How did we get to this point in America with so many
coronavirus cases and deaths? (China’s
response to this crisis had its own problems, but that’s for another time.) Well, let’s take a look at the chronology of the
Trump administration’s actions:
Note: The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health
institute of the United States. It is a
United States federal agency under the department of Health and Human Services. Every year the Trump administration has
requested a cut in the CDC’s budget, only Congress has prevented that from
happening. (The Trump administration can
truthfully say they never cut the CDC’s budget, they didn’t, they just tried
repeatedly.)
2005, President George
Bush: “If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.” “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."
2016: The National
Security Council created a color-coded 69-page instruction manual, known as the
“pandemic playbook” for fighting pandemics.
January 2017:
The Trump administration is briefed on the “pandemic playbook” by the outgoing
administration. Trump’s homeland
security adviser, Tom Bossert, “expressed enthusiasm about its potential as
part of the administration’s broader strategy to fight pandemics”.
Trump shut down the
entire global-health-security division of the National Security Council, eliminated the US government's $30 million Complex Crises Fund, and reduced
national health spending by $15 billion.
April 10, 2018: John Bolton, Trump's
national security adviser at the time, ousts Bossert and disbands the NSC's pandemic response directorate,
where the “pandemic playbook” resided.
May 2018.
§ At an event marking
the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, Dr. Luciana Borio (Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the
National Security Council ) 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, who would have overseen
the US's response to a pandemic, 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.”
§ Page 17: “The
increase in frequency and diversity of reported disease outbreaks—such as
dengue and Zika—probably will continue through 2018, including the potential
for a severe global health emergency that could lead to major economic and
societal disruptions, strain governmental and international resources, and
increase calls on the United States for support. A novel strain of a virulent
microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major
threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to
acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
§ Page 21: “We assess
that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu
pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to
massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy,
strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for
support.”
Crimson Contagion was a simulation administered by the Department of Health and Human
Services from January to August 2019 that tested the
capacity of the U.S. federal government and twelve U.S. states to respond to a
severe influenza pandemic originating in China. The exercise involves a scenario in which tourists
returning from China spread a respiratory virus in the United States, beginning
in Chicago. In less than two months the virus had infected 110 million
Americans, killing more than half a million. The report issued at the
conclusion of the exercise outlines the government's limited capacity to
respond to a pandemic, with federal agencies lacking the funds, coordination,
and resources to facilitate an effective response to the virus.
April 17, 2019:
Biodefense summit, Health and Human Services
Secretary Alex Azar and Tim Morrison, then a special assistant to the President
and senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefense on the
National Security Council “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,” Azar said, before listing
off efforts to mitigate the impact of flu outbreaks.
July 2019:
Dr. Linda Quick, American field epidemiologist embedded in China’s “CDC” is
relieved of her duties.
September, 2019: The Trump
administration decided to end a $200m early
warning program designed to alert it to potential pandemics just three months
before it is believed Covid-19 began infecting people in China.
The
project, called Predict, had been run by the US Agency for International
Development since 2009. It had identified more than 160 different coronaviruses
that had the potential to develop into pandemics, including a virus that is
considered the closest known relative to Covid-19.
A
decision to wind down the program was made just three months before the first
reports of people becoming infected with Covid-19 in Wuhan, China. The end of
the program saw the departure of dozens of scientists and analysts working to
identify potential pandemics in countries around the world, including China.
November, 2019: Per ABC News, The US military's National Center for Medical
Intelligence (NCMI) compiled an intelligence report in which "analysts concluded
it could be a cataclysmic event”. The
intelligence report was then briefed "multiple times" to the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff and the White House.
December, 2019: Repeated briefings were held through December across the
US government, including the National Security Council, culminating in a
detailed outline of the threat in the President's Daily Brief in early January,
according to ABC News, whose report cited four sources briefed on the matter.
December
31, 2019: China
alerts the World Health Organization to several cases of an unusual type of
pneumonia in Wuhan. The Taiwan
Centers for Disease Control sends an email regarding rumors of at least
“seven cases of atypical pneumonia.”
January 3, 2020: The CDC is first
alerted to a public health event in Wuhan, China (This fact was
revealed publicly later by HHS Secretary Alex Azar.)
Trump
attends a campaign rally in Miami, Fl.
January 5, 2020 WHO news release: “On 31 December 2019, the WHO China
Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown
cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. … Based on the
preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of
significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections
have been reported.”
January 6, 2020: The CDC issues a travel notice for Wuhan due to
the spreading coronavirus.
§ Note: The Trump campaign
claims that this marks the beginning of the federal government disease control
experts becoming aware of the virus. It was 10 weeks from this point until the
week of March 16 when Trump began to change his tone on the threat.
