He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus - The New York Times nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/…
This is a MUST READ, some excerpts are below:
.@SecAzar publicly announced in February that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks.
The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.
Despite @POTUS’ denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, #PeterNavarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses
By the last week of February, it was clear to the administration’s public health team that schools and businesses in hot spots would have to close.
But in the turbulence of the Trump White House, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences.
When #DrRobertKadlec, the top disaster response official at the Health and Human Services Department, convened the White House coronavirus task force on Feb. 21, his agenda was urgent.
It was becoming apparent that the administration had botched the rollout of testing to track the virus at home, and a smaller-scale surveillance program intended to piggyback on a federal flu tracking system had also been stillborn.
If Dr. Kadlec had any doubts, they were erased 2 days later, when he stumbled upon an email from a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, among the group of academics, government physicians & infectious diseases doctors who had spent weeks tracking the outbreak. 
“Is this true?!” Dr. Kadlec wrote back to the researcher. “If so we have a huge whole on our screening and quarantine effort,” including a typo where he meant hole. Her response was blunt: “People are carrying the virus everywhere.”
A memo dated Feb. 14, prepared in coordination with the National Security Council and titled “U.S. Government Response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus,” documented what more drastic measures would look like, including:
“significantly limiting public gatherings, cancellation of sporting events, performances, & public & private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Widespread ‘stay at home’ directives from public & private organizations with nearly 100% telework”
Mr. Trump was walking up the steps of Air Force One to head home from India on Feb. 25 when #DrNancyMessonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, publicly issued the blunt warning they had all agreed was necessary.
But Dr. Messonnier had jumped the gun. They had not told the president yet, much less gotten his consent.
On the 18-hour plane ride home, Mr. Trump fumed as he watched the stock market crash after Dr. Messonnier’s comments.
On the 18-hour plane ride home, Mr. Trump fumed as he watched the stock market crash after Dr. Messonnier’s comments.
Furious, he called Mr. Azar when he landed at am Feb. 26, raging that Dr. Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily... Mr. Azar would soon find his authority reduced.
The meeting that evening with Mr. Trump to advocate social distancing was canceled, replaced by a news conference in which the president announced that the White House response would be put under the command of Vice President Mike Pence.
With @VP and his staff in charge, the focus was clear: no more alarmist messages. Statements and media appearances by health officials like Dr. #AnthonyFauci and @CDCDirector would be coordinated through Mr. Pence’s office.
Over nearly 3 weeks from Feb. 26 to March 16, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States grew from 15 to 4,226. Since then, nearly half a million Americans have tested positive for the virus and authorities say hundreds of thousands more are likely infected.
So the article goes on, and on and on.... MUST READ! @POTUS @realDonaldTrump , thanks to the #RealNews @nytimes your day of reckoning will come sooner than later.
In the last week in March, #KellyanneConway, a senior @WhiteHouse House adviser involved in task force meetings, gave voice to concerns other aides had... Among other things, she told him, he would end up being blamed by critics for every subsequent death caused by the virus.
Within days, @POTUS watched images on television of a calamitous situation at Elmhurst Hospital Center, miles from his childhood home in Queens, N.Y., where 13 people had died from the coronavirus in 24 hours.
This is the end of the article but, sadly it was only the beginning of the #USCoronaVirusEpidemic . There was, there is much, much, so god damn much worse to come....
@threadreaderapp unroll
