Insisting during a town hall Tuesday night that Covid-19 will simply disappear on its own — echoing a baseless claim he also made in February, March, April, May, June, July, and August — President Donald Trump touted a so-called “herd immunity” approach to the pandemic that public health experts warn would lead to hundreds of millions of new coronavirus infections and millions of additional deaths.
“We’re gonna be OK. And it is going away,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “And it’s probably gonna go away now a lot faster with the vaccine. It would go away without the vaccine, George.”
When Stephanopoulos replied that “many deaths” would result such a scenario, Trump said: “You’ll develop like a herd mentality. It’s gonna be herd developed, and that’s gonna happen. That will all happen. But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly. But I really believe we’re rounding the corner, and I believe that strongly.”
Watch:
TRUMP: It is going away
STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a vaccine?
TRUMP: Sure. Over a period of time
S: And many deaths
TRUMP: It's gonna be herd developed pic.twitter.com/dtJRE7XwFX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 16, 2020
Trump’s remarks came as Covid-19 continues to spread across the United States, with the nation averaging around 38,000 new cases per day over the past week. In total, the U.S. has recorded over 6.6 million positive coronavirus cases and at least 195,600 deaths, and it remains unclear when a safe and effective vaccine will be available to the public.
“This was not true when Trump said it in February,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) in response to the president’s claim that the virus is going away. “It is not true today, 195,000 American deaths later. Covid-19 is not going to just ‘disappear.’ Making that the strategy leads to more preventable deaths.”
To reach “herd immunity” to the virus, experts say around 65% of the U.S. population — over 200 million people — would have to be infected. Given the current U.S. death rate from Covid-19, that number of cases would kill millions of people.
“‘Herd mentality’ is what his cult followers have,” epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding tweeted following the president’s comments late Tuesday. “‘Herd immunity’ without a vaccine is deadly. Trump’s idiocy on science is killing us.”
University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers noted that “developing herd immunity doesn’t just take time, it works by infecting over a hundred million and killing hundreds of thousands.”
“He’s describing a massacre,” tweeted Wolfers. “If you think the problem here is that he said herd mentality rather than herd immunity, you’re missing the big picture. Whatever word he spoke, the idea is to sacrifice several hundred thousand more people’s lives.”
Trump’s town hall came days after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned the number of deaths that would result from a “herd immunity” approach to the virus would be “totally unacceptable.”
“If everyone contracted it, even with the relatively high percentage of people without symptoms… a lot of people are going to die,” said Fauci, who Trump officials have attempted to muzzle as he continues to publicly warn that the fight against the pandemic is far from over, contradicting the president’s false optimism.
“If you look at the United States of America with our epidemic of obesity as it were, with the number of people with hypertension, with the number of people with diabetes,” Fauci continued, “if everyone got infected, the death toll would be enormous.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.