COVID Timeline - A Tragedy of Trump/GOP Failures

[_Icarus]

Dec. 31: China confirms existence of a new virus.

Jan 8: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first alert advising U.S. clinicians to watch for patients with respiratory symptoms and a travel history to Wuhan, China.

Jan 8: Trump hosts a rally in Toledo

Jan 14: Trump hosts a rally in Milwaukee

Jan 18: Trump played golf

Jan 19: Trump played golf https://trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings

Jan 20: The first U.S. case is confirmed in Washington state

Jan 22: A company that offered to make life-saving protective masks as the coronavirus began its spread across the U.S. in January was snubbed by government officials. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/governme ... 11c0c8cafa

Jan 22: When asked is there are worries about a pandemic? Trump responded: "No. Not at all. And 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." https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/22/tru ... r-control/

Jan 22: Sen. Tom Cotton sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar encouraging the Trump administration to consider banning travel between China and the United States and warning that the Communist regime could be covering up how dangerous the disease really was. https://www.cotton.senate.gov/files/doc ... 0FINAL.pdf

Jan 24: The first classified briefing on Coronavirus where only 14 Senators appeared https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/3 ... ncy-155058

Jan 24: Trump tweets, "It will all work out well."

Jan. 26: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Department of Health and Human Services to declare coronavirus a public health emergency, which would free up $85 million in funding for federal agencies. “Should the outbreak get worse they’re going to need immediate access to critical federal funds that at present they can’t access,” Schumer said. https://nypost.com/2020/01/26/schumer-c ... emergency/

Jan 27: Joe Biden writes an OpEd in USATODAY warning of the virus threat. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... y-damning/

Jan 28: Trump hosts a rally in New Jersey

Jan. 28 : Washington state’s two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, demanded in a letter that Azar keep them apprised “with the latest information regarding the severity of the disease, the country’s capacity to diagnose cases, what steps were being taken to prepare U.S. health care workers, what screening systems were in place at U.S. airports, the status of a novel coronavirus vaccine.” https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/in ... ECEA8AB771

Jan 28: Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to the secretaries of state, health and human services, and homeland security, he noted that “no amount of screening [at airports] will identify a contagious-but-asymptomatic person afflicted with the coronavirus” and called for an immediate evacuation of Americans in China and a ban on all commercial flights between China and the United States. https://www.cotton.senate.gov/files/doc ... Letter.pdf

Jan 30: Jan 8: Trump hosts a rally in Iowa.

Jan 30: The WHO declares a global health emergency.

Jan 30: Trump implemented China travel restrictions which only blocked roughly half the traffic coming in from China.

Jan 30: "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. ... we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it."

Jan 31: Trump tells Fox News host Sean Hannity, "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

Feb 1: Trump played golf

Feb 4: there were 11 confirmed cases in the U.S.

Feb 5: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that top Trump administration officials resisted calls from senators during a meeting on Feb. 5 ― a day prior to Trump’s acquittal in the Senate ― urging them to request emergency funding and to stockpile supplies to deal with the coming crisis.“They said they had it covered. Didn’t need any additional funding. What a fatal screw up,” Murphy tweeted.

Feb. 5, Murphy tweeted: “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.” https://news.yahoo.com/senator-says-whi ... 19950.html

Feb 5: HS Secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion for medical equipment in early February but was rebuffed by White House officials who were upset about the price tag and the fact that Azar had gone around them to Congress. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

Feb 6: The first COVID death in America happens, but doesn't become realized until late April. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... st-reveals

Feb 7: USA sends medical supplies to China. "This week the State Department has facilitated the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies to the Chinese people, including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials. These donations are a testament to the generosity of the American people." https://www.state.gov/the-united-states ... ronavirus/

Feb 10: Trump hosts a rally in New Hampshire.

Feb 10: "A lot of people think that goes away in April."

Feb 10: "We only have 11 cases and they're all getting better."

Feb 14: Trump: "We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape."

Feb 15: Trump played golf

Feb 17: Two more Americans die of COVID - not realized until late April https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... st-reveals

Feb 18: “I don’t think corona is as big a threat as people make it out to be,” Tomas Philipson, acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04 ... c-warnings

Feb 19: Trump hosts a rally in Phoenix

Feb 20: Trump hosts a rally in Colorado Springs.

