Comments by "maynunal" (@maynunal) on "Pence joins 'Fox & Friends' to detail Trump's Europe travel ban" video.
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February 26: Trump wrongly says the coronavirus "is a flu"
Trump, contrasting the coronavirus with Ebola, said: "This is a flu. This is like a flu."
Facts First: While Trump may have simply meant that the coronavirus has a fatality rate more like the flu than like Ebola, experts have emphasized that the coronavirus is, simply, not the flu. They are different viruses with different characteristics, though they share symptoms, and the coronavirus has a higher mortality rate.
Experts say the mortality rate for the coronavirus is much higher than the approximately 0.1% rate for the seasonal flu, though the exact rate for the coronavirus is not yet known. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 11 that it is "10 times" that of the flu's 0.1%.
As World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said March 3, the coronavirus "causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza. While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease."
Also, the behavior of the flu over the course of a year is pretty well-understood, while the behavior of the coronavirus over time is not yet known. And while there are flu vaccines available, there is no vaccine available for the coronavirus (and no proven treatment).
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