July 16, 2020
The Hill – White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Thursday that Anthony Fauci was wrong to liken the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic, calling his remarks “false” and “irresponsible.”
“He was at Georgetown the other day and he suggested that this virus was worse or as bad as the 1918 flu epidemic. And I can tell you that not only is that false, it is irresponsible to suggest so,” Meadows told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum. “Listen, we all say things and do things that we wish that we hadn’t done.”
“My understanding is Dr. Fauci is walking that back and telling the American people that that was not accurate and not based on science,” Meadows continued.
A spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci directs, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Meadows was referring to remarks Fauci made Tuesday during a Georgetown University Global Health Initiative webinar during which he described the coronavirus as a “pandemic of historic proportions” and suggested it was possible the coronavirus could approach the “seriousness” of the 1918 pandemic.
RECENTLY: Fauci CANCELED
“Right now if you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic where anywhere from 50 to 75 to 100 million people died, I mean that was the mother of all pandemics and truly historic. I hope we don’t even approach that with this, but it does have the makings of the possibility of … approaching that in seriousness, though I hope that the kinds of interventions that we’re going to be, and are implementing would not allow that to happen,” Fauci said.
Fauci said the two pandemics are also similar because they were caused by new viruses that jumped from animals to humans … Read more.
