As per the 4/5/2020 Washington Post Report by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, “70 days of denial, delays and dysfunction:”

Excerpts:

“The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus.”

“And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.”

As per 3/31/2020 New York Times report by Jim Tankersley, “White House Economists Warned in 2019 a Pandemic Could Devastate America.” (“A study published last fall went unheeded. “)

Excerpts:

“White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.”

“It went unheeded inside the administration.”

“In late February and early March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread from China to the rest of the world, President Trump’s top economic advisers played down the threat the virus posed to the U.S. economy and public health.

“The 2019 study warned otherwise — specifically urging Americans not to conflate the risks of a typical flu and a pandemic. The existence of that warning undermines administration officials’ contentions in recent weeks that no one could have seen the virus damaging the economy as it has. The study was requested by the National Security Council, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

Link to entire article: White House Economists Warned in 2019 a Pandemic Could Devastate America

As per the 4/4/2020 Washington Post report by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, “The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged.” (“From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost.”)

Excerpts:

“By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president — and the coronavirus the enemy — the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.”

“The country has adopted an array of wartime measures never employed collectively in U.S. history — banning incoming travelers from two continents, bringing commerce to a near-halt, enlisting industry to make emergency medical gear, and confining 230 million Americans to their homes in a desperate bid to survive an attack by an unseen adversary.”

“Despite these and other extreme steps, the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation.”

“It did not have to happen this way. Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus.”

“The failure has echoes of the period leading up to 9/11: Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck.”

“The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.”

“And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.”

“The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them. At one point, a Food and Drug Administration official tore into lab officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, telling them their lapses in protocol, including concerns that the lab did not meet the criteria for sterile conditions, were so serious that the FDA would “shut you down” if the CDC were a commercial, rather than government, entity.”

“Other failures cascaded through the system. The administration often seemed weeks behind the curve in reacting to the viral spread.”

“It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent and effective.”

“Even the president’s base has begun to confront this reality.

Link to article: The U.S. was beset by denial, and dysfunction … via mysanantonio.com

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