Trump's Deadly Cornavirus Bungle

“Nobody ever expected a thing like this,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, March 23. To the contrary, starting in 2016, in the aftermath of the Ebola crisis of 2014-2015, the National Security Council had initiated a project to develop a "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents," aka "the pandemic playbook."  The playbook outlines hundreds of tactics and decisions to be considered when confronting a pandemic including consideration of availability of personal-protective-equipment (PPE) for healthcare providers,  recommendation that the federal government work to detect potential outbreaks, and consider invoking the Defense Production Act.

The Trump administration was made aware of the document's existence in 2017, but -- whether by choice or ineptitude -- it was "thrown onto a shelf" according to a government official interviewed by Politico, who worked in the Obama and Trump administrations.

Among its many recommendations, the playbook contains a set of key questions and decisions to be addressed as soon as there is a "credible threat" of a pandemic, which in the case of COVID19 would have been in early to mid January when the virus was spreading in China. The playbook further recommends specific steps once there is evidence that the disease is spreading in humans, which the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded was the case with COVID19 on January 22. In that case, the playbook directs the federal government to coordinate "workforce protection activities" including "determination, procurement and deployment" of PPE. (The Trump administration did not take initiative in those tasks until the last weeks of March.)

Meanwhile, until July 2019, US epidemiologist Dr. Linda Quick had been working for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) embedded in the corresponding Chinese government agency. Dr. Quick's job was to train Chinese field epidemiologists who would be deployed to sites of potential outbreaks to identify and contain diseases. But in July she learned that her position would be defunded by the Trump administration in September, a casualty of Trump's inability to comprehend how tariffs work (hint: the Chinese don't pay them), and left for another position with the CDC.

According to a recent report in the Times of Israel, US intelligence agencies became aware of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, during the second week of November. The agencies informed the Trump administration "which did not deem it of interest," and also informed NATO and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). ABC News published a similar report indicating that the US military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) warned in late November that disease was spreading through Wuhan, and that it could become a "cataclysmic event." ABC's sources state that there were multiple briefings concerning the outbreak, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the White House. (The Defense Department subsequently denied that the NCMI memo existed.)

White House briefings continued through December, and included the National Security Council (NSC), eventually appearing in the President's Daily Brief in early January. But the NSC briefings were decidedly anti-China, influenced by deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and other China hawks who sought to publicly blame China for the virus outbreak. The China hawks collided with Trump economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, shepherding the on-again-off-again trade deal that was expected to be a central plank of Trump's re-election campaign.

On December 31 the National Security Council received a so-called "pop-a-flare" message forwarded from a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) attache in Beijing describing strange cases of pneumonia. A similar message was referred to the CDC on January 3, in which the head of China's disease control agency described an outbreak growing out of control. Nonetheless, when asked on January 22 by CNBC's Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland whether there were concerns about a pandemic, Trump replied "No. Not at all. And-- we’re-- 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." 

The Trump administration's reflexive distrust and dismissal of anything associated with the Obama administration might explain their catastrophic refusal to have considered the NSC playbook, but not why Trump dismissed a January 29 memo from one of his favorite China bashers, trade adviser Peter Navarro. In blunt terms Navarro warned that the imminent pandemic might cost the US trillions of dollars, and threaten the lives of millions of Americans.  Navarro's memo appeared on the day that the White House Coronavirus Task Force was announced. Trump would later deny having been aware of the memo. Eventually input from HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others reinforced what Pottinger and national security adviser Robert C. O'Brien had been advocating, and Trump was prevailed upon to restrict non-US citizens from traveling from China. There were so many exceptions to the travel ban, however, that researchers questioned whether it would be effective.

As reported by the New York Times, the day after the first Navarro memo, Secretary Azar warned Trump on a phone call of the possibility of a pandemic. According to the Times, Trump told Azar he was being alarmist. On February 5 senators including Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy met with administration officials, urging them to take the virus threat more seriously. But at a political rally in Manchester, NH on February 10, Trump touted his trade deal with China, and claimed without evidence that the virus would "miraculously go away" in warmer weather.

On February 13, Azar announced that the then-existing flu surveillance system would be used to identify coronavirus cases. By the following week public health labs in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle were still not screening samples collected by the flu surveillance network, apparently related to problems with the coronavirus test developed by the CDC. As a result the administration had almost no information as to how quickly the disease was spreading.

On February 21, Dr. Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary of HHS for Preparedness and Response called a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Noting a spike in new cases in China, Iran, and South Korea, as well as the United States, Kadlec warned that a lockdown would be necessary to prevent the spread of the virus. Kadlec's group reportedly wanted to meet with Trump right away, but initially Trump was on a state visit to India. While he was on his way home, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, went public with proposals for voluntary quarantine,  closing schools, canceling mass gatherings -- the kinds of measures the task force had agreed were necessary. But she committed the unpardonable sin in Trumpworld: she had not discussed the proposals with Trump, or obtained his consent. In the wake of a crashing stock market the meeting with Trump to discuss social distancing was replaced by a press conference in which it was announced that VP Mike Pence would lead the White House response to the coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci, would later confirm that in the third week in February Trump had received recommendations that the nation adopt social distancing policies including staying home from work. With the White House focused instead on "messaging," nearly a month would pass before Trump would finally recommend social distancing -- a month during which the virus spread unchecked. As reported by multiple sources, in January and February, US manufacturers encouraged by the federal government shipped nearly $80 million worth of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and oxygenation equipment, and protective garments to China.

On March 12 a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry suggested that the US military might have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan in October 2019. Trump was reportedly furious, and later that week would refer to coronavirus as the "Chinese virus." Soon the market for essential Chinese healthcare-related products devolved into chaos with state and local governments bidding against each other for the critical resources.

On March 13 Trump declared a national emergency. As documented by NPR , one month later promises made in conjunction with the declaration remain "largely unfulfilled."

• Introducing several retail executives Trump suggested that there would be a private-public partnership to make drive-through coronavirus testing available. One month later Walmart had opened two sites, Walgreens had opened two, and CVS had opened four. Target, whose CEO featured prominently in Trump's celebrity virus presentation, had opened no testing sites and told NPR there was no formal partnership with the federal government.
• Home testing assistance promised by LHC Group executive Bruce Greenstein failed to materialize; LHC employees contacted by NPR a month later said they did not have training or materials necessary to administer coronavirus testing.
• Trump and coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx claimed that Google was developing a website to facilitate drivethrough testing. "No such screening and testing website has been developed by Google," NPR reported. A company owned by Google's parent, Alphabet, developed a pilot program for the state of California that is only available in five counties.
• Trump claimed he would waive license requirements so that doctors could work where they were needed most. Medical licensing is controlled by the states, however, and the federal govenment does not have the authority to waive requirements.
• Trump claimed the federal government would purchase oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but a month later this had not occurred. Congress would have to approve any such purchase.
• Diagnostic testing lab requests for government funds to build additional testing facilities, national guidelines for who to test, and government support for the supply chain -- brought to the White House in the weeks prior to the March 13 pantomime -- have not been addressed in the month since.