It became clear that the Corona virus could be a threat in late December, 2019. Already in November, the U.S. Intelligence Community had notified the president that it was possible that the outbreak beginning in China could be dangerous. The Trump Administration received formal notification of the epidemic the first week of January 2020. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was diagnosed in mid-January and the first fatality from COVID-19 took place on February 29. The financial market had already begun to crash. The 100th victim of pandemic in the U.S. died on March 17 and by March 20 there were 5,600 confirmed cases. Only on March 21 did the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services place its first large order for N-95 masks.
The President was briefed on the dangers of a pandemic around the time he entered the office of the presidency. The subsequent three years and most importantly the period between January 3, 2020 and March 21 were entirely wasted in preparing the United States in any way for a pandemic threat. The travel ban placed on China in late January was of very little significance; it applied only to non-citizens and not to citizens or residents and 40,000 people traveled from China to the United States in the next two months.
That the pandemic occurred is not President Trump’s fault of course. But, as made clear by David Frum in his article in the Atlantic Magazine of April, the “utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault.” For example, the loss of stockpiled respirators because maintenance contracts were allowed to lapse by the federal government in 2018 was his fault. The failure to store sufficient protective gear was his fault.
Amidst many other similar failures by President Trump and his allies during the critical period from January 3 to March 21 and beyond what was President Trump saying to the America people to warn them during these all-important weeks?
When the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was diagnosed in mid-January, the President, as reported by David Leonhardt in the New York Times, was asked in an interview on CNBC whether there were worries about a pandemic. He replied, “No, not at all. We have it totally under control.” But the seriousness of the epidemic was becoming clearer, there were many warnings of the danger of the virus by prominent experts in January. But he ignored these and other warnings. On January 24, he tweeted, “It will all work out well.” On January 30, he said in a speech in Michigan, “We have it well under control. We have very little problem in this country—five and they are recuperating successfully.” That same day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus as a “public health emergency of international concern.”
In early February, the President was asked by Sean Hannity on Fox News about the virus. He replied, “Well, we pretty much shot it down coming from China (referring to the ban on travel from China to the U.S. by non-citizens, which accomplished nothing). We have a tremendous relationship with China which is a very positive thing.” By this time there were nearly 15,000 cases worldwide, a doubling over the previous three days.
On February 5, the CDC began shipping test kits to laboratories, but they had a technical flaw. However the Trump Administration after this did little—creating a new virus test is not easy—even while other countries were working hard developing test equipment that worked. The administration was offered test equipment that was functional by the World Health Organization but turned it down. As a result, the United States fell behind South Korea, Singapore and China in fighting the epidemic. Said a Harvard epidemiologist, “We just twiddled our thumbs and the virus waltzed in.”
The President kept telling the American people that the virus was going away—warm weather would stop the virus. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he told a campaign rally on February 10. On February 19, he told a Phoenix television station, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.” A few days later he said the virus was “very much under control…we had 12 at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.” The message for the President to the American people was clear. The coronavirus is a small problem getting better. The truth was the U.S. didn’t know how bad the problem was as we had done very little testing. But many scientists available indications suggested it was getting worse rapidly. On February 23, the World Health Organization announced the virus was in 30 countries with 78,811 confirmed cases, a twofold increase in three weeks.
The President seemed uninterested in the pandemic, but then the stock market began to crash and he did care about that. He began blaming others, he criticized the media, CNN and MSNBC, for “panicking markets.” He said at on of his rallies, falsely, that “the Democrat policy of open borders” had brought the virus into the country. It turned out in the end to have come not from China and not from Mexico, but from Europe.
He lashed out at “do nothing Democrat comrades.” He tweeted about “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” mocking him for arguing that he should be more aggressive fighting the virus. At a rally on February 28 in South Carolina, the President denounced the Democrats by politicizing the coronavirus pandemic calling it “their new hoax.”
