The United States “overreacted” to the coronavirus pandemic, according to former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
Mulvaney, who left the White House in March, argued on Tuesday that U.S. officials have “lost perspective” on the health crisis over the past few months. He said that the country should be returning to normalcy as long as people continue to use face masks and practice good hygiene.
“I would be completely comfortable sitting in a center seat on an airplane. Maybe I’m the only person who says that. But I knew I had a mask on that worked, and I knew the people sitting next to me had on a mask that worked,” he told CNBC of a recent flight. “Logic would dictate it’s very, very, very difficult for me to get that disease from them.”
“In fact, probably harder to get it from them than it would have been during an ordinary flu season. So, I think we’ve sort of lost perspective on this a little bit, Joe, and we’ve overreacted a little bit,” he said. “Keep in mind, I think a year and a half ago, two years ago, someplace just shy of 100,000 people died of the ordinary flu.”
Mulvaney clarified that he was not equating the coronavirus to the flu. But he noted that tens of thousands died from the flu, and “the country didn’t shut down.”
“It’s time to sort of deal with this in the proper perspective,” he added. “And that’s to allow us to get back to work safely.”
Mulvaney was forced to self-quarantine in March after coming into contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus from a Brazilian delegation that met with President Trump. While giving a speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he claimed the attention on the virus was an attempt by the media to “bring down the president.”
The current coronavirus death toll in the U.S. is more than 98,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 40-year high in the number of flu-related deaths in 2018, with 80,000 dead for the year total.
The president named Mulvaney as the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland after he was replaced as chief of staff by Mark Meadows.
