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Month: March 2020

What’s happening in LA?

Published by digby on March 15, 2020

A very tiny silver lining:

Evening traffic on the 405 Freeway in West Los Angeles was so sparse last week that 24-year-old Jerrold Smith II took out his iPhone and recorded it for posterity.

“Just so no one thinks I’m crazy, it’s 6 o’clock,” Smith said, wonder in his voice, as he drove south toward the 10 Freeway. Normally one of America’s worst bottlenecks, the interchange had barely a dozen cars nearby.

As coronavirus fears have swept Southern California, and reported cases of COVID-19 have surged in Los Angeles County, commuters still going to work have encountered a strangely unsettling phenomenon: a lack of traffic jams.

Free-flowing traffic seems more a cause for mourning than celebration as the region grapples with the pandemic. The dream of traffic getting better, Los Angeles commuters say, didn’t include a scenario like this.

“At first I loved it,” said Andrea Martín, 54, as she filled up her Toyota at a Chevron in Historic Filipinotown before driving to the Westside. “Then I realized: ‘Oh, this means people aren’t working.’”

Unfortunately, lighter traffic may be the only good news in all this. As it happens, California has been miserably lagging in testing, especially in LA which is a major world crossroad.

Testing Californians for the novel coronavirus remains hampered by a lack of key chemical components.

Calling it “imperative,” California Governor Gavin Newsom forcefully called upon federal officials, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to provide “all the ingredients” for the tests.

“The tests are not complete,” Newsom said at a press conference Thursday. “meaning the test kits do not include in every case the RNA extraction kits, the reagents, the chemicals, the solutions…. I’m surprised this is not more of a national conversation,” he said.

Unlike a pregnancy test, the coronavirus kit isn’t ready to go right out of the box (Newsom likened it to buying a printer without ink). The kits are configured more for a research lab than a hospital, and it takes four to six hours to perform the test on patient samples.

About 1,500 Californians have been tested, though it’s likely that thousands of people have been exposed to the virus.

To fill in the gaps, Newsom said chemical components to complete the tests were being shared throughout the 18 labs in the state currently carrying out the testing. He said Quest Diagnostics, which has a lab in San Juan Capistrano, will open two new labs in California by the end of the month. He said the three labs, once online, will be able to process more than 5,000 tests per day.

There are about 17 million people in the LA metro area alone. There have only been 61 cases found here so far. But it’s quite clear that this is because they haven’t been testing. The biggest stories we’ve had here are of airport employees testing positive. That is not good. Not good at all. When it explodes here it will explode in a big way.

(If it doesn’t, we will be studied for decades to discover why it didn’t, considering the vast amount to travel within and outside the region along with the massive gatherings of people. Something in the water?)

Heres Newsom today:

Trump is trying to buy off foreign scientists

Published by digby on March 15, 2020

Feb. 10, 2020 at 1:38 p.m. PST

President Trump once again is asking Congress to make major cuts to the budgets of science and health agencies while favoring research deemed essential to national security.

The 2021 budget request delivered Monday to Congress includes a nearly 10 percent cut to Health and Human Services and a 26 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency.

It asks for increases in funding for research on quantum computing and artificial intelligence, areas in which the United States competes with China. Trump also wants to grant NASA a multibillion-dollar boost to help the space agency put astronauts back on the moon.

We already know that he cut the pandemic response team from the White House two years ago.

Going back to the moon is essential to national security? But protecting the population from pollution, climate change and global pandemics is unimportant? Ok.

Get a load of this:

President Donald Trump reportedly tried to recruit German scientists working on a cure for the coronavirus and offered large sums of money to secure exclusive rights to their work for the US, according to a report which was confirmed by the German government.

Prominent German newspaper WELT am Sonntag reported that Trump had offered large sums of money to lure the Germany-based company CureVac to the United States and to secure exclusive rights to a vaccine.

This story has been confirmed. The Germans aren’t interested because they believe any breakthrough should be available to the whole world.

Trump thinks anyone can be bought because he can be bought.

And by the way, this really makes you wonder if the reason the US refused to use the WHO test is that Trump wanted to only use a test for which the US had “exclusive rights.”

