>> Donald Trump had a rather terrible performance during his town hall with ABC, where he breezed
through one bungled answer after the next. Talking about coronavirus was no exception,
take a look. >> We're gonna be okay, and it is going away,
and it's probably gonna go away now a lot faster because of the vaccine.
It would go away without the vaccine, George, but it's going to go away a lot faster with
it. >> It'd go away without the vaccine?
>> Sure, over a period of time, sure, with time, it goes away.
>> And many deaths. >> And you'll develop a herd mentality, it's
gonna be herd developed, and that's gonna happen.
That will all happen, but with the vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly.
>> Got to take a quick break. >> But I really believe we're rounding the
corner and I believe that strongly. >> As you know, Dr. Fauci disagrees with that.
>> Well, I mean, but a lot of people do agree with me.
>> Now, when you hear Trump use the phrase herd mentality, you might think that, especially
coming from a doofus like him, he's referring to his supporters pouring into a target and
yelling at patrons to take off their masks. >> Take off your mask, take it off, yeah.
>> We're not gonna take it anymore.
>> Or you might also think of Trump supporters running into a Trump rally that's taking place
indoors without wearing masks. >> And look, as tempting as it is to dunk
on Trump because he is a moron, in reality, what he was referring to there is herd immunity,
which is an incredibly dangerous and awful response or policy toward coronavirus.
Because it would mean that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans would die as
a result of pursuing that short-sighted and awful policy. So herd immunity is something
that Donald Trump has mentioned before, but he did the same thing that you heard in that
first video. He didn't call it herd immunity, he called it herd mentality, let's take a
look.
>> Other countries try to use the herd mentality. It's just something that doesn't work, if
you look. If we didn't do what we did at the time, we could have lost more than 2 million
people, I really believe that. I could show you charts of other places that gave it a
shot and they're not doing well.
And I would show it to you right now, I don't want to embarrass anybody, but they gave that
a shot. It's an automatic. I mean, everybody would say, let's do that, until they sit down
and start thinking, and we could have lost more than 2 million people, we could have
lost more than 2 million, it could have been much more than that.
By the way, we have one that says from 1.6 to 2.2. But it could have really been more
than that, but I looked at one in particular, one country in particular that is using the
herd mentality, not working out very well. >> So Trump was likely referring to Sweden
which implemented herd immunity, but as you can see it in those earlier videos, Trump
referred to herd immunity as herd mentality.
And he also acknowledged how disastrous that policy really would be and how it would lead
to so many people dying. Now, Trump has pivoted towards something more accepting of herd immunity.
I'll tell you why in just a minute, but John, why don't you jump in?
>> I just wanna die right now.
Yeah, I had missed in the past that he had called it mentality in those past, I've seen
some of those videos but I guess I just naturally fill in the blanks to be accurate. What's
amazing about it is that he has repeatedly, up to recently, cuz recently he just starts
saying that he's doing this, that they're pursuing this strategy.
But for months, he had been like taking a victory lap dunking on other people who'd
be stupid enough to pursue this strategy, including, as you know, Sweden, which is literally
the one European country that every right winger says we should follow suit with. After
being apparently the only identifiable US politician to actually push for this early
on with Dr. Fauci having to tell him that it would kill millions of people.
He then uses his own stupid suggestion to look smart by comparison, which just seems
absolutely insane, and the weird having to one up himself, like the the 2.2 million people
that would die that he'll now never acknowledge that he said that, that it would have somehow
been even higher than that.
He doesn't know anything about this. He doesn't care anything about this, and I know that
you're gonna go through some of the numbers of how this would actually play out, but really
fast. Let's just say, you have to do your job as a journalist to call it like they implemented
the herd immunity strategy, but that doesn't mean anything.
It just means, let's not do everything we can to stop people from being infected with
this. It's as if zombies were rampaging through and I implemented the buffet, strategy which
was eventually their stomachs will be full of warm, human flesh and blood, and then surely
they'll stop feasting on us at that point.
