A Fox News contributor disagreed with the coronavirus being classified as a “pandemic.”
Bill Bennett, the former secretary of education under the Reagan administration, made the argument during a Monday morning interview on Fox & Friends.
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He began his point by criticizing death toll projection models for the COVID-19 virus, saying that they have been “wrong most of the time by a lot.” He noted that the new projection for the United States is up to 60,000 deaths, which is much lower than the 100,000-to-200,000 estimate earlier this month.
Bennett compared this most recent forecast to the 2017-2018 flu season, which left 61,000 people dead.
“Now, we all regret the loss of 61,000 people, if that’s what it turns out to be,” Bennett said, later adding, “But if you look at those numbers and see the comparable, we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.”
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus outbreak to be a pandemic in March. A pandemic is declared when an infectious disease affects many countries at once.
Bennett also predicted that fewer than 60,000 people would die before pivoting to the economic ramifications of shutting down the country, specifically mentioning the millions of newly unemployed workers.
“This was not and is not a pandemic, but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this, and it’s really unfortunate to look at the facts,” Bennett said.
Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, who was conducting the interview, responded, “It is labeled a pandemic,” before pivoting to discuss Bennett’s point about the low mortality rate associated with the novel coronavirus.