January 9, 2020 WHO statement: “Chinese
authorities have made a preliminary determination of a novel (or new)
coronavirus, identified in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan. …
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses with some causing less-severe
disease, such as the common cold, and others more severe disease such as MERS
and SARS. Some transmit easily from person to person, while others do not.
According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe
illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people. … More
comprehensive information is required to understand the current status and
epidemiology of the outbreak, and the clinical picture.”
Trump
attends a campaign rally in Toledo, OH.
January 10, 2020: Former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert warns that we shouldn’t “jerk around
with ego politics” because “we face a global health threat…Coordinate!”
January 12, 2020 WHO news
release: “The evidence is
highly suggestive that the outbreak is associated with exposures in one seafood
market in Wuhan. The market was closed on 1 January 2020. At this stage, there
is no infection among healthcare workers, and no clear evidence of human to
human transmission.”
China
shares the genetic sequence of the coronavirus.
January 13, 2020: Thailand
announces it has the first imported case of the coronavirus. The individual,
who lived in Wuhan, had arrived from China on Jan. 8.
WHO
news release: “The way these patients became
infected is not yet known. To date, there has been no suggestion of human to
human transmission of this new coronavirus. There have been no infections
reported among health care workers, which can be an early indicator of person
to person spread.”
January 14, 2020: WHO news
release: “Based on the
available information there is no clear evidence of human-to-human
transmission. No additional cases have been detected since 3 January 2020 in
China.”
WHO tweet: “Preliminary investigations
conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of
human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in
#Wuhan, #China.”
WHO news briefing: “From the
information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human
transmission, potentially among families, but it is very clear right now that
we have no sustained human-to-human transmission,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of
the WHO’s emerging diseases unit. “It is still early days, we don’t have a
clear clinical picture.”
Trump
attends a campaign rally in Milwaukee, WI.
January 18, 2020: After two weeks of attempts, HHS Secretary Alex
Azar finally gets the chance to speak to Trump about the virus. The president
redirects the conversation to vaping, according to the Washington Post.
January 19, 2020: WHO tweet “An animal
source seems the most likely primary source of this novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
outbreak, with some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close
contacts.”
January 20, 2020: First U.S. case is reported in Washington state, a healthy
35-year-old nonsmoker who had just returned from Wuhan, China.
President Xi of China warns the public about the new virus. In that 6 day lag the city of Wuhan hosted a
mass banquet for tens of thousands of people and millions began traveling for
Lunar New Year celebrations.
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.” At the time, there
were only 222 confirmed cases in the world, including four deaths.
WHO scientists arrive in Wuhan China.
January 21, 2020: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says “… obviously you need to take it seriously. And
do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are
doing, but this is not a major threat for the people of the United States and
this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should
be worried about.”
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory
Disease at the CDC, tells reporters, “We do expect additional cases in the
United States.”
First case is identified
in the US.
January 22, 2020: WHO news
release “Data collected
through detailed epidemiological investigation and through the deployment of
the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking
place in Wuhan. More analysis of the epidemiological data is needed to
understand the full extent of human-to-human transmission.”
Trump: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be fine.
January 23, 2020:
The WHO warns of a 4 percent death rate, human-to-human transmission and
potential exporting of the virus to “any country”.
A Chicago area woman returns from Wuhan, China. One week later her husband is infected
becoming the first known case of person-to-person transmission in the US.
January 24, 2020:
Trump praises China and President Xi Jinping for the country’s “efforts and
transparency” in dealing with the Coronavirus.
“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!”
CBS announces the second confirmed case of coronavirus
in the US is a woman in the Chicago area.
The
business of the Senate included an all-senators briefing on coronavirus with
Trump health officials, including the CDC director and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Three
Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and James Inhofe
(R-OK) dump millions’ worth of stocks, collectively.
January 27, 2020: Top White House aides meet with Chief of Staff
Mick Mulvaney to encourage greater focus on the threat from the virus. Joe Grogan, head of the White House Domestic
Policy Council warns that “dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life
in the United States for many months.”
Trump is dismissive “because he did not believe that the virus had
spread widely throughout the United States”.
January 28, 2020: Two former Trump administration officials - Gottlieb
(former head of Trump’s FDA) and Borio - publish
an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring the president to “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They advocate a
4-point plan to address the coming crisis:
§ (1) Expand testing to
identify and isolate cases.
§ Note: This did not happen
for many weeks. The first time more than 2,000 tests
were deployed in a single day was not until almost six weeks later, on March
11.
§ (2) Boost flu
vaccination efforts to reduce the load on hospitals.
