On April 4th, Washington post launched this in-depth investigation article, which comprehensively and deeply reviewed the failure experience and deep reasons of the United States in the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis. The article was based on 47 interviews with American government officials, public health experts, intelligence officials and other personnel involved in the fight against the epidemic.
When Trump declared himself a wartime president and coronavirus was his enemy, the United States was facing such a terrible prospect that the number of people who eventually died in Covid-19 might exceed the sum of the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the Afghan War and the Iraqi War.
The United States adopted a series of wartime measures, which were never taken together in the country’s history, including banning inbound tourists from two continents, almost stagnant trade, recruiting industries that manufacture emergency medical equipment, and trapping 230 million Americans in their homes, all in an attempt to escape the attack of an invisible opponent.
Despite all kinds of extreme measures, and the United States has always been considered to be the most well-prepared country to deal with epidemics, it was finally defeated by novel coronavirus catastrophically, with more casualties than any other country.
Things didn’t have to happen this way. Although not fully prepared, the United States does have more professional knowledge, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that have finally performed much better in resisting the virus.
This failure is reminiscent of everything that happened before the September 11th incident: all parties, including the highest level of government, issued warnings, but President Bush turned a deaf ear to these warnings until the enemy attacked.
I. Initial warning
On January 3, the Trump administration received the first official notice of coronavirus. Within a few days, American intelligence agencies warned the seriousness of this coronavirus threat in their daily briefing to the president, which was the first time in western countries to warn this virus.
However, it was not until 70 days after receiving the initial notice that Trump finally realized that this coronavirus is not a distant threat, nor is it a well-controlled harmless influenza virus, but a deadly and terrible force. It is a deadly force that may defeat the US defense system and kill tens of thousands of citizens at any time.
Now I can finally see clearly that these two months have become a critical moment that has been wasted.
Trump made some unfounded assertions in those weeks, including his claim that everything would "miraculously" disappear, which caused great trouble to the public and contradicted the urgent information sent by public health experts.
"Although it is outrageous that the media prefer to fabricate conspiracy theories in the White House, President Trump and this administration will still pay attention to the health and safety of Americans around the clock and work around the clock to slow down the spread of the virus, expand the scope of testing and speed up the vaccination," said Judd Deere, a presidential spokesman. "Thanks to the leadership of the president, we will be healthy, strong and prosperous, and stand out from the challenges of growth."
The president’s behavior and his combative remarks are only one aspect of the deeper dysfunction.
The most serious failure is that (early) efforts to develop diagnostic tests failed. This test could have been mass-produced and distributed all over the United States, allowing relevant institutions to find early outbreaks of diseases and take isolation measures to control them.
On one occasion, an official of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who opened the laboratory of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told them that all kinds of mistakes, including the fear that the laboratory did not meet the standards of aseptic conditions, were so serious that the FDA said that if CDC was a commercial entity rather than a government entity, it would have been closed long ago.
Other failures spread throughout the epidemic prevention system. In response to the spread of the virus, the government usually seems to be a few weeks behind. The protracted debate between the White House and public health institutions about funds, coupled with the small emergency supplies, left most of the country’s health care system unprotected until Covid-19 became a pandemic.
Infighting, turf wars and sudden changes in leadership hindered the work of the coronavirus task force.
We may never know whether it is possible to avoid many deaths and millions of infections if more consistent, urgent and effective response measures are taken. But even now, there are still many signs that the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis may have devastating consequences.
Even the president’s basic supporters are beginning to face this reality. In mid-March, when Trump advertised himself as a wartime president and belatedly urged the public to work together to slow down the spread of the virus, Republican leaders were examining grim poll data, which showed that Trump was making his followers fall into a false sense of security in the face of deadly threats.
Polls show that Trump’s contemptuous description of the virus and the satirical reports of the virus by Fox News and other conservative TV stations have far more influence on the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. As a result, it is frustrating that many Republicans refuse to change their travel plans, to follow the guidelines of "social distance" (editor’s note: keep a distance of about 2 meters between people), to hoard supplies, and to take the threat of coronavirus seriously.
"Denial is unlikely to be a successful survival strategy," Republican pollster Neil newhouse concluded in a document. This document was shared by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and widely discussed in the White House. It said that Trump’s staunchest supporters "are putting themselves and their loved ones at risk".