On multiple occasions, the President claimed that the coronavirus was less serious than the flu. “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than the flu. He said on March 2, “It’s very mild.” He said to Fox News on March 4, on March 7, “I’m not concerned at all” and on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” At this time, in the first half of March, the public began to understand. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar told ABC, “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.” While touring the CDC, the President said on TV news channels, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” On the same newscast he brought up completely extraneous issues such as his impeachment and also suggested that he knew as much as any scientist. On March 16, the President finally called for social distancing orders to be issued by the States.
The United States and South Korea were in more or less the same place at the very beginning of the coronavirus impact on their soil. But after squandering nearly two months spent in belittling the significance of the crisis and failing to put the government to work in assembling personal protective equipment for hospital workers, rolling out a mass testing program—something that only the federal government is capable of doing—and manufacturing ventilators, the United States was in a much worse place than South Korea. The President took his first real action in calling for social distancing guidelines on March 16 and the first equipment purchase on March 21. By contrast, former Vice President Joe Biden on January 29 in an op-ed article had sounded the alarm about a coming dangerous coronavirus pandemic and called for strong responsive measures.
The United States was now far behind and by early April, the death rate from COVID-19 was 50 per capita in the United States and only four per capita in South Korea. After the many administrative failures and the President essentially ignoring the pandemic and focusing on his own personal political interests, by April 12, there were 22,000 deaths from COVID-19, far more than need have been had the Administration responded in a timely way. A few days later, there were 30,000 fatalities.
In September, 2019 there was a report by the World Health Organization Global Preparedness Monitoring Board warning of the lack of preparedness worldwide should there be a lethal respiratory virus pandemic as follows:
“A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (which naturally emerges or is accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements. Donors and multilateral institutions must ensure adequate investment in developing innovative vaccines and therapeutics, surge manufacturing capacity, broad spectrum antivirals and appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions.”
The United States received formal notification of the coronavirus epidemic on January 3, and the President took his first real action on March 16. At a White House press briefing on March 13 the President said with respect to the chaos that had descended on the United States as a result of his ignoring the threat of the coronavirus and whether he took responsibility for any of this, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
This was after often-misleading Americans about the severity of the virus and therefor the public was confused about what it should do. On the one hand, all the experts in the field who addressed the subject publicly called for immediate strong actions to respond to a huge threat as did many Democratic Party political leaders. On the other hand, the President was dismissing everything saying the epidemic would “disappear like magic.” The reality which was abundantly clear weeks before the President did anything was that the United States was extremely seriously threatened by a deadly pathogen which would, if not properly checked, destroy the health, economy and lives of Americans. What would our Founders think of this inexcusable behavior amounting to the equivalent of criminal negligence if it was a legal case? I have returned from some time away from this blog, but could not in good conscience avoid saying something about this situation.
“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth—if men possessed of these and other excellent qualities are chosen to fill seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.” –Samuel Adams 1780
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know—but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefensible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents and trustees for the people, and if the cause, the intent and the trust is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys and trustees.”–John Adams 1765
“That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved, they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue…Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.”–John Hancock 1779
“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”–Samuel Adams 1748
“Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth or by an injustice…There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible as he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do so a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it’s good dispositions.–Thomas Jefferson 1785
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools who don’t have brains enough to be honest.”–Benjamin Franklin 1740
“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”–Thomas Jefferson 1774
“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road for the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that those men who have overturned the liberties of the republics, the greatest number have began their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”–Alexander Hamilton 1788
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for…but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, so that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by others.”–James Madison 1788
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”–Benjamin Franklin – proposed as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States
“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”–Thomas Jefferson 1800
“A government of laws, not of men.”–John Adams 1780
“If he be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of security in a Republic? the answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last—a sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”–Alexander Hamilton 1794
“If ever the time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”–Samuel Adams 1780
“The natural cure for an ill administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.”–Alexander Hamilton 1788
“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has the right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but it is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.”–James Madison 1793
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks… Let us remember that if we suffer lamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom! It’s a very serious consideration which should deeply impress our minds that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.”–Samuel Adams 1771
“The unity of government which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so rightly prize. But it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness that you should cherish a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which link together the various parts.”–George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
John Jay