§ (3) Prepare hospital
units for isolation with more gowns and masks.
- Note: In
a normal year, the U.S. health care system uses about 25 million medical
N95s, according to Premier Inc., an organization that helps hospitals
purchase supplies. Many of the masks are disposable and meant to be used
once. HHS has
estimated that the United States could need as many as 3.5 billion N95
masks during a pandemic.
§ (4) Vaccine
development.
January 28, 2020: Trump attends a campaign rally in Wildwood, NJ.
“Any way you cut it,
this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of
Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote in an email to a group of public
health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected
size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”
January 29, 2020: The New York Times reports that “mask hoarders” may cause further shortages
when the outbreak reaches America.
In a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser: “The lack
of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans
defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil. This
lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a
full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
January 30, 2020: Dr. James Hamblin publishes another warning
about critical PPE materials in the Atlantic, titled “We Don’t Have Enough Masks.” At the time, it was clear that mask shortages
would be a serious problem. Other countries coping with COVID-19 were already
running short on masks and ordering them from America and, in addition, almost
the entire CDC stockpile had been consumed during the 2009 flu season.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a global
health emergency.
Trump
attends a campaign rally in Des Moines, IA.
Trump: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country
at the 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 good ending for us…that I
can assure you.”
January 31, 2020: Trump imposes travel restrictions on China.
§ Trump’s Chinese
travel restrictions only banned “foreign nationals who had been in China in the
last 14 days.” This wording did not - at all - stop people from arriving in
America from China. In fact, for much of the crisis, flights from China landed in America almost daily filled with people
who had been in China, but did not fit the category as Trump’s “travel ban”
defined it.
Foreign
Policy reports that face masks and latex gloves are sold out on Amazon and
at leading stores in New York City and suggests the surge in masks being sold
to other country’s needs “refereeing” in the face of the coming crisis.
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of
Commerce: “I think it (coronavirus) will help to accelerate the return of jobs
to North America.”
By the end of January and
beginning of February a majority of the intelligence in Trump’s daily briefings
was about the coronavirus.
In January and February
U.S. manufacturers sent millions of dollars of face masks and other protective medical equipment to China with encouragement
from the federal government.
February 2, 2020 Trump:
“We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.”
February 3, 2020:
An unclassified Army briefing on the coronavirus projected that “between 80,000
and 150,000 could die” in an extreme ‘Black Swan’ analysis. (A ‘Black Swan’ event is an outlier event of
extreme consequence but often understood as an unlikely one.)
February 4, 2020: On February
4, 2020, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
determined that there is a significant potential for a public health emergency
that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and
security of United States citizens living abroad and that involves a novel
(new) coronavirus (nCoV) first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China in
2019 (2019-nCoV).
Gottlieb and Borio take to the WSJ again, this time to warn the president that “a pandemic seems inevitable” and
call on the administration to dramatically expand testing, expand the number of
labs for reviewing tests, and change the rules to allow for tests of people
even if they don’t have a clear known risk factor.
§ Note: Some of these
recommendations were eventually implemented - 25 days later.
The CDC is ready to
send out hundreds of coronavirus test kits to state and local health labs. Unfortunately, the version sent out failed to
work for most. (In January the CDC had developed
a test for the coronavirus in their agency’s labs.) By the time they started sending out new
version the virus had already spread.
In his State of the
Union address, Trump pledged to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans
from the coronavirus.
February
4 or 5, 2020: Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for
preparedness and response, and other intelligence officials brief the Senate Intelligence Committee that the virus poses a “serious” threat and that “Americans
would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives.”
February
5th, 2020: The
Senate votes not to remove Trump from office.
(Note: On March 24th, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) says the
president was distracted from public health issues because he had to defend
himself in the impeachment hearings. Now
read the “warnings” that were evident in the days and weeks following.)
Senator
Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweets “Just left the Administration briefing on coronavirus. Bottom Line: they aren’t taking this serious
enough. Notably, no request for
ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need
supplies, training, screening staff, etc. And they need it now.”
February
6th, 2020: The CDC ships the first test kits, which
turned out to be defective.
February
7th, 2020: Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State: “This week the State Department
has facilitated the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical
supplies to the Chinese people, including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and
other vital materials. These donations
are a testament to the generosity of the American people.”
President Trump tells reporters that the CDC is working with
China on the coronavirus.
February 9, 2020: The White
House Coronavirus Task Force briefs governors from across the nation at the
National Governors' Association Meeting in Washington.
February 10, 2020: Trump attends a
campaign rally in Manchester, NH.
“I think the virus is going to be it’s going to be fine.”
