California Rep. Devin Nunes said the media and liberals are “putting the country into a panic” by hyping the coronavirus outbreak.
“What the media and the Left are doing here is they’re putting the country into a panic, and look, it’s for no reason,” the Republican congressman told Fox News host Jesse Watters on his Saturday evening program. “I’m not saying that this isn’t a serious health concern. We need to take it serious.”
Nunes said the elderly, especially those with preexisting health conditions, need to take extra precautions with the outbreak, but the “main issue is for us in the United States is just to remain calm.”
“A lot of people are panicking,” Nunes said. “One guy sneezed. Or someone has a runny nose.”
Nunes referred to his experience contracting H1N1, which killed over 12,000 U.S. citizens from 2009-2010, to make his case for why people should remain calm now and heed instructions from health experts.
“So as someone who did come down with H1N1 — I had it for about two weeks. It was a pretty bad flu. I know what it was like back again then. But I also remember that nobody was panicking. I did not have to self-quarantine. They told me to stay away from people. They told me to continue to keep my temperature down,” Nunes said.
Others have called for U.S. citizens not to overreact to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, including celebrity physician Dr. Drew Pinsky, who said the media was fanning the flames of the “panic.”
“What I have a problem with is the panic and the fact that businesses are getting destroyed, that people’s lives are being upended, not by the virus, but by the panic,” Pinsky said. “The panic must stop. And the press, they really somehow need to be held accountable because they are hurting people.”
Nunes said, “That it’s very probable we’ll get through this fairly quickly.”
