President Donald Trump exaggerated Americans’ comparative success battling the coronavirus, falsely saying in a press briefing that the U.S. per capita death rate is lower than “most” of Western Europe. He also claimed a 9% decrease in COVID-19 fatalities over the past week, but the data do not show such a decline.
In a flurry of tweets and remarks, President Donald Trump continued to distort the facts on the coronavirus pandemic.
In July 14 remarks in the White House Rose Garden, President Donald Trump made a series of false, misleading and unsupported statements about the novel coronavirus and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s position on it.
Noting that the United States accounts for about one-quarter of global COVID-19 cases and deaths, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. has “the worst record of any country in the world.” While the U.S. has the most confirmed cases and deaths by a wide margin, it does not have the most in either category on a per-capita basis.
During a visit to Iowa, Vice President Mike Pence made several false claims about President Donald Trump’s handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
At a June 8 press conference, a World Health Organization scientist confusingly suggested that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus is “very rare” — a statement that many scientists found problematic, and which some politicians and those on social media seized upon as evidence that certain public health measures were not necessary.
President Donald Trump falsely claimed, “Tijuana is the most heavily infected place anywhere in the world, as far as the plague is concerned,” referring to the novel coronavirus.
In remarks about SARS-CoV-2, President Trump wrongly said China “stopped it cold” from spreading from Wuhan to other parts of China “but they didn’t stop it cold from coming to the United States … and the rest of the world.” It did spread in China beyond Wuhan, but China also took extreme measures to slow the spread of the disease that the U.S. did not.
False information that claims COVID-19 is caused by a bacteria and can be easily treated started spreading by text message, and is now viral on social media. Actually, COVID-19 is caused by a virus and there is no treatment for it.
President Donald Trump has upped the ante in his allegations about Nancy Pelosi and Chinatown, falsely charging that the House speaker urged foreign nationals to “bring your infection” to the San Francisco neighborhood. Pelosi never issued such an invitation.