As this report swept the top of the Republican Party, Trump also changed. In recent days, Trump was very angry because he was reminded that he had claimed that the number of infection cases would soon "drop to zero".
So far, more than 7,000 people have died of coronavirus in the United States, and about 240,000 cases have been reported. But Trump admits that the new model shows that the final national death toll may be between 100,000 and 240,000.
In addition to the suffering of thousands of victims and their families, this result will change the international status of the United States and damage and weaken the reputation of the United States as a global leader in extremely difficult times.
Gregory F. Treverton, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said, "This is a real blow to the feeling that the United States is capable.
The Committee is the most senior intelligence analysis agency of the government. Treverton resigned in January 2017 and now teaches at the University of Southern California. He pointed out, "This is part of our global role. Traditional friends and allies trust us because they think we can work with them in a crisis, not the other way around. "
Second, we have completely controlled it.
Public health departments in the United States, like anti-terrorism officials, military planners, aviation authorities and other personnel, are all special types of civil servants, and their careers have been spent considering the worst case.
The arsenal used by public health departments to deal with virus invasion is very powerful, which can kill a new pathogen while fighting for a cure, but it is also easy to be defeated if it is not mobilized in time. Therefore, officials of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other institutions are paying close attention to emerging dangers every day.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was informed of the coronavirus case on December 31st, and began to write a report for the US Department of Health and Human Services on January 1st. But the clearest warning American officials received about this coronavirus was that on January 3rd, Robert redfield, director of CDC, got a call, and a mysterious respiratory disease was spreading.
Redfield quickly passed on the disturbing news to Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for supervising the CDC and other public health institutions. Aza ensured that the White House was informed and instructed his chief of staff to share the report with the National Security Council.
From that moment on, the government and the virus have been caught in a race against time. Whether the pathogen and preventive measures can take the lead will determine the scale of the virus after it attacks the United States and how many people will get sick or die.
The initial reaction was promising, but officials immediately encountered obstacles.
Senior officials of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have begun to convene an internal working group, including CDC directors redfield and Azar, and Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The following week, the White House also held sporadic meetings with officials of the National Security Council and the State Council, mainly discussing when and whether to bring government employees back to the United States.
American officials began to take initial measures to deal with a potential outbreak. As of mid-January, Robert Cardertz, an Air Force officer and assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for preparedness and response, had instructed his subordinates to make contingency plans to implement the National Defense Production Law, which enabled the government to force private companies to produce equipment that was vital to national security.
Aides disagreed on whether to implement the bill, and nothing happened after several weeks.
On January 14th, Calderz scribbled a word in his notebook: "Coronavirus! !”
Although Trump’s lower-level officials have started a series of preparatory work, it was not until Trump spent the weekend at Haihu Manor on January 18 that Health Minister Azar gave him a detailed report on the coronavirus.
Even before the Minister of Health could get in a word, Trump interrupted him and began to criticize Azar’s handling of the federal ban on abortion of e-cigarette products, which annoyed Trump.
At that time, Trump was in the pain of an impeachment war because he was accused of trying to get political benefits from Ukrainian leaders. The Republican-controlled Senate seemed certain to acquit Trump, but Trump was absorbed in the trial, shouting at senators in the middle of the night and making a list of enemies he thought so that he could be punished after the case against him was over.
In hindsight, officials said, Azar could have urged Trump more forcefully, at least to turn some of his attention to the new threat, which would soon put his presidency to a more severe test and kill a large number of Americans in the last year of Trump’s first presidency.
But the Secretary of State, who has strained relations with Trump and other government officials, assured the President that those responsible are handling and supervising this issue. Azar told several aides that the president thought he was an "alarmist" because Azar tried to focus Trump’s attention on new issues and even asked a close friend for advice.
Within a few days, a new alarm appeared.
On January 21st, a Seattle man who recently traveled abroad tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the first known infection case in the United States.
It was also at this time that American officials began to face up to their failure in dealing with the crisis.
During the September 11th terrorist attacks and the outbreak of avian influenza in 2005, Azar held a senior position in the US Department of Health and Human Services, and he was very familiar with crisis management.
