This is a must-read, and since Washington Post has dropped its paywall for Covid-19 stories do take a few minutes along with your blood pressure medicine and learn the terrible truth — that Trump was warned about the potential for a deadly pandemic in January and February but would not listen to his advisors and would not accept the seriousness of the situation and would not act to save the nation.
It is infuriating. This is a crime against humanity. There is no punishment grave enough to account for this. Trump by his sociopathic insane selfish focus on his own “genius” and also, his craving for re-election and of course more money and power has driven us into a ditch and G*d alone knows how many of us will die, lose our friends, homes, jobs, family members and our futures because of this selfish asshole.
Pardon my French.
Anyway,
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The blame isn’t exclusively on Trump. Congress didn’t do anything either. Why I have no idea. I get that the Republicans were as usual greedy and trying to protect their power. Where were the other Congresspeople? Did the Democrats have this information also? If so were they powerless?
The article seems to indicate that Trump’s own White House advisors tried to get him to focus and to act, but without success.
He continued to claim that the virus was no big deal, that it would be fine, it would disappear by a miracle, the stock market was booming, while the world started to burn.
State Department clearly knew there was a serious threat. According to the article Americans had been flown home from Wuhan on charter planes and there was a lot of “chatter” in January.
But inside the White House officials were unable to get Trump to take this gravest of matters seriously. Trump was more interested in vaping apparently.
Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
Mick Mulvaney apparently tried to set up regular action/information meetings but Trump didn’t think the issue was worth troubling himself and worse, even, he lied to the American people about the threat and refused to do anything to mitigate the increasingly dire situation, including the lack of tests and a coordinated response to the threat.
By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection, according to people who spoke directly to Grogan. Other officials, including Matthew Pottinger, the president’s deputy national security adviser, began calling for a more forceful response, according to people briefed on White House meetings.
“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
www.washingtonpost.com/...