Feb 21: Trump hosts a rally in Las Vegas.

Feb 23: “We have it very much under control in this country.” https://factba.se/transcript/donald-tru ... ry-23-2020

Feb 24: The virus "is very much under control" and the stock market "starting to look very good to me!" https://Twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 7740174339

Feb 25: CDC official Nancy Messonnier warned that a coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. was inevitable. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/2 ... cdc-117389

Feb 25: Larry Kudlow, Trump Econimic Advisor: "We've contained this pretty close to airtight."

Feb 25: As the Stock Market begins to crash, Trump tries happy talk: “We’re very close to a vaccine.”

Feb 25: “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here..and isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama." - new Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany

Feb 26: "So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... onference/

Feb 26: Trump on the 57 cases - "We have 15 people and within a couple of days its going to be down to close to zero." https://Twitter.com/i/status/1246790046197395456

Feb 26: when asked if “U.S. schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.” Trump responded, "I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... onference/

Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... n-leaders/

Feb. 28: at a Charleston, South Carolina, rally, Trump called the coronavirus the Democrats' "new hoax." That day, there were 59 confirmed cases and two coronavirus deaths in the United States.

Feb 28: "Almost everybody that we see is getting better and it could be everybody." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... arture-84/

Feb 29: "Everything is really under control.” - Trump at CPAC conference https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... harbor-md/

Feb 29: "We've taken the most aggressive actions to confront the coronavirus. They are the most aggressive taken by any country."

Feb 29: Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO that the intelligence briefings and warnings from the CDC and World Health Organization led him to become “alarmed that more was not being done to prepare the U.S. for the spread of this virus.” https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/3 ... ncy-155058

March 2: "They're going to have vaccines relatively soon and they're going to have something that actually makes you better and we think that's going to happen even sooner."

March 2: "I think its very safe" to keep holding campaign rallies.

March 3: Do you think its inevitable that this will spread across the country? "No I don't think that's inevitable at all."

March 4: Matt Gaetz mocks the virus by wearing a gas mask in Congress. https://Twitter.com/RepMattGaetz/status ... 39520?s=20

March 4: Trump falsely claims Obama "did nothing" about the Swine Flu epidemic. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... d-nothing/

March 4: Trump calls it the "Corona Flu" .. "At this moment we think we have it very much in hand ... [W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... line-ceos/

March 5: Trump on Hannity: "Its not that severe."

March 6: "I would rather (Cruise ship passengers stay aboard) because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship."

March 6: The crisis is “an unforeseen problem” that “came out of nowhere”

March 6: "Anybody that wants a test can get a test."

March 7: America realizes that virtually no one can get a test.

March 7: Trump played golf

March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 994189002/

March 7: Trump: "Very soon, we're going to come up [with a vaccine]." Dr. Fauci says we are at least 12-18 months away from a vaccine.

March 8: Trump played golf

March 8: "Going to a rally, there's no reason that you shouldn't go." - Ben Carson when asked about Trump rallies.

March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” https://Twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 6314869761

March 10: VP Pence said Trump instructs everyone to shake hands when they want to shake hands. "I expect the President will continue to do it. I'll continue to do it."

March 11: On the same day the WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic, Trump uses a prime-time Oval Office address to announce a ban on travel for non-Americans from most of Europe. He misstates a freeze on cargo and falsely said the health insurance industry has "agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments."

March 11: “We’re having to fix a problem that, four weeks ago, nobody ever thought would be a problem.”

March 14: “It’s something that nobody expected.”

March 15: Devin Nunes (R) on FOX News: “If you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to go out and go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easy. Let’s not hurt the working people in this country...go to your local pub”

March 16: Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said "This was foreseeable, and foreseen, weeks and months ago, and only now is the White House coming out of denial and heading straight into saying it could not have been foreseen.”

March 17: Trump: "I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic, long before it was called a pandemic."

March 22: Trump tweeted: "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!"

