Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Defends School Re-Openings Because the Flu is ‘More Dangerous’ For Kids Than Covid-19

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows defended President Donald Trump’s plan to re-open schools for the fall because “the flu is more dangerous based on real statistics than Covid-19,” he said in an interview with CNN Wednesday night.

“The president once again said schools should reopen,” Wolf Blitzer said. “Because, in his words, and he said this today, I was surprised to hear it when he said it on Fox & Friends ‘kids are virtually immune to the virus.’ That’s not true as you know … The president seems to be giving a false sense of security.”

“No, I don’t think he’s giving a false sense of security at all,” Meadows responded. “Here’s the great news as a parent, as someone who our loved ones are the most precious thing that we have in our life, and as a parent when you look at that. If you look at the risk of children going to school, there’s a six times greater likelihood of children dying from the influenza than there is from this disease.”

“So, when we look at relatively safe,” Meadows continued. “Again, one death is too many — but what I’m telling you is the flu is more dangerous based on real statistics than Covid-19. And parents need to understand that because we all want to make sure we protect our kids.”

“But you agree that when the president says kids are virtually immune, they are not virtually immune,” Blitzer said back. “They’re potentially in real danger.”

Meadows went on to throw out a statistic that 54 people under the age of 18 have died from coronavirus and “most if not all of those had co-morbidities, other things that this disease attacked,” he said.

“Even if the kids don’t have any symptoms, even if they’re totally immune, we don’t know what the long-term effects of having coronavirus will be on their bodies, on their brains,” Blitzer said. “There’s a lot that the doctors are telling us we simply don’t know. So we got to deal with this.”

Blitzer then pressed Meadows to say children can transmit the disease, trying to contradict Trump’s comments from Wednesday morning.

“That’s correct,” Meadows said. “I think we can all transmit. Anybody who sent their kids to school know that a lot of times the kids come home and you catch whatever you got from your kids who were transferring it back-and-forth. I don’t deny that.”

Watch above, via CNN.