ITS NOT THAT BAD- many no symptoms, to cold, to flu-like — Technologic (@Technologic916) March 3, 2020

My notes from a Morgan Stanley hosted event with John Hopkins Chief Epidemiologist. JH is forecasting a widespread outbreak, they est 40-60% of the world pop will be infected over 1-2 years. They est true death rate will be .1% -.5%. They expect it to peak in the spring… ITS NOT THAT BAD- many no symptoms, to cold, to flu-like Dangerous for elderly and immunocompromised, as reported No incentive right no to test mild cases, so the death rate will be massively overstated They expect there to be school closures, but that they will not be particularly effective They believe this will be a circulating annual virus like the flu that will peak in the spring They believe this has been circulating for some time, most cases are very mild, under-tested He stated “i will likely get the virus, as I will be treating these patients” “I will not wear a mask because it will be useless” The biggest risk to travel is flying to an international destination and then having the govt cancel travel Hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed, ICUs will be stressed and undersupplied Social distancing unlikely to be effective, basically just wash your hands and don’t touch your face By 2022 we will likely have vaccines and ultimately we will have routine childhood immunizations He emphasized that this is a fluid situation and this information can quickly become stale, but this is their best guess at this time #COVID19 #coronavirus

Personalities at CNN, like Sciutto, and other outlets are deliberately and maliciously reporting information that is false and known to be false at the time of reporting. The only other explanation is a callous and reckless disregard for the facts that they don’t even bother to check what they are reporting. The WHO mortality number is massively inflated. President Trump was absolutely right that the best estimate for Covid-19 mortality is well under 1%. The sad thing is that these are the people who actually think we should believe what they say.

(In case Brian ‘Tater’ Stelter or his mini-me Oliver Darcy asks, I didn’t ask you for comment because I don’t care what you have to say.)