But by then it was too late; The United States was already the world leader in its rate of covid-19 infection and has since become home to one-third of the world’s cases and five times as many as any other country.
And some of this inaction may have been deliberate. From Vanity Fair:
But the effort [to organize a national program] ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.
Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert. (Emphasis added.)
Read this devastating article from Slate as well: The Trump Pandemic: A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans.
From NBC:
Trump told Bob Woodward he knew in February that COVID-19 was 'deadly stuff' but wanted to 'play it down'
“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic," Trump said in a March 19 call with Woodward, according to an audio clip posted Wednesday on The Washington Post's website. The newspaper obtained a copy of the book, "Rage," which is scheduled to be released next week.
In the same interview, Trump acknowledged that the disease was more deadly than he previously thought.
"Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. But just today, and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It's not just old, older," Trump said, according to an audio clip, and then added, "young people, too, plenty of young people."
Here’s a link to the timeline I put together about the U.S. response to the pandemic (through 28 April of this year).
And now, we have learned this:
TRUMP'S WRETCHED HANDLING OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS ONE OF THE GREATEST FAILURES IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
