Re-listening to Trump audio w/Woodward. Trump said death rate was 5% & "it goes through the air" (which is diff than "airborne").
Both facts were public knowledge at the time. China had announced Wuhan had a 4.9% CFR & coronavirus was known to spread via respiratory droplets.
Trump reveals no special knowledge in this comment. The 5% CFR and coronavirus spread via "the air" were both publicly known. The fact the media is blowing this up into such a controversy is dishonest at best, criminal at worst. And Woodward knows this. That's why he waited.
In fact, here's NBC News on 1/24 explaining how the virus spreads.
nbcnews.com/health/health-…
Here's CNN saying the same thing at the same time.
cnn.com/asia/live-news…
The big problem here is there is a difference between airborne, spreading through the air, and aerosolized. It was known then it could spread through the air via droplets (sneeze/caugh) but was not know to spread as airborne or aerosolized.
Trump, over the past two days, when explaining his comments, made the same mistake the media did by assuming airborne and spread through the air are the same thing.
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