February 12, 2020: Gottlieb testifies before Congress that actions must be taken to address medical supply chain
issues and the possibility of shortages.
February 13,
2020: the Center for Global
Development, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, warned in a report about the
“urgent but closing window” for the U.S. government to prepare, including
specifically recommending an immediate review of the P.P.E. supply chain; the
creation of a plan for the distribution of supplies and the public
communication of that plan; and the development of ‘options for addressing PPE
shortfalls,’ which ranged from increasing manufacturing to coming up with new
‘parameters for reuse in crisis conditions’.
February 14, 2020 Trump:
“We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
Trump predicts that the arrival of warmer weather
could cause the coronavirus to slow down.
February 19, 2020 Trump:
“I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the
warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of
virus.”
§ It’s important to
understand that the Trump campaign brags about the fact that the administration
lifted CDC restrictions on tests. This is a factually true statement.
§ But it elides that
fact that they did so on March 3 - two critical weeks after the third
Borio/Gottlieb op-ed on the topic, during which time the window for
intervention had shrunk to a pinhole.
Trump attends a campaign rally in Colorado
Springs, CO.
February 21, 2020: Trump attends a campaign rally in Las Vegas, NV.
Dr. Robert Kadlec,
the Department of Health and Human Services' lead on disaster response, met
with the White House's coronavirus task force and the group concluded that
social distancing measures including school closures would need to take place
soon.
February
22, 2020: A WHO team of international experts
arrives in Wuhan, China.
February 23, 2020: Harvard School of Public Health professor issues warning on lack
of test capability: “As of today, the US remains extremely limited in COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what
went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are
not looking for it.
Peter Navarro urges
immediate funding to “minimize economic and social disruption”.
February 24, 2020: The Trump administration sends a letter to
Congress requesting a small dollar amount—between $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion - to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.
This is, of course, a pittance compared to the massive recovery package being
debated at the time. At the time the administration was widely criticized by members of Congress for not going big enough to deal with the
problem.
Peter Navarro assures the
press that the coronavirus was “nothing to worry about for the American people”
under Trump’s leadership.
Dr. Duane Caneva, the
chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, sent an urgent email with the subject line “Red Dawn Breaking
Bad” to a small group of doctors, epidemiologists, public-health officials, and
pandemic experts.
The DOW drops more than 1,000 points. Trump: “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!”
February 25, 2020: Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, told reporters that the
coronavirus was likely to spread within communities in the United States and
that disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump called Azar on his way
back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock
markets, according to two senior administration officials. Mr. Azar sought to quell concerns, saying the
virus was “contained.” Trump: “CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of
handling coronavirus.” “I think that’s a
problem that’s going to go away. They
have studied it. They know very
much. In fact, we’re very close to a
vaccine.”
§ Trump mocks Congress in a White House briefing, saying “If
Congress wants to give us the money so easy - it wasn’t very easy for the wall,
but we got that one done. If they want to give us the money, we’ll take the
money.”
Trump had a briefing where he replaced
Dr. Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, as the head of the
coronavirus task force with Vice President Mike Pence, with a focus on
controlling the message so as not to impact the economy.
Trump: “This is like a flu. This is 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…Fifteen, within a
couple of days, is going to be down to zero.”
In contrast the Cleveland Clinic alerted
the public that it was prepared to quickly open 1,000 additional hospital beds
should the need arise.
Trump discussed
coronavirus containment efforts with Indian Prime Minister Modi and updated the
press on his Administration's containment efforts in the U.S. during his state
visit to India.
February 27, 2020: “We have the skills and resources as a community but we are collectively
paralyzed by a bloated bureaucratic/administrative process,” Marc Couturier,
medical director at academic laboratory ARUP in Utah, writes to other
microbiologists after weeks of mounting frustration.
The administration embraced a new approach behind closed doors that very
day, concluding that “a much broader” effort to testing was needed, according
to an internal government memo spelling out the plan. Two days later, the
administration announced a relaxation of the regulations that scientists said
had hindered private laboratories from deploying their own tests.
By then, the virus had spread across the
country. In less than a month, it would upend daily life, shuttering the
world’s largest economy and killing thousands of Americans.
Trump: “One day it’s like a miracle it will
disappear”.
February 28, 2020:
Trump
attends a campaign rally in North Charleston, NC. He describes the coronavirus as a “new
hoax” of his political rivals. “Now the Democrats are politicizing
coronavirus. And this is their new
hoax.”
The CDC discovers the first (2) cases of community
transmission.
Dr. Jerome Adams, the
surgeon general and chief medical officer for the United States, was added to
the Red Dawn email chain.
