Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response (article)

[PufPuf23]

Last edited Tue May 5, 2020, 08:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response

Editor’s note: originally published on April 13, 2020, most recently updated on May 2, 2020

What follows is a comprehensive timeline of major U.S. policy events related to the novel coronavirus pandemic. We’ve focused on the U.S. government’s preparation for a pandemic, tracking warning signals of COVID-19, and public and internal responses when the outbreak hit inside the United States.

In our view, the timeline is clear: Like previous administrations, the Trump administration knew for years that a pandemic of this gravity was possible and imminently plausible. Several Trump administration officials raised strong concerns prior to the emergence of COVID-19 and raised alarms once the virus appeared within the United States. While some measures were put in place to prepare the United States for pandemic readiness, many more were dismantled since 2017.

In response to COVID-19, the United States was slow to act at a time when each day of inaction mattered most–in terms of both the eventual public health harms as well as the severe economic costs. The President and some of his closest senior officials also disseminated misinformation that left the public less safe and more vulnerable to discounting the severity of the pandemic. When it came time to minimize the loss of life and economic damage, the United States was unnecessarily underprepared, had sacrificed valuable time, and confronted the pandemic with a more mild response than public health experts recommended. These lapses meant that the United States was ultimately forced to make more drastic economic sacrifices to catch up to the severity of the pandemic than would have otherwise been necessary.

Readers can reach their own conclusions based on these publicly available facts. If we have missed any key information, please notify us by sending an email to [e-mail].

TIMELINE

Friday, Jan. 13, 2017: The joint Obama-Trump transition teams run an exercise for pandemic preparedness.

For the full timeline go to:

https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

edited for cleaner link, thank you to crickets

[gopiscrap]

1. thank you

[Dustlawyer]

2. +1!!!

[crickets]

3. Exhaustive and excellent! K&R

cleaner link: https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

[PufPuf23]

4. That was my opinion on reading as well.

Thanks for the cleaner link. I edited the OP.

[crickets]

6. +1 This was a very good find. nt

[Hortensis]

5. Don't bother looking on that for what congress, blocked by

Republican control of the senate, did NOT do.

On the plus side, I was mildly encouraged to hear ex-CIA Director John Brennan actually mention that congress needed to take action to stop the Republicans from sacking even pandemic mitigation efforts.

“I just wish that Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, and also the DOJ, which I am very concerned about in terms of the political cancer that is seeping in the highest levels there, this needs to be addressed in the most forthright, honest way possible.”

Okay. At least that congress is supposed to do something, even without mentioning McConnell's corruption in making sure it doesn't, is more than anyone else mentions.

Of course, only the blatancy of the crony corruption of the cabal controlling the Republican Party is at all new. On reading a summary of the accelerating corruption and subversion of the Republican Party, 1992 was given as a date when it greatly accelerated, but without specific explanation. Readers of that journal were apparently supposed to know what was happening then -- beyond the shocking election of Democrats to the presidency and majorities in both houses of congress. The Republicans got control of both houses in 1994, and they returned to what they had come to do every time they were given/take the power to do it. But accelerating.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. 1990s? ...

With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America

Moscow Mitch, of course, has always hated a central government. He has worked against the Federal government for as long as he has held office.

[PufPuf23]

9. Goes back to Nixon and Reagan at least.

The deification of Reagan was the tipping point in our national descent.

The narrative from a prepared POTUS Obama to the POS Trump who proceeded to defund and discontinue and pack with the remnants of the institutions with the uncommitted and unqualified.

There is a huge lesson to be learned that the media mostly ignores.

Trump and predecessors wanting to drown government in a bathtubs truly put the USA at existential risk by the ideology. Now Trump et al aggressively foment social unrest and take no responsibility for their policies and actions.

[Hortensis]

10. Yes! It'd been ongoing for decades, but the idea in what I read

what that it revved up into a new stage about then. I put it aside to try to look up more, and then forgot it. I think by that election they'd mostly finalized their purge of Republican politicians who wouldn't go along. ??

Of course we've seen even more blatant acceleration in corruption and sedition in this century, facilitated by SCOTUS awarding the election to Bush and Republicans retaining control of congress. By then they were fully committed to the course they'd chosen, taking actions that would destroy them if they couldn't control the results, including most of the electorates' and media's reactions.

[smirkymonkey]

7. Thank you for posting!