The man believes everything in the world can be dealt with like a licensing deal for cheap ties and bad cologne.

Trump admits it

Published by digby on March 15, 2020

You don’t need to know anything more than this:

“There was somebody who they say has it. I have no idea who he is,” Trump said at a White House news conference Friday. “I haven’t seen the pictures. I take hundreds of pictures a day. That night I was taking hundreds of pictures so I don’t know.”

Brazilian officials and other guests said the White House asked basic screening questions of at least some who were in proximity to the president, including where they had traveled recently and whether they felt ill. But it does not appear that guests had their temperatures taken. Experts have said that those infected with coronavirus can be asymptomatic and still pass the illness to others.

After the dinner, some in the Brazilian delegation joined Trump and other U.S. officials at Guilfoyle’s birthday party. Trump offered a toast to the group for their “energy.” Ivanka Trump and Kushner also gave toasts, according to one of the people who was at the resort, and Graham gave a speech lauding Guilfoyle for being the political opposite of liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

In all, Trump attended at least four fundraisers throughout the weekend, said a person familiar with his schedule, and he introduced some donors to Bolsonaro.

On Friday, Trump’s campaign sent an email to donors alerting them that more than one guest had tested positive for coronavirus and urging them to consult doctors if they show symptoms.

The day after the dinner with Bolsonaro, Trump again addressed the GOP donors.

“We’ve done good,” he said of the administration’s coronavirus response, according to the guest who relayed his remarks to The Post. “But no matter what we do, it will never be good for the press. Because they’re using this to try and win an election.”

The president did not yet know that the virus had penetrated the confines of his oceanfront resort as he continued: “They’re trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools — you know, destroy the country. And that’s ok, as long as we can win the election. But I really believe that if they see that the Trump administration is handling this virus in a professional, competent way, I don’t believe that’s going to hurt us.”

They’re trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools, you know, destroy the country.

This is the message Fox News and right-wing media is telling their audience:

Trump has done a heroic job, especially compared to the devastation that America went through with the H1N1 epidemic that Obama botched terribly and killed massive numbers of Americans.

And the press and the Democrats and frankly, the entire world, are hyping this thing to hurt Donald Trump.

He is a sick, sick person and he’s infecting half the country with his sickness. And it isn’t COVID-19. It’s mass delusion.

#stayawayfromtheredhats

Where’s Jared?

Published by digby on March 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/carriecordero/status/1239179508713951237?s=20

Here’s the picture she was referring to:

https://twitter.com/carriecordero/status/1239181011499585536?s=20

I know I don’t have to tell any of you what this is reminiscent of. The difference, of course, is that they disappeared Jared in order to protect him, not purge him. In fact, the staffer who originally included the picture is probably going to be fired.

Life in lockdown

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 15, 2020

News from the flood of school closings and event cancellations meant to slow the COVID-19 pandemic is overwhelming. Snicker at the empty store shelves if you will, but it is clear everyone is making this up as they go, especially authorities at the highest levels.

Spain on Saturday followed Italy in advising people not to leave their homes except to purchase supplies or to work if they cannot work from home. France has closed museums, cafes and restaurants. The World Heath Organization has declared Europe the new epicenter of the outbreak. Multiple countries there are closing their borders to travel.

Nike is closing all its stores in the U.S and in other parts of the world from Monday until March 27. That new tracksuit or golf apparel will have to wait.

Confusion will be my epitaph

Here in the U.S., the Donald Trump administration’s travel restrictions caused at major airports just the sort of commingling of potential carriers that health officials hoped to prevent. “Contemplating travel right now is confusing,” declares a New York Times headline. Thousands last night did not need a headline to know that.

Advice for treating the disease changes almost daily. French authorities now warn against taking anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen for fever. They may simply aggravate the infection. Officials there now recommend paracetamol (acetaminophen) instead.

As I crawl a cracked and broken path

The Trump administration seems perpetually behind the curve. On Friday, Trump finally declared a national emergency. In a Saturday press conference, the administration announced it advised nursing homes Friday to “restrict all visitors effective immediately,” including all non-essential personnel. But the home where my mother-in-law lives here in Asheville went into lockdown on Monday. We visited with her last night through her window,  Life Care Center- style.

