A detailed timeline of all the ways

Trump failed to respond to the

coronavirus
The federal coronavirus response shows a president dead set on
avoiding responsibility for the pandemic.
By Cameron Peters@jcameronpeterscameron.peters@voxmedia.com  Jun 8, 2020, 6:00am EDT
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/8/21242003/trump-failed-coronavirus-response

A week and a half ago, the US coronavirus death toll surpassed 100,000 —

the most in the world, and more than the next three countries combined. 

That number has only grown in the days since. And in the face of that
crisis, President Donald Trump has a message for the American people: It
was China’s fault, and the only reason the US death toll isn’t worse is
because of his quick action in banning travel from China.

In fact, there are many reasons the US death toll is so high, including a
national response plagued by delays at the federal level, wishful thinking by
President Trump, the sidelining of experts, a pointed White House
campaign to place the blame for the Trump administration’s shortcomings
on others, and time wasted chasing down false hopes based on poor
science.

Often as not, though, rather than argue the merits of its response at home,
the Trump administration has chosen to focus on its action against China
as a benchmark for success — and that’s not accidental. In fact, Trump’s
quick pivot to blaming China is a deliberate strategy, supposedly backed up by
internal Trump campaign polling and designed to obfuscate the details
of the truly inadequate US response. But in the early days of the novel
coronavirus pandemic, Trump himself took a very different line on
everything from China to the severity of the virus itself and how bad things
might get in the US.
Though White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony
Fauci admitted as early as March that the virus could kill 100,000 to 200,000
Americans, Trump has had his own ever-shifting goalposts for what counts
as a successful response. On April 20, he predicted 50,000 to 60,000 dead
from Covid-19. A week later, he revised his estimate to 70,000. On May 4,
it was 80,000 to 100,000 people, and we now know it will continue to climb
past that mark.
Throughout the pandemic, however, much of the Trump administration’s
spin — regarding Trump’s own response, China’s role, and more — has
been misleading, if not outright untrue. Here’s what Trump and the federal
government have — and have not — done to respond to the virus.

2019

In late 2019, the coronavirus wasn’t on much of the world’s radar. President
Trump was becoming the third president in US history to be impeached. We
now know, however, that the first cases of the virus were cropping up as
early as November. Here’s where things stood late last year:

November 17: Although it was not diagnosed as such at the time,

researchers have now identified the first confirmed Covid-19 case as having
been seen on November 17 in China’s Hubei province.

December 27: A man in France, who is now the first known Covid-19 patient
outside of China, goes to the emergency room with a fever and difficulty
breathing. At the time, Covid-19 was still unheard of outside of China.

December 31: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reports the first

cluster of cases of a “pneumonia of unknown cause,” later identified as
Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, now called SARS-
CoV-2.

January 2020 

Though new discoveries — such as the December case in France

mentioned above — keep pushing the timeline of the virus back, much of
the world began to take note of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in
China in January 2020, which at the time was mostly centered in the Hubei
province. On January 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a
preliminary news item about the then-unidentified disease; at the time, it
was a relatively distant concern in the US, particularly given the country
had yet to see any confirmed cases.

But the coronavirus’s threat was of concern to US national security officials,

who, as the Washington Post reported in March, were warning Trump of the
global danger posed by the virus in daily intelligence briefings as early as
January.

Nonetheless, in public comments and tweets, the president consistently

played down the fledgling pandemic even as the first US case was reported
in Washington state. He also applauded China’s handling of the virus at
several points in January, before taking action to protect the US in the form
of a limited travel ban from China on January 31.

Here’s what things looked like in January.

January 11: The first death from a confirmed case of Covid-19 is reported in

China.

January 16: A researcher in Germany develops the first coronavirus test.

January 19: Human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus

is confirmed by the Chinese government.

January 21: The first confirmed Covid-19 case in the US is reported in

Washington state.

January 22: While at Davos, Trump makes his first public comment on the
coronavirus, downplaying the risk in comments to CNBC and CBS News
correspondent Paula Reid.

To CNBC: We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China,
and we have it under control. It’s — going to be just fine.

To CBS: We do have a plan and we think it’s going to be handled very well.
We’ve already handled it very well … We’re in very good shape and I think
China’s in very good shape also.

January 24: Trump praises China’s “efforts and transparency” and thanks

Chinese President Xi Jinping for his response to the virus.

January 29: Trump receives a briefing on the coronavirus, and asserts that

the US is “on top of it 24/7.”

January 30: The WHO declares the coronavirus a global health emergency.

January 30: Trump suggests that the coronavirus is under control in

remarks at a manufacturing plant in Michigan:

We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five [cases]. And
those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with
China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for
us.