March 25: Politico reports that Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/2 ... stream=top

March 27: Trump wants his signature to appear on relief checks sent out to Americans in the next several weeks, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

March 28: “We might not have to do it but there’s a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine — short-term, two weeks for New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut."

March 29: Trump said quarantining New York "will not be necessary", after the state's governor said doing so would be preposterous and illegal.

March 30: Trump accuses nurses and New York officials of stealing masks because he was told that was happening by an unnamed "tremendous power in the business" https://Twitter.com/mrmarkpotts/status/ ... 75682?s=20

March 30: By the end of the day, roughly 280 million masks from warehouses around the U.S. had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country, according to the broker — and that was in one day. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisal ... 57b4a756d4

March 30: Trump begins his phone interview with Fox & Friends by trying to blame Obama for the country's lack of "medical product" (Trump had 3 years to replenish supplies!) https://Twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1 ... 46592?s=20

March 30: Trump just moved the coronavirus goalposts from "within a couple of days [cases are] going to be down to close to zero" to 200,000 US deaths representing "a very good job.” https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21199586/ ... 0-good-job

March 30: Trump Tells Governors He Hasn’t Heard Anything About Lack Of Testing Kits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq4rYc ... w-X13UcfRc

Mar 31: Trump promised Illinois 300,000 N95 masks. What Illinois received were surgical masks, which aren't remotely as effective. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/politics ... H1FDHfNbJc

March 31: Mitch McConnel blames the delayed response to COVID-19 on the impeachment of Trump. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavi ... 8d98a5571e

Mar 31: Trump says "We inherited obsolete tests" in a statement that reveals his lack of understanding about testing. Tests on novel viruses can only be developed once the genetic sequencing of the virus has been provided. It was impossible for Obama to have had tests for a virus that didn't exist at the time.

April 1: Trump officials recently contacted Thai officials to request they send a bunch of supplies to the US. The incredulous Thai officials responded by pointing out that the US was requesting precisely the same supplies the US had just sent to Thailand. The US then halted all aid it was sending out so they figure out what, exactly, they were doing. The Trump admin is, always has been, and always will be a clown car of bewildering incompetence. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/3 ... w8yA8fcry0

April 1: One of the nation's largest commercial labs has faced a backlog of tests that ballooned in the last two weeks, and has delayed results in some cases up to 10 days. New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics had about 160,000 coronavirus test orders waiting to be processed on March 25, which amounted to about half of the 320,000 total orders for the tests the company had received up to that date https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/politics ... mHGc0HURZw

April 1: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp says he is initiating a state wide quarantine because he just found out asymptomatic people can be contagious. Something we have all known since January. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 580804002/

April 1: Trump says no national policy on mitigating the virus because in some places like Alaska you wouldn’t need it. Alaskan governor already implemented a stay at home order that Trump didn’t know about.

Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis said he hasn’t implemented any orders in the State because the White House hasn’t directed him to.
Mike Pence said the task force will continue to defer to State governors to make up their own decisions as to what they want to do.
Surgeon General advised all Americans to stay home and said he believes the Task Force guidelines is a National stay at home order, contrary to what Pence said.

GOP states have been receiving a wealth of supplies even more than they asked for from the Federal stockpile, while Democrat states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Main have secured only a fraction of their requests. 

April 1: Forbes reports that “roughly 280 million masks from warehouses around the U.S. had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country, according to the broker - and that was in one day.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisal ... 5349a156d4

FEMA spokesperson said the agency “has not actively encouraged or discouraged U.S. companies from exporting overseas.” https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/3 ... aid-157806

NYT reports that thousands of ventilators do not work because the Trump administration allowed the contract to maintain these machines to lapse last summer. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/p ... ators.html

April 2: JARED KUSHNER: "The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use."