It's not really a strategy, it's just like a gilded surrender basically. And that is
literally what they are pursuing right now, they're increasingly willing to admit it with
casual references like you saw from Donald Trump last night, but that is 100% federally
the strategy that we're pursuing. >> Yeah, exactly.
I mean, even if it's not officially announced, Trump has really backed away from doing anything,
or even considering anything that would be effective in responding to coronavirus. Meanwhile,
the cases continue to rise. We're still seeing many Americans die every day, hundreds, if
not, on average 1000 Americans a day dying from this virus, and this just lack of compassion
or concern for human lives is kind of incredible.
And look, Trump really doesn't like the way we're talking about it right now. That's why
he was trying to bark through this entire segment but don't worry, I put a stop to it.
So where is this language now coming from, right? He mentions herd immunity, he calls
it herd mentality.
Well, keep in mind that fairly recently there was a new coronavirus advisor who joined the
Coronavirus Task Force and he's very much in favor of herd immunity. Scott Atlas, one
of President Trump's top medical advisors, is urging the White House to embrace a controversial
herd immunity strategy to combat the pandemic which would entail allowing the coronavirus
to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus.
Now, he promoted this idea during an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News. So if you
hear Kayleigh McEnany say that Scott Atlas does not support this policy, please understand,
just like most other statements given by Kayleigh McEnany, that's a lie. Also, the administration
has already begun to implement some policies along these lines according to current and
former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.
So testing has slowed down a little bit. That's one other thing to keep in mind, because it
goes along with this pivot toward a policy that's even more disastrous than what the
country was already experiencing. And now let's talk about how many Americans are likely
to die while herd immunity is implemented.
Atlas has argued both internally and in public that an increased case count would move the
nation more quickly to herd immunity and won't lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are
protected, meaning elderly people in nursing homes. But infectious disease experts strongly
dispute that, noting that more than 25,000 people younger than 65 have died of the virus
in the United States.
And by the way, these are numbers from August 31st. So I'm guessing that the numbers of
deaths for people under 65 are probably higher now. In addition, the United States has a
larger number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung
disease and obesity, and millions of at-risk people live outside of nursing homes, many
in households with children whom Atlas believes should return to school in person.
So this guy's a disaster. Now, let's get to some pretty devastating numbers. Herd immunity
for the coronavirus would need to be somewhere between 50 to 70% of the US population having
resistance to the virus, which means about 165 million to 230 million people would need
to be infected and develop immunity.
With the rate with the death rate of about 1%, that means 2.3 million people could die
in this country under herd immunity, disaster. >> Great strategy, it's the best. I take issue
with one thing you said there. So you said what Scott Ellis believes and then you reference
accurately that infectious disease experts disagree with them.
In fairness, that's chops, because he's not an infectious disease expert. So it's really
unfair to put him up against those people who actually know what they're talking about.
I know people might be confused about that since he's apparently Trump's top medical
adviser on a viral pandemic, but he's not actually a doctor of that sort, doesn't necessarily
know that much more than any random about this.
And judging by the conclusions that he's reached, I'd argue he knows less than someone like
me, whose medical expertise comes mainly from watching episodes of House. Yeah, millions
of people will likely die, and bear in mind, he's saying the numbers won't go up significantly
if we protect vulnerable people.
First of all, as you noted, many people who are younger than that die, many more suffer
terrible injuries that can potentially be very long lasting, we're learning more about
that over time. But also, this is a political movement that has given rise to the Target
rioters and things like that, the people you just showed in that video.
How are you going to protect those vulnerable people when you have convinced people by telling
them to liberate their states that they don't need to deal with this, that it's a hoax,
that it's fake? Why protect grandma from something that was just invented by Bill Gates and doesn't
actually exist?
