"Very much under control"

In February 2020, Trump publicly implied that the flu was more dangerous than COVID-19 and asserted that the outbreak in the U.S. was "very much under control" and would soon be over, yet he told Bob Woodward at the time that COVID-19 was "deadly", "more deadly than even your strenuous flu", and "tricky" to handle due to its airborne transmission. In March 2020, Trump privately told Woodward, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Trump's comments to Woodward were made public in September 2020.