April 2: Trump refuses to order nationwide shutdown because he thinks the state governors should decide what's best for their states. Dr. Fauci says "If you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that. We really should be." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dr-antho ... 491833e4a3

April 3: The Obama administration green lit a machine designed to church out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic. Trump's HHS Department squashed it. So not only did Obama NOT leave the federal government with no plan/"empty shelves," but it was Trump who actually ENSURED that they would be empty. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... Mb84gPlurg

April 3: We learn that fiscal restraints imposed by Republicans in Congress in the early years of the Obama administration left the U.S. less prepared to respond to the coronavirus pandemic today. https://www.propublica.org/article/us-e ... 4lfcNUZHyY

April 3: Trump cracks a joke at his briefing. "The models show hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and you know what I want to do? I want to come way under the model. The professionals did the models and I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model."

CDC is now recommending people wear face coverings to stop spread of coronavirus, but then Trump immediately says "I don't think I'm going to be doing it." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/worl ... dates.html

Trump: "We have a stockpile. It is a federal stockpile. We can use it for states, or we can use it for ourselves. We do use it for the federal government. We have a very big federal government."

April 3: Jared Kushner’s ventilator remarks contradicted a government website. So in an Orwellian twist, the Trump administration quickly changed the site. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national ... ebfff09faf

Kushner's claim remains at odds with US Code, and they can't change that. 42 U.S. Code § 247d–6b (A)(3)(J): "The Secretary, in managing the stockpile... shall provide assistance... to maintain and improve State and local public health preparedness capabilities to distribute and dispense medical ...products from the stockpile"

Rather than do everything he can do to save lives in New York right now, Trump seems to prefer holding ventilators in reserve for a future circumstance where other states (perhaps ones more crucial to his reelection hopes) are in need. https://www.vox.com/2020/4/3/21207650/t ... tors-cuomo

April 4: Some states receive masks with dry rot, broken ventilators https://news.yahoo.com/states-receive-m ... kfmevaatca

April 4: medical supplies our tax dollars paid for in the national stockpile are being distributed to private companies who then sell them to the highest bidder. Basically, just like various state governors have been claiming. https://Twitter.com/julieannemery/statu ... 0148671491

April 4: Trump accuses the media and Democratic governors of conspiring to make unreasonable ventilator and PPE requests of his administration https://Twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/1 ... 12768?s=20

April 4: A Covid-19 budget request from HHS in late January that White House officials rejected for fear of seeming “alarmist.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... rc404=true

April 4: Immediately after Fauci makes an impassioned case that social distancing works, Trump says, "but again, we're not going to destroy our country. We have to get back ... we have a big decision to make at a certain point ... the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself." https://Twitter.com/AlexandreKrausz/sta ... 19040?s=20

April 5: April 5: federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin bulk ordering N95 masks, nearly two months after former Trump Admin officials and other experts were raising alarms about the shortage. https://apnews.com/090600c299a8cf07f5b44d92534856bc

April 5: "I answered this 15 times. You don't have to answer." -- Trump prevents Dr Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine

April 5: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) slammed Donald Trump’s inadequate action in the battle against the COVID-19 crisis, saying the president doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “federal” or the role he is supposed to fulfill. “If [the Trump administration] had started in February building ventilators, getting ready for this pandemic, we would not have the problems that we have today and frankly, very many fewer people would die,” Pritzker said.

April 5: "You should be thanking them for what they have done, not always asking wise guy questions" -- Trump ends the press briefing by berating an Associated Press reporter who dared to ask him about the government's slow response to coronavirus

April 5: "For any country. Our country had the greatest economic boom in history," Trump says, falsely. Growth was stronger for periods under Obama, not to mention numerous previous eras!

April 6: AMA President Dr. Patrice Harris rebuke's Trump's remarks. “There could be deaths. This is a new virus, and so we should not be promoting any medication or drug for any disease that has not been proven and approved by the FDA.” What do you have to lose? “You could lose your life,” Harris said. “It’s unproven. And so certainly there are some limited studies, as Dr. Fauci said. But at this point, we just don’t have the data to suggest that we should be using this medication for COVID-19.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ama-pres ... d76c663197


April 6: LARRY KUDLOW on coronavirus, "I don't believe anybody could've predicted the exponential rise of this."

