Fox News Contributor Compares Coronavirus to the Flu: ‘This Is Not a Pandemic’

Fox News contributor Bill Bennett dismissively compared the coronavirus to the flu on Monday — while arguing against the strict stay at home guidelines that have “put major a dent in” the U.S. economy — and falsely claimed the current crisis is not a pandemic.

Bennett spoke to Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends Monday, in a segment flagged by Media Matters’ Bobby Lewis. Bennett kicked things off by criticizing death toll projection models for Covid-19. Bennett said the models have been “wrong most of the time by a lot.” The projected death toll used by the U.S. government was revised to 60,00 — well below the previous expectations of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths with mitigation — as social distancing became increasingly prevalent throughout the country.

Since the models now predict approximately 60,000 American deaths, Bennett compared this to the 61,000 people who died from the flu in a particularly bad year, 2017-2018.

“Now, we all regret the loss of 61,000 people, if that’s what it turns out to be,” Bennett said. “But if you look at those numbers and see the comparable, we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.”

Bennett, the former drug czar for President George H.W. Bush, lamented the economic impact of Covid-19, pointing to record jobless claims and shuttering of schools and churches.

“This was not and is not a pandemic, but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this and it’s really unfortunate to look at the facts,” Bennett said.

“It is labelled a pandemic,” Kilmeade noted, though he also pointed out the high survival rate from the coronavirus.

Several of the most prominent opinion voices on Fox News have come under fire for downplaying the coronavirus pandemic at its early stages. Health experts have explained that Covid-19 is worse than the flu, and far more deadly. And yet, a recent Gallup poll found that most people who consume Fox News and other conservative news sources believe the virus is “less deadly than or as deadly as flu.”

Watch above, via Fox News.