He instructed his subordinates to take prompt action to establish a nationwide monitoring system to track the spread of coronavirus — — This is an upgraded version of the work done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor new strains of common influenza every year.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first public alert about coronavirus on January 8th, and began to monitor the major airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and new york on the 17th, where a large number of passengers arrive every day.
However, in other aspects, the situation is out of control, the number of cases in Seattle has doubled, and the public has raised more and more questions. There is no measure to prevent infected passengers from arriving from abroad.
At this critical moment, Trump left the United States to attend the annual Global Economic Forum in Davos. Senior officials accompanying him included Robert O ‘Brien, national security adviser, who received an overseas call from the anxious Azar.
Azar told O ‘Brien that it was "chaos" in the White House, and officials of the Department of Health and Human Services were forced to give almost the same briefing to three people on the same day.
Azar urged O ‘Brien to involve the National Security Council and coordinate a matter that may affect air travel, immigration authorities, the State Council and the Pentagon. O ‘Brien seems to be aware of this urgency, and put his deputy, Matthew Pottinger, in charge of coordinating the US response that is still in its infancy.
But the growing anxiety within the government does not seem to be reflected in the president. On January 22nd, when Trump was interviewed by CNBC in Davos, he was asked about coronavirus for the first time. When asked if he was worried about a potential epidemic, Trump said, "No.. We have completely controlled it. In one case, everything will be fine. "
Third, the spread began to be uncontrolled.
In fact, the National Security Council of the United States has an opportunity to control the epidemic, readjust the strategy of the United States, control the virus if possible, and find ways to prepare the resources needed by hospitals in the event of an outbreak in the United States, including basic equipment such as protective masks and ventilators.
But American officials seem to be more concerned with logistics issues, including how to evacuate Americans from the epidemic area, rather than mobilizing to deal with what is about to happen.
In Washington, the then acting chief of staff, Mick Malvani and Pottinger, began to convene a meeting of senior officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Council at the White House.
This group includes Azar and Fossey, as well as nine other people in the administrative department, which formed the core of the coronavirus task force of the US government. But its main concern is how to prevent foreign infected people from going to the United States and evacuate thousands of American citizens.
These meetings did not seriously focus on testing or supply, which proved to be the most challenging problems facing the Trump administration.
The working group was formally announced on January 29th.
"The original intention of this organization is to focus on border control and repatriation," said a senior official who attended the meeting. "It is not a comprehensive organization that includes all government departments to manage everything."
According to the participants, the State Council’s agenda dominated these early discussions. Officials began to make plans for charter flights and withdrew 6,000 Americans. They also debated the wording of the possible travel advice issued by the government.
On January 29th, Malvani, acting White House Chief of Staff, hosted a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House. At the meeting, officials discussed the issue of raising the travel restrictions to "level 4", which meant that the State Council would issue a warning of "no travel".
On January 31, Azar announced restrictions to prohibit non-American citizens who have been in the epidemic area for the past two weeks from entering the United States.
Trump has reason to point out that such restrictions are evidence that he responded positively at the beginning of the outbreak. This was one of the few intervention options that met Trump’s instinct during the whole crisis. He always seems to focus on drawing boundaries and keeping foreigners out of the country (editor’s note: China Post here insinuates that Trump always wants to exclude immigrants and refugees).
But in the month before that, 300 thousand people had returned to the United States. According to the data released by the World Health Organization, as of the end of January, there were only 7,818 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in the world, but it is obvious that the virus is spreading out of control.
At that time, Pottinger, the White House Asia Policy Advisor, was pushing for another travel ban, this time restricting the flow of travelers from Italy and other EU countries, which are rapidly becoming the main new nodes of the epidemic.
Pottinger’s proposal was supported by leading health care officials, including Fauci, who believed that it was crucial to close any way that the virus might enter the country.
This time, the plan was resisted by Treasury Secretary Steven Nuchin and others who were worried about the adverse impact on the US economy. This is an early sign of internal tension in the US government, which has led to the division of the Trump administration, and the opposition between those who give priority to public health and those who are determined to avoid any adverse impact on the economy and growth in an election year.
Those who stand on the side of the economy have the upper hand over Trump. More than a month later, the government issued a belated and confusing ban on flying from Europe to the United States (note: Britain was not included at first).
During this period, thousands of people crossed the Atlantic again.
