Joining the trend of right-wing commentators calling the coronavirus no big deal, former White House deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka won\u2019t stop telling his audience that the virus is \u201cmass hysteria\u201d created by the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This year alone, for the record\u2014tell your friends if they start getting hysterical saying \u2018I can\u2019t buy those medical surgical masks\u2019\u201416,000 Americans have died of the flu. The flu. Is that a front-page story?\u201d Gorka said on his \u201cAmerica First\u201d podcast last Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre they [Democrats] blaming that on the president? No, because they can\u2019t, but 12 deaths from some new threat called coronavirus? Let\u2019s politicize that. There is no gutter they will not sink into,\u201d Gorka said. (At the time of the podcast\u2019s recording, 12 people had died from coronavirus; the number has since risen to 38<\/a> and continues to rise.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gorka had Dr. Marc Siegel, a regular Fox News contributor, on his podcast last Wednesday<\/a> to affirm his claims that the fear was overblown and attack Democrats for shifting the blame of the virus\u2019s outbreak on to Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow is this president responsible for this virus? It came from China, didn\u2019t it?\u201d said Siegel, who also called the World Health Organization (WHO) \u201ca bunch of alarmists<\/a>\u201d on a recent Fox News panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday<\/a>, Gorka blamed the virus\u2019s spread on Democrats and \u201clying hacks and propagandists,\u201d in mainstream media, including Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re not sick as a nation, but you should be sickened by what the media is trying to do to you,\u201d Gorka said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 100 countries have been affected by the coronavirus. Globally, more than 4,000 people have died from it, including more than 800 people<\/a> in Italy alone. On Wednesday, WHO Director-General announced that \u201cconcerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity,\u201d and by the alarming levels of inaction,\u201d the organization had designated the virus a pandemic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n