President Donald Trump recently admitted he wasn’t aware people could actually die from the flu, which is certainly a little puzzling to hear, considering the fact that the illness actually killed his own grandfather.
As the Washington Post reported, the POTUS was speaking in Atlanta on Friday when he appeared to completely overlook his own family health history, particularly that of his paternal grandfather, Friedrich Trump.
At that appearance in Atlanta, Trump talked about the coronavirus outbreak and compared it to influenza.
“‘Over the last long period of time, you have an average of 36,000 people dying’ a year,” he said, quickly checking with Antony S. Fauci, the director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to confirm this number.
Apparently, this number wasn’t all that came as a surprise to Trump.
“I never heard those numbers,” the president continued, “I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu? I didn’t know people died from the flu.’ … And again, you had a couple of years where it was over 100,000 people died from the flu.”
As the Post confirmed, Trump at least had his facts right as far as statistics are concerned.
According to the CDC , seasonal influenza has killed 12,000 to 61,000 people in the country every year since 2010.
And there were periods in the past that were even worse for this.
In fact, there have been several instances in American history where more than 100,000 people were killed by influenza strains, including the 1968 pandemic, and the one in 1918.
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1918 happens to also be the year 49-year-old businessman Friedrich Trump died of the flu.
In May of that year, the father of three arrived home from a stroll feeling particularly unwell, and died almost instantly.
As it turns out, he was a victim of the first wave of the Spanish flu pandemic, which ultimately killed some 675,000 Americans , and at least 50 million people worldwide.
At his appearance in Atlanta on Friday, President Trump did in fact reference one family member, although it wasn’t his ill-fated grandfather.
Instead, he brought up his “super-genius uncle” John G. Trump, Friedrich Trump’s youngest son, who the POTUS explained gave him the genes to understand the science surrounding the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
That’s how he seems to think it works, anyway.
“You know my uncle was a great — he was at MIT,” the president said. “He taught at MIT for a record number of years. He was a great super genius, Dr. John Trump.”
“People are really surprised I understand this stuff,” he continued, “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”
