Debunking Trump's flu-coronavirus comparison Democracy Now

Seven weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the U.S., the government is scrambling to ramp up its capacity for developing and distributing testing for the virus as cases mount exponentially across the country. This comes after several weeks of Donald Trump spreading misinformation that directly contradicted CDC and WHO warnings, in which the president downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and likened it to the flu. "The difference with this virus is two: First of all, no one is immune. So in theory, 100% of the population is susceptible to this virus," says Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Steven Goodman. "The second part is the fatality rate. Either for people who present to the medical care system sick enough to go to a doctor, or per infection, [the fatality rate] looks to be a fair bit higher than the flu, maybe on the order of five times — maybe even 10 times — higher."