January 31: Trump suspends entry to the US for many — but not all —

categories of people traveling from China, a move which some
epidemiologists warned at the time was “more of an emotional or political
reaction” than a public health decision. The Department of Health and
Human Services declares the coronavirus a public health emergency.

February 2020

February started with a State of the Union address on February 4, and the
first US Covid-19 death followed on February 6 in California’s Bay Area.
The majority of the coronavirus messaging coming from the White House,
however, continued to focus on downplaying the virus rather than bracing
for the now-realized possibility that it could become a full-blown pandemic
and a global public health crisis.

The Trump administration did take a few steps toward crafting a federal
response, requesting emergency funding from Congress and setting up a
task force with Vice President Mike Pence at its head. Meanwhile, Trump
— and Fox News — leaned hard into portraying the coronavirus as under
control, and even as a Democratic hoax.

As a result, February was by and large a lost month: Delays in developing a

test kit were followed by testing shortages, and both issues meant the
coronavirus was able to spread undetected and unabated in many parts of
the country.

Here’s what things looked like in February.

February 4: Trump gives the annual State of the Union address and briefly

mentions the US response to the coronavirus in his speech.

We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on
the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps
to safeguard our citizens from this threat.

February 5: The Food and Drug Administration issues an emergency use

authorization for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
coronavirus test, clearing the way for it to be used in state labs.

February 6: The first death in the US from a confirmed case of Covid-19

is retroactively confirmed to have occurred in early February by the Santa
Clara County medical examiner following an autopsy of the victim.

February 7: Trump again praises Xi’s response to the coronavirus.

February 15: The first death in Europe from a confirmed case of Covid-19

is reported in France.
February 23: Trump again claims that the coronavirus is “under control” in
an impromptu South Lawn press conference with Marine One waiting to
depart to Andrews Air Force Base ahead of a trip to India.

We’re very much involved. We’re very — very cognizant of everything going on.
We have it very much under control in this country.

February 24: In a tweet, Trump reiterates his claim that the virus is “very
much under control in the USA.”

February 25: Trump requests $2.5 billion in coronavirus response funding

from Congress for vaccine development, testing, PPE, and more.

February 26: The first instance of community spread in the US

is confirmed by the CDC.

February 26: Trump appoints Pence to lead the coronavirus task force;

during the same press conference, he again downplays the virus.

And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going
to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

February 27: Trump predicts that the coronavirus will disappear “like a

miracle.”

It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.

February 28: Trump refers to the coronavirus as the Democrats’ “new hoax”

at a rally in South Carolina.

The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus… One of my people came up to me

and said “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia, that
didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax
that was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over,
they’ve been doing it since you got in… And this is their new hoax.”

March 2020

In March, the coronavirus for the first time began to intrude on daily life in a
major way. The NBA shut down on March 11, the same night Trump
addressed the nation in primetime from the Oval Office, announcing a
European travel ban and promising economic relief efforts. 

Not long after that speech, California became the first state to implement a
general stay-at-home order on March 19.
By the end of the month, more than 30 states had done the same, and those
shutdowns — a public health necessity, in the opinion of most experts —
brought the US economy to a screeching halt. As a result, it’s maybe not
surprising that Trump, who has previously tied his reelection pitch directly
to the economy, spent much of the month broadcasting an unwarranted
optimism about the trajectory of the virus and promoting potential
treatments like hydroxychloroquine — which the FDA has since warned
against using for Covid-19 treatment or prevention, noting it can
cause heart problems.

The growing severity of the pandemic, however, also led to a mid-March

social distancing push from the White House. Shortly after his primetime
address, Trump announced a new slate of guidelines advising against
discretionary travel and against congregating in groups of more than 10
people.

And toward the end of the month, the growing death toll from the
coronavirus — centered on New York, Trump’s longtime home — appeared
to have an impact on the president. In a press conference, he
acknowledged that the first half of April was “going to be a rough two-week
period” and walked back previous statements downplaying the coronavirus
by comparing it to the seasonal flu.

Here’s what things looked like in March.

March 5: Trump suggests that closing the US to travel from China helped to

keep the number of Covid-19 cases low.

March 6: At the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump says falsely

that “anybody that wants a test can get a test”; he also comments that he
would rather have infected people who were trapped on a cruise ship stay
there to keep the number of confirmed US cases low.

Anybody that wants a test can get a test ... they’re making millions of more as we
speak. But as of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test — that’s the
important thing — and the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The
transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.

...

I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double
because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.
March 9: Trump compares the coronavirus to the common flu, a
comparison which at that time had already been debunked by experts
including Dr. Anthony Fauci.

