Have you heard? Bob Woodward—pause for reverential ooohs and aaahs here—has a new book out, with the claim that Trump lied about COVID-19 when it first erupted way back in early February. “Trump admits he lied about COVID-19 threat in new Woodward book,” says the Puffington Host headline.
But what did he actually say according to the story?
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call with Woodward. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. This is deadly stuff,” he repeated.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, according to a copy of the book obtained by CNN. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Normally “avoiding a public panic” would be a reason for praise, but people afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome can’t help themselves.
Remember that this statement was made around the time that Trump halted flights from China, and Europe shortly thereafter. And what did the media and Democrats say? Xenophobia! Racism! Unnecessary! Keep in mind that as late as March 15 NYC’s Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio was still telling people to attend the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and San Francisco Democrats were telling people that it’s no problem to attend Chinese New Year. Ask yourself: if Trump had sounded a larger alarm than he did (with the CDC having blown the test regime), just imagine what Democrats and their media toadies would have said. They’d accuse Trump of whipping up panic for political reasons.
Meanwhile, have you heard that the recent Sturgis, South Dakota annual motorcycle meetup has unleashed a COVID wave an order of magnitude larger than all the Black Lives Matter protests and rallies put together? (Funny how protests are immune from spreading COVID.) More than 250,000 new cases! Which would be a spread rate a couple orders of magnitude higher than any country has experienced even in a New York nursing home. That’s the claim of this study from. . . Germany. Germany? Needless to say, this study has received the usual credulous coverage in our media.
Reason magazine has the dope on these dopes, who appear to be using a climate model or something:
According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.
There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that’s only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers. . .
The researchers also assumed a $46,000 price tag for each person infected to calculate the $12.2 billion public health cost of the event—but this figure would only make sense if every person had a severe case requiring hospitalization.
Tonight’s special bonus—watch Elon Musk stoop to hand Robert Reich his head:
