NOVEMBER 2005
In 2005, President George W. Bush was reading a book. The
book was John Barry's history of the 1918 influenza. The book spurred Bush to
start poking around to see if the country was ready to handle another pandemic.
In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of
Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail -- describing with stunning
prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. Among those in the
audience was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leader of the current crisis response, who
was then and still is now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases.
"A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire," Bush
said at the time. "If caught early it might be extinguished with limited
damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can
spread quickly beyond our ability to control it." . . .
"To respond to a pandemic, we need medical personnel
and adequate supplies of equipment," Bush said. "In a pandemic,
everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators masks and protective
equipment would be in short supply."
Bush told the gathered scientists that they would need to
develop a vaccine in record time.
"If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge
capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and
manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic
strain," he said.
That was the Bush administration. And please keep in mind
that all of this energy came directly from President Bush himself, who saw the
dangers when others did not, who raised the alarm all on his own, and who then
rode herd over the army of officials and bureaucrats in the executive branch.
The Obama administration created an actual playbook for
dealing with a pandemic—the 69 page document is literally called a
"playbook"—which they handed off to the Trump administration in 2017.
DECEMBER 2015
The Obama administration and medical firm Halyard Health of
Alpharetta, Ga., announced the project to develop a rapid pandemic mask
production line.
DURING 2016 (specific date not determined)
The Obama Administration prepares a playbook for dealing
with a pandemic. Among its strategies: “Is there sufficient personal protective
equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook
instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when
facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal
exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the
Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy
decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting
pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other
recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect
potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the
Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged
behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.
“Each section of this playbook includes specific questions
that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels”
within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising
officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate
diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.
The Trump Administration ignores the playbook.
[More information and a link to the actual playbook can be
found here: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285]
JANUARY 11, 2017
Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no
doubt” Donald J. Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious
disease outbreak during his presidency.
Fauci has led the NIAID for more than 3 decades, advising
the past five United States presidents on global health threats from the early
days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through to the current Zika virus
outbreak.
During a forum on pandemic preparedness at Georgetown
University, Fauci said the Trump administration will not only be challenged by
ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise
disease outbreak.
“The history of the last 32 years that I have been the
director of the NIAID will tell the next administration that there is no doubt
they will be faced with the challenges their predecessors were faced with,” he
said.
JANUARY 13, 2017
The Obama administration’s transition team conducted
tabletop disaster response activities with Trump's top aides. One of those
tests was eerily prescient—a strain of novel and deadly influenza they called
H9N2, origination in Asia and quickly spreading to Europe and then to the U.S.
"Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic
since 1918," the Obama team told Trump's aides in the exercise, according
to the documents and interviews from that transition effort obtained by
Politico.
Those materials show that the "Trump team was told it
could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral
drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified
national response was 'paramount.'”
DURING 2017 (specific date not determined)
The Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its
annual models of the havoc that pandemics would wreak on America’s critical
infrastructure in 2017, according to current and former DHS officials with
direct knowledge of the matter.
From at least 2005 to 2017, an office inside DHS, in tandem
with analysts and supercomputers at several national laboratories, produced
detailed analyses of what would happen to everything from transportation
systems to hospitals if a pandemic hit the United States.
But the work abruptly stopped in 2017 amid a bureaucratic
dispute over its value, two of the former officials said, leaving the
department flat-footed as it seeks to stay ahead of the impact the COVID-19
outbreak is having on vast swaths of the U.S. economy. Officials at other
agencies have requested some of the reports from the pandemic modeling unit at
DHS in recent days, only to find the information they needed scattered or hard
to find quickly.
FEBRUARY 1, 2018
The Washington Post writes “CDC
to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” The meat
of the story is “Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some
of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China,
Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.”
FEBRUARY 13, 2018
The US Intelligence Community released its annual
intelligence assessment identifying coronaviruses as “having pandemic potential
if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
MAY 2018
At the urging of John Bolton, the White House dismantled the National Security Council’s global health
security office. Trump bristled when asked about his decision to
disband the office at a news conference in the Rose Garden [in March 2020].
“I just think it's a nasty question,” the president
responded. “And when you say ‘me,' I didn't do it. ... I don't know anything
about it.”
[G]lobal health experts say Bolton's decision left the Trump
administration flat-footed in confronting the virus that has caused nearly
6,400 cases of COVID-19 and killed 108 in the U.S. as of March 18.
"Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC
'streamlining' involved decapitating and diluting the White House’s focus
on pandemic threats," Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the
Center for Global Development, wrote…"He eliminated the senior director
position entirely, closed the biodefense directorate, and spread the remaining
staff across other parts of the NSC."
Closing the pandemic office "clearly reflected the
White House’s misplaced priorities and has proven to be a gross
misjudgment," Konyndyk wrote.
- At
an event marking the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, Borio
says “pandemic flu” is the “number 1 health security issue” and
that the U.S. is not ready to respond.
- One
day later her boss, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer is pushed out of the
administration and the global health security team is disbanded.
- Rep.
Ami Bera warns that “Admiral Ziemer’s departure is deeply
alarming, especially when the administration is actively working to cut funds
that addressed past pandemics like Ebola.”
- Beth
Cameron, former senior director for global health security on the
National Security Council adds: “It is unclear in his absence who at the
White House would be in charge of a pandemic,” Cameron said, calling it “a
situation that should be immediately rectified.”
- Note:
It was not.
In May 2018, Trump ordered the
NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of
Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The
month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s
DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC
nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global
health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of
its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was
reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for
International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under
fire from both the White
House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so
far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health
Service Commissioned Corps by 40
percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring
officers go unreplaced.
MAY 7, 2018
Hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, [a] daylong conference on May 7, 2018, was supposed to
mine a calamity from the past for lessons on the present and warnings for the
future. There were sessions titled “Nature Against Man” and “Innovations for
Pandemic Countermeasures.” Implicit was the understanding that while the 1918
pandemic was a singular catastrophe, conditions in the 21st century were ideal
for another outbreak.
Long before the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and
then soon spread to nearly every country on Earth, the 2018 conference offered
proof that epidemiologists at the CDC and other institutions were aware that a
new pandemic was poised to strike. They discussed troubling developments. They
pointed to obvious gaps in the nation’s defenses. They braced themselves for
what they feared was coming.
“Are we ready to respond to a pandemic?” asked Dr. Luciana Borio, who was head of the since
dissolved global health section of the National Security Council.
Dr. Borio answered her own question: “I fear the answer is
no.” She was discussing the influenza but could have just as easily been
referencing the coronavirus, given the similarities between the two infections.
AUGUST 2018
Trump is warned that his tariffs on Chinese goods will lead to a shortage in medical equipment due to most such equipment coming from China. Trump ignored the warning and imposed the tariffs, creating the exact shortage he was warned of.
Trump is warned that his tariffs on Chinese goods will lead to a shortage in medical equipment due to most such equipment coming from China. Trump ignored the warning and imposed the tariffs, creating the exact shortage he was warned of.
SEPTEMBER 2018
The Trump administration received detailed plans for a new
machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high
speed during a pandemic.
The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of
a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.
But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.
APRIL 2019
“Of course, the thing that people ask: ‘What keeps you most
up at night in the biodefense world?’ Pandemic flu, of course. I think everyone
in this room probably shares that concern,” [Health and Human Services
Secretary Alex] Azar said, before listing off efforts to mitigate the impact of
flu outbreaks. (BioDefense Summit in April 2019.)
JULY 2019
Trump eliminated a key American public health position in
Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, leaving the US
without an observer on the ground in the most likely spot in the world to spark
a global pandemic.
SEPTEMBER 2019
Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have
begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a
$200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in
China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.
The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International
Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential
to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The
initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign
laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new
coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and
organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists
and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player
in the program.
SEPTEMBER 2019 (October, maybe?)
White House economists publish a study that warned
a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the
economy. The report is ignored. [The study is located here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Mitigating-the-Impact-of-Pandemic-Influenza-through-Vaccine-Innovation.pdf
]
OCTOBER 2019
The Department of Health and Human Services conducted a
series of exercises, called Operation Crimson Contagion, about a hypothetical
virus that: emerged from China; caused a fever and
respiratory illness; was spread around the world by air
travel; and generated a global pandemic. As The New York Times reports,
operation “Crimson Contagion” was actually a series of exercises intended
to test every aspect of the government’s response to the outbreak of a novel
disease. The “not to be disclosed” report showed the results of that test
were nothing short of terrible. Without clear guidance, federal agencies
sparred over their roles in fighting the disease. Without advance planning, hospitals
and other facilities were short on materials and overrun with cases. Without
any coordination from federal offices, states and localities were left on their
own when it came to determining things like school closings and other
restrictions. The whole thing was a fair description of chaos.
[The link to the actual report is here: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6824-2019-10-key-findings-and-after/05bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
]
OCTOBER 25, 2019
The Trump Administration shuts down the Predict program:
Predict, an animal virus surveillance program run by
the United States Agency for International Development, is shutting down after
10 years of research, according to The New York Times. Launched after an H5N1 bird flu
outbreak, Predict was part of an effort to search for previously undiscovered
zoonotic diseases, which are passed from animals to humans. Viruses such as
AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola, and certain influenza strains originally came from
animals.
Researchers found more than 1,000 new viruses from animal
samples collected during the program’s run, including a new Ebola strain. In addition,
it provided disease outbreak prevention training for thousands of people and
strengthened medical laboratories in developing countries.
The program, which partnered with universities, conservation
groups, and nonprofits to track, monitor, and prevent disease, was shut down at
the end of its 10-year funding cycle. Some public health officials worry that
its end could leave the world more vulnerable to dangerous epidemics. “Predict
needed to go on for 20 years, not 10,” says Jonathan Epstein, a veterinarian
with the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, a Predict partner organization, to
the Times.
Some projects will be continued by other government
agencies, but the focus on training health workers abroad will be reduced. The
end of Predict “is really unfortunate, and the opposite of what we’d like to
see happening,” Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway and
the former World Health Organization director-general, tells the Times.
“Americans need to understand how much their health security depends on that of
other countries, often countries that have no capacity to do this themselves,”
she adds.
Biden on Twitter: "We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores."
Biden on Twitter: "We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores."
NOVEMBER 2019
Intel officials brief the White House on the existence of an
unknown pathogen in China.
U.S. intelligence agencies sends warnings of an outbreak in
China to the Israeli government.
DECEMBER 2019
--Intel officials brief the National Security Council about
the outbreak in China.
HERE IS A TIMELINE FROM NATIONAL REVIEW ON THE
EXTENT OF CHINA’S ATTEMPTS TO SPREAD MISINFORMATION OR TO CONCEAL THE SEVERITY
OF COVID-19:
JANUARY 1, 2020 (or thereabout)
The first time Dr. Robert Redfield heard about the severity
of the virus from his Chinese counterparts was around New Year’s Day, when he
was on vacation with his family. He spent so much time on the phone that they
barely saw him. And what he heard rattled him; in one grim conversation about
the virus days later, George F. Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, burst into tears.
JANUARY 2, 2020
The CDC contacts the National Security Council to warn of
the unknown pathogen.
EARLY JANUARY 2020
The National Security Council office responsible for tracking
pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread
of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like
keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago.
Trump would avoid such steps until March.
JANUARY 3, 2020
The White House got its first formal notification about coronavirus on Jan 3. Within days, US spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat by including the first of many warnings in the President’s Daily Brief.
The White House got its first formal notification about coronavirus on Jan 3. Within days, US spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat by including the first of many warnings in the President’s Daily Brief.
JANUARY 3 TO MARCH 21, 2020
The U.S. suffered from a lack of tests
JANUARY 4, 2020
The World Heallth Org. tweeted "#China has reported to WHO a cluster of #pneumonia cases —with no deaths— in Wuhan, Hubei Province Flag of China. Investigations are underway to identify the cause of this illness."
The World Heallth Org. tweeted "#China has reported to WHO a cluster of #pneumonia cases —with no deaths— in Wuhan, Hubei Province Flag of China. Investigations are underway to identify the cause of this illness."
JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2020
--U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the
novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings
prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he
continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the
President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each
day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant
global developments and security threats.
For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the
virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing
information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised
the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.
But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the
president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little
patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week,
according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
classified material.
--According to Caitlin B. Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and
Human Services China “stalled for weeks” in allowing
WHO experts to visit in January and February, “and the WHO never criticized
them for the delay and even praised China for its ‘transparency.’”
Nonetheless, more than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians
and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World
Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and
transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to
the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.
A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work
at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior
Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels
with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President
Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the
threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the
United States.
JANUARY 7, 2020
The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system
to better share and respond to information about the virus.
JANUARY 9, 2020
WHO released a "national capacities review tool"
[which] is to ... help national authorities to i) identify main gaps ii)
perform risk assessments and iii) plan for additional investigations, response
and control actions."
JANUARY 10, 2020 (or) JANUARY 11, 2020
China published coronavirus genome allowing tests to be developed. While South Korea was able to roll out widespread testing in early February 2020, Trump’s CDC would be unable to produce a reliable test until late March.
Chinese researchers made the sequence of the virus public.
China published coronavirus genome allowing tests to be developed. While South Korea was able to roll out widespread testing in early February 2020, Trump’s CDC would be unable to produce a reliable test until late March.
Chinese researchers made the sequence of the virus public.
JANUARY 11, 2020
The CDC issued a Level I travel health notice for Wuhan,
China.
JANUARY 12, 2020
WHO tweeted "Whole genome sequences for the novel
#coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from the Chinese authorities
were shared with WHO and have also been submitted by Chinese authorities to the
GISAID platform so that they can be accessed by public health authorities,
laboratories and researchers.
JANUARY 13, 2020
WHO tweeted there was a new case of the coronavirus in Thailand.
WHO tweeted there was a new case of the coronavirus in Thailand.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020
Trump’s CDC declined to copy the WHO coronavirus test and created its own faulty test, leaving the US without testing until late March and losing the chance of containment. Trump’s FDA also hampered private test development efforts.
Trump’s CDC declined to copy the WHO coronavirus test and created its own faulty test, leaving the US without testing until late March and losing the chance of containment. Trump’s FDA also hampered private test development efforts.
JANUARY 2020
Without wearing PPE, Trump’s HHS employees entered a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received at an Air Force base in California, and then moved freely on and off the base, likely sparking the spread of the virus in California.
Without wearing PPE, Trump’s HHS employees entered a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received at an Air Force base in California, and then moved freely on and off the base, likely sparking the spread of the virus in California.
JANUARY 17, 2020
Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, says that Japan and Thailand
are already using the genetic sequence to detect cases, adding: “We at the CDC
have the ability to do that today — but we are working on a more specific
diagnostic.’’
JANUARY 18, 2020
The top health official, Azar, called Trump on Jan. 18 to
warn him about coronavirus. Before he could get a word in, Trump interjected to
berate him about a fumbled vaping flavor ban. Azar asked a confidante for
advice about how to break through to Trump.
JANUARY 20, 2020
The first confirmed case of
the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
in South Korea was announced.
The first confirmed case of 2019-nCoV infection in the
United States.
WHO Tweet: It is now very clear from the latest information that there is at least some
human-to-human transmission of #nCoV2019. Infections among health care workers
strengthen the evidence for this.
https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1219478544041930752
https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1219478544041930752
JANUARY 22, 2020
Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus
in a television interview from Davos with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. The first American
case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, “Are there
worries about a pandemic at this point?”
The president responded: “No. Not at all. And we have it
totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it
under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
“We have it totally under control. It’s one person
coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” —
Trump in a CNBC
interview.
The president tells CNBC
that “we have it totally under control” and “it’s going to be just fine.”
Ron Klain, a Biden adviser who managed the 2014 Ebola response, co-writes
a piece excoriating Trump for “brashly” dismissing coronavirus as
“under control,” while calling for “expertise” to “guide critical decisions”
and noting “reasons for great concern.”
--Trump Tweet: “One of the many great things about our just
signed giant Trade Deal with China is that it will bring both the USA &
China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President
Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”
JANUARY 23, 2020
The WHO was already
warning that coronavirus could “appear in any country,” and
urged all countries to be “prepared for containment” and get
ready to exercise “isolation” and “prevention” measures against its spread.
JANUARY 24, 2020
Trump Tweet:
“China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus.
The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will
all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to
thank President Xi!”
Trump Tweet in regard to the coronavirus outbreak:
“It will all work out well.”
In the United Kingdom, it took just an hour to brush aside
the coronavirus threat. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of
Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to
the UK public was “low”.
This was despite the publication that day of
an alarming study by Chinese doctors in the medical journal, The Lancet.
It assessed the lethal potential of the virus, for the first time suggesting it
was comparable to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million
people.
Unusually, Boris Johnson had been absent from Cobra. The
committee — which includes ministers, intelligence chiefs and military generals
— gathers at moments of great peril such as terrorist attacks, natural
disasters and other threats to the nation and is normally chaired by the prime
minister.
JANUARY 26, 2020
China's health minister warned that people can spread the virus before showing
symptoms, making the virus much harder to contain. A veteran adviser for a US
health agency told CNN this bit of information was a "game changer."
JANUARY 27, 2020
--White House aides met with then-acting Chief of Staff Mick
Mulvaney to try to get senior officials to take the virus threat more
seriously, the Washington Post reports. Joe Grogan, the head of the
White House Domestic Policy Council, warned it could cost Trump his
re-election.
--Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other
Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm
about a global pandemic in an op-ed
in USA
Today. By the end of January, eight cases of the virus had been confirmed in
the United States. Hundreds more must have been incubating undetected.
--Trump Tweet: “We are in very close communication with
China concerning the virus. Very few cases reported in USA, but strongly on
watch. We have offered China and President Xi any help necessary. Our experts
are extraordinary.”
JANUARY 28, 2020
Tom Frieden, a former director at the CDC, told Bloomberg News that it was "very clear that this is a serious epidemic" noting that the virus was more contagious than SARS. "So the possibilities here go from the bad, to the very, very bad," Frieden said.
Tom Frieden, a former director at the CDC, told Bloomberg News that it was "very clear that this is a serious epidemic" noting that the virus was more contagious than SARS. "So the possibilities here go from the bad, to the very, very bad," Frieden said.
Trump retweeted a headline from One America News, an outlet
with a history of spreading false conspiracy theories: “Johnson & Johnson
to create coronavirus vaccine.”
A Veterans Affairs official worried in January that the
W.H.O. and C.D.C. were slow to address the spread of the virus.
A former Bush and Obama adviser compared the outbreak to
major disasters in world history.
Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease doctor at the
University of Nebraska who served in the White House under President George W.
Bush and as an adviser to President Barack Obama, was also a regular
participant in the email chain. He stayed in regular communication with federal
officials as the United States attempted to figure out how to respond to the
virus. From the beginning he predicted this would be a major public health
event.
Azar touts the CDC test development: “This was really a historic accomplishment. Within one week —
within one week, the CDC had invented a rapid diagnostic test.”
JANUARY 29, 2020
Despite Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a millions deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.
Despite Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a millions deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.
JANUARY 30, 2020
The first case of person-to-person transmission in the US
was reported.
The health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II,
directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on
Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in
two weeks. Azar warned Trump that the virus could become a pandemic and that
China should be criticized for its lack of transparency, per the Times. The
president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest,
responded that Mr. Azar was being alarmist. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist
and rejected the idea of criticizing China.
The World Health Organization declares an international
health emergency.
Trump, during a speech in Michigan, said: “We have it very
well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment
— five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”
“We think we
have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at
this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But
we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s
going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.” — Trump in
a speech in
Michigan.
Secretary Wilbur Ross says coronavirus will be good for American
jobs: "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North
America."
JANUARY 31, 2020
--Trump took his only early, aggressive action against the
virus on Jan. 31: He barred most foreigners who had recently visited China from
entering the United States. It was a good move.
But it was only one modest move, not the sweeping solution
that Trump portrayed it to be. It didn’t apply to Americans who had been
traveling in China, for example. And while it generated some criticism from
Democrats, it wasn’t nearly as unpopular as Trump has since suggested.
Trump banned foreign nationals who had been to China from
entering the US, but allowed US citizens to travel daily to and from China
resulting in hundreds of people entering the US from China each day with no
screening or testing.
--Trump: "Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in
from China. We have a tremendous relationship with China, which is a very
positive thing. Getting along with China, getting along with Russia"
--Joe Biden tells
reporters in Iowa that “science” must “lead the way,” adding: “We
have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus.”
--(From Foreign Policy) It is revealed that in the
spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress
to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate
$252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in
Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of
the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the
proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts
included reducing $15
billion in national health spending and cutting the global
disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the
government’s $30
million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
FEBRUARY 1, 2020
Joe Biden tweets:
“We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way
with science.”
FEBRUARY 2, 2020
Trump goes on Sean Hannity’s show and claims: “We pretty
much shut it down, coming in from China.” Trump extols our “tremendous
relationship” with China, and adds: “We did shut it down, yes.”
New York City health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, reassured commuters that “this is not something that you’re going to contract in the subway or on the bus.” The mayor reiterated the point several times in early March.
See this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html
New York City health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, reassured commuters that “this is not something that you’re going to contract in the subway or on the bus.” The mayor reiterated the point several times in early March.
See this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html
FEBRUARY 3, 2020
--An unclassified briefing document on the novel coronavirus
prepared on Feb. 3 by U.S. Army-North projected that “between 80,000 and
150,000 could die.” It framed the projection as a “Black Swan” analysis,
meaning an outlier
event of extreme consequence but often understood as an unlikely
one.
[The] Army made some of the assumptions that other agencies
were making at the time—specifically that China was vastly underreporting cases
and that the true case fatality rate of COVID-19 was much lower than statistics
at the time indicated. So the Army projection calls for a full one third of the
nation to be infected, but projects that 80 million cases will result in only
300,000 to 500,000 needed to be hospitalized, and eventually that 80,000 to
150,000 deaths. That’s a hospitalization rate well below 1% and an overall
fatality rate of about a 0.1%.
-- Beijing accuses the
United States of creating unnecessary panic over the deadly new coronavirus
strain that has killed 361 people in China and infected more than 17,000 others
around the globe. The Chinese foreign ministry said Monday that Washington has
failed to offer any meaningful assistance during the health crisis. “All it has
done could only create and spread fear, which is a bad example,” said ministry
spokeswoman Hua Chunying. The U.S. was the first nation to suggest withdrawing
some of its embassy staff from China, and the first to impose a ban on Chinese
travelers. “It is precisely developed countries like the United States with
strong epidemic prevention capabilities and facilities that have taken the lead
in imposing excessive restrictions contrary to WHO recommendations,” Hua added.
FEBRUARY 4, 2020
The CDC receives the first “emergency use authorization”
from the FDA and prepares to distribute its test more widely. The CDC will ship out about 200 test kits to labs nationwide. It
is the only test kit design available in the United States.
FEBRUARY 5, 2020
--The C.D.C. began shipping coronavirus test kits to laboratories around
the country. But the tests suffered from a technical flaw and didn’t produce
reliable results, labs discovered.
--The technical problems were understandable: Creating a new
virus test is not easy. What’s less understandable, experts say, is why the
Trump administration officials were so lax about finding a work-around, even as
other countries were creating reliable tests.
--Trump received a request from HHS Secretary Azar for $2
billion to buy respirator masks and other supplies for the national stockpile,
but Trump supplied only 25% of the requested funds.
--Trump administration officials declined an offer of early
congressional funding assistance that a group of senators made on Feb. 5 during
a meeting to discuss the coronavirus. The officials, including Health and
Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said they “didn’t need emergency funding,
that they would be able to handle it within existing appropriations.”
--Trump overrode the CDC and ordered that 14 passengers
infected with the coronavirus be flown home in a plane full of uninfected
people. washingtonpost.com/health/coronav…
--The Trump administration could have begun to use a
functioning test from the World Health Organization, but didn’t. It could have removed regulations that prevented
private hospitals and labs from quickly developing their own tests, but didn’t.
The inaction meant that the United States fell behind South Korea, Singapore
and China in fighting the virus. “We just twiddled our thumbs as the
coronavirus waltzed in,” William Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist, wrote.
Trump, for his part, spent these first weeks of February
telling Americans that the problem was going away.
FEBRUARY 6, 2020
An American citizen dies of coronavirus in China as Trump
praises Xi’s efforts.
FEBRUARY 7, 2020
FEBRUARY 7, 2020
A study was published in the medical journal JAMA, which found that found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital. The study's results indicated that the virus was very infectious. Some researchers were warning of the contagious nature of the virus earlier in February as well.
In a series of tweets on February 7, Trump again praised the
Chinese President's handling of the crisis.
"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone
with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on
leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very
well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he
will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus
hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in
China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.
We are working closely with China to help!"
"I just spoke to President Xi last night, and, you
know, we're working on the -- the problem, the virus. It's a -- it's a very
tough situation. But I think he's going to handle it. I think he's handled it
really well. We're helping wherever we can."
The Trump administration sends 18 tons of medical supplies
to China.
FEBRUARY 8, 2020
Additional CDC test kits arrive at labs in New York,
Nebraska, Colorado, Minnesota and elsewhere. By the end of the day, lab
directors share bad news: They aren’t working properly. Through the weekend,
lab directors share notes of the test and start to realize “this could be
really bad.”
FEBRUARY 10, 2020
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in
the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I
really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in
April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date
to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
“Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you
know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat
comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though.
We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” — Trump
at the White
House. (See our item “Will the New Coronavirus ‘Go Away’ in April?“)
--“Coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple
effects.”-
White House acting budget director Russell Vought
FEBRUARY 11, 2020
Biden goes
on “Morning Joe” and excoriates Trump for claiming the coronavirus
will disappear in the warm weather, crossing himself while doing so, and
adding: “You couldn’t make it up.”
FEBRUARY 12, 2020
--Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases warned that the US "should be prepared for this new virus to gain a foothold" in the country and that "at some point we are likely to see community spread in the US or other countries."
--The first public hint of trouble with the test kits
emerges when the CDC’s Messonnier mentions unspecified “issues’’ at the public
health labs. “Some of the states identified some inconclusive laboratory
results,’’ Messonnier tells reporters. “We have multiple levels of quality
control to detect issues just like this one.”
FEBRUARY 13, 2020
--On February 13, Trump was asked by Fox News' Geraldo
Rivera if he thought China was being truthful about coronavirus. The President
called China "extremely capable" and professional in handling the
outbreak.
--"Well, you never know. I think they want to put the
best face on it. So you know, I mean, if somebody -- if you were running it,
you'd probably -- you wouldn't want to run out to the world and go crazy and
start saying whatever it is because you don't want to create a panic," he
said. "But, no, I think they've handled it professionally and I think
they're extremely capable and I think President Xi is extremely capable and I
hope that it's going to be resolved."
--Azar testifies in Congress that the CDC is working
with five cities to add coronavirus testing to its regular flu surveillance to
see whether “there is broader spread than we have been able to detect so far.”
The labs are in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
However, the tests do not work.
--Susan Butler-Wu, director of medical microbiology at the Los
Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center, warns in
an email in response to an inquiry from Congress: “We’re screwed from a testing
standpoint if this thing takes off in the US."
FEBRUARY 14, 2020
“There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm — historically,
that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not
sure yet. But that’s around the corner.” — Trump in speaking to
National Border Patrol Council members.
While speaking to National Border Patrol Council
members, Trump said China was "working very hard on
this."
"It's a tremendous problem," he added. "But
they're very capable and they'll -- they'll get to it."
A memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with
the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of
"quarantine and isolation measures," per the Times. Officials planned
to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the
meeting was canceled.
FEBRUARY 17, 2020
--Experts worried that it would be hard to convince society to
order restrictions like school and business closures to slow the spread.
--Convincing governors and mayors to intentionally cause
economic harm by ordering or promoting mitigation efforts — such as closing
businesses — is always a difficult task. That is why it is so important, these
medical experts said, for the federal government to take the lead, providing
cover for the local officials to kick off the so-called Nonpharmaceutical Interventions, such as school and
business closures. Again, this group of doctors and medical experts recognized
from early on that this step was all but inevitable, even if the administration
was slow to recognize the need.
--The Diamond Princess was an early case study of how quickly
the virus could spread.
Strong evidence was emerging as of mid-February — with the
first cases of Covid-19 already in the United States — that the nation was
about to be hit hard. These doctors and medical experts researched how quickly
the virus spread on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined in
the port of Yokohama, Japan, on Feb. 3 before hundreds of United States
citizens on the ship returned home.
Dr. Eva Lee, a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology
who has frequently worked with the federal government to create infectious
disease projections, helped the Red Dawn group do modeling, based on the virus
spread on the cruise ship. (Dr. Lee is facing sentencing on federal charges that she
improperly applied for a federal grant for unrelated research.)
FEBRUARY 18, 2020
--“I don’t think corona is as big a threat as people make it
out to be,” the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas
Philipson, told reporters during a Feb. 18 briefing, on the same day that more
than a dozen American cruise ship passengers who had contracted the virus were
evacuated home. Public health threats did not typically hurt the economy, Mr.
Philipson said. He suggested the virus would not be nearly as bad as a normal
flu season.
"I think President Xi is working very hard," Trump
said. "As you know, I spoke with him recently. He's working really hard.
It's a tough problem. I think he's going to do -- look, I've seen them build
hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that
done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he's doing it very
professionally."
--Asked if he trusted the data from China, the President
declined to answer the question, instead, again, praising the Chinese
President.
"Look, I know this: President Xi loves the people of
China, he loves his country, and he's doing a very good job with a very, very
tough situation," he said.
FEBRUARY 19, 2020
--The Chinese CDC, in a study of more than 72,000 confirmed and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus, found that the virus was more contagious than the related viruses that cause SARS and MERS.
--The Chinese CDC, in a study of more than 72,000 confirmed and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus, found that the virus was more contagious than the related viruses that cause SARS and MERS.
Trump told a Phoenix television station, “I think the
numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”
FEBRUARY 21, 2020
The White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives, per the Times.
When Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official
at the Health and Human Services Department, convened the White House
coronavirus task force on Feb. 21, his agenda was urgent. There were deep
cracks in the administration’s strategy for keeping the virus out of the United
States. They were going to have to lock down the country to prevent it from
spreading. The question was: When?
THIRD WEEK OF FEBRUARY 2020
By the third week in February, the administration’s top
public health experts concluded they should recommend to Mr. Trump a new
approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging
steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House
focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their
views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread
largely unimpeded.
FEBRUARY 23, 2020
--“We have it very much under control in this country.” — Trump
in speaking
to reporters.
--The World Health Organization announced that the virus was
in 30 countries, with 78,811 confirmed cases, a more than fivefold increase
over the previous three weeks.
--Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up
to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.
--Speaking to reporters on February 23 on the White House South Lawn, Trump was
asked if Xi should be doing anything differently in his handling of the crisis.
"No, I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I
spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's
a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to
solve the problem and he will solve the problem. OK?"
--February was a tipping point for some experts.
The concern the medical experts had been raising in late
January and early February turned to alarm by the third week in February. That
was when they effectively concluded that the United States had already lost the
fight to contain the virus, and that it needed to switch to mitigation. One
critical element in that shift was the realization that many people in the
country were likely already infected and capable of spreading the virus, but
not showing any symptoms. Dr. Lee discussed this conclusion with Dr.
Robert Kadlec, the head of the virus response effort at the Department of
Health and Human Services and a key White House adviser.
FEBRUARY 24, 2020
--Trump attempted to manipulate the stock market stating that it is “starting to look very good,” despite later claiming to know at the time of his statement that the world faced a serious pandemic that would surely destroy the US economy.
--Trump attempted to manipulate the stock market stating that it is “starting to look very good,” despite later claiming to know at the time of his statement that the world faced a serious pandemic that would surely destroy the US economy.
--“The Coronavirus is
very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all
relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very
smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
--Financial markets in the United States suffered the first
of a sequence of crashes. The Dow plunged over 1,000 points.
--From The Washington Times:
Feb. 24, meanwhile, was China’s deadliest day from COVID-19;
if Beijing’s possibly suspect statistics are to be believed, 149 people died
from the coronavirus on that day. That afternoon, an Air China 777 arrived at
JFK after a 13-hour flight from Beijing. The following day, Los Angeles
International Airport welcomed flights from both Beijing and Shanghai.
That the Trump administration “banned flights,” “closed the
borders,” or “stopped flights” from first China and later the European Union to
halt the spread of COVID-19 has become a staple of its defense of its response
to the pandemic. But it simply isn’t true. At no time through the course of
this awful period have flights even once been halted between either China and
the U.S. or Europe — including even Italy — and the United States.
The Trump administration did impose travel restrictions
between China and the U.S., and later Europe and the U.S., but both actions
have loopholes large enough to fly a 777 through. In the case of China, on Jan.
31 — weeks after it was known that the coronavirus was a serious problem — the
administration restricted travel for “foreign nationals who had been in China
in the last 14 days.”
That means that Americans — just as capable as carrying and
transmitting a contagious viral infection as foreigners — had free passage
between China and the U.S. And so daily flights between China and the U.S.
continued. (And yes, even these limited restrictions were slammed as being too
punitive at the time.)
The Trump administration’s alleged Europe travel ban,
announced to much fanfare earlier this month, is similarly weak. It too exempts
Americans from any restrictions whatsoever, and the screening that returning
Americans have been subjected to at airports has been laughably weak.
Passengers have been given a form to fill out (which many travelers have
reported aren’t even being collected), waved through immigration, and then
simply urged to self-quarantine. It’s like the honor system, but for containing
a deadly pandemic.
↓
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited San Francisco’s
Chinatown on Feb. 24. To view videos of her visits two months later is almost
jarring, as she strolls arm-in-arm and walks amid a crowd. She made clear the
point of her visit was to show it was “very safe to be in Chinatown,” which had
been hit hard by a drop in tourism after reports of the virus emerging from
China.
Asked whether she had confidence in the federal
government, Pelosi did not mention Trump but said she had confidence in Anthony
S. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. “Prevention, prevention,
prevention,” she said. “We want people to be concerned and vigilant. However,
we don’t want them to be afraid.”
Other than a reference to a parade that took place two
weeks earlier, Pelosi did not propose a parade, a street fair or a party, as
Trump claimed. She never indicated she doubted the virus existed, as Trump
claimed. She promoted Chinese businesses, even tweeting a brief video of her
making fortune cookies.
Trump falsely claimed she had deleted a tweet of her
visit to Chinatown. The video in Trump’s tweet came from a news clip, and there
is no record of Pelosi deleting such a tweet.
There is also no evidence Pelosi was responsible for
“many deaths.” As of April 22, there have been a total of 21 deaths in San
Francisco County; the first death was not announced until March 25, a month after her trip to Chinatown.
Chinatown, in fact, had no covid-19 cases as of mid-April
in its 22 blocks, according to a
report published by the New York Times. “Despite being particularly
vulnerable to the novel coronavirus in the United States, Chinatown turned out
to be well-prepared, unlike other places around the country,” the article said,
citing a community plan of action that was put in place on Feb. 1, emphasizing
frequent hand-cleaning, availability of sanitizers and education on basic
hygiene principles, including frequent use of masks
Not nearly enough has been said about this case. It
happened at Vacaville, California, right next to Travis Air Force Base where
passengers from the Diamond Princess landed after being brought home.
That included 14 who had tested positive for covid-19, who were flown home by the State Dept against CDC advice. The CDC not only advised against putting them in the same plane as the uninfected evacuees -- which was done -- it advised against returning them to the US at all until they were recovered.
Coronavirus-infected Americans flown home against CDC’s advice https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-diamond-princess-cruise-americans/2020/02/20/b6f54cae-5279-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html
They were met at Travis AFB by Health Dept staff who were wearing no proper protection, and who then took commercial flights home.
U.S. workers without protective gear assisted coronavirus evacuees, HHS whistleblower says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/us-workers-without-protective-gear-assisted-coronavirus-evacuees-hhs-whistleblower-says/
Soon after, the woman in Vacaville developed symptoms. This was back when the Trump administration were trying to hide their lack of tests by refusing to test anyone without a known China connection. Only after a week did UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento finally persuade the CDC to test her, and she became the first known domestically-transmitted US case.
https://www.livescience.com/california-coronavirus-patient-not-tested-for-days.html
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-27/california-coronavirus-patient-was-not-tested-for-several-days-uc-davis-says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/coronavirus-testing-california/
Her infection came courtesy not of Nancy Pelosi, but of Mike Pompeo
That included 14 who had tested positive for covid-19, who were flown home by the State Dept against CDC advice. The CDC not only advised against putting them in the same plane as the uninfected evacuees -- which was done -- it advised against returning them to the US at all until they were recovered.
Coronavirus-infected Americans flown home against CDC’s advice https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-diamond-princess-cruise-americans/2020/02/20/b6f54cae-5279-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html
They were met at Travis AFB by Health Dept staff who were wearing no proper protection, and who then took commercial flights home.
U.S. workers without protective gear assisted coronavirus evacuees, HHS whistleblower says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/us-workers-without-protective-gear-assisted-coronavirus-evacuees-hhs-whistleblower-says/
Soon after, the woman in Vacaville developed symptoms. This was back when the Trump administration were trying to hide their lack of tests by refusing to test anyone without a known China connection. Only after a week did UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento finally persuade the CDC to test her, and she became the first known domestically-transmitted US case.
https://www.livescience.com/california-coronavirus-patient-not-tested-for-days.html
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-27/california-coronavirus-patient-was-not-tested-for-several-days-uc-davis-says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/coronavirus-testing-california/
Her infection came courtesy not of Nancy Pelosi, but of Mike Pompeo
-- “You should
seriously consider buying these [stock market] dips”
[Note: The Dow Jones ended February 24 at 27,960. It
closed March 11 at 23,553]
FEBRUARY 25, 2020
--Presidential economic advisor Larry Kudlow states that the
virus has been “contained”.
--On the same day Larry Kudlow said coronavirus was
“contained”, Trump’s campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany made an even more
bold claim. “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here...and
isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President
Obama."
--Director of the National Center for Immunization and
Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and
said "we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.”
Trump reportedly called Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people
unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet, per the Times.
--On Feb. 25, Trump said that
China was “working very, very hard” to contain coronavirus, adding that
“they’re getting it more and more under control,” which led Trump to conclude
that for the United States, coronavirus was a “problem that’s going
to go away.”
--Biden had voiced that same sentiment the day before, insisting that
he would “insist, insist, insist” that China show more transparency about what
was going on with coronavirus.
--Trump falsely claims "nobody had ever even heard of
Ebola" in 2014:
Comparing the coronavirus outbreak with the Ebola situation
of 2014, Trump said, "At that time, nobody had ever even heard of
Ebola."
FEBRUARY 26, 2020
--At the coronavirus briefing on February 26, for example, Trump said all of the
following: "This is a flu. This is like a flu"; "Now, you treat
this like a flu"; "It's a little like the regular flu that we have
flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick
manner."
“So we’re at the low
level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be
pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over
the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump at a White
House briefing.
“And again, when you
have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close
to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump at a press
conference.
“I think every aspect
of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that,
especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very
substantially down, not up.” — Trump at a press
conference, when asked if “U.S. schools should be preparing for a
coronavirus spreading.” Biden directly rebutted this line, saying: “I
would not be taking China’s word for it. I would insist that China allow our
scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it’s from,
how far along it is.”
Trump was scheduled to meet with top infectious disease
experts to discuss urgent social distancing steps. Instead, the meeting was cancelled
because Trump was mad about bad press.
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk.
He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very
hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that
spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down
over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually
gotten smaller. In one instance where we think we can be — it’s somewhat
reliable, it seems to have gotten quite a bit smaller.”—Trump
--Over nearly three weeks from Feb. 26 to March 16, the
number of confirmed
coronavirus cases in the United States grew from 15 to 4,226.
FEBRUARY 27, 2020
-- “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle —
it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting with African American leaders.
--Trump calls concerns about the coronavirus and warnings of
a pandemic to be the “new hoax” of the Democrats.
--Redfield, the CDC director, testifies to the House Foreign
Affairs subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and nonproliferation that the “CDC
believes that the immediate risk of this new virus to the American public is
low.”
On a conference call with a range of health officials, a
senior FDA official lashes out at the CDC for its repeated lapses.
Jeffrey Shuren, the FDA’s director for devices and
radiological health, tells the CDC that if it were subjected to the same
scrutiny as a privately run lab, “I would shut you down.”
Privately, the CDC concludes that a “much broader” effort to
testing is needed.
FEBRUARY 28, 2020
--Due to CDC and other agency pronouncements undermining Trump’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the virus, Trump muzzled all federal agencies by requiring Pence to approve all coronavirus communications before dissemination.
--Due to CDC and other agency pronouncements undermining Trump’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the virus, Trump muzzled all federal agencies by requiring Pence to approve all coronavirus communications before dissemination.
--On February 28, then–White House Chief of Staff Mick
Mulvaney told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, near
Washington, D.C.:
The reason you’re ... seeing so much attention to [the
virus] today is that [the media] think this is gonna be what brings down this
president. This is what this is all about. I got a note from a reporter saying,
“What are you gonna do today to calm the markets.” I’m like: Really,
what I might do today to calm the markets is tell people to turn their
televisions off for 24 hours ... This is not Ebola, okay? It’s not
SARS, it’s not MERS.
--Trump shouts at a rally in South Carolina that Democrats’
criticism of his response (which proved entirely accurate) is “their new hoax.”
At that same rally Trump said: "The Democrat policy of open borders is a direct
threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now you see it with the
coronavirus, you see it. You see it with the coronavirus."
--From Feb. 28 testimony in the House Foreign Affairs
Committee:
REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): Donald Trump's chief of staff Mick
Mulvaney told
the Conservative Political Action Conference that the coronavirus was
the hoax of the day. Do you agree with Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mulvaney,
that the coronavirus is the hoax of the day? Pompeo refuses multiple times to
answer the question.
--Dozens of clinical laboratory scientists from across the
nation write to Congress asking for permission to create new tests, saying
“this regulatory process is significantly more stringent than that required for
every other virus we test for.”
Forty-seven days after the Chinese had distributed the
virus’s genetic sequence, the CDC
abandons the test’s once-touted third component. Messonnier announces that
the component “can be excluded from testing without affecting accuracy.’’
Biden goes
on CNN and says Trump has yet to “gain control” of the coronavirus,
while calling on Trump to stop downplaying it and urging him instead to “let
the experts take this over” and “let the experts speak.”
FEBRUARY 29, 2020
--“And I’ve gotten to
know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control.
I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well.
Everything is really under control.” — Trump in a speech at
the CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.
--The first person in the United States known to have
succumbed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, dies.
-- “And I want to say that China seems to be making
tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. And if you read,
Tim Cook of Apple said that they are now in full operation again in
China. Their numbers are way down.” –Trump
LATE FEBRUARY 2020
The Trump Administration turns down an offer of tests from the World Health Organization:
Why the United States declined to use the WHO test, even
temporarily as a bridge until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
could produce its own test, remains a perplexing question and the key to the
Trump administration’s failure to provide enough tests to identify the
coronavirus infections before they could be passed on, according to POLITICO
interviews with dozens of viral-disease experts, former officials and some
officials within the administration’s health agencies.
The slowness of the testing regimen — which,
administration officials acknowledged this week, is still not producing enough
tests to meet the national demand — was the first, and most sweeping, of many
failures. So far there have been confirmed cases in at least 23 states, and at
least 15 deaths, while the stock market plunged and an otherwise healthy
economy braced for a major disruption.
MARCH 2, 2020
Dr. Kadlec and other administration officials decided the
next day to recommend to Mr. Trump that he publicly support the start of these
mitigation efforts, such as school closings. But before they could discuss it
with the president, who was returning from India, another official went public
with a warning, sending the stock market down sharply and angering Mr. Trump.
The meeting to brief him on the recommendation was canceled and it was three
weeks before Mr. Trump would reluctantly come around to the need for
mitigation.
This slow pace of action was confusing to the medical
experts on the Red Dawn email chain, who were increasingly alarmed that cities
and states that were getting hit hard by the virus needed to move faster to
take aggressive steps.
-- “I’ve
heard very quick numbers, that of months.”
[Note: Immunologist Anthony Fauci, the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly said that
a vaccine will not be available for a year or year and a half.]
MARCH 3, 2020
--“Six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, you never heard of this.” –Trump
--Oregon sent
a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking for 400,000 N95 masks.
For days, it got no response, and only by March 14 received its first shipment,
of 36,800 masks. But there was a problem. Most of the equipment they got was
well past the expiration date and so “wouldn’t be suitable for surgical
settings,” the state said.
--New York City also put in a request for more than 2 million
masks and only received 76,000; all were expired, said Deanne Criswell, New
York City’s emergency management commissioner.
MARCH 4, 2020
“[W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump at a White House meeting with airline CEOs.
“[W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump at a White House meeting with airline CEOs.
“Well, I think the
3.4% is really a false number.” — Trump in an interview on Fox News, referring
to the percentage of diagnosed COVID-19 patients worldwide who had died, as
reported by the World Health Organization. (See our item “Trump and the Coronavirus Death Rate.”)
Trump’s HHS admitted the US only had 1% of face masks needed
for “full-blown” coronavirus pandemic.
(From CNN): Trump falsely claims Obama impeded testing
Trump claimed he had reversed a decision by President Barack
Obama's administration that had impeded testing for the coronavirus, saying that "the Obama administration made a
decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing.
And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in
a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed
with." He said on March 5: "They made some decisions which
were not good decisions...We undid some of the regulations that were made that
made it very difficult, but I'm not blaming anybody."
There is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus
testing. The Obama administration did put forward a draft proposal
related to lab testing, but it was never implemented.
--Trump falsely claims the Obama administration "didn't
do anything" about H1N1
Trump said of H1N1, also known as swine flu: "And they
didn't do anything about it."
The Obama administration did respond to H1N1. On April 26,
2009, less than two weeks after the first US cases of H1N1 were confirmed, the
Obama administration declared a public health emergency. Two days later, the
Obama administration made an initial $1.5 billion funding request to Congress.
(Congress ultimately allocated $7.7 billion). In October 2009, Obama declared a
national emergency to allow hospitals more flexibility for a possible flood of
H1N1 patients.
The Obama administration did face criticism over the pace of
the government's vaccination effort, but "they didn't do anything" is
clearly false.
-- Trump’s
HHS admitted the US only had 1% of face masks needed for “full-blown”
coronavirus pandemic.
MARCH 6, 2020
--Presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway asserts that
the virus has been contained.
--“We closed it down, we stopped it.” –Trump
--Trump on March 6, explaining he'd rather have sick
passengers stay offshore on a cruise ship: "I like the numbers being where
they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that
wasn’t our fault."
--Trump incorrectly stated: “Anybody that needs a test, gets
a test." In fact, the nation is desperate for more testing, leading some states to conserve testing for only health-care workers.
--“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised
that I understand it. . . . Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know
so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done
that instead of running for president.”
-- “I didn’t know people died from the flu.”
--“We stopped it, it was a very early shut down, I would
still argue to you that this thing is contained.”
MARCH 7, 2020
“No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job
with it.” — Trump,
when asked by reporters if he was concerned about the arrival of the
coronavirus in the Washington, D.C., area.
MARCH 7-8, 2020
Trump took a golf trip to Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago, knowing that coronavirus was continuing to spread unchecked in the United States.
Trump took a golf trip to Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago, knowing that coronavirus was continuing to spread unchecked in the United States.
MARCH 8, 2020
--“They’re trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel
the meetings, close the schools — you know, destroy the country. And that’s ok,
as long as we can win the election.” –Trump
--In states with major outbreak like Washington and New
York, local hospitals have reported a shortage of test kits to identify cases.
As of March 8, the CDC had only conducted around 1,700 tests, compared
to nearly 200,000 in South Korea.
--Only 1,707 Americans have been tested by the CDC. This
figure does not include other sources of testing. The overall rate of testing
is about 18 per million.
MARCH 9, 2020
[Trump] tweeted: "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the
common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut
down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed
cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths," "Think about that!" CNN's
tally on March 9 was 565 confirmed cases.
MARCH 10, 2020
“And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it.
And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” — Trump after
meeting with Republican senators.
--In early March, when Washington state requested 233,000
N95 respirators and 200,000 surgical masks, the Strategic National
Stockpile sent
them less than half that amount. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maine also
said they received fractions of what they requested from the federal
government.
But on March 10, after Washington’s request, Florida asked
for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, and other equipment. The
full order arrived three days later. One anonymous official told
the Washington Post, “The president knows Florida is so important for his
reelection … He pays close attention to what Florida wants.”
MARCH 11, 2020
A former high-ranking Trump official weighed in with criticisms:
When Trump gave a speech to the nation on March 11 in which
he announced limits on flights from Europe to the United States — but still no
move to curb gatherings in cities where the virus had spread — the experts on
the email chain grew angry and fearful. Among those questioning Mr. Trump’s
decision was Tom Bossert, who had previously served as Mr. Trump’s homeland
security adviser:
--“If we get rid of the coronavirus problem quickly, we
won’t need [economic] stimulus.”
--Biden gives
a speech stressing the importance of presidential truth-telling amid
crises, noting that Trump’s ongoing falsifications risk leaving Americans
without reliable guidance, compounding “public fears.”
MARCH 12, 2020
--President Donald Trump’s new European travel restrictions have a convenient
side effect: They exempt nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are
located.
The United Kingdom, which is home to Trump Turnberry and
Trump International Golf Links, and Ireland, which is home to another
Trump-branded hotel and golf course at Doonbeg, do not participate in the
Schengen Area. Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are also not part of the Schengen
Area. All three of the resorts are struggling financially.
--Broadway
closes and the NCAA
cancels March Madness. The US has
more than 1,600 confirmed coronavirus cases, across almost every state.
--“We have ’em very heavily tested. If an American’s coming
back, or anybody’s coming back, we’re testing. We have a tremendous testing
setup where people coming in have to be tested. And if they are positive, and
if they’re able to get through—because, frankly, if they’re not, we’re not
putting them on planes, if it shows positive…”
[Note. This is not true.]
-- According
to a survey of epidemiologists the coronavirus outbreak probably won’t peak
before May, meaning it will be getting worse and worse and worse over the next
two months, and for much of that time, presumably, exponentially worse.
--New York City’s live theater industry shutdown for at
least a month on Thursday, March 12, a day before the ban on gatherings of 500
or more people was set to go into effect. But that morning, New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio was still holding
out hope that a different decision could be reached.
"I don’t want to see Broadway go dark, if we can avoid
it,” he told CNN that morning. “I want to see if we can strike some kind of
balance.”
--
A spokesman for the Chinese government on promotes a conspiracy theory
that the coronavirus was brought to the city of Wuhan by the U.S. military.
"It might be US Army who brought the epidemic to
Wuhan," said Zhao Lijian, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Business
Insider reported.
The comment, an alternate explanation Beijing is
pushing amid global criticism of the country's failure to mitigate the
virus, comes as the Chinese government has increasingly disputed widespread
international reporting that the virus was first detected in Wuhan.
MARCH 13, 2020
It took Trump until March 13 for Trump to declare the pandemic a national emergency, 19 days after the financial markets began their retreat.
It took Trump until March 13 for Trump to declare the pandemic a national emergency, 19 days after the financial markets began their retreat.
Asked about the administration’s epic failure to ramp up
testing, Trump declares:
“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
--By Friday, March 13, at
least five other states less affected by coronavirus than New York had
already shut down their schools in order to slow the spread of the COVID-19, as
well as Los Angeles and San Diego, two of the largest school districts in the
country. But Mayor Bill de Blasio wasn’t ready to make changes yet, even though
about one-third of New York City public school students were
absent that day. Two days later, on Sunday the 15th, after Cuomo announced
city schools would be closed starting the next day, de Blasio confirmed the
news.
MARCH 15, 2020
Biden responds to that Trump quote (about responsibility) by
reiterating his call for
widespread free testing, and by declaring:
“It is the job of the president to take responsibility — and his response is
unacceptable.”
MARCH 16, 2020
New York City mayor Bill De Blasio moved so slowly in
responding to coronavirus, against
the guidance of his top health officials, that some of them
threatened to resign, according to reports on March 16 from The New York
Times and the Daily News. De Blasio denied that anybody said they would resign,
but seemed to admit to tensions, saying “people have had serious
conversations,” but sources told the Daily News there major disagreements over
the mayor’s “slow pace to adapt to information about how quickly (the disease)
was advancing.”
MARCH 17, 2020
Trump proclaims:
“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
The U.S. death toll from coronavirus reaches 100.
MARCH 18, 2020
Trump finally signed executive order on the Defense Production Act to address massive shortages in PPE and ventilators across the US. Trump would spend the next 9 days saying he wouldn’t invoke the DPA and would only use it as “leverage.”
Trump finally signed executive order on the Defense Production Act to address massive shortages in PPE and ventilators across the US. Trump would spend the next 9 days saying he wouldn’t invoke the DPA and would only use it as “leverage.”
-- Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner has
created his own coronavirus team to work alongside the official coronavirus
task force, The Washington Post reports. The team reportedly
consists of Kushner’s government allies and individuals from private industry
who are focused on setting up drive-through testing sites and delivery of
health care supplies. However, Kushner’s team has reportedly sowed confusion
within the Trump administration—with some calling it a “shadow task force” that
makes requests outside of the regular coronavirus response efforts. “We don’t
know who these people are,” one official told the Post. “Who is
this? We’re all getting these emails.”
MARCH 19, 2020
Californians ordered to stay at home to curtail the
spread of the virus.
MARCH 20, 2020
--New York City has 5,600 confirmed cases. New
York issues a stay at home order, beginning a war of words between Trump
and a number of governors.
--Trump promoted unproven drug treatments as if they were
miracle cures.
MARCH 21, 2020
--The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its
first large-scale order for N95 masks. Only then did the White House begin
marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest.
--Despite having known about the pandemic for months and
having already sent 17.8 tons of strategic pandemic reserves to China, Trump
launches an orchestrated campaign to accuse China of covering up the global
pandemic.
MARCH 22, 2020
The White House promises there will be 27,000,000 testing
kits by March 31. In mid-April there were still only 4,000,000.
MARCH 24-25, 2020
Trump floated the idea of terminating all social distancing and allowing the coronavirus to ravage the country.
Trump floated the idea of terminating all social distancing and allowing the coronavirus to ravage the country.
MARCH 24, 2020
--Fox News asks Trump when he knew he had to
"move" on coronavirus. Trump says that he first heard about what was
happening in China in the media—not via any of the means the most powerful man
in the world has at his disposal to hear about major national security threats.
In fact China informed the World Health Organization
about coronavirus in 2019. DHHS and the NSA knew by January 3 at the latest.
DHHS briefed Trump by January 18 at the latest. It's likely that Trump was
first told in late December—over a month before he did anything.
--Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from
states that were critical of his handling of the pandemic.
MARCH 25,
2020
“The LameStream
Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as
long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election
success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger
than ever before!” --Trump
MARCH 26, 2020
--The U.S. officially has more cases than any other nation.
--1,000 U.S. dead
Trump Claimed U.S. States Don't Need the Amount of
Ventilators They're Asking for: “I Don't Believe You Need 40,000 or 30,000”
--(From Science) When Donald Trump recently touted
the common malaria treatments hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential
remedies for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), he ignited unprecedented
demand for the drugs—and set scientists’ teeth on edge. Although the World
Health Organization (WHO) agrees the compounds are worth testing more fully on
the pandemic coronavirus, few drug or infectious disease experts—not even the
president’s own advisers—share his optimism that the drugs could become “one of
the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” as he tweeted. And many
are critical of the small French clinical study of just 42 patients that seems
to have touched off most of the excitement.
MARCH 28, 2020
2,000 U.S. dead
--Trump’s refusal to implement the Defense Production Act
and coordinate procurement of medical equipment for states forced them to bid
against each other, creating delays and price gouging that hampered attempts to
contain and combat the virus.
MARCH 28, 2020
--Trump sent California 170 broken ventilators.
--Trump sent California 170 broken ventilators.
--Trump said he had a slush fund of $500 billion that he can
dole out to himself and to corporations, and that he can simply ignore the
limits placed by Congress on how he can spend the money.
--Trump calls former baseball player Alex Rodriguez seeking
advice on coronavirus response.
--(From Politico): A review of the CARES Act suggests
Democrats did manage to influence its direction, shifting some of its aid to
individuals toward lower-income families, while imposing some conditions on its
aid to businesses—changes that Trump is already taking credit for. They also
inserted some oversight provisions that Trump has already vowed to ignore.
But Republicans won some huge concessions from Democrats,
most notably a $500 billion bailout fund for big businesses and a $170 billion
tax break for real estate investors like the president.
MARCH 29, 2020
Donald
Trump has suggested hospital workers in New York of stealing and
possibly selling face masks “out the back door” during an astounding press
conference on Sunday evening.
Standing in the White House’s Rose Garden the president
asked reporters to look into the supposed illegal activity but provided no
evidence to back up his claims aside from increased demand for supplies from
hospitals swamped by the coronavirus pandemic.
“For years [suppliers] have been delivering ten to twenty
thousand masks. OK, it’s a New York hospital and it’s packed all the time but
how do you go from ten to twenty thousand to 300,000?”
“Something’s going on and you ought to look into it as
reporters.
“Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back
door? And we have that in a lot of different places so somebody should probably
look into that because I just don’t see from a practical standpoint how that’s
possible.”
-- In a White House briefing in the Rose
Garden, Trump referenced new data from his task force and said that between
100,000 and 200,000 deaths would represent a victory over the coronavirus.
--Medical supply manufacturers say they cannot figure out
how to prioritize the supply of medical equipment among the states. Trump
steadfastly refuses to intervene and nationalize the medical supply chain,
leading to inefficiency and shortages.
MARCH 30, 2020
--Trump went on Fox & Friends, to defend his
handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Here is a thing he said:
"Nobody could have predicted something like this . . ."
"Nobody could have predicted something like this . . ."
“A month ago, nobody ever heard of this. Nobody had any
idea.”
--Trump suggests that 100,000 dead in the U.S. would be an
indication of “a very good job”.
--On two occasions during Sunday's coronavirus briefing,
Trump falsely denied he had said words he had said publicly last week.
When PBS's Yamiche Alcindor noted that the President had
said he did not believe that governors actually need all the equipment they
claimed they did, Trump said, "I didn't say that" — even though he
said precisely that on Fox News on Thursday.
Later, when CNN White House Correspondent Jeremy Diamond
noted that Trump had said he wanted governors to be "appreciative" of
him, and that "if they don't treat you right, I don't call," Trump
said, "But I didn't say that" — even though he said precisely that at
the Friday briefing.
Trump falsely denied that he claimed governors from certain
states are asking for equipment they don't need. At Sunday's briefing,
Alcindor, Newshour's White House Correspondent, asked the President whether he
felt his comments and belief "that some of the equipment that governors
are requesting they don't actually need" would have an impact on the
federal distribution of ventilators and other medical resources. As Alcindor
attempted to finish her question, the President interjected, "I didn't say
that," before going on to say it wouldn't have an impact.
--Several rural-state governors alerted President Trump on
Monday that they are struggling to obtain urgently needed medical supplies and
testing equipment, warning that despite the worsening coronavirus situation in New York and other
urban areas, more sparsely populated parts of the country need help, too.
In response to requests for more testing kits, Mr. Trump
said, "I haven't heard about testing in weeks," according to an audio
recording of the call between the president and governors obtained by CBS
News.
During the call, which lasted a little over an hour,
Democratic and Republican governors detailed how they are struggling to obtain
the protective equipment doctors and nurses will need to treat the sick and the
test kits needed to determine whether sick residents are suffering from
COVID-19.
MARCH 31, 2020
--Almost 80% of Americans on some form of lockdown.
--FEMA announced it “has not actively encouraged or discouraged U.S. companies from exporting [PPE] overseas,” with 280M masks purchased by foreign buyers from US companies in a single day on March 30, despite desperate shortages in the US.
--Trump’s US Agency for International Development is
finally stopped from providing PPE to foreign countries after Trump’s
coronavirus task force realizes it will look bad when the public finds out what
it has been doing.
MARCH 30-APRIL 6, 2020
(From CNN): President Donald Trump has falsely
claimed four times since last week that he inherited a faulty coronavirus test
-- which was, in reality, developed this year.
In March, Trump initially made a debatable claim that he
had inherited a flawed testing "system." By the final days of March
and the first days of April, however, he was making a demonstrably inaccurate
claim about inheriting the actual tests.
·
"We inherited a broken test -- the whole
thing was broken," Trump said on the Fox News morning show "Fox and
Friends" on March 30.
·
"And remember this: We inherited -- the
word is we inherited bad tests. We really inherited bad tests. These are
horrible tests. And it was broken. It was all broken. And we fixed it,"
Trump said at the White House briefing on April 1.
·
"The original test -- the ones we
inherited, Jim, as an example, they were -- they were broken. They were
obsolete. They were not good tests. And that's what we got stuck with,"
he said at the April 3 briefing.
·
"Initially speaking, the tests were old,
obsolete, and not really prepared," he said at the April 6 briefing.
·
Trump's clear suggestion was that the flawed test had
been left to him by President Barack Obama's administration.
The faulty initial test for the coronavirus was
created during Trump's administration, in early 2020, by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. Since this is a new virus that was first
identified this year, the tests couldn't possibly be "old" or
"obsolete."
"He is lying. He is lying 100%. He is lying because
he is trying to shift blame to others, even if the attempt is totally
nonsensical," said Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor in the
Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public
Health.
The claim "doesn't make sense because it is
false," said Tara Smith, an epidemiology professor at Kent State
University. "This a new virus."
Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called the claim "absurd"
given that "this virus did not exist in the prior administration."
Mina added: "The technology used to test for this
virus is technology that is routinely used in clinical microbiology
laboratories. It is not faulty."
MARCH 2020, Undetermined Date
During one task force meeting in the Situation Room last
month, Trump turned to Fauci and challenged him.
It was the day the administration was adding Ireland and the
United Kingdom to its travel restrictions, and Trump wanted to understand why
talk of “herd immunity” — allowing the coronavirus to sweep a nation largely
unchecked, with the belief that those who survived would then be immune — was
such a bad idea.
“Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” Trump asked,
according to two people familiar with his comments, a question other
administration officials say he has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.
Fauci initially seemed confused by the term “wash over” but
became alarmed once he understood what Trump was asking.
“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci said.
The president said he understood but since then has
repeatedly made clear he wants to reopen things soon — although significant
roadblocks remain.
APRIL 1, 2020
--After Trump depleted our strategic stockpile of PPE by donating tons of it to China and other countries around the world, Trump announces he had a call with Putin where he agreed to *purchase* PPE from Russia.
--After Trump depleted our strategic stockpile of PPE by donating tons of it to China and other countries around the world, Trump announces he had a call with Putin where he agreed to *purchase* PPE from Russia.
--Trump Administration admits that the national stockpile
of PPE is almost completely empty.
washingtonpost.com/national/coron…
washingtonpost.com/national/coron…
--Thousands of ventilators in the US stockpile found to
be broken after Trump Administration allowed the maintenance contract for the
ventilators to expire in 2019.
--(From Bloomberg) China has concealed the extent of the
coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and
deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community
concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S.
officials.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report
is secret, and they declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said,
is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally
incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers
are fake.
The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019,
but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths,
according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the
U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.
APRIL 2, 2020
--FEMA tells House Oversight only 9,500 ventilators are in
national stockpile, with only 3,200 more to come in next 2 weeks. The 100,000
ventilators Trump promised will not be available until June, at earliest, after
need greatly diminishes.
--Trump Administration admits that strategic PPE reserves
are *NOT* being sent to states or to hospitals that need them, but instead are
being sent to private companies for sale to the highest bidder.
-- Jared Kushner, senior
adviser to the president, prompted controversy when he made a rare public
appearance at the April 2 coronavirus task force briefing and commented on the
federal stockpile. When asked about states’ needs for supplies, Kushner said
the stockpile was “supposed to be our stockpile.” The president’s son-in-law
added, “It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”
--Trump issues another memo purporting to invoke the Defense
Production Act, but again fails to issue any orders directing any private
entities to do anything. The DPA is still not being used to order the
production of ventilators or PPE.
APRIL 3, 2020
--The CDC recommends all Americans wear face coverings in public
– after weeks
of suggesting otherwise. New York’s mayor warns that D-Day is looming as
hospitals struggle to find personal protective equipment, ventilators, beds and
staff.
--After Jared Kushner announces that the Strategic National
Stockpile is “for us” and not for the states in contradiction of the HHS
website, the Trump Administration modifies the HHS website to align it with
Kushner’s disinformation.
APRIL 4, 2020
--Since Chinese officials disclosed the
outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health
officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United
States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months
after Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of
data collected in both countries.
The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple
nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Thousands of them flew directly
from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health
officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States.
Flights continued this past week, the data show, with
passengers traveling from Beijing to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New
York, under rules that exempt Americans and some others from
the clampdown that took effect on Feb. 2. In all, 279 flights from China have
arrived in the United States since then, and screening procedures have been
uneven, interviews show.
-- Trump stands
at the White House podium and escalates his marketing blitz on behalf of
hydroxychloroquine, hyping the old malaria drug’s alleged promise in treating
COVID-19, as well as his administration’s success in acquiring huge amounts of
it.
APRIL 5, 2020
“A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated
Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk
orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment
needed by front-line health care workers”
APRIL 7, 2020
It is revealed that Trump has discussed the views of Mehmet
Oz favorably, in particular Oz’s advocacy of anti-Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
APRIL 11, 2020
Number of coronavirus deaths in South Korea: 211
Number of Coronavirus deaths in America: 20,294
Both countries had their first confirmed cases on January
20.
APRIL 13, 2020
Trump claims total authority over the states, saying:
“The president
of the United States calls the shots.” He is challenged by
governors, who say he does not have the constitutional right to reopen the
country without their involvement.
APRIL 16, 2020
Trump says he's angry he wasn't told there was an epidemic:
"And I was angry, because this should have been told to us. It should have
been told to us early. It should have been told to us a lot sooner. People knew
it was happening and people didn't want to talk about it." (See entry for
March 17, 2020.)
APRIL 17, 2020
Two days after thousands of protesters
in Michigan gathered to decry their state’s stay-at-home order, Trump
tweets to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA”, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA”.
Protesters in
other states follow suit.
APRIL 23, 2020
After a Homeland Security official presented widely disputed
findings on Thursday that sunlight, heat, and humidity can weaken the virus,
Trump turned
to the official and said: “So supposing we hit the body with a
tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think
you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it? And then I said
supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do, either
through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re gonna test
that too?” At another point in the briefing, he turned to the official: “I see
the disinfectant where it knocks [the virus] out [from a surface] in a minute,
one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that [by] injection
inside or almost a cleaning?”
Trump will later claim he was being sarcastic.
APRIL 25, 2020
↓
For weeks, nurses and other employees at Veterans Affairs
hospitals have said they were working with inadequate protective gear. VA
officials denied it.
But in an interview, the physician in charge of the country’s
largest health-care system acknowledged the shortage — and said masks and other
supplies are being diverted for the national stockpile.
“I had 5 million masks incoming that disappeared,”
said Richard Stone, executive in charge of the sprawling Veterans Health
Administration. He acknowledged that he’s been forced to move to “austerity
levels” at some hospitals.
Stone said the Federal Emergency Management Agency
directed vendors with equipment on order from VA to instead send it to FEMA to
replenish the government’s rapidly depleting emergency stockpile
APRIL 28, 2020
The number of U.S. coronavirus deaths reaches 58,000. This
toll was inflicted over about 8 weeks’ time. It is equal to the death toll the
U.S. suffered in Vietnam over a period of 12 years.
