HE KNEW!
President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage."
"This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on February 7.
In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. "Pretty amazing," Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times "more deadly" than the flu.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics ... index.html
Though White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted as early as March that the virus could kill 100,000 to 200,000 Americans, Trump has had his own ever-shifting goalposts for what counts as a successful response. On April 20, he predicted 50,000 to 60,000 dead from Covid-19. A week later, he revised his estimate to 70,000. On May 4, it was 80,000 to 100,000 people, and we now know it will continue to climb past that mark.
Throughout the pandemic, however, much of the Trump administration’s spin — regarding Trump’s own response, China’s role, and more — has been misleading, if not outright untrue. Here’s what Trump and the federal government have — and have not — done to respond to the virus.
2019
In late 2019, the coronavirus wasn’t on much of the world’s radar. President Trump was becoming the third president in US history to be impeached. We now know, however, that the first cases of the virus were cropping up as early as November. Here’s where things stood late last year:
November 17: Although it was not diagnosed as such at the time, researchers have now identified the first confirmed Covid-19 case as having been seen on November 17 in China’s Hubei province.
December 27: A man in France, who is now the first known Covid-19 patient outside of China, goes to the emergency room with a fever and difficulty breathing. At the time, Covid-19 was still unheard of outside of China.
December 31: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reports the first cluster of cases of a “pneumonia of unknown cause,” later identified as Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, now called SARS-CoV-2.
January 2020
Though new discoveries — such as the December case in France mentioned above — keep pushing the timeline of the virus back, much of the world began to take note of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in China in January 2020, which at the time was mostly centered in the Hubei province. On January 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a preliminary news item about the then-unidentified disease; at the time, it was a relatively distant concern in the US, particularly given the country had yet to see any confirmed cases.
But the coronavirus’s threat was of concern to US national security officials, who, as the Washington Post reported in March, were warning Trump of the global danger posed by the virus in daily intelligence briefings as early as January.
Nonetheless, in public comments and tweets, the president consistently played down the fledgling pandemic even as the first US case was reported in Washington state. He also applauded China’s handling of the virus at several points in January, before taking action to protect the US in the form of a limited travel ban from China on January 31.
Here’s what things looked like in January.
January 11: The first death from a confirmed case of Covid-19 is reported in China.
January 16: A researcher in Germany develops the first coronavirus test.
January 19: Human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus is confirmed by the Chinese government.
January 21: The first confirmed Covid-19 case in the US is reported in Washington state.
January 22: While at Davos, Trump makes his first public comment on the coronavirus, downplaying the risk in comments to CNBC and CBS News correspondent Paula Reid.
To CNBC: 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.
To CBS: We do have a plan and we think it’s going to be handled very well. We’ve already handled it very well … We’re in very good shape and I think China’s in very good shape also.
January 24: Trump praises China’s “efforts and transparency” and thanks Chinese President Xi Jinping for his response to the virus.
January 29: Trump receives a briefing on the coronavirus, and asserts that the US is “on top of it 24/7.”
January 30: The WHO declares the coronavirus a global health emergency.
January 30: Trump suggests that the coronavirus is under control in remarks at a manufacturing plant in Michigan:
We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five [cases]. 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.
Another hit job. Interesting they start their time in February, and yet he shut down china flights a week prior. And Alex Azar declares a public emergency on the 31st. SoP from the #Orangemanbad propagandists.
You know full well, and I believe I have seen you even write it, that we had to be cautious early on... in order to be certain we had the PPE appropriated for those that needed it and to stock pile it.That was my point.