Leave it to Fox News to ferret out a coronavirus patient without symptoms and prod him to tell viewers to “not freak out about all of this,” even though he contracted the COVID-19 on a cruise ship where others died.

On Saturday’s Cavuto Live, host Neil Cavuto interviewed Diamond Princess passenger Mark Jorgensen, in quarantine after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Jorgensen was on the Diamond Princess cruise ship where at least 619 passengers were infected and six have died.

Cavuto didn’t mention the six deaths when he engaged Jorgensen for some Happy Coronavirus Talk.

“I feel fine,” Jorgensen told us right off the bat. “I have no symptoms at all. Actually, I never really have.”

That’s great news and I certainly hope Jorgensen never develops any symptoms. But Jorgensen is obviously no expert on the virus or how to treat it. Nevertheless, Cavuto asked, “Any advice you have on all of this?”

Clearly, Jorgensen had been pre-screened to tell us that coronavirus is no biggie. “I'm not one to advise the experts on this,” he said, “but I personally believe that it's not the scary thing that everyone thinks it is. I am not symptomatic. … [M]y wife was tested positive without symptoms and is now clear of it. So I would say, you know, maybe we can step back and breathe a little bit and not freak out about all of this.” 

A little later, Jorgensen said, “I just look back at things like the bird flu and Zika and all those things that were supposed to wipe out the population and, you know, they weren't the disasters that everyone thought they might be.” 

Cavuto asked Jorgensen to recount his experience on the cruise ship. “Everything was fine on the cruise until the last night [when] they announced at dinner that they had found this one man with a positive test and he had gotten off the ship in Hong Kong,” Jorgensen said. After that, everyone was screened, and “10 more people” tested positive so the ship was quarantined.

Cavuto never mentioned that hundreds have since tested positive nor the deaths.

So a viewer might easily get the impression that the whole pandemic is nothing to worry about - and that is probably exactly what Fox News wants.

Meanwhile, the New York Post had an interview with Carl Goldman, another coronavirus patient from the Diamond Princess with a far different story.

Coronavirus hit “hard and fast,” said Goldman.

An infected person “can go for days feeling fine” before symptoms emerge, he added.

“We could have been exposing so many people to the virus not knowing we had it.”

“I had a bit of a cough, but I chalked it up to the dry air in the cabin,” he said.

Then he fell asleep, and when he awoke stateside, “I knew I had a high fever,” he said.

Goldman’s fever broke by the time he got to the hospital and he seems to be recovering nicely.

Let’s hope Jorgensen’s case never gets even this far. But the point is, it could, and the larger worry is how easily it spreads. The Washington Post explains: “What is concerning, however, is that symptoms can be mild, and the disease can clearly spread before people realize they’re sick. SARS spread when people had full-blown illness, which is one reason it was possible to contain it — it was easier to tell who had the virus.”

You can watch the Coronavirus Happy Talk below, from the February 29, 2020 Cavuto Live, via Media Matters.