The administration claimed Saturday we will soon have capacity to test people in their cars, something cities in a half-dozen states have already implemented. Trump touted a new bill providing “free coronavirus testing for all Americans who should be tested” (emphasis mine). Vice President Mike Pence claimed a website would be available soon where they can be screened for whether “a test is in order” because “we want to make sure that people are being tested that have the symptoms.”

In that same press conference claiming the long-awaited tests will be available any day via the “extraordinary strength of our private sector,” Dr. Deborah Birx of the coronavirus task force seemed to downplay people with respiratory symptoms getting tested:

Finally I want to conclude with something that’s very important. When you are tested and our results look very similar to South Korea now to date where South Korea, 96 plus percent of people with symptoms were negative. That means also that they had respiratory symptoms.

Birx reminded listeners that a negative test today does not mean you won’t be negative tomorrow, so continue to take precautions. Clear?

Birx observed that a many people under 20 “are potentially asymptomatic and spreading the virus.” Thus, there is risk of asymptomatic young people we don’t test spreading the virus because they don’t know they have it because we refuse to test them because they’re asymptomatic. Clear?

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh

Finally, Trump himself claimed he himself had been tested for the virus. He had drawn criticism for not self-isolating after exposure to multiple people since diagnosed with the virus, and after shaking nearly every hand in sight at his Rose Garden briefing on Friday. Last night, the White House released a statement from the president’s personal physician that Trump had tested negative. By now, you should trust Trump’s personal physicians, yes?

Meanwhile:

Local officials from around the country are worried about the readiness of the U.S. public health system, citing a sharply limited number of ventilators to help some of the sickest coronavirus patients and an inadequate supply of critical care beds in a hospital industry that has gone through years of cutbacks in inpatient beds.

As they prepare for an expected influx of patients, local public health officials painted a picture of a system with only a limited “surge” capacity, and stressed the importance of social distancing as a crucial way to keep the numbers of patients at a level the system can handle.

Add to that, “South Korea has 12.3 hospital beds per 1,000 people. The US has 2.8,” Vox reports. And that extraordinary private sector? After for-profit HCA Healthcare took over our hospital system here, complaints have spiked and the quality of care has rapidly declined. The state attorney general is investigating.

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I’ll be crying

UPDATE: Added S. Korea/Italy comparison tweet.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

You don’t have to have symptoms to spread the virus

Published by digby on March 14, 2020

This is big news, if true. And it suggests that people need to take these social distancing exhortations a whole lot more seriously. That would include the President of the United States who insists that he’s feeling fine so there’s no need to worry about the fact that he’s been in close quarters with a bunch of people who have contracted the virus and is possibly spreading it to his entire cabinet and the coronavirus task force all day long.

For all we know, he’s Patient Zero for half the leaders in the world.

​New studies in several countries and a large coronavirus outbreak in Massachusetts bring into question reassuring assertions by US officials about the way the novel virus spreads.

These officials have emphasized that the virus is spread mainly by people who are already showing symptoms, such as fever, cough or difficulty breathing. If that’s true, it’s good news, since people who are obviously ill can be identified and isolated, making it easier to control an outbreak.

But it appears that a Massachusetts coronavirus cluster with at least 82 cases was started by people who were not yet showing symptoms, and more than half a dozen studies have shown that people without symptoms are causing substantial amounts of infection.

For weeks, federal officials have emphasized that asymptomatic transmission can happen, but have said that it’s not a significant factor in the spread of the virus.
On March 1 on ABC’s This Week, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told host George Stephanopoulos that asymptomatic spread is “not the major driver” of the spread of the new coronavirus.

“You really need to just focus on the individuals that are symptomatic,” he said. “It [the containment strategy] really does depend on symptomatic presentation.”
The website for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes that assessment.

​Several experts interviewed by CNN said while it’s unclear exactly what percentage of the transmission in the outbreak is fueled by people who are obviously sick versus those who have no symptoms or very mild symptoms, it’s become clear that transmission by people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic is responsible for more transmission than previously thought.

