The COVID epidemic that began in earnest in the United States in 2020 was the worst pandemic to strike the U.S. in over 100 years. The response to it was uneven, at best, and plenty of mistakes were made (such as Andrew Cuomo’s tragic decision on nursing homes). But far and away the most damaging “response” was that of the Orange Shitgibbon himself, the vile Donald “Fuckface” Trump. I constructed a chronology of the COVID disaster from its origins to late April 2020. (You can read the whole thing here.) These are some “highlights”:
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.
FEBRUARY 1, 2018
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.”
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
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 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. [NOTE” Vought is a key figure in Project 2025.]
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 23, 2020
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.
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.
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."
--“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.”
I don’t need to remind you of what happened after the COVID virus had been “contained”.
President Donald Trump on Friday deflected blame for his administration’s lagging ability to test Americans for the coronavirus outbreak, insisting instead — without offering evidence — that fault lies with his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said defiantly, pointing to an unspecified “set of circumstances” and “rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.”
Trump wasn’t exactly all that active in stopping the pandemic:
HOWEVER, DEAR LEADER DID MAKE USEFUL SUGGESTIONS FROM TIME TO TIME.
President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of an "injection" of disinfectant into a person infected with the coronavirus as a deterrent to the virus during his daily briefing Thursday.
Trump made the remark after Bill Bryan, who leads the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology division, gave a presentation on research his team has conducted that shows that the virus doesn't live as long in warmer and more humid temperatures. Bryan said, "The virus dies quickest in sunlight," leaving Trump to wonder whether you could bring the light "inside the body."
"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing," Trump said, speaking to Bryan during the briefing. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too."
REPUBLICAN SCIENTIFIC GENIUSES CHOSE TO ATTACK DR. ANTHONY FAUCI FOR THE CRIME OF CONTRADICTING DEAR LEADER.
RIGHT WING MEDIA PLAYED THE ROLE OF ACCOMPLICE IN THE SPREAD OF COVID
...on Murdoch's Fox News network, which is run by his son Lachlan, some of its top-rated hosts have had a very different message for viewers.
In a segment of his top-rated show on February 10, Tucker Carlson alleged that unspecified powerful forces were "lying" about the vaccines and trying to suppress questions being asked about them.
In a statement to Insider, a representative said the network had "extensively" promoted vaccines across the breadth of its output. But its most prominent personalities have not always been on board.
A week before Carlson's segment, Laura Ingraham hosted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on her podcast. Kennedy, the nephew of John F. Kennedy, is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the US. Though the podcast is not a Fox News product, she is one of the network's biggest stars.
VACCINE LIES SPREAD BY FIGURES SUCH AS TUCKER CARLSON AND RFK JR. HAD TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES
PLEASE NOTE WHERE THE HEAVIEST DEATHS ARE CONCENTRATED
From The New York Times
AND WITHIN THE PAST 24 HOURS…
The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed a report that former President Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin COVID-19 testing equipment during the height of the pandemic.
Why it matters: The Trump campaign categorically denied new revelations in journalist Bob Woodward's book "War," which renewed scrutiny of the relationship between Putin and the Republican presidential nominee.
Catch up quick: Woodward reported in his book that during the early days of the pandemic, Trump sent scarcely available COVID-19 testing machines for the Russian leader's personal use.
- Woodward also reported that Trump and Putin have had "as many as seven" personal conversations since Trump left office in 2021.
THE COVID KING WREAKED HIS HAVOC, AND AMERICA IS STILL PAYING FOR IT.
