Pandemic Timeline: Trump and His Travel Bans...Too Little — Too Late

By Steven Harper | May 5, 2020 

With only 4 percent of the world’s population, the US has almost one-third of all reported COVID-19 cases and more than 25 percent of resulting deaths. In just two months, more than 60,000 Americans have lost their lives to the virus, surpassing the total number of military fatalities during the nearly two decades-long Vietnam War.

....Jan. 3, 2020: The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar about a novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Azar tells his chief of staff to notify...National Security Council that it’s a very big deal.

Early January: In the first of more than a dozen classified briefings through February, the President’s Daily Brief of Intelligence Matters warns Trump about the dire health and economic dangers that the virus poses.

...Jan. 18: Trump plays golf at his club in West Palm Beach. Azar has spent weeks trying to warn Trump personally about the virus and finally gets a call through to him there. Trump interrupts the conversation to criticize Azar’s handling of an aborted federal ban on vaping products.

Jan. 21: The CDC confirms America’s first case of COVID-19 in Washington State. On Jan. 24, it confirms a second case in Illinois.

....If Trump had...instituted a comprehensive testing and contact-tracing program [as other countries did], he would have learned that the first COVID-19 cases in New York City — the worst global epicenter of the pandemic — originated in Europe, not China. Because Trump rejected the advice of senior advisers pushing him to close air travel from Europe, the virus reached NYC in February.

...Mar. 10: Trump says, “It will go away, just stay calm. It will go away.” 

Mar. 11: Trump announces restrictions on travelers from Europe, but they’re riddled with exceptions and don’t become effective until Mar. 14.

Mar. 13: “Europe was just designated as the hotspot right now, and we closed that border a while ago,” Trump says, although the border remains open and the restrictions he issued two days earlier are not yet in effect. 

To read this timeline in its entirety, go to: https://billmoyers.com/story/trump-and-his-travel-bans