Fourth, the wall of resistance
When the debate about the travel ban was staged in the White House, public health officials began to panic about the serious shortage of key medical equipment, including protective masks for doctors and nurses, and the funds used to pay for these things were rapidly decreasing.
By the beginning of February, the government quickly used 105 million dollars of congressional funds to deal with the outbreak of infectious diseases. At that time, for most people, the threat of coronavirus to the United States seemed distant, if not completely fictional.
But for health officials who are responsible for storing supplies for the worst case, disaster seems increasingly inevitable.
American stocks of N95 protective masks, protective clothing, gloves and other materials have been seriously inadequate after years of insufficient funds. The crisis disrupted overseas supply chains, and the outbreak of this crisis suddenly threatened the replenishment prospects of this American store.
Most of the production of these equipment has already been transferred abroad, and the factories there are now closed because the workers are asked to stay at home. At the same time, countries are buying masks and other equipment to prepare for their own coronavirus outbreak, which pushes up costs and monopolizes supply.
At the end of January and the beginning of February, the leaders of the Department of Health and Human Services sent two letters to the White House Office of Management and Budget, asking them to use their power to transfer the $136 million of the department’s funds to the fund pool that can be used to fight coronavirus. Azar and his aides also began to submit a multi-billion-dollar supplementary budget application to Congress.
However, White House budget hawks believe that too much one-time funding will be regarded as alarmist when there are only a few cases of infection in the United States.
Joe, chairman of the US Domestic Policy Committee? Grogan clashed with health officials in response. He didn’t believe that the money would be used correctly and questioned how health officials used the previous disaster preparedness funds.
On February 4, when Trump delivered his State of the Union address, Azar talked with Russell Walter, Acting Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Walter seemed happy and asked Aza to submit a proposal.
The next day, Azar did just that, drafting an additional application of more than $4 billion, which officials in the Budget Office and others in the White House thought was an angry demand for big money.
According to three people familiar with the matter, Azar arrived at the White House that day and had a tense meeting with them in the situation room, and then a quarrel broke out.
Alex Azar, Minister of Health and Human Services, gave a speech at the White House briefing on coronavirus on January 31st. Source: Washington Post
A representative of the budget office accused Azar of lobbying Congress first to ask for a huge sum of money that White House officials were not interested in approving. Aza was angry with these criticisms and defended the necessity of urgent procurement. But before the coronavirus crisis began, his position in the eyes of White House officials was already shaky, and this quarrel further damaged him.
A few weeks later, there was a worrying coronavirus epidemic in the United States, and the attitude of White House officials eased. The team in the Office of Management and Budget reduced Aza’s request to $2.5 billion, which can only be used in the current fiscal year. Congress ignored this figure and approved an $8 billion supplementary bill, which Trump signed into law on March 7.
But once again, the facts prove that delay is costly. These controversies mean that before the Trump administration competed with many other desperate countries, the United States missed a narrow window to store ventilators, masks and other protective equipment, and state officials who were fed up with the failure of the federal government began to find supplies themselves.
At the end of March, the government ordered 10,000 ventilators, which was far from meeting the demand of public health officials and governors. These machines will not arrive in the United States until summer or autumn. According to the epidemiological prediction model, the Covid-19 pandemic will subside by then.
"It’s actually a bit like a joke," said a government official involved in the discussion of the late purchase.
V. Uncertain testing
Although the spread of viruses is invisible, public health officials have developed detailed methods to map and track their activities. In many ways, preventing the outbreak of epidemic or slowing down the speed of pandemic depends on whether people can be quickly divided into infected people and uninfected people.
However, to do this, the key is to have an accurate detection method to diagnose patients and quickly deploy it to laboratories all over the country. In the United States, it may take more time to achieve this goal than any other failure.
"If you do the test, you can say, Oh, my God, there is a virus spreading in Seattle. Let’s act quickly." A senior government official involved in fighting the epidemic said. "But we have no idea."
The most expensive mistake is that senior health officials estimate that the epidemic may be limited in the United States, just like all other cases of infection in decades, and that the US CDC can independently develop its own diagnostic tests for coronavirus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was established in the 1940s to control the malaria epidemic in the southern United States. The center has been in a leading position in the diagnosis and testing of major epidemics such as Ebola virus, Zika virus and H1N1 virus. But CDC was not established for mass production testing.
