Misleading: Trump: Frankly, he ran the H1N1, swine flu, and it was a total disaster...700,000 people would be dead right now. But it was a far less lethal disease.

By: Devika Kandelwal
November 2 2020

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The CDC had estimated that around 61 million people caught swine flu in the U.S. between April 2009 and April 2010. More than 12,000 people died.Trump has frequently called the Obama-Biden administration's handling of the swine flu a "disaster." This is not true. Swine flu is estimated to have killed 12,469 in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is far fewer than the more than 200,000 who have died of COVID-19 to date. The Obama administration generally received praise for its response to swine flu. While government reports identified room for growth, they also highlighted successes, like rapid research and development of a vaccine that arrived in less than six months. On April 26, 2009, when there were only 20 cases of H1N1 and no deaths reported around the country, the Obama administration declared H1N1 a public health emergency. The administration quickly sought funding from Congress, receiving almost $8 billion. A New York Times assessment in 2010 noted some flaws in the system, but overall the government was praised for its response, in part because it turned out that the pandemic was not as severe as it once had appeared. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in August. 2009 had forecast 30,000 to 90,000 deaths, but the final death toll was much less than that. Trump also contradicted his own statement which he made in 2009, where he said the Obama administration was handling the ​early days of the 2009-2010 H1N1 outbreak ​"fine​" and warned against overreacting to the new virus.