Trump Continues to Lie About COVID-19, Claims It Isn’t a Risk for Young People

 

Photo: MANDEL NGAN (Getty Images)

There are only two kinds of people in the world: Those of us who follow uncompromised science and fucking idiots.

I don’t blame those who follow the political stylings of President Trump. (Who am I kidding? Of course, I blame all of y’all shit bags for following this ghoul.) But I must admit that I’m a little concerned about those of us who follow his scientific advice (no I’m not. Fuck ya’ll.)

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?

The U.S. death toll has eclipsed 200,000 and Trump, the president of people who believe anything he says, once again lied and said that COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody” younger than 18, “again downplaying the extent of the pandemic and contradicting his previous statements that the virus poses a risk to ‘plenty of young people,’” the Washington Post reports.

Trump made this claim during another one of his racist pep rallies, this time in Swanton, Ohio, in front of a group of maskholes who were packed next to each other like cigarettes. Trump continued to push the lie that only older “Americans with heart problems and preexisting conditions truly need to fear the virus.”

“It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. That’s what it really affects,” the president said, the Post reports. “In some states, thousands of people — nobody young. Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows? Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”

Umm…No the fuck it isn’t. The virus has been noted to affect young people at a much smaller rate and claiming that younger people aren’t affected is just a bold-faced lie. But his followers don’t care. The president could literally walk out on stage at a rally and take a shit and they would all applaud his form.

During interviews with Bob Woodward for his book Rage, Trump was recorded claiming that he purposefully downplayed the severity of COVID-19—he was even taped saying that the virus affected “plenty of young people.”

“Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob,” Trump told Woodward, the Post reports. “But just today, and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older.”

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, children are at risk for severe COVID-19 and are at a greater risk of spreading COVID-19.

From the Post:

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number and rate of coronavirus cases among children younger than 18 had increased “steadily” from March to July. The agency emphasized that while covid-19 remains more serious and prevalent among adults, a lack of widespread testing prevents public health experts from understanding the true incidence of infection for American children. A CDC study found that young people of color, much like their older counterparts, have been disproportionately hospitalized from covid-19, compared with their White peers.

The World Health Organization warned in August that young people are becoming primary spreaders of the virus in many countries. Several American studies published over the summer suggested that those younger than 18, with their high rate of infection and viral loads, play a much larger role in community spread of the coronavirus than researchers previously believed. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said that the long-term effects of covid-19 in young people — residual symptoms such as a high rate of cardiovascular abnormalities — are “really troublesome.”

But Trump is still out here still encouraging states to open schools for in-person learning, because, let’s face it, he doesn’t give a shit who dies as long as the economy doesn’t collapse. On Monday, Trump repeated his refrain saying, “Open your schools. Everybody, open your schools.”

What he didn’t say, and what he’ll never say, is what Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said during a news conference last month: “We are seeing young people who are dying from this virus,” the Post reports.