In the conversation, Hannity begins by asking Trump about the lethality of COVID-19, with Hannity mentioning a number of 3.4%. This value is essentially the worldwide case fatality rate (CFR): The number of 3,285 deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus divided by the 96,600 confirmed cases, gives a global CFR of 3.4%. That number is currently dominated by results out of China, where 80,000 of the current cases are sited, and the number is definitely affected by the rate of testing. In China, where over 300,000 people have been tested, that number may be a fairly accurate assessment of the outcome for anyone who contracts the novel coronavirus. In the United States, where the number of people tested is still woefully low, the CFR is currently sitting at a truly horrifying 7%, with 11 deaths and 158 cases.

Here’s how Trump handles this question. He says, “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, and … But based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people who do this … Because a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild. Uh, 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, uh, you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this, uh, corona flu.”

In the broadest possible terms, there is something to what Trump is saying. There are an unknown number of unreported cases with relatively mild outcomes. Adding those cases to the total case count would decrease the overall CFR. But no one knows what that number is. On the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which may be the source of the best, if unintentional, experimental data available, about one-half of those who were tested and found to have the novel coronavirus had either mild or no symptoms. Some epidemiologists have projected that even in China, the numbers may represent as little as 10% of the known cases.

But that doesn’t make the 3.4% value a “false number,” and it certainly doesn’t mean that it can be dismissed by a “hunch.” Even if the overall case value is a half, or a fifth, or a tenth of that value, that still makes COVID-19 a threat that can kill tens to hundreds of thousands of Americans for a very simple reason: We’ve never had this disease. There is no immunity. There is no vaccine. Unchecked, the coronavirus can be expected to infect 30%-80% of the total population. That’s hundreds of millions of cases in the United States alone.

However, Trump doesn’t stop there. After calling the disease “corona flu,” Trump says this: “If we have, you know, 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’ve had in the state of Washington, and like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, uh, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4%, which is a very high number, as opposed to … as opposed to a fraction of 1%.”

Everything in this statement isn’t just terrible; it’s also all almost impossibly dangerous. Trump is flat-out suggesting that things are improved by people having coronavirus … and going to work. Apparently because this makes the overall percentage number look better. Trump then moves back to comparing coronavirus to the flu, repeating his astonishment about how many people the flu kills each year, in an effort to dismiss the coronavirus as an also-ran.

Everything about this whole conversation is Trump at his most staggeringly ignorant. But it’s also Trump leveling a gun at the nation and firing. Both barrels. In an effort to downplay the significance of the coronavirus, he’s deliberately undercutting efforts to slow the spread of that virus.

And it seems all too likely that Trump will get what he wants—a chance to see what the real case fatality rate looks like when measured across millions of Americans.