The intelligence community has long warned of the virus, and trump continues to ignore it
According to The Washington Post, U.S. intelligence agencies compiled a classified warning in January and February about the global threat posed by the coronavirus, and President Donald Trump and lawmakers played down the threat, according to people familiar with the matter, failure to take actions likely to slow down the spread of pathogens.
The intelligence reports do not predict when the virus will reach U.S. shores, nor do they recommend specific steps that public health officials should take, issues that fall outside the purview of intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China and later in other countries, and warned that they believed Chinese officials appeared to be playing down the severity of the outbreak to its lowest level.
In sum, the report paints an early picture of the spread of a virus that is characteristic of a global epidemic and may require rapid government action to contain it. But despite the reports, Donald Trump continues to downplay the threat to Americans, both publicly and privately. Lawmakers did not get serious about the virus until this month, when officials across the country began clamoring for people to stay at home.
An American official said intelligence agencies had "been warning about this since January. ". Trump may not have seen it coming, but many others in the administration saw it coming, and they just couldn't get him to do anything about it, " the official said. "The system is flashing a red alert. "
A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, while a White House spokesman rejected criticism of trump's reaction.
U.S. Health Secretary Adjara Autonomous Republic noted that the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had held discussions with his Chinese colleagues as early as Jan. 3, alerting officials to the initial reports of the virus.
The number of warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased from late January to early February, intelligence officials familiar with the matter said. By then, most of the intelligence reports in the daily briefings and in the office of the director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency summaries were about the new coronavirus, officials who had read the reports said.
On Jan. 27, White House aides, along with then chief of Staff Mick, tried to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people familiar with the matter. Joe Grogan, head of the White House's Domestic Policy Committee, said the government needed to take the virus seriously or risk the president not being re-elected.
Mawani then began holding more routine meetings. But in an earlier briefing, officials said trump was dismissive because he did not believe the virus had spread widely across the United States.
People who spoke directly to Grogan said that by early February, Grogan and others were concerned that there were not enough tests to determine infection rates. Other officials, including the president's Deputy National Security Adviser, Matthew Pottinger, also began calling for a stronger response, according to people briefed on the White House meeting.
But Donald Trump ignored that, and went on to reassure Americans that the coronavirus would never go out of control like other countries. "I don't think it's a problem, " Donald Trump said Feb. 19. "I think when we go into April, the warmer weather has a very negative effect on the virus. "
Five days later, "In the U.S. , the coronavirus is very controlled, " Donald Trump tweeted. "The stock market looks very good to me! "
But at the beginning of the month, a senior health department official sent a different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and in a classified briefing, four U.S. officials said the coronavirus had implications for global health.
The Health Ministry's Assistant Minister for Emergency Response, Robert Kadlec, joined committee members, including Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officials, in saying the virus posed a "serious" threat, one of the officials said. But the Donald Trump government did not take it seriously.
The official said Kadertz offered no specific recommendations, but said Americans needed to take action that could disrupt their daily lives to stay ahead of the virus and blunt its effects. "This is very shocking, "
Said a person familiar with the situation, as the disease spread beyond China and U.S. intelligence agencies tracked outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Much of the information comes from public sources, including news reports and official statements, but much of it also comes from confidential intelligence sources. As new cases have emerged, the number of reports has skyrocketed.
With the first confirmed cases of infection in the United States, trump continues to insist that the risk to Americans is small. "I think it's going to be fine, " he said Feb. 10. Four days later, he said, "right now, there are very few cases of the virus in the United States. ". Many of them are getting better and better. Some are fully recovered. So we are in a very good position."
In perhaps the most important public alert of the day, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, told reporters on Feb. 25 that the coronavirus was likely to spread in communities across the United States and that the disruption to daily life would be "severe. ". On the way home from a visit to India, Donald Trump called Adjara Autonomous Republic and complained that he had spooked the stock market, according to two senior administration officials.
According to people familiar with Donald Trump, Donald Trump's final change of heart came when Deborah Burks, coordinator of the White House coronavirus outbreak response team, showed Donald Trump a statistical model of how the virus spreads in other countries, and heard directly from ceos of big companies who were shocked by the stock market crash.
But by then, there were signs everywhere that a major epidemic was in the offing.
