“Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.”
— President Trump, March 19
Nobody? Well, let’s see…
The outgoing Obama administration briefed at least 30 representatives of Trump’s team for three hours on the danger of a potential global pandemic.
Obama aides … have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors. … Obama aides say the Trump administration’s fumbling of the coronavirus outbreak is partly rooted in how unprepared — and in some cases unwilling — it was to engage in transition exercises at all in late 2016 and early 2017.
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U.S. intelligence officials repeatedly warned President Trump in multiple intelligence briefings.
The coronavirus first appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January … U.S. intelligence officials warned in November that the coronavirus spreading in China’s Hubei region could become a “cataclysmic event,”
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Americans at the WHO transmitted real time information about the coronavirus to the Trump administration.
A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
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