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Trump went on to portray the coronavirus problem in ethnonationalist terms: “There are fringe globalists that would rather keep our borders open than keep our infection — think of it — keep all of the infection, let it come in,” he said, before expressing surprise that tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu each year.

“When you lose 27,000 people [from the flu] a year — nobody knew that — I didn’t know that. Three, four weeks ago, I was sitting down, I said, ‘What do we lose with the regular flu?’ They said, ‘About 27,000 minimum. It goes up to 70, sometimes even 80, one year it went up to 100,000 people.’” (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have not been more than 51,000 flu-related deaths in the US over the past decade.)

“I said, ‘Nobody told me that. Nobody knows that.’ So I actually told the pharmaceutical companies, ‘You have to do a little bit better job on that vaccine,’” Trump continued.

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday night spun a web of theories minimizing the coronavirus' threat to Americans, accusing the World Health Organization of dispensing inaccurate facts about the outbreak and suggesting that those with the disease would be safe going to work.

During expansive remarks on Fox News host Sean Hannity's program, the president continued to break with public health officials' more dire messaging regarding the international crisis and forcefully contradicted the WHO, which earlier in the week pegged the global mortality rate for the coronavirus at 3.4 percent.

"Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor," Trump said.

"You never hear about those people. So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and — or virus. So you just can't do that," he continued. "So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work but they get better."....

"When you do have a death — like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, believe you had one in New York — you know, all of a sudden, it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent," Trump told Hannity. Although 11 cases have been reported in New York, no deaths in the state have been officially attributed to the coronavirus.

"But again, they don't know about the easy cases because the easy cases don't go to the hospital. They don't report to doctors or the hospital, in many cases," Trump said. "So I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent."

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The WHO rate compares the number of deaths to the number of people tested. But many people who have the virus do not show serious symptoms and do not get tested, said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But, as Trump tried to explain this in his interview, he added confusion by discussing how people with a mild case of the disease caused by coronavirus may not be tested for it.

"So, if we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better," Trump said.

Trump's upbeat tone made it seem as though he was suggesting it was a good thing that people with coronavirus could go to work.

Meanwhile, major employers in Washington state, where there has been a cluster of coronavirus cases, are telling employees to stay home to avoid further spread of the virus.

Facing backlash, Trump clarified what he said he meant in a tweet on Thursday morning. "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work," Trump said.

I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work. This is just more Fake News and disinformation put out by the Democrats, in particular MSDNC. Comcast covers the CoronaVirus situation horribly, only looking to do harm to the incredible & successful effort being made!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2020

An administration official told NPR on the condition of anonymity that when Trump said sick people go to work, he was talking about telecommuting.

It's a challenge for any politician to accurately convey public health messages: to encourage preparedness and avoid inciting fear without underplaying or overselling the risks. That challenge is particularly acute for Trump given his free-flowing communications style.

During the interview, Trump also revealed that he was concerned that repatriating Americans from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was held in Japan last month would "look bad" because it would increase the total number of coronavirus cases in the United States. "I felt we had to do it. And, in one way, I hated to do it statistically," Trump said.

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Have the politicians talk to the public about practical things they can do to reduce their risks, like washing hands and cleaning surfaces, he said. And, when asked a technical question, have an expert on hand to answer it.

"People understand if the president or any of the political leaders are not experts in everything," he said.