April won't end the coronavirus, and other Trump myths After days of mixed and misleading messages, President Trump attempted to reassure Americans in a lengthy news conference on Wednesday. It was littered with falsehoods. Here's a sampling: "We're rapidly developing a vaccine and they can speak to you. … The vaccine is coming along well. And in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly, a vaccine for the future, and coordinate with the support of our partners." Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters any vaccine would not be "applicable to the epidemic unless we really wait about a year to a year-and-a-half." "The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery. One is — one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover." The precise number of deaths annually from the seasonal flu isn't known, but estimates range from 12,000 to 61,000. In addition, tens of millions of people come down with the flu each year and the fatality rate is 0.1 percent in the United States. The coronavirus appears to have a fatality rate that could possibly be 20 times higher. (Estimates are less than 3 percent.) "I don't think it's inevitable [that coronavirus will come to the United States]. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared." Trump contradicted Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who a day earlier had said: "Ultimately, we will see community spread in this country. It's not a question of if but rather a question of when and how many people in this country will have severe illness." "With Ebola, we were talking about it before, you disintegrated. If you got Ebola, that was it. [Coronavirus] is like a flu, and this is a much different situation than Ebola." People with the Ebola virus did not disintegrate. The case fatality rate (or the percentage of known infected people who die) for the virus varies dramatically — from 25 percent to 90 percent — depending on the outbreak. In general, it averages around 50 percent. Coronavirus is more deadly than the seasonal flu, although it's hard to know the case fatality rate of the coronavirus yet (estimates put it below 3 percent). For the full fact check, click here. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Biden didn't get arrested on his way to meet Mandela
Longtime readers may remember Hillary Clinton claiming in 2008 that she once braved gunfire while landing in Bosnia. (She didn't.) On the campaign trail in recent weeks, former vice president Joe Biden has regaled audiences with tales of his own daring escapade abroad, claiming he was arrested on the way to meet South African leader Nelson Mandela: "After he got free and became president, he came to Washington and came to my office. He threw his arms around me and said, 'I want to say thank you.' I said, 'What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?' He said: 'You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me.'" (He didn't.) Biden traveled to South Africa via Lesotho in 1976 (though he often says it was 1977). And he was briefly separated from members of the Congressional Black Caucus on that trip. But there's no evidence that he was arrested. He didn't mention it when he described the trip in 2013: "Obviously, no one [was] able to see [Mandela] on Robbens Island, but making our case. And after he became president, he came to see me, and thanked me, along with everyone else on that trip, for supporting sanctions against apartheid." (It's actually spelled Robben Island.) The supposed arrest was not mentioned in Biden's 2007 memoir, or in Jill Biden's memoir. We could not find news reports about it. And any arrest of a U.S. senator would have received copious press attention. Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, who traveled with Biden, couldn't recall any arrest. Memory can be a fierce opponent, but this seems more like an anecdote with useful political timing than a slip of mind. Biden earned Four Pinocchios. After our fact check was published, Biden admitted he was never arrested. For the full fact check, click here. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. Analysis ● By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly ● Read more » | | | | 
Email 
No comments:
Post a Comment