None of it actually makes any sense whatsoever, and to look out there and to see this and
know, I'm sure many people watching this have lost family members to this, I lost a family
member to this, to look into the future and know that we are doing everything we can to
increase the number of people that are going to die from this.
It's just, it's so horrifying, and the cost, even if Trump loses, we're looking at another
six months of rampant 1,000 deaths plus every single day. I mean God only, if he actually
wins re-election, who can say how many hundreds of thousands of additional people will die?
But the entire thing is like a horror movie that we're being forced to watch in real time.
>> Look, even if Trump loses, we are on track, based on the number of Americans who just
reject wearing masks, we are on track to have hundreds of thousands of more deaths by the
end of the year. That's a story we'll get to later in the rundown. But Scott Atlas has
referred to himself as the anti Fauci, which means that we should be listening to Fauci.
If you care about your health, your loved ones' health, you want to make sure that you
and your loved ones survive throughout this pandemic, listen to the advice of Anthony
Fauci as much as possible. And he has weighed in on herd immunity, here's what he had to
say.
>> Are they still at the White House, I know that some of the advisors have said that they're
not doing this, but are they talking about herd immunity?
>> That's not a fundamental strategy that we're using, the fundamental strategy that
we clearly articulate and go by through the task force is to try to prevent as many infections
as you possibly can prevent.
That when you get someone who's infected, you do the identification, isolation and contact
tracing. And you do the kinds of things to prevent infections, the things that I've just
been speaking about with you when we were talking about trying to make sure we don't
get any surging of cases over the Labor Day weekend, so I'm not so sure what what that's
all about.
But we certainly are not wanting to wait back and just let people get infected so that you
can develop herd immunity. That's certainly not my approach. It's certainly not Dr. Birx's
approach or any of the other people that I know of on that task force. Now, of course,
with the exception of Scott Atlas, and props to Anthony Fauci for using that awesome Zoom
feature that really smooths things out, he looks great in that video.
>> My God. >> Had to comment on that.
>> Yeah. >> But yeah.
>> Sorry, continue. >> No, no, go ahead.
>> Yeah, he can say that. Okay, he's apparently wrong, maybe that's not his strategy, maybe
that's not Birx, although I doubt that. That you cannot look at what the federal government
has done slash is not doing and not come to the conclusion that they don't care.
And again, we call it the herd immunity strategy. It just means not doing anything to stop it.
He's not instituting any sort of nationwide lockdown, nationwide mask wearing mandate.
He's not even encouraging people at his own rallies to wear masks. He is allowing it to
spread, that's all it is.
And the one extra person that I think deserves some criticism here is George Stephanopoulos
because he knew going into that that Trump has been making references to herd immunity,
that Scott Atlas is on his team and all of that. Trump uses it in an answer, and Stephanopoulos
is like, well, we really, we have to go to a break.
Okay, yeah he fact checked him on a few things, but what is more consequential than this?
Him casually slipping into a town hall answer that, yeah, no, we're doing the thing, remember
that thing I said is gonna kill millions of people? No, I changed my mind, we're totally
doing that.
Yeah, we really have to get to those commercials. That's the most important thing right now.
What's the point of having him there if you're not gonna question him on that topic?
>> Yeah, well, look, George Stephanopoulos isn't an executive over at ABC. He's hosting
this town hall, and yeah, breaks suck, and you've gotta go to breaks.
>> But I think, just keeping it real, breaks are the worst. But he did do a decent job
fact checking in a number of other answers. So I will be critical when I think that it's
appropriate, and I hear what you're saying, I would prefer that they didn't go to break
in that moment.
But I don't know if he's 100% in control of that, you get what I'm saying?
>> Go to the break and come back, go to the break, come back, ask about it. You can't
move on from that, it's too important. If he if he was like, yeah, and by the way, in
a week I'm gonna nuke Iran, we got a break, can't ask a follow up about that.
No, at some point you're obligated, hundreds of thousands of lives, possibly millions of
lives, are on the line. What are you there for if not to ask questions about that?