Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a recent interview with NBC News that the novel coronavirus can hurt people in ways unlike the flu.
- Fauci’s comments came in response to President Donald Trump’s claim that the coronavirus is as deadly as the flu.
Fauci said the ways the coronavirus can damage you “is very much different from influenza.”
- “You don’t get a pandemic that kills a million people and it isn’t even over yet with influenza,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “So it is not correct to say it’s the same as flu. It has some overlapping symptomatology early on. But flu doesn’t do the things to you that COVID-19 can.”
Fauci once again promoted the need for people to take their health seriously.
- “There are some things that should be universally practiced, and that is the universal wearing of masks, avoiding crowds, keeping a distance, doing things outdoors more than indoors and washing our hands frequently,” Fauci told NBC News. “That doesn’t matter who you are. That’s what you should be doing.”
What Trump said
President Donald Trump returned to the White House after being hospitalized due to COVID-19. He tweeted Tuesday morning about how it compares to the flu.
- “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”