The success of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has contributed to an institutional arrogance. Even in the face of a potential crisis, the CDC did not feel an urgent need to involve private laboratories, academic institutions, hospitals and global health organizations that are also capable of developing tests.
However, some people worry that CDC testing is not enough. FDA Commissioner Stephen? Hahn sought authorization in early February and began to appeal to private diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies for help.
Whether it’s a bad idea for FDA Commissioner Hahn to personally call the company he supervises, the leaders of FDA have different opinions. When FDA officials consulted the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, they thought it was a terrible idea.
At this point, Azar, as the Minister of Health and Human Services, seems to be committed to keeping his institution at the center of the response work all the time, ensuring that tests are conducted from the CDC, and then relying on the existing laboratory network system for tracking common influenza to establish a national coronavirus monitoring system.
According to a document outlining the testing strategy obtained by Washington post, at the working group meeting, Health Minister Azar and CDC Director redfield tried to get 100 million dollars to support the plan, but they were rejected because of the high cost.
Even if the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has successfully and rapidly developed an effective detection method that can be distributed nationwide, it is problematic to rely heavily on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The scale of the epidemic and the need for large-scale testing far exceed the capacity of previous influenza networks, which may make it difficult to implement the plan. The plan will not involve commercial laboratory companies in the next six months.
When the CDC failed to complete the basic task of establishing a job test, and the working group rejected Azar’s plan, the work completely failed.
On February 6th, when the World Health Organization reported that it would send 250,000 test kits to laboratories around the world, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to distribute 90 test kits to a few national health laboratories.
Almost at the same time, the national laboratories encountered problems, and the results in more than half of the laboratories were inaccurate, which meant that they could not be relied on to diagnose real patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a stopgap measure, requiring laboratories to send the test results to its headquarters in Atlanta, which will delay the test results for several days.
The lack of effective detection means has led officials to restrict when and how to use detection means and delay monitoring and testing. The initial guidelines were so strict that States did not encourage testing patients with symptoms unless they had been to high-incidence areas and had contact with confirmed cases, when pathogens almost certainly had spread more widely to the general population.
These restrictions have left senior officials basically ignorant of the true scale of the epidemic.
In mid-February, medical expert Fauci and CDC director redfield told White House officials at a meeting in the Situation Room that there was no evidence of worrying interpersonal communication in the United States.
In hindsight, it is almost certain that the virus had taken root in the community at that time. However, even the country’s top experts have little meaningful data about this threat in the United States.
Fauci later admitted that as they learned more, their views changed.
At the same time, although Trump’s subordinates are becoming more and more vigilant, Trump continues to show optimism. On February 10, he held a political rally in New Hampshire attended by thousands of people. He announced at the rally, "By April, you know, in theory, if the weather is a little warmer, it will miraculously disappear."
The rally in New Hampshire is one of the eight gatherings that Trump held after being told about coronavirus by Azar. During this time, he also went to the golf course six times.
One day ago, on February 9th, a group of governors attended a formal party at the White House. They met privately with Fauci and redfield, director of the CDC. This briefing made many governors feel uneasy, and there was little similarity with the president’s statement.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (Republican) said, "Doctors and scientists told us what they are saying now."
In the same month, the forecast became more and more terrible in emails between federal medical and public health officials. A medical consultant of the Department of Veterans Affairs warned, "We are flying blindly."
In late February, American officials found signs that CDC laboratories failed to meet basic quality control standards. In a conference call with several health officials on February 27th, a senior FDA official lashed out at the repeated mistakes of the CDC.
Jeffrey Shulun, director of equipment and radiation hygiene at FDA, told CDC that if you are subjected to the same scrutiny as private laboratories, "I will shut you down."
On February 29th, a man in Washington State became the first American to die of coronavirus infection. On the same day, FDA issued a guide, indicating that private laboratories are free to develop their own diagnostic methods.
Another four weeks’ time was wasted.
VI. Life and Death
A week later, on March 6, Trump visited the facilities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States with a red hat "Keep America Great". He boasted that the CDC test was almost perfect, and that "anyone who wants to test will be tested", but this promise has not been fulfilled nearly a month later.
