Tucker Carlson Hits U.S. Officials Downplaying Coronavirus: ‘Spent Weeks Minimizing’ a ‘Very Serious Problem’
After chiding some of the coronavirus response on the left Monday night, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson made a point of telling his audience, “If we’re being honest, the other side has not been especially helpful either.”
Carlson said the following calling out people minimizing the coronavirus:
“People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem. ‘It’s just partisan politics,’ they say. ‘Calm down. In the end this was just like the flu and people die from that every year. Coronavirus will pass. And when it does, we will feel foolish for worrying about it.’ That’s their position. No doubt these people have good intentions as they say, this many of them anyway. They may not know any better. Maybe they’re just not paying attention, or maybe they believe they’re serving some higher cause by shading reality. No one wants to be manipulated by a corrupt media establishment — and it is corrupt. And there’s an election coming up. Best not to say anything that might help the other side. We get it. But they’re wrong. The Chinese coronavirus is a major event… It’s definitely not just the flu.”
Carlson didn’t call anyone out by name, but President Donald Trump tweeted stats about deaths from the flu last year to address concerns about the coronavirus:
So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020
At one point Carlson brought up how Italy essentially issued a nationwide lockdown, reviewing the serious impact of the virus on that nation and saying, “That’s far worse than here. But the only difference likely is time. Early evidence suggests it takes about six days for the number of coronavirus cases to double. That trend holds here in the United States, it will be just a few weeks until we are where Italy is now. In a few months, if nothing stops the virus, there will be millions of cases here.”
He said people should be “calm” but that shouldn’t also mean “remaining complacent.”
“It’s better to tell the truth. That is always the surest sign of strength. As they level with us, our leaders ought to prepare the public for what may come next. If a recession is coming, we need to save money for the possible effect of that. If travel restrictions are coming, we should know that too.”
You can watch above, via Fox News.
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