From Robert Reich Blog
The Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a deliberate disaster from the beginning. But don't take my word for it just look at the facts.
Here's the timeline:
The initial outbreak of the coronavirus began in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019.
By mid-January, 2020, the White House had intelligence reports that warned of a likely pandemic.
Two days later, the virus was confirmed in both the US and South Korea.
That week, South Korean officials immediately drafted medical companies to develop test kits for mass production. The WHO declared a global health emergency. But Trump ... did nothing.
As Hubei Province went on lockdown, Trump, who loves any excuse to enact a racist travel ban, barred entry of any foreigners coming from China (it was hardly proactive) but took no additional steps to prepare for infection in the United States.
He said, "We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China,"
He didn't ramp up production of test kits so we could begin isolating the virus.
By February, the US had 14 confirmed cases but the CDC test kits proved faulty; there weren't enough of them, and they were restricted to only people showing symptoms. The US pandemic response was already failing.
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