He also claimed to have a keen medical mind. "I like this kind of thing. I really understand, "he said. "People here are surprised and I can understand. These doctors all said, how do you know so much? "
In fact, many failures in preventing coronavirus outbreaks in the United States were either exacerbated by his leadership or his leadership.
For weeks, he said almost nothing about the crisis, but did not downplay its seriousness or spread obvious false information. At the same time, he also rejected the warnings of intelligence officials and senior public health officials in his government.
Sometimes, his concern about the trend of the stock market is more real than the spread of the virus in the United States, and his criticism of the chairman of the Federal Reserve is even stronger. It seems that he has never shown strong concern about the possible large-scale infection of Americans.
In March this year, one state after another imposed comprehensive new restrictions on citizens’ daily life to protect the American people, which triggered serious economic turmoil, so Trump made new predictions about these measures.
On March 9, he wrote on Twitter that the common flu kills tens of thousands of people every year. "Nothing stops, and life and economy continue."
A day later, he promised that the virus would "disappear" and just keep calm.
Two days later, Trump finally ordered to stop traveling from Europe, after his national security adviser had proposed this policy for weeks. However, Trump used his own expression to screw up the statement of the Oval Office (the official office of the President of the United States). White House officials spent several days trying to correct the wrong remarks, which led American citizens to flee overseas and go home.
Senator Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said: "On March 13th, some people began to take this issue seriously before they realized that they were at war … … At that time, he took decisive action and brought some real returns. "
Prior to this, Trump had spent several weeks reorganizing the responsibility of leading the government to deal with the crisis. At first, he appointed Azar as the head of the working group, then he relied on Pottinger, the national security adviser, for a short time, and finally, at the end of February, he pushed Vice President Burns to the position of overall responsibility.
During the crisis, other officials tried to help correct the direction of the United States, and sometimes helped correct the president’s statement. But just as Fauci, Azar and others tried to make their position clear, Trump turned to those who had no qualifications, experience or discernable insight in dealing with an epidemic behind the scenes.
The most important one is his consultant and son-in-law kushner. A team reporting to kushner occupied the space on the seventh floor of the building of the Ministry of Public Health and carried out a series of early actions.
One of the plans is for Google to set up a website to guide those who have symptoms to test facilities, which should have appeared in Wal-Mart parking lots all over the country, but never came true.
The other is about Larry, the chairman of Oracle Bone Inscriptions Company? An idea put forward by Ellison is to use software to monitor the use of unproven antimalarial drugs against coronavirus pathogens.
So far, these promises made at the White House press conference have not been fulfilled. However, the proposal of son-in-law kushner often interrupts the work of those who are under great pressure, and they need to manage the measures to deal with the epidemic.
Current and former officials say that officials of the Ministry of Public Health, medical expert Fauci, CDC director redfield and others have repeatedly had to shift their attention from their core business to the White House’s false requests, and they know they can’t ignore them.
Azar, who once responded, was eliminated and deprived of decision-making power. His performance was ridiculed by a series of White House officials, including kushner.
A former senior government official who has frequent contact with former colleagues said that Fossey is trying to launch the most ambitious clinical trial in history to speed up the development of vaccines. However, the top health officials in the United States will get a call from the White House or the kushner team, and they ask, Isn’t it good to cooperate with Oracle Bone Inscriptions?
Fauci attended the press conference with Trump.
If the coronavirus exposes the country’s false confidence in its ability to deal with the crisis, it also shows the limitations of Trump as president and his contempt for facts, science and experience.
During his presidency, he withstood other challenges, including the investigation and impeachment involving Russian interference in the general election, mainly by vigorously refuting the facts against him and trying to control the public’s understanding of the incident with a series of lies.
Coronavirus may be the first real crisis that Trump faced during his tenure. Thousands of deaths and infections were so obvious that Trump’s dirty tricks failed.
After months of downplaying the severity of coronavirus and resisting calls for drastic measures to contain it, Trump finally seemed to succumb to the reality of coronavirus after crowning himself as wartime president.
When the president met with Republican allies in the Oval Office last month, he said that his campaign was no longer important because his re-election would depend on his response to coronavirus.
Finally, he said at a news conference: "It is absolutely important for the American people to abide by these guidelines in the next 30 days."
"This is a matter of life and death."
It’s March 31st.
