Rashida Tlaib Questions Dr. Fauci on Estimate of 70-150 Million Coronavirus Cases: Is That Wrong?

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) on Thursday questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on a prediction from a government doctor that 70 million to 150 million people in the United States will contract the coronavirus.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, made his prediction to Senate staff this week, according to Axios.

“Dr. Fauci, is he wrong?” Tlaib asked the NIAID director at a Capitol Hill hearing on the pandemic.

“I think we really need to be careful with those kinds of predictions, because that’s based on a model,” Fauci said. “All models are as good as the assumptions that you put into the model.”

“What will tell you what you’re going to have will be how you respond to it with containment and mitigation,” he continued. “When people do models, they say, this is the lower level, this is the higher level. And what the press picks up is the higher level. They say, you can have as many as.”

“Remember the model during the Ebola outbreak said you could have as many as a million. We didn’t have a million.”

Two people died in the United States from Ebola in 2014, though both contracted the disease overseas. Two contracted the disease in the United States — both survived.

Watch above, via CSPAN.