March 11: The WHO officially labels the coronavirus a pandemic.

March 11: Trump makes an error-ridden primetime address from the Oval

Office that coincides with Tom Hanks announcing his coronavirus
diagnosis and the NBA suspending its season.

Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day, we’re moving
very quickly ... The vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low.
President Donald Trump gives an address from the Oval Office on the federal government’s response
to the coronavirus.

March 13: Trump declares a national emergency in response to the

coronavirus, freeing up billions in federal funding for the virus response.

March 16: Trump announces “15 Days to Stop the Spread” CDC guidelines,

encouraging social distancing.

March 18: Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

mutually close the US-Canada border; Trump officially invokes the Defense
Production Act (DPA) in order to push domestic manufacturing industries to
produce badly needed medical supplies.

March 19: Trump incorrectly claims that the Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) approved the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine for treating
Covid-19.

The nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if things don’t
go as planned it’s not going to kill anybody. When you go with a brand new drug,
you don’t know that that’s going to happen. It’s shown very very encouraging
early results.

March 19: Trump labels the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus” in a press

conference; photos show that he revised prepared remarks to add the
xenophobic term.

March 20: Trump closes the US-Mexico border, saying:

[Unauthorized entries] threaten to create a perfect storm that would spread the
infection to our border agents, migrants, and to the public at large. Left unchecked,
this would cripple our immigration system, overwhelm our healthcare system, and
severely damage our national security. We’re not going to let that happen.
March 20: Trump touts hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug unproven as a
Covid-19 treatment, at the White House Coronavirus Task Force daily
briefing; in the same exchange, he attacks NBC News correspondent Peter
Alexander as a “terrible reporter.”

Let’s see if it works. It might and it might not. I happen to feel good about it, but
who knows, I’ve been right a lot. Let’s see what happens.

March 22: As the economic impact of coronavirus lockdowns becomes

more apparent, Trump shies away from a prolonged shutdown following a
historically bad day for the Dow Jones stock index the previous week.

March 24: Trump floats Easter Sunday, April 12, as a potential reopening

date.

I would love to have it open by Easter. I will — I will tell you that right now. I
would love to have that — it’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll
make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up
and just raring to go by Easter.

March 26: The US hits 1,000 reported Covid-19 deaths.

March 27: Trump attacks General Motors CEO Mary Barra on Twitter over

ventilator manufacturing amid a desperate shortage of the machines, and
threatens to “invoke ‘P’” — the Defense Production Act — to compel the
company to make more, the first of many such threats made against
companies producing essential materials.

March 27: Trump signs a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that

includes direct cash payments to Americans, additional funding for
hospitals, and some $500 billion in loans for companies.

March 29: Trump extends CDC social distancing guidance through April 30;

in the Rose Garden, he also says he believes his administration will have
“done a very good job” if the US avoids the worst-case 2.2 million deaths
predicted by London’s Imperial College.

March 31: Trump drops his comparison to the flu, saying the coronavirus is

“vicious”:

It’s not the flu. It’s vicious. When you send a friend to the hospital, and you call up
to find out how is he doing — it happened to me, where he goes to the hospital, he
says goodbye. He’s sort of a tough guy. A little older, a little heavier than he’d like
to be, frankly. And you call up the next day: “How’s he doing?” And he’s in a
coma? This is not the flu.
April 2020

For all that Trump spent January and February praising China’s response
to the coronavirus, April saw his White House execute an about-face as the
human and economic toll of the pandemic in the US mounted. The
president began to blame China, Democratic presidential nominee Joe
Biden, and the WHO for problems with America’s Covid-19 response. And
Democratic governors, like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who maintained
lockdown orders and criticized the Trump administration’s response to the
crisis, became targets of his ire.

Here’s what things looked like in April.

April 2: Trump employs the DPA to direct 3M and other companies to

manufacture masks and ventilators:

Moments ago, I directed Secretary Azar and Acting Secretary Wolf to use any and
all available authority under the Defense Production Act to ensure that domestic
manufacturers have the supplies they need to produce ventilators for patients with
severe cases of C-O-V-I-D 19. You know what that is, right? Become a very
famous term: C-O-V-I-D — COVID.

April 4: Trump again invokes the DPA to combat the hoarding of medical

supplies by “wartime profiteers.”

April 6: The US hits 10,000 reported Covid-19 deaths.

April 9: The Trump campaign releases a misleading ad attacking Biden’s

record on China.

April 13: Trump claims to have the legal right to overrule governors’

shelter-in-place orders, asserting at a press conference that the president’s
“authority is total.”