April 6: A video of President Obama warning the world about imminent threat of noevl viruses resurfaces: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/202 ... tn-vpx.cnn

Trump says the federal coronavirus effort has been “incredible.” His own government disagrees. A new HHS inspector general report details “severe shortages” facing hospitals dealing with the pandemic. https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-20-00300.pdf

April 6: In late January, President Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro warned his White House colleagues the novel coronavirus could take more than half a million American lives and cost close to $6 trillion, according to memos obtained by Axios. https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro ... 382a9.html

US 'wasted' months before preparing for coronavirus pandemic https://apnews.com/090600c299a8cf07f5b4 ... hIb-qZTslw

April 8: Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... ocPY1lJz3k

[_subgenius]

You forgot that Trump mentions Covid19 in SotU on Feb 4th (she tore that speech up, right?)

and

Pelosi says go to Chinatown on Feb 24. "here we are...come join us".

and

should we include mardi gras too?

and so on...

Your hair fire, though tedious, is ridiculous and childish. Try adulting on this issue - you might find it refreshing and less exhausting thatn the tantrum you've been throwing since November 2016.

[_subgenius]

Oh, and another timeline entry that is of utmost relevance:
December 15, 1791
10th amendment in particular

[_EAllusion]

Ah, yes, the 10th amendment. The famous amendment that established the United States as a weak confederacy that makes the President have to *checks notes* systematically downplay a global pandemic and lie about federal response.

[_Icarus]

Pelosi was responding to racist discrimination that was taking place in her district as people were refusing to do business in Chinatown in retaliation for COVID-19.

Pelosi wasn't privy to intelligence briefings that recommended mitigation efforts or economic lock-downs at that time, but the President was.

Way to pass the buck subs.

[_EAllusion]

I think Pelosi underreacted given available information, but she was indeed responding to racial fears leading to business discrimination against Asians a couple weeks prior to when the public push for lock-down orders began in earnest. As it turns out, the Asian dominated areas of the country were and are some of the safer spots because of early warnings from cultural connections abroad and a stronger culture towards infection mitigation behavior. If you were gonna shop anywhere, Chinatown was as good of a place as any. Of course, bringing Pelosi doing this in late Feb up is meant to suggest that Trump's systematic downplaying of the virus threat in public and unbelievably bungled federal response wasn't a notable failure. Just par for the course. Whatabout whatabout whatabout. This is false, though, as there were warnings all over the place - that's what Trump was downplaying - that were being ignored.

This is ambitious, because we all lived through it just a few months ago.

[_Brackite]

You forgot that Trump mentions Covid19 in SotU on Feb 4th (she tore that speech up, right?)

and

Pelosi says go to Chinatown on Feb 24. "here we are...come join us".

Feb. 24th was on the same date when Trump tweeted that the "Coronavirus is very much under control". And Trump held two rallies after Feb. 24th. One rally on Feb. 28th and another one on March 2nd.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/Trump-hold ... 3-02-2020/

[Guest]

I don't know if it is part of what you are capturing, but March 11 seems like a watershed date. That was the day Tom Hanks was confirmed as infected along with his wife, Rita Wilson. And the NBA became the first major sports league to postpone it's season as players tested positive. It seemed like it shifted public dialogue. I look at it as the day most people I knew started taking it seriously. In Utah it went from, "It's just the flu, brah" to, "Buy all the toilet paperz!!!!"

[_honorentheos]

March 23 - Arizona man dies from taking chloroquine phosphate after hearing Trump promote use of pharmaceutical chloroquine to combat COVID-19.

NBC News spoke to the wife, who said they learned of chloroquine's connection to coronavirus during a President Donald Trump news conference, which "was on a lot actually." They took it because they "were afraid of getting sick," she said.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html

[_canpakes]

You forgot that Trump mentions Covid19 in SotU on Feb 4th ...

Has anyone forgotten? If they have, it’s probably on account of how little was said, and how meaningless it turned out to be. From the transcript, here is the full extent of Trump’s attention devoted to the coronavirus:

“Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases. 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.”

Trump spent more time talking about Venezuela. : D

And he certainly has little to show for his promise of taking “all the necessary steps”.

But I get it. Trump simply mentioned the coronavirus for a brief 30 seconds and that’s all it took for you to be convinced that he was serious about it. Kind of like how evangelicals buy into his BS of being a good, practicing Christian. Because he says so, right?