I want to expose something that has become an article of faith on the left. Multiple talking heads and barely literate pundits are claiming this:

Donald Trump is intentionally lying about the corona virus epidemic and is irresponsibly putting your family in danger.

Don’t believe me, here’s Dean Obeidallah, failed lawyer and third rate Muslim comedian turned pundit, who found a career hating everything GOP and writing and talking about that hate on CNN, MSNBC and in the New York Times:

“Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) warned us earlier this week that mortality rate from the coronavirus was no longer a little over 2 percent as previously stated. Instead the death rate based on the updated data was 3.4 percent, with people 60 and older at the greatest risk.  That means the coronavirus is three times more deadly than the seasonal flu.

Consequently, it’s no surprise that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website warns that if you have this virus, it states point blank: “Do not go to work, school, or public areas.”

But none of that apparently matters to Trump as he stunningly told Hannity that he didn’t believe the WHO new findings on the mortality rate of the coronavirus: “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number.” What was Trump’s basis for dismissing the experts of the WHO and downplaying the risk posed but this growing epidemic? Simple, Trump said “this is just my hunch.”  Trump wants you and your family to ignore threat posed by this virus based on his “hunch”?!   Trump then literally made up his own mortality rate for the coronavirus, saying “personally, I’d say the number is way under 1%.”

Trump misleading Americans on the threat posed by the coronavirus is nothing new but still dangerously irresponsible. For example, on February 10, when asked about the coronavirus outbreak, Trump stated, “a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in.” But even Trump health officials disputed Trump’s prediction at the time.”

I want to post what the President actually said:

“I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number. Now this is just my hunch,  but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that 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…Personally, I’d say the number is way under 1 per cent.”

Let’s review:

1.       Trump said it was his “hunch” but that he had been talking to a lot of people who deal with the data.

2.       He makes the point that we don’t know how many people have been infected or how many have recovered.

3.       He says, that in his opinion, the number is less than 1% because when we find more cases, the denominator of the fraction increases ad the percentage decreases.

See for yourself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqjrlKfW93I

Well, what do the experts say?

Here’s the New England Journal of Medicine:

“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.”

Let’s also look at the data from the floating petri dish called the Diamond Princess:

Around 705 passengers out of the 3,711 on board the boat caught coronavirus. more than half did not show any symptoms or signs of illness. Six people from the boat died, a death rate of 0.85 percent and not a single death among passengers has been in a person under 70, showing the rate is lower still in younger cases.

Notice how selectively the Trump-hating media edit the President’s comments.

So just who do you think is pushing fake news into the airwaves and “misleading Americans on the threat”.