“We now know that asymptomatic transmission likely [plays] an important role in spreading this virus,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm added that it’s “absolutely clear” that asymptomatic infection “surely can fuel a pandemic like this in a way that’s going to make it very difficult to control.”

In an article two weeks ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, expressed concern about the spread of the disease by people who haven’t yet developed symptoms, or who are only a bit sick.

“There is also strong evidence that it can be transmitted by people who are just mildly ill or even presymptomatic. That means COVID-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people,” he wrote, using the scientific word for the disease caused by the virus.

Others agree that people without serious symptoms play a substantial role in the spread of the new coronavirus.

“Asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic transmission are a major factor in transmission for Covid-19,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and longtime adviser to the CDC. “They’re going to be the drivers of spread in the community.”
Osterholm urged public officials to be clearer about the way the virus is spread.

“At the very beginning of the outbreak, we had many questions about how transmission of this virus occurred. And unfortunately, we saw a number of people taking very firm stances about it was happening this way or it wasn’t happening this way. And as we have continued to learn how transmission occurs with this outbreak, it is clear that many of those early statements were not correct,” he said.

I know there’s a great temptation among people who are not in the highest risk groups to blow this off and not take it as seriously. But that’s a bad idea. Even if you aren’t showing symptoms you might be passing the virus around to everyone you come in contact with and they can be exposing other people as well.

And if this is true, it opens up a whole new window into this thing:

The showboating impeachment witness who failed to show up weighs in

Published by digby on March 14, 2020

Here’s global outbreak preparedness expert Jeremy Konyndyk’s response on twitter:

Look who finally decided to address this!

Let’s dissect everything that’s wrong with this tweet.

“Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false.”

A basic rule of bureaucracy is that your structures reflect and reinforce your priorities. (Bolton knows this)

So what’s left after a “streamlining” reveals what you actually care about. Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC “streamlining” involved decapitating and diluting the unit dedicated to pandemic prep and biosecurity.

He eliminated the Sr Director position entirely, closed the directorate, and sprinkled the remaining staff across other parts of the NSC. That’s the opposite of streamlining. Instead of giving an issue (biosecurity) a distinct institutional presence, expertise, and voice in the policy process, Bolton’s re-org left this issue fragmented across other directorates that were focused on other higher priorities. That choice means that you don’t have a cohesive team able to elevate pandemic and biosecurity perspectives to senior leaders, you just have a few director-level subject-matter experts scattered around with limited influence and little ability to reach decision-makers. (Again, Bolton knows this) Next.

“Global health remained a top NSC priority”

Say it with me: Global health (of which I’m a big fan) is NOT the same as pandemic readiness.

(Bolton knows this, or at least he should) Global health focuses on all sorts of good things overseas. AIDS programs. Vaccine programs. Safe childbirth programs. Etc

What does global health *not* do? US domestic readiness!

(which you’d think is pretty obvious, given the “global” part, but hey). So arguing that prioritizing global health somehow equals biosecurity is just disqualifying-ly wrong.

It’s focused on aid, not biosecurity.

It’s focused on health risks in developing countries, not the US.

These are just fundamentally different priorities. Next:

“expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis”

Not remotely comparable to today; no threat to the homeland; and US involvement was not a dazzling success, either. The US response to the Congo Ebola crisis was widely and rightly criticized at the time. At first, the Trump administration refused to deploy USG experts anywhere near it, even as WHO deployed a massive team and took on huge risks.

And look, there were legit security risks in the Ebola zone. I know, because I went out there in April 2019.

Risks were serious but not insurmountable. If USG can deploy civilians in Afghanistan or Syria, we could’ve managed those risks in Congo too, if White House wanted to. Altogether, not a case of the USG leading the way. Rather, putting WHO out front while USG kept a safe distance.

And anyway – this outbreak posed no real domestic risk to the US. There wasn’t much the NSC needed to do to protect the homeland from Ebola in Congo. So pointing to Congo/Ebola as an example of successful US biosecurity is, again, disqualifying-ly wrong.