February 29, 2020,
The first confirmed death from the coronavirus is reported in the United
States. Trump: “Everything is really
under control.”
March 2, 2020:
Trump
attends a campaign rally in Charlotte, NC.
“You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an
impact, on corona?”
March 3, 2020: Vice President Pence is asked about legislation encouraging companies
to produce more masks. He says the Trump administration is “looking at it.”
§ Note: Recall that the
concern about masks was raised publicly by high-profile former Trump appointees,
on January 28.
By this time the US has 122 confirmed cases and 7
deaths.
Trump: “So we have thousands or hundreds of thousands
of people that just get better, by, you know, sitting around and even going
back to work.”
In contrast, Ohio’s
Republican governor, Mike DeWine, shut down a weekend fitness expo expected to
draw 60,000 people a day to a Columbus convention center. There were no
identified coronavirus cases in the state at the time.
March 5, 2020 Trump:
“I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 6, 2020: Trump while touring the CDC in
Atlanta says, “Anybody right now, and yesterday, right now that needs a test
gets a test. They’re there. They have the test. The tests are beautiful.
Anybody who needs a test gets a test.”
Later that same day, Trump says “What a problem. Came out of nowhere.”
March 7, 2020: Fox News host Tucker Carlson, flies to Mar-a-Lago to implore Trump to take the virus
seriously in private rather than embarrass him on TV. Even after the private
meeting, Trump continued to downplay the crisis, forcing Carlson to obliquely
criticize him publicly on his show two nights later.
§ Note: Carlson, after
hearing from an expert with “access to intelligence” who was concerned about
the virus began covering the issue on his show February 3rd, over a month prior
to the private meeting.
March 8, 2020 Trump:
“We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our
attack on coronaVirus.”
March 9, 2020: Tom Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser, publishes an op-ed saying it is “now or never” to act. He
advocates for social distancing and school closures to slow the spread of the
contagion.
§ Trump: “The Fake News
Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its
semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus
situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the
average American’.”
§ Trump: “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!”
The number of US coronavirus cases jumps from 423 to 647.
March 11, 2020
the WHO declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. The NBA suspends
their season.
March 12, 2020
the NHL suspends their season. MLB
suspends operations indefinitely.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, instead
of working through the weekend on an emergency aid package, recessed for a long
weekend and returned to Kentucky.
March 13, 2020:
Trump starts delivering his own daily coronavirus briefings. He declares the outbreak a national emergency but
says
“I don’t take responsibility at all” when asked whether he takes responsibility
for the lag in making test kits available.
Jerry Falwell, Jr. on Fox & Friends: “You know,
impeachment didn’t work, and the Mueller report didn’t work, and Article 25
didn’t work, and so maybe now this is their next, ah, their next attempt to get
Trump.”
March 16, 2020: British scientists publish forecasts
of America’s trajectory: with no mitigation 2,200,000 dead; with some
mitigation 1,100,000 dead.
Trump announces his support for a 15-day period of social distancing in order to slow
the spread of coronavirus. “Who
knew?”
Tim Morrison, a senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute and former senior director for counterproliferation
and biodefense on the National Security Council, stated that the president and
John Bolton did not “dissolve” the pandemic response office but they shrunk the
NSC staff and consolidated it into the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate.
March 17, 2020: Facing continued shortages of the PPE (Personal
Protection Equipment) needed to prevent healthcare providers from succumbing to
the virus, Oregon Senators Jeff Merkeley and Ron Wyden call on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to expand supply of medical equipment.
US has 7,786 confirmed cases and 118 deaths. Trump:
“This is a pandemic and I called it a pandemic long before anyone called it a
pandemic.”
Trump responds: “Well we’re going to
know whether or not it’s urgent.”
Note: At this point 118 Americans had died
from COVID-19.
March 19, 2020: Governor Gavin
Newsom of California enacts the first stay-at-home order in the US.
March 20, 2020: 2 months after the
first reported case, the US has more than 26,000 cases with 340 deaths.
March 21, 2020: Trump says "We're going to be able to make
that drug available almost immediately. And that's where the FDA has been so
great. They've gone through the approval process - it's been approved." The FDA attempted to quickly reverse the lie.
March 22, 2020: Six days after calling for a 15-day period of
distancing, Trump tweets: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM
ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH
WAY WE WANT TO GO!
New York issues their
stay at home order.
March 23, 2020:
S&P 500 falls to the point where it erases all gains made during Trump’s
presidency.
March 24, 2020: Trump tells Fox
News that he wants the country opened up by Easter Sunday (April 12).
