President Donald Trump recently said “close to 100 million people died” from the 1918 Spanish flu, and that “if you got it you had a 50/50 chance, or very close, of dying.” But 100 million is a high-end estimate of global deaths from that influenza pandemic, and we found no evidence the case fatality rate for those who had it was 50%.
President Donald Trump has enthusiastically pushed the use of two malaria drugs — one in combination with an antibiotic — to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. But there is currently only limited evidence to suggest the drugs are effective against the new virus.
Facebook posts make the unsubstantiated suggestion that the novel coronavirus is infectious in the air for “8 hrs,” and falsely claim that “everyone is required to wear mask everywhere!” There is also no requirement for healthy people to wear masks; experts say health care workers need them most.
President Donald Trump has been holding daily press conferences to provide the latest information about the coronavirus from the federal government, but his rhetoric has sometimes been imprecise, misleading or outright incorrect.
Over the weekend, the Biden campaign posted a video that claims the Trump administration silenced Dr. Nancy Messonnier for “speaking out” about the new coronavirus at a Feb. 25 press briefing. But the campaign’s support for the claim is awfully thin.
At a White House briefing March 19, President Donald Trump said, “Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.” But that’s simply not the case.
Following a flawed rollout of test kits in the U.S. for the new coronavirus, former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump have given inaccurate information related to the diagnostic tests distributed by the World Health Organization.
After President Trump said, “I don’t know anything about” the disbanding of a White House pandemic response office, the Democrats claimed that he “lied” and pointed to Trump’s earlier remarks about “some of the people we cut” as evidence. But those remarks were in response to a question about proposed budget cuts — not the anti-pandemic team in question.
Social media posts are spreading a quote falsely attributed to President Donald Trump about the coronavirus. He didn’t say, “People are dying who have never died before.” But Ernest Hemingway did.
President Donald Trump left the misleading impression that two drugs were “approved” for use in treating the new coronavirus and were available for “immediate delivery.”