The point of the unit Bolton disbanded was to protect the US by focusing simultaneously on both US and overseas readiness. We learned this lesson the hard way in 2014 when our domestic and int’l readiness and response streams were housed in different parts of the NSC and got out of sync with each other, leading to vulnerabilities in the US health system. I wrote about it here:

Struggling with Scale: Ebola’s Lessons for the Next PandemicThe next global pandemic is a matter of when, not if. Preparing for this inevitability requires that policy­makers understand not just the science of limiting dis­ease transmission or engineering a d…https://www.cgdev.org/publication/struggling-scale-ebolas-lessons-next-pandemic

Obama’s decision to create the biosecurity directorate was a direct outcome of that experience. We knew that protecting the US from overseas disease risks meant joining both domestic and overseas readiness, and retaining the institutional memory gained from Ebola/2014. So Bolton’s defense here is entirely bogus.

And what’s more, he’s savvy enough about government to know that.

He’s just hoping to fool those who aren’t. 

For more on this, read this oped in the Washington Post by the former leader of the White House pandemic team.

Here’s another piece about someone on the dismissed pandemic team.

Carriers in our midst

Published by digby on March 14, 2020

Your basic right-wing moron goes on camera to show everyone he knows that they should stay as far away from his as possible:

Apparently, the media in every country around the world is also hyping this virus to… I don’t know why. All the governments that are being hit are saying the same things to their people. Countries such as Italy, South Korea, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, etc are all over-reacting because of the liberal media that hates Donald Trump.

These are people incapable of seeing reality anymore. I’m not sure they will see it even if they get sick themselves or of someone they love dies. This is real cult behavior. It’s not a joke anymore:

Team Trump has finally found itself in a crisis it cannot propagandize its way out of. Unfortunately, this has not led Team Trump (the administration and its various Fox News-based media arms) to pivot to the brash notion of telling the truth. No, of course not. 

Previously, before we hit the crisis stage, we got weeks of obfuscation, and the president’s conviction that “it’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.” Now, Trumpists are trying to grapple with the possibility that the global pandemic may in fact be real. As COVID-19 has decimated Italy, killed thousands of Chinese nationals, and spread like a brush fire through at least 47 states, it’s becoming harder and harder for Trumpists to deny the truth.

But because they’re Trumpists, they are still trying desperately to stick to the party line. The problem is they’re not completely sure what that party line is. The Trumpists’ messaging has become completely inconsistent, vacillating between Laura Ingraham’s conviction that COVID-19 is a way for Democrats to “to smear the administration in a number of ways,” and Newt Gingrich saying that it was “the Wuhan that poisoned the world. That’s what you get when you get Chinese trade.” Trumpists seem completely conflicted between their love of racism and their passion for denial of obvious facts. How can Trumpists learn to message a pandemic they’ve been saying isn’t real for weeks?  

Many Trumpists will do what Jerry Falwell did Friday morning, which was to dismiss the pandemic while also using it for a little racism and conspiracy talk. After going on the president’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, and saying that people are “overreacting,” Falwell tweeted, “Could Covid-19 be the ‘Christmas gift’ North Korea’s leadership promised America back in December?” 

That the disease is no big deal but also the fault of North Korea is a hard needle to thread. Some won’t even bother threading it. One of Trump’s most sycophantic sycophants, Sebastian Gorka, took the opportunity to praise Dear Leader, saying that Trump “has been utterly proven correct” on the “Wuhan virus.” Of course Trump has been saying for weeks that the virus would “disappear,” which is obviously not correct, as we are up to 1,700 infected today, and that’s without widespread testing that would put the real number even higher.

As the conservative media finds itself stuck between embracing the pandemic as a way to blame China for something and saying Democrats are overreacting in the hopes of making Trump look bad, it’s important to remember that people actually believe these talking points, and a lot of the people who believe these talking points are in the age group for which COVID-19 is the most fatal (the death rate for people over the age of 60 is more than 4.5 percent, and it rises sharply with every decade). 