§ Trump says, “You will
have packed churches all over our country, I think it would be a beautiful time
and it is just about the timeline that I think is right.” “We’ve done more tests in eight days than
South Korea has done in 8 weeks.” (South
Korea has tested 348,582 people.)
§ The pace of the viral
spread was increasing.
§ Testing was still in
the process of ramping up, and unavailable in many areas.
§ Doctors were still “desperate” for masks and other basic PPE
supplies.
Note: According to the CDC, the coronavirus bacteria has
been found on a cruise ship 17 days after passengers had left. Scientists in Iceland claim they have found
40 mutations of the coronavirus – and admit seven cases can be traced back to a
football match in England. They traced
the virus back to three European countries – Austria, Italy, and England.
VP Pence: “I can tell you that at no point has the
White House Task Force discussed a nationwide lockdown.”
WHO warns the US could be the next epicenter of the
global coronavirus.
On the basis of the
February 4, 2020 HHS EUA determination, the Secretary of HHS declares that
circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of medical
devices, including alternative products used as medical devices, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, authorizing the emergency use of ventilators…
March 25, 2020:
Congress passes a $2,200,000,000,000 rescue package. Trump says, in a letter sent to state
governors, that his administration is working to publish new guidelines for
state and local governments to use when making decisions about “maintaining,
increasing or relaxing social distancing and other mitigation measures” for the
coronavirus epidemic. The data will
suggest guidelines categorizing counties as “high risk, medium risk or low
risk” for the virus. The data will drive
“the next phase” of the response.
Note: There are at least 53,934 confirmed cases in the
United States and at least 728 people have died.
March 26, 2020:
It was announced that last week 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment
benefits. US death toll reaches
1,000. Health worker union sleuths find
39 million masks in stockpile. (Note: California
estimates they will need 500 million for the duration of the pandemic.)
White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said the
United States “can start thinking about getting back to some degree of
normality when the country as a whole turns that corner” of reducing the spread
of the coronavirus outbreak. “You need
to see the trajectory of the curve start to come down.”
The US overtakes China with the most coronavirus cases
with 83,329 positive tests.
Reuters reveals that the Trump administration cut CDC
staff in Beijing by more than two-thirds over the past two years.
March 27, 2020:
Total number of US cases passes 100,000.
Fox Business Network announced it has officially
“parted ways” with anchor Trish Regan following her controversial rant against
what she called the ‘coronavirus impeachment scam’ earlier this month.
Kentucky republican representative Thomas Massie
called for an in-person vote on the coronavirus stimulus bill forcing House
members to return to Washington. The
bill finally passes.
More than 800,000 physicians across the country signed
a letter urging Trump to keep social distancing practices in place after he
said he wants to reopen businesses by Easter.
Trump tells Pence not to call governors who have been
critical of the federal government’s response to the crisis.
Trump used the
Defense Production Act for the first time to compel General Motors to
produce ventilators. He promises
to make 100,000 ventilators in 100 days.
March 28, 2020:
Trumps says he intends to ignore the provision of the bill that requires the
newly created Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery to report to
congress ‘without delay’ when any other agencies in his administration refuse
to provide information about how the money is being spent.
For several days Trump has noted that the US is
surpassing South Korea and other countries when it comes to coronavirus
testing. Note: While the US has
overtaken South Korea in total number of coronavirus tests administered, it has
conducted far fewer tests per capita given the US population is more than six
times larger than South Korea’s.
Total number of US cases passes 141,000
March 29, 2020:
Trump says federal guidance urging social distancing will stay in place through
April 30.
Total number of US cases passes 164,000.
March 31, 2020:
Mitch McConnell claims the slow response by President Donald Trump
and Congress to the COVID-19 crisis was because the impeachment
"diverted the attention of the government."
Montana
Gov. Steve Bullock (D) details two problems with testing. First, his state
doesn’t have enough tests, saying “we’re one day away if we don’t get test kits
from the CDC that we wouldn’t be able to do testing.” And second, that the
federal government has depleted the tests available on the private market.
Trump
respond to Bullock’s concerns by saying, “I haven’t heard about testing in
weeks. We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these
great tests, and we’ll come out with another one tomorrow, that’s almost
instantaneous testing. But I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”
The FDA approved a test
that provides results in as little as two minutes. The company that created it,
Bodysphere, reportedly said it's ready to "have millions of test
kits" in dozens of states by mid-April and is working with federal
agencies on distribution.
The
FDA gave emergency approval
to two antimalarial drugs (hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine) to be used as
treatment for COVID-19 patients. Despite limited studies on its benefits, the
FDA said the possibility of it being effective outweighs the risks. Millions of
doses will be shipped out to hospitals nationwide, and a trial on its
effectiveness is underway.