April 14: Trump announces plans to halt funding to the WHO, accusing the

organization of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the
coronavirus.”

April 15: The US hits 25,000 reported Covid-19 deaths.

April 16: The Trump administration releases its reopening guidelines:

Every state is very different. They’re all beautiful. We love them all. But they’re
very, very different. If they need to remain closed, we will allow them to do that.
And if they believe it is time to reopen, we will provide them the freedom and
guidance to accomplish that task — and very, very quickly — depending on what
they want to do.

April 17: As small groups of — sometimes armed — protesters

demonstrating against shelter-in-place orders begin to receive media
coverage, Trump calls on his supporters, including those who attended
these protests, to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all of which
have Democratic governors.

April 17: Trump attacks Biden and the Obama administration’s handling of

the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

April 22: Trump, who has spent the last few days promoting reopening,
announces that he opposes Georgia reopening.

I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly with his
decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines
for the incredible people of Georgia ... I think it’s too soon.

April 23: Trump signs an executive order blocking green cards for most

categories of prospective immigrants; at a daily press briefing, he
also floats bleach as a potential coronavirus treatment:

And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute.
And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a
cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on
the lungs.

April 24: The US hits 50,000 reported Covid-19 deaths.

April 28: The US hits 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases.

April 30: The Trump administration allows federal “Stay at Home”

guidelines to expire, ceding the field to state efforts.

May 2020

If April was focused on shifting the blame, May was the month the
president pivoted to denying there was anything to be blamed for. Although
the US death toll passed 100,000 on May 27, Trump nonetheless insisted
that the US response had “met the moment.” The US began to lead the
world in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

And the president continued his efforts to reframe recent events to cast
himself in a favorable light. For instance, in May, Trump attributed his
decision to limit travel from China as the major factor in avoiding a death
toll numbering in the millions, though most of the coronavirus cases at the
epicenter of the US outbreak — New York City — have been shown
to originate from Europe.

And as states began to reopen nonessential businesses — despite experts

warning premature reopening could lead to a second wave of infections —
Trump also looked to put the crisis behind him. The president
made multiple trips to battleground states in May, and his campaign is
reportedly examining plans to resume holding Trump’s signature rallies.

Here’s how things looked in May.

May 3: Trump again revises his estimate on the number of Covid-19 deaths

the US will suffer and predicts 85,000 to 100,000 fatalities during a Fox
News virtual town hall.

Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100 thousand people. That’s a
horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this. This should have been
stopped in China. It should have been stopped. But if we didn’t do it, the minimum
we would have lost is a million-two, a million-four, a million-five. That’s the
minimum. We would have lost probably higher than — it’s possible higher than
2.2.

May 7: The US hits 75,000 reported Covid-19 deaths; the New York

Times reports that the Trump administration elected to shelve detailed
reopening guidelines from the CDC.

May 8: Trump claims that the US is “the world leader” in responding to the
coronavirus.

May 9: Although many states have yet to meet the minimum requirements
for reopening based on the White House’s guidelines, Trump continues to
push for the reopening of nonessential businesses, using the slogan
“TRANSITION TO GREATNESS!”

May 10: Trump again goes after the Obama administration’s response to

the 2009 swine flu pandemic, falsely calling it a “disaster.” As the
Washington Post has explained, “some flaws in the system were
discovered” in the Obama administration’s handling of the H1N1 pandemic,
“but overall the government was praised for its response.”

May 11: Trump says that the US has “met the moment and we have
prevailed” in responding to the coronavirus.
May 18: Trump tells reporters that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, an
antimalarial drug that has been linked to an increased risk of death when
used to treat coronavirus patients.

May 21: Trump claims falsely that he was “so early. I was earlier than

anybody thought” in response to a Columbia University study suggesting
that 36,000 lives could have been saved in the US alone by implementing
social distancing measures just a week earlier. As noted above, the
president reportedly ignored security briefings on the coronavirus for weeks
and did not roll out a social distancing campaign until mid-March.

May 22: Trump at a press conference announces he is labeling churches as

“essential” and calls for governors to allow their reopening, as well as
threatening — without authority — to “override” any governors who fail to
do so.

May 23: For the first time since March, Trump hits the links at his own golf
course in Sterling, Virginia, as the US death toll edges toward 100,000.

May 24: Trump bans non-US citizens traveling from Brazil from entering the

country.

May 26: Trump again favorably compares the death toll to an Imperial

College projection that estimated the death toll had the US taken no steps
to stop the spread of Covid-19, tweeting that “if I hadn’t done my job well, &
early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People.”

May 27: The US hits 100,000 reported Covid-19 deaths.