In Friday’s Washington Post, an elderly retiree said, “People are too worried. The flu has killed more people than the coronavirus, and people haven’t been as concerned over the flu.” The conservative media’s messaging may be messy, but its results will be toxic. The average age of a Fox viewer is 65 years old, and the people most likely to die from COVID-19 are over the age of… 65 years old. For these people’s sake, we should hope that Fox world abandons its Trish Regan “Coronavirus is an impeachment scam” messaging before it’s too late for the Boomers who believe it.  

That guy in the video above shows it isn’t just Boomers who believe it. In fact, take a look at the people who attend Trump rallies. Most of them are middle age. And most of them are probably running around spreading the virus willy-nilly because their Dear Leader and Fox News think the whole thing is overblown.

Trump is bragging about a 1- day stock rebound from a crash he caused

Published by digby on March 14, 2020

President Donald Trump on Friday sent a note to supporters that included a chart showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average dramatically rising roughly at the time he began a news conference declaring a national emergency over coronavirus. The President signed the chart.

The note, which was also sent to some members of Congress, included screenshots of television coverage of the stock market closing much higher than Thursday.“The President would like to share the attached image with you, and passes along the following message: ‘From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!’ ” read the note, a copy of which was obtained by CNN from a source with familiar with it.

It doesn’t get any more pathetic than this. Even Louis Gohmert must have cringed when he saw it, it’s so stupid.

It’s not that he isn’t right about the rally. It was a big one. But guess why?

Stocks soared Friday as Wall Street rebounded from the sharp losses suffered in the previous session — the worst since the “Black Monday” market crash in 1987.

Can you see the absurdity of his victorious declaration?

Here’s another scary chart:

So far, his approval rating is hanging right in there. It seems his cult is with him no matter how many people die.

History has recorded his ineptitude

Published by digby on March 14, 2020

Trump’s messages to the country. A timeline:

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control.”

Jan. 24: “It will all work out well.”

China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020

Jan. 29: “Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!”

Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.”

Feb. 2: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. … We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. So we’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.”

Feb. 7: “Nothing is easy, but [Chinese President Xi Jinping] … will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone.”

….he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2020

Feb. 10: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine.”

Feb. 14: “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”

Feb. 19: “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.”

Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked within the newsletter are free to access.

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020

Feb. 25: “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are … getting better. They’re all getting better. … As far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.”

Feb. 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world.”

Feb. 26: “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Feb. 26:Q: This is spreading — or is going to spread, maybe, within communities. That’s the expectation.A: It may. It may.Q: Does that worry you?A: No. … No, because we’re ready for it. It is what it is. We’re ready for it. We’re really prepared. … We hope it doesn’t spread. There’s a chance that it won’t spread too, and there’s a chance that it will, and then it’s a question of at what level.

Feb. 27: “Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!”

Feb. 28: “I think it’s really going well. We did something very fortunate: we closed up to certain areas of the world very, very early — far earlier than we were supposed to. I took a lot of heat for doing it. It turned out to be the right move, and we only have 15 people and they are getting better, and hopefully they’re all better. There’s one who is quite sick, but maybe he’s gonna be fine. … We’re prepared for the worst, but we think we’re going to be very fortunate.”

Feb. 28: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Feb. 29: “We’re the number-one travel destination anywhere in the world, yet we have far fewer cases of the disease than even countries with much less travel or a much smaller population.”

March 4: “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.”

March 5: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths.”

With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2020

March 6: “We did an interview on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, ‘Calm. You have to be calm. It’ll go away.’ ”

March 7: “It came out of China, and we heard about it. And made a good move: We closed it down; we stopped it. Otherwise — the head of CDC said last night that you would have thousands of more problems if we didn’t shut it down very early. That was a very early shutdown, which is something we got right.”

March 8: Retweets a story about Surgeon General Jerome Adams playing down the risk of coronavirus for Trump personally.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams used his comments to downplay the risk of coronavirus to the president https://t.co/PA6a3Dv7gz— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 8, 2020

March 9: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the average American.’ ”

March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020

March 10: “As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more.”

March 10: “And it hit the world. And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

March 11: “I think we’re going to get through it very well.”

March 12: “It’s going to go away. … The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point … when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing coming out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.”