Age of COVID-19: How could they not know?

A New, Unidentified Virus Is Causing Pneumonia Outbreak in China. That's the news headline I saw on TV back in before Christmas. By the middle of January I was reading that the world health organization said a mysterious illness in China was likely being caused by a new virus. On Jan. 29, Peter Kent Navarro (White House trade advisor) warned his people at the White House that if the Trump administration  did not "mount an aggressive containment strategy" for the coronavirus, it could kill more than half a million Americans and cost the country nearly $6 trillion. On January 30th the outbreak was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization, as the outbreak continued to spread outside China,  marching across the world like a conquering army.

"Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion"

Trump has repeatedly expressed his shock at the scale of  covid 19 as it moved across the US of A like a well oiled machine. In a separate briefing, Trump said: 

"Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion.”

Yeah China did downplay the covid-19 problem in the early days and did not inform the world of person-to-person transmission until Jan. 20. I hear Trump watches TV all the time. Didn't he see like the rest of us that in Wuhan, Chinese workers constructed (from scratch)  two buildings to hold  around 2,600 hospital beds in a matter of days? People around here were in awe. I mean, you had construction workers, working all night. There's no doubt the Trump administration took notice of that.It was history repeating itself. During the  SARS outbreak, China built a hospital in seven days with 7,000 people working day and night.

So to be clear..Trump was aware of the person to person transmission of this disease.

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — Jan 22 Trump in a CNBC interview.

Later that week the Trump administration did impose travel restrictions between China and the U.S. but the restrictions was full of loopholes. The administration only actually  restricted travel for “foreign nationals" who had been in China in the last 14 days. Now in that the CNBC interview he acknowledged that a single  person coming in from China could could infect people.  Americans had a free pass to travel between China and the United States unintentionally infecting fellow Americans.  So daily flights between China and the U.S. continued. 

“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Feb 24 Trump in a tweet.

Trump has a long history of belittling the threat of the coronavirus. He called it a "hoax". To be clear, Trump did not suggest that the virus itself was a hoax but the opposition party complaining about the coming pandemic. The threat of the pandemic was the hoax. Like the Chinese government before him. Trump thought he could cover up the threat of covid 19 and the stock market wouldn't notice a higher-than-normal volume of  body bags being purchased. 

“And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.” — Feb 29 Trump in a speech at the CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.

We now understand that in Trump administration didn't have it under control. 

"I don’t take responsibility at all" -Mar 13 Trump in the Rose Garden. 

In fact according to him more people will be killed by the economy...

“You have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably — and I mean definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.” Mar 23rd Trump

"You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.” Mar 24th Trump