From Alan Piper, Senior Politics Producer, “NowThis”:
2014 Obama-Biden’s global health security unit established to: see, isolate, respond quickly, 69 page pandemic response playbook
2018 Trump fired global health security unit, declined to renew CDC epidemic
prevention funding
2019 intelligence official warning of COVID coming from china
Jan. 3 Whitehouse National Security Council briefed
Jan. Germany began working on a test
Jan. 8 CDC first warning
Jan. 9 WHO first warning
Jan. 10 WHO issued a comprehensive packet how to detect test and manage potential
cases
Jan. 18 HHS Sec. Alex Azar tried to have an urgent phone call about the crisis but was
cut off to berate him for his efforts to ban flavored vaping projects
Jan. 20 First confirmed case of COVID 19 in America and South Korea implemented
testing, 250 deaths, US 65,000
Jan. 22 We have it under control. It’s just one person coming in from China.
Jan. 23 Wuhan shut down, WHO international news conference, Sen. Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer called for a public health emergency
Jan. 24 Tweet China all will work out well
Jan. 27 Biden op-ed: Trump failing to take this crisis seriously and need to take more
immediate action
Jan. 28 Warren released her plan
Jan. 29 Trade advisor Peter Navaro urgent White House memo warning of the risk of
the virus, task force formed
Jan. 30 Wouhan locked down, WHO “global health emergency”
Feb. 2 Partial China travel restriction 39 countries, epidemiologist Dr. Jennifer Ruzzo: no evidence travel restrictions stopped or slowed transmission of the virus
Feb. 3, WHO strategic preparedness
Feb. 5, Azar requested $4 billion to fight the virus, lead to a shouting match in the W.H.
Feb. 6, WHO began distributing ¼ million tests around the world, U.S. didn’t want any, 90 CDC
faulty tests
Feb. 10, Trump proposed budget would cut CDC by 16% (Trump: virus will be gone by
April)
Feb. 19, 20, Trump rallies
Feb. 23, Peter Navarro sounded another WHO alarm increasing probability of a full-
blown COVID 19 pandemic
Feb. 24, Trump asks Congress for additional funding “CORONA virus very much under
control”
Feb. 26, “you treat this like a flu” “risk to the American people remains very low” 60
cases, not 15
Feb. 27, “will disappear like a miracle”
Feb. 28: Democrat’s “hoax”
Feb. 29, first confirmed U.S. death
Feb. 29 – March 6, Wash., Calif. Maryland, Kentucky & Utah states of emergency, CDC
“anyone that needs a test gets a test”
March 4, Fox interview: might be okay to go to work w/CORONA
March 7, N.Y. state of emergency
March 9, Trump compared CORONA virus to the flu
March 10, “It will go away on its own”
March 11, WHO not just a global health emergency but a pandemic, alarming levels or
spread and severity and “by the alarming levels of inaction”
March 13, Trump finally declares a national emergency
March 16, tells governors respirators, ventilators and equipment get it yourself
March 17, I always knew it was a pandemic, knew long before it was called a pandemic
March 26, US passed all other countries with 82,000 confirmed cases
May 15, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, White House Scrapped Obama/Biden
Playbook and drafted their own. We see how that worked out.
The latest: In a July 5 speech Trump reported that after three million COVID 19 tests, ninety-nine percent are “totally harmless.” The source of President’s statistic is unknown to and unsupported by scientific advisors. As always, it’s impossible to ferret out The Donald’s thinking. Does he mean to minimize America’s 130,000 deaths and current 3,000,000 plus 50,000 new cases a day—ten times the total for twenty-seven European Union member states?
Columbia University found that a February stay-at-home order would have precluded 83% of America’s COVID 19 cases. Data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation show that 90% of U.S. COVID 19 deaths would have been prevented if the president had issued physical distancing guidelines even two weeks earlier.
Failing to act early and decisively, the Trump’s administration’s triggered the deaths of tens-of-thousands and suffering of hundreds-of-thousands Americans. And, alarming and unfathomable as it is, Donald’s campaign boast that he could shoot a person on a New York street and not lose a single voter seems born out!
In great and tragic irony, Donald Trump’s COVID 19 response today recalls Winston Churchill’s Battle of Britain observation regarding the Royal Air Force, “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”
And he’s running for reelection!
Such a tiny mind.
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