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Trump, Steps and delays in response to Coronavirus

By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late.

Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on January 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state.

Donald Trump

“We have it totally under control,” Trump said on CNBC.

“It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”In the 11 weeks since that interview, the coronavirus has reached every corner of the globe.

It has infected more than 500,000 Americans and killed at least 20,000.It has rewritten the rules of society, isolated people in their homes, closed schools, devastated the economy and put millions out of work.

When Mr Trump spoke in Switzerland, weeks’ worth of warning signs already had been raised.

In the ensuing month, before the president first addressed the crisis from the White House, key steps to prepare the nation for the coming pandemic were not taken.

Life-saving medical equipment was not stockpiled. Travel largely continued unabated. Vital public health data from China was not provided or was deemed untrustworthy.

A White House riven by rivalries and turnover was slow to act. Urgent warnings were ignored by a president consumed by his impeachment trial and intent on protecting a robust economy that he viewed as central to his reelection chances.

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Twenty current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House were interviewed for this account about the critical weeks lost before the president spoke to the nation on February 26.Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.

On New Year’s Eve, China informed the World Health Organisation of a “mysterious pneumonia outbreak” spreading through Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million.

The government closed a seafood market at the center of the outbreak, moved all patients with the virus to a specially designated hospital and collected test samples to send to government laboratories.

Doctors were told to stay quiet; one who issued a warning online was punished. He later died of the virus.The Pentagon first learned about the new coronavirus in December from open source reports emanating from China.

By early January, warnings about the virus had made their way into intelligence reports circulating around the government.On January 3, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, received a call from his Chinese counterpart with an official warning.

Quickly, US intelligence and public health officials began doubting China’s reported rates of infection and death toll.

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They pressed China to allow in US epidemiologists both to assist the country in confronting the spread and to gain valuable insights that could help buy time for the US response.

US officials also pressed China to send samples of the virus to US labs for study and for vaccine and test development.


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Ihesiulo Grace

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