COVID TIMELINE

[_Icarus]

Jan 22: "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: Ron Klain, a Biden adviser who managed the 2014 Ebola response, co-writes a piece excoriating Trump for “brashly” dismissing coronavirus as “under control,” while calling for “expertise” to “guide critical decisions” and noting “reasons for great concern.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... _manual_13

Jan. 24: Trump praises and gives thanks to China for its efforts to contain the coronavirus, and adds: “It will all work out well.” https://Twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... andemic%2F

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

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: Biden publishes an op-ed in USA Today hitting Trump for “shortsighted policies" that "have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic,” and warning that the coronavirus “will get worse before it gets better.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 581710002/

Jan. 30: Trump says at a rally in Michigan: “We think we have it very well under control.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... warren-mi/

Jan. 31: Joe Biden tells reporters in Iowa that “science” must “lead the way,” adding: “We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus.” https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles ... s-outbreak

Feb. 2: Trump goes on Sean Hannity’s show and claims: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” Trump extols our “tremendous relationship” with China, and adds: “We did shut it down, yes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrqd7xt2Xk

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 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 7th: Trump in private interview: "It goes through air Bob. That's always tougher than the touch... It's also more deadly than your strenuous flus. This is more deadly, this is 5% versus 1%."

Feb. 10: Trump claims that “a lot of people” think the coronavirus “goes away in April with the heat,” adding that we only have “11 cases and they're all getting better,” and that “we’re in great shape.”

Feb. 11: Biden goes on “Morning Joe” and excoriates Trump for claiming the coronavirus will disappear in the warm weather, crossing himself while doing so, and adding: “You couldn’t make it up.” https://www.mediaite.com/news/joe-biden ... you-doing/

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 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 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: 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. 26: Trump claims the media is conspiring with Democrats to hype the coronavirus to rattle the markets. Trump also says the coronavirus is “going very substantially down, not up.” https://Twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 1832004608

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. 27: Trump hails his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, and while he does reveal a hint of uncertainty, he says: “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: Trump shouts at a rally in South Carolina that Democrats’ criticism of his response (which proved entirely accurate) is “their new hoax.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... x-n1145721

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

Feb. 28: Biden goes on CNN and says Trump has yet to “gain control” of the coronavirus, while calling on Trump to stop downplaying it and urging him instead to “let the experts take this over” and “let the experts speak.” https://Twitter.com/NewDay/status/12333 ... oronavirus

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." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... ference-2/

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 concern and wears 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: "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: "No, I’m not concerned at all." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 994189002/

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

March 9: Trump begins tweeting attacks on the media. "The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation"

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: Trump again hails the “great job” he’s doing on the coronavirus, and declares: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st ... ium=header

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 13: Asked about the administration’s epic failure to ramp up testing, Trump declares: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/po ... _manual_37

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: CNN reports: 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: After all that, Trump preposterously proclaims: “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/p ... virus.html

March 19th: Trump in private interview: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like to play it down because I don't want to create a panic."

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 24: Trump says in a Fox News town hall he would "love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go by Easter."

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: “States with GOP governors & GOP electorates delayed each social distancing measure by an average of 2.7 days, a far larger effect than any other factor, including state income per capita, the % of neighboring states w/ mandates, or even confirmed cases"

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

March 30: Trump says US to send medical supplies to Italy, France, Spain https://news.yahoo.com/Trump-says-us-se ... soc_trk=Facebook

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: Republican Governor Slaps Down Trump Testing Claim: ‘That’s Just Not True.' Larry Hogan said there remains a shortage of tests, personal protective equipment and ventilators in every state." He added that the Trump administration has some new testing measures “in the works,” but for now “no state has enough testing.”

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

Trump is now trying to convince America that he couldn't focus on coronavirus because of impeachment. From January to March of this year, Trump took *6* different weekend golf vacations and held numerous campaign rallies during that period..

March 31: Pentagon says it still hasn't sent ventilators because it hasn't been told where to send them https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/31/politics ... tGVDp-7uIo