Politics

Kamala Harris Makes Misleading Attack On Trump By Comparing Coronavirus To Ebola

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Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris kicked off her bid for the vice presidency Wednesday with a misleading attack on President Donald Trump.

Harris made a direct comparison between the coronavirus pandemic — which has ravaged most of the world in a matter of months — and the ebola outbreak that took place in 2014. (RELATED: ‘People Will Say Anything To Get Power’: Greg Gutfeld Launches Attack On Biden And Harris)

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“It didn’t have to be this way. 6 years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola … Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people in the United States died. Two. That is what’s called leadership,” Harris said.

But Harris left out a number of details that made it clear that the two viruses were very different.

The death rate from Ebola was much higher — over 50% — and the CDC recorded 11,325 deaths over the course of two and a half years. Only eleven cases were treated in the United States, two of which were fatal.

The Ebola outbreak was also not technically labeled a “pandemic,” meeting only the requirements to be termed an “epidemic.”

The CDC explains the difference between the two:

An outbreak is called an epidemic when there is a sudden increase in cases. As COVID-19 began spreading in Wuhan, China, it became an epidemic. Because the disease then spread across several countries and affected a large number of people, it was classified as a pandemic.

Several critics — some of them doctors — chastised Harris for drawing the comparison, calling it “irresponsible,” “dishonest” and “pure bullsh**t.”