Twitter flags Trump for comparing flu to covid-19 but leaves tweet accessible

U.S. President Donald Trump answers a question during an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S August 20, 2018. File, REUTERS, Leah Millis

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday compared his Covid-19 experience with seasonal flu through a tweet he shared on his social media platform.

“Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” read the tweet by the U.S president.

As a result, twitter flagged his tweet claiming that the tweet was misleading and it was against twitter rules.

“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest in the Tweet to remain accessible,” stated the flag report.

The Centre for disease control and prevention estimates that between 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the US have been as a result of flu since 2010.

Flu cases are rarely reported in most states in US as a result there is no concrete data of people that fall sick each year. 

Data estimate of the 2019-2020 influenza season as of April 4, 2020, shows that between 24,000 and 62,000 people lost their lives to the flu. 

At one point Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease elaborated on the severity of Covid and flu.

"The seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 per cent, whereas coronavirus is "10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu."

According to the World Health Organization, annual epidemics are estimated to result in about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths.

President Trumps’ tweet is partly false.