‘Can’t Operate Out Of Hysteria’: Dr. Carson Says ’98 Percent’ Of Coronavirus Infected Will Recover

Dr. Ben Carson says there is not enough attention being paid to the “number of people who have recovered” from coronavirus, noting that the number “is going to be about 98 percent of all the people who get it.” 

Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who serves as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), also said the one-quarter to fully one-half of all people who will get SARS-CoV-2 will show no symptoms at all.

“You probably do know someone that has it, you may have it, who knows?” Carson told Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Thursday. “But people have been terrified because we’ve talked about the bad.”

SARS stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.” This new virus is an off-shoot of that one, which emerged in 2003 — less deadly but more infection. In that 2003 outbreak, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the fatality rate for SARS was 14% to 15%. The agency estimated the fatality rate for people older than 64 years to be more than 50%. 

For this outbreak, Carson said Americans should continue practicing social distancing and wearing masks when in contained spaces, as well as following all the other guidelines from the White House coronavirus task force, of which he is a member.

The famed doctor also said that the federal government needs to watch for the infection curve to flatten off and for antibody testing to be readily available before fully reopening the economy.

“When we see that bell-shaped curve — and we’ve seen it come down rather steeply in some other countries — when that happens [and] we haven’t seen it go back up, that’s what we are looking for here,” he said. “That already seems to be starting.”

“Obviously, we don’t want to [resume economic activity] too early. We will wait for a couple of weeks and see if that continues down and then we also need to make sure that we have appropriate testing,” he said, adding “We can’t operate out of hysteria. When people are hysterical they don’t do logical things.”

“We have to be able to test people to see if they have the antibodies which will make them much safer in terms of returning to the workforce. And then we have to return them in a logical way. That’s the key.”