More than a dozen
companies worldwide are working to develop a vaccine. And three of them have
reportedly started Phase 1 of clinical trials with human volunteers. A vaccine
isn't expected for at least a year, but the quick turnaround could be
unprecedented – a process that usually takes years.
Almost the entirety of what the public knows about the death projection
was presented on a single slide today from the White House coronavirus task
force. A White House representative said the task force has not publicly
released the models it drew from out of respect for the confidentiality of the
modelers, many of whom approached the White House unsolicited and simply want
to continue their work without publicity. A representative for Fauci did not respond to
a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Vice President Pence declined to
comment. On a Thursday call with conservative leaders, Pence said it was
“difficult” to view the models but “the president thought it was important to
share with the American people.”
Coronavirus
task force briefing: “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days
that lie ahead.” Trump says he
anticipates the epidemic will be the “the worst thing the country has probably
ever seen.”
The US
has more than 185,000 infections and over 3,800 deaths.
April 1, 2020,
per Johns Hopkins: The United States, which now accounts for almost a
quarter of reported global infections, logged its 5,000th death and a new first
- 1,000 deaths in a single day.
Trump: “Things are going to get worse.
We're going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but
especially a few days from now, that are going to be horrific.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Desai on Fox News:
“So last year we know about this. We knew coronavirus was coming, we
knew it was a respiratory disease, and we knew it was person-to-person. Why is
it that it is this week that the FDA finally approved these new Abbott lab
testing? Which, by the way, was one test at a time. It’s a great test but it’s
one test at a time. It’s different from the labs that are doing mass testing.
We needed this months ago. You look at Korea, South
Korea and the U.S. had their first official confirmed case on the same date: January
19th. Since January 19th, you look at what South Korea did and what we did.
Their population is 1/6th of ours, look at the cases they have, look at the
mortality they have.
It’s a trifle compared to what we’re dealing with
right now because we had a very weak response and they had a very strong
response."
The Trump administration grants an emergency
six-month extension for the PREDICT program.
April 2, 2020:
Wimbledon is cancelled for this year.
The Labor Department reported 6.6 million Americans filed
unemployment claims last week.
Congress will not return to Washington until April 20th.
Dr. Laura Ucik, a third-year resident in New York, said she goes to work
feeling "like a sheep going to slaughter.
My colleagues and I are writing our last will and testament. I'm 28
years old. We fear that we may not
survive this pandemic and yet we show up every day to this hospital to take
care of our community. We're running out of (personal protective equipment),
we're running out of pain medicine, we're running out of sedatives, we're
running out of oxygen masks."
N.Y. Times: More
than 2,000 ventilators, a key piece of equipment to treat coronavirus patients,
in the federal stockpile are unavailable to be deployed because the Trump
administration failed to maintain the devices as they were in storage.
Per Johns Hopkins data, reported
coronavirus cases worldwide pass 1,000,000 with 50,000 deaths. (Confirmed cases topped 500,000 a week ago.)
WHO: “Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near
exponential growth in the number of new cases, reaching almost every country,
territory, and area.”
The US has 230,000 confirmed infections and more than
5,500 have died.
April 3, 2020: Trump fires Michael Atkinson who just happened to be the
intelligence community watchdog who played a key role in Trump’s impeachment.
April 5, 2020: Trump: "We have
made great progress with the antibody testing, fantastic progress.”
April 7, 2020:
Trump announces a freeze on US contributions to the WHO. (Obviously an attempt to deflect blame away
from his administration; later he denies saying it.)
Kayleigh
McEnany is appointed as Trump’s new press secretary. This is the same woman who on April 4th
said “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."
Trump removes Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine
who had just been designated to oversee the newly created Pandemic Response
Accountability Committee.
Trump: “I think mail-in voting is horrible, it’s
corrupt.”
Reporter: “You voted by mail in Florida’s election las
tmonth, didn’t you?”
Trump: “Sure. I
can vote by mail”
Reporter: “How do you reconcile with that?”
Trump: “Because I’m allowed to.”
April 9, 2020:
Economists say the US unemployment rate is 13%, the worst since the Great
Depression.
Per
Johns Hopkins the US has more than 450,000 cases more than Spain, Italy, and
France combined.
April 10, 2020: The number of
worldwide deaths caused by the coronavirus surges past the 100,000 mark,
doubling in nearly a week.
VP Pence: "Very soon we will have an antibody test that
Americans will be able to take to determine whether they ever had the
coronavirus."
April 11, 2020: The US death toll
eclipses any other country with 18,860.
Trump:
Regarding ventilators, “A lot of them will be coming at a time when we won’t
need them as badly.”
