Back To Where We Started: Trump Administration Has Made No Progress on Combating Coronavirus in Three Months

On April 30th, while the United States was in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, Donald Trump ignored the advice of medical experts and allowed federal social distancing guidelines to expire while also urging governors to reopen their economies. Trump made this decision despite clear evidence and warnings from experts that the first wave of the virus was far from over.

In disregarding the advice of scientists, epidemiologists, and public health experts, Trump extended the first wave of the virus even further. At the same time, Trump ordered testing to be slowed down and neglected to improve supply chain capacity, abandoning efforts to prepare for new spikes. 

Now, cases are surging and hospitals are running out of ICU beds across hard-hit regions, leaving those who are sick with nowhere to go. The simple truth is that this burden could have been avoided. Had Trump not pushed states to open prematurely, or had he spent the months after reopening working to increase testing, isolation, and contact tracing and ramping up health systems’ capacity, the dire hospital, testing, and supply shortages we are witnessing today might have been avoided. Time and again, Trump’s failure to prepare for the coronavirus has put Americans at risk.

And now on virtually every conceivable metric we are back to square one.

Instead of Preparing, Trump Gave Up: With Full Knowledge That Reopening Would Cause the Virus to Surge, Trump Called It Quits in Building the Infrastructure to Deal With the Virus

Trump Dropped The Ball On Social Distancing — And Urged States To Open When They Were Not Ready

• In July, as cases across the country surged, President Trump began pushing for schools to reopen against the advice of experts.
• President Trump’s push for reopening caused spikes in cases and hospitalizations throughout the country. Hospitals in Arizona, Florida and Texas are running out of beds in intensive care units. By July 13th, nearly 1 in 100 Americans had tested positive for coronavirus.
  
• On May 21st, President Trump promised that he would not reclose the country if the United States was hit with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
  
• On April 30th, President Trump allowed social distancing guidelines to expire as more than half the states moved to reopen.
  
• The White House waited until March 16th to issue social distancing guidelines, nearly two months after the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the United States.
• Epidemiologists Britta Jewell and Nicholas Jewell estimated that 90 percent of cumulative deaths in the U.S. during the first wave of Covid-19 could have been avoided if social distancing guidelines were implemented just two weeks earlier. Columbia University researchers agree – estimating that 83 percent of cumulative COVID-19 deaths reported by May 3rd could have been avoided if social distancing began on March 1st.

Trump Gave Up On Testing — He Abandoned Efforts To Ramp Up Testing, Let Testing Plateau At Insufficient Levels, And Repeatedly Dismissed The Need For Testing

• On June 27, the Washington Post reported that testing equipment was “still being doled out based on which states manage to get federal officials on the phone to press their case.”
• Trump on June 21, 2020: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please.”
• On May 24, the Trump administration submitted a legally required testing plan to Congress that largely placed the onus on states to secure their own supplies.
• Though experts have been warning since April that the U.S. needed to ramp up tests to a target of 3,000,000 to 20 million per day, the Trump administration has not done so. U.S. testing levels remain at about 700,000 per day, far short of the at least 80 to 150 million monthly tests Harvard Global Health institute director Dr. Ashish Jha says are necessary.
• South Korea was able to test 287,000 people eight weeks after its first confirmed coronavirus case. The United States had only reported testing 56,000 people in the same time frame.
• Trump’s FDA did not relax its testing rules until February 29, 2020. This left independently developed coronavirus tests, including one developed by the University of Washington, on hold for as many as 11 days. 

Trump Dropped The Ball On Preparing Hospitals With Protective Equipment, Other Supplies

• On July 8, Vice President Pence downplayed PPE shortages and promised that the administration would issue guidance for the reuse of medical supplies, rather than ramp up domestic production. 
• On June 30, the American Medical Association begged the administration to employ the Defense Production Act to increase domestic production of PPE.
  
• On June 30, as cases were surging in states like Texas and Arizona, President Trump ended Project Airbridge,’ the administration’s attempt to secure PPE amid a nationwide shortage. Many of the supplies procured by Airbridge remain difficult to account for. 
• In May, the Trump administration shifted its priorities away from expanding testing and fortifying the supply chain. 
• Trump ignored a 69 page National Security Council playbook that said the Administration should have begun procuring personal protective equipment at least four months ago.
• Trump cut the budget request to buy respirator masks and other supplies for the national stockpile by 75%. On February 5, HHS Secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion — but Trump slashed that to only $500 million. 
• Federal contract records show that Trump waited until mid-March — after hospitals were already out of N95 masks and ventilators — to start bulk ordering crucial medical supplies. 
• For three months, Trump allowed US medical supplies to be exported to other countries as our national stockpile became depleted. By March 11, twenty-four other governments had placed restrictions preventing masks and ventilators from leaving their borders.
• On February 7, Trump’s State Department allowed 17.8 tons of medical supplies to be sent to China.

Trump Silenced Experts & Pushed Junk Science: As Experts Warned Of A Resurgence, Trump Abandoned The Coronavirus Task Force And Silenced Experts

• Trump is no longer speaking with infectious-disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci and The White House has attempted to discredit Fauci.
• After more than three months of silence, the CDC has only held two public briefings on coronavirus in the past month. For comparison, the CDC held public briefings almost every day for six weeks during H1N1.
• As cases rose in June, Trump “dramatically scaled back” the number of coronavirus meetings on his schedule, instead holding long meetings on polling and endorsements.
• In May, the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force meetings were scaled back to once a week and the task force became mostly idle.
• Also in May, the CDC became increasingly sidelined and the Trump administration kept leading infectious-disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci out of the spotlight. CDC Director Robert Redfield has also been kept from the spotlight — a senior administration official noted that he “is never really in the Oval [Office] with the president.’
• In early May, Trump removed Christi A. Grimm, Principal Deputy Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, after Grimm released a report highlighting shortages of testing and PPE at hospitals.
• In April, Trump removed vaccine expert Rick Bright from his position at the Department of Health and Human Services after Bright pressed for the vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug endorsed by Trump.
• Trump claimed we were close to a coronavirus vaccine when public health officials say it’s at least a year away. 

Trump Has Consistently Downplayed The Coronavirus Crisis

• Trump intentionally downplayed the crisis, despite intelligence briefings about its severity:
• On January 22nd, Trump described the coronavirus as “one person coming in from China.” 
• On January 30th, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency. 
• By February 7th, Trump began insisting that coronavirus would become weaker and disappear as the weather started to warm. 
• On February 10th, Trump insisted that the U.S. only had 11 cases of coronavirus and “most of them are getting better very rapidly.” 
• On February 26th, Trump wrongly claimed that coronavirus was like the regular flu and “we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” 
• On February 28th, Trump insisted that “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear” and suggested that coronavirus was Democrats’ “new hoax.” 
• On March 2nd, Trump baselessly claimed that the World Health Organization’s estimate that the coronavirus had a 3.4% mortality rate was “really a false number.” 
• Through March 10th, Trump continued to insist “Just stay calm. It will go away.” 
• On March 15th, as states began going into lockdown, Trump claimed that the United States had “tremendous control” over the virus.
• On March 31st, Trump wrongly predicted that the virus would go away by the end of April.
• Trump on April 28th: “This is going to go away.”
• On May 15th, Trump falsely asserted that the virus would “go away at some point” while downplaying the need for a vaccine.
• On June 17th, Trump stated that “The numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out.”
• On July 1st, Trump again claimed that the virus would “just disappear.”