Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., compared the risk caused by the coronavirus to the risk people take when they drive a car during a phone call with local business leaders that was recently leaked to the media.
"We get in an automobile, we drive on our public roads, and a certain number of us will die on our public roads every year," Perdue said during a Zoom call with the Rome Floyd Chamber last Thursday, a recording of which was obtained by Vox. "Well, each of us in a representative democracy have the freedom to make that determination about the risk level for me as an individual. And therefore, we choose to go or we choose not to go. In a situation like this, as long as we have good information, we can make our own decisions."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said in March that it's misleading to compare the coronavirus to automobile accidents.
"I think that's a false equivalency to compare traffic accidents with — I mean, that's totally way out," Fauci said at a White House press briefing on March 20. "That's really a false equivalency, when you have something that is new and is emerging and you really can't predict totally the impact it's going to have."
Perdue also compared the coronavirus to the flu, saying, "we've had ordinary flu seasons with more deaths than we're seeing now."
A spokesperson for the senator said that "in no way was Sen. Perdue downplaying COVID-19."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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