Confirmed cases of the coronavirus
reached at least 519,453 as of Saturday afternoon. At least 20,071 have
died in the US.
The New York Times
publishes a long article about a series of Trump administration failures in the
early days of the coronavirus.
April 12, 2020: Dr. Anthony Fauci said
on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that "no one is going to
deny" that more lives could have been saved during the coronavirus crisis
if the Trump administration had implemented social distancing guidelines prior
to March.
The Republican Governor of Louisiana said he would
have cancelled Mardi Gras if the feds had warned him sooner.
Republican
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan suggested that the president of the United States had
not told the truth when he said that states have all the medical supplies they
need.
The US now has the
highest number of coronavirus deaths with 21,692.
April 13, 2020: Trump: “Governors should
have had ventilators. They chose not to have them.”
South Korea
reported that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had
tested positive again.
Trump claims he
can overrule States over ending coronavirus shutdowns.
Trump’s coronavirus briefing presented a video
timeline of his coronavirus actions. The
only event listed between January 31st when he ordered the partial
ban on travel from China and March 13th when he declared a national
emergency was February 6th “CDC ships First Testing Kits”.
New Jersey, Louisiana, Washington
DC, and Maryland record their highest daily deaths since the beginning of the
coronavirus outbreak.
Per the Johns Hopkins website, 2,000,000+ cases
worldwide with 682,000+ in the US.
April 14, 2020:
· The seven governors of New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Pennsyslvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Delaware formed a
joint reopening strategy council.
· California, Oregon and Washington have also
combined together into a joint regional task force.
· Monday, Trump said, “When somebody’s president
of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to
be. It’s total. It’s total. And the governors know that.”
April 15, 2020:
For the first time ever, the Washington Post supports a Democrat for
president. “Trump must be defeated.”
Trump says
the U.S. has "passed the peak" of the coronavirus outbreak, which has
infected more than 632,000 people in America.
Per the Johns Hopkins website 636,000+ cases in the
US.
April 16, 2020:
Seven northeastern states extended their shutdown until May 15th.
Seven midwestern governors announce their states will coordinate on reopening.
Per the Johns Hopkins website 667,000+ cases in the
US.
April 17, 2020: Trump’s
releases his 3-phase guidelines for reopening the economy.
Covid-19 surpasses the seasonal flu in deaths this
year. 147,508 Covid-19 versus 142,937
for the flu.
"We have a massive
blindspot because of the lack of testing," Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist
at Boston Children's Hospital told ABC News. "We've not really had a deep
understanding of the amount of illness that happened in the community."
Per the Johns Hopkins website 699,000+ cases in the
US.
April 18, 2020:
The rapid coronavirus test that
Trump touted at the White House and has been pushing for weeks has been
producing false negatives.
Trump bragged today that America has “produced better
health outcomes than any other country”.
The White
House issued a sharp rebuke today to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who
reportedly spent over $1.7 million on flights bringing medical supplies from
China in secret—out of fear the Trump administration would seize the cargo for
the federal stockpile.
April 19, 2020:
Today on CNN’s State of the Union, Republican
Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said that Donald Trump is lying about states
having enough tests to reopen their economies.
Per the Washington Post, more than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians
and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, transmitted real-time information about its discovery and
spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and
international officials.
Dozens of
grocery store workers have died from the coronavirus, despite masks,
temperature checks and capacity restrictions to keep them safe.
April 20, 2020: Trump on state closures,
“Some governors have gone too far. Some of the things that happened are maybe
not so appropriate. And I think in the
end it's not going to matter because we're starting to open up our states, and
I think they're going to open up very well."
Trump said about testing, “We are moving very
rapidly. And we'll be doubling our number
of daily tests if the governors bring their states fully online to the
capability that they have. We have tremendous capability out there already
existing. We have testing coming in two weeks that will blow the industry away.”
April
21, 2020:
The Trump campaign admits the federal government disease control experts became
aware of the virus on January 6th.
Two Californians who died on Feb. 6 and
Feb. 17 had contracted the novel coronavirus signaling that the virus may have
spread — and claimed lives — in the United States weeks earlier than previously
thought.
April 22, 2020: New
autopsy results show two Californians died of coronavirus on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 -- up to three weeks before the
previously known first US death from the virus. These deaths now stand as the
country's earliest two attributed to the coronavirus,
a development that appears to shift the understanding of how early the virus
was spreading in the US.
Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized
with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical
centers who died or were discharged by April 11.
About 28% who
were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting
routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died
too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered
large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival.
Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing
machine, either.
April 23, 2020: Trump
says coronavirus "may not come back" in the fall, a claim at odds
with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said it will persist.
