CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE
updated 9/28/20
12/19/06
Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), Public Law No. 109-417, is signed into law by President George W. Bush.
PAHPA had broad implications for the United States Department of Health and Human Services's (HHS) preparedness and response activities. Among other things, the act amended the Public Health Service Act to establish within the department a new Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR); provided new authorities for a number of programs, including the advanced development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures; called for the establishment of a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy. One of those programs was the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) . As part of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, it was established to aid in securing our nation from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as from pandemic influenza (PI) and emerging infectious diseases (EID).
BARDA supports the transition of medical countermeasures such as vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics from research through advanced development towards consideration for approval by the FDA and inclusion into the Strategic National Stockpile.
https://www.phe.gov/about/barda/Pages/default.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_Advanced_Research_and_Development_Authority
In its first year in operation, the research agency considered how to expand the number of ventilators. It estimated that an additional 70,000 machines would be required in a moderate influenza pandemic. The ventilators in the national stockpile were not ideal. In addition to being big and expensive, they required a lot of training to use. The research agency convened a panel of experts in November 2007 to devise a set of requirements for a new generation of mobile, easy-to-use ventilators.
In 2008, the government requested proposals from companies that were interested in designing and building the ventilators. The goal was for the machines to be approved by regulators for mass development by 2010 or 2011, according to budget documents that the Department of Health and Human Services submitted to Congress in 2008. After that, the government would buy as many as 40,000 new ventilators and add them to the national stockpile.
The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_related_to_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ykz5AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1680&lpg=PA1680&dq=2007+blue+ribbon+panel+federal+emergency+preparedness+ventilators&source=bl&ots=PgcWWpqcgn&sig=ACfU3U3c1w1dmNni6ahhtlYB9zKybAlelA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjt08GN1LPoAhVBYTUKHfaaCGgQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=2007%20blue%20ribbon%20panel%20federal%20emergency%20preparedness%20ventilators&f=false
11/23/08
Global Trends 2025 the fourth installment in the National Intelligence Council-led effort to identify key drivers and developments likely to shape world events.
“The emergence of a novel, highly transmissible, and virulent human respiratory illness for which there are no adequate countermeasures could initiate a global pandemic,” the authors warned. The threat, they added, would likely emerge “in an area marked by high population density and close association between humans and animals, such as many areas of China and Southeast Asia.”
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf
2/12/09
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair presents his annual threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Highly publicized virulent infectious diseases—including HIV/AIDS, a potential influenza pandemic, and ‘mystery’ illnesses such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—remain the most direct health-related threats to the United States. The most pressing transnational health challenge for the United States is still the potential for emergence of a severe pandemic, with the primary candidate being a highly lethal influenza virus.”
“The most pressing transnational health challenge for the United States is still the potential for emergence of a severe pandemic, with the primary candidate being a highly lethal influenza virus.”
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/090212/blair.pdf
https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2009/04/swine-flu-not-out-of-the-blue-for-u-s-intelligence-community/
2/2/2010
DNI Blair again sets out the potential disruption of a pandemic.
“lack of consistent surveillance and diagnostic capability for diseases in animals undermines the United States’ ability to identify, contain, and warn about local outbreaks before they spread.”
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/20100202_testimony.pdf
4/17/12
Report: Taking Measure of Countermeasures, Part 3: Protecting the Protectors, Hearing,
Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, And Communications, Committee on Homeland Security, House of Representatives.
As part of our strategic approach to encouraging innovation in medical countermeasure development, we are also developing new tools for all responders and a number of these efforts are already showing results. HHS is developing a next generation portable ventilator that will be lighter and less expensive, making it easier and quicker to administer critical treatments. In 2007, HHS convened a blue ribbon panel of experts to review the state of ventilators in the market against the requirements for use in all-hazards preparedness. In September 2010, an advanced research and development contract was awarded to Newport Medical in California for design and development of a next-generation portable ventilator that is at a highly-affordable price point and that could be used with minimal training on a broad range of patients from neonates to adults. A prototype was developed by July 2011 and is currently being evaluated. The initial results are promising and the program is on schedule to file for market approval in September 2013.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg77377/html/CHRG-112hhrg77377.htm
3/12/13
DNI James Clapper's Worldwide Threat Assessment warns that “an easily transmissible, novel respiratory pathogen that kills or incapacitates more than one percent of its victims is among the most disruptive events possible. Such an outbreak would result in a global pandemic.”
“This is not a hypothetical threat.”
https://fas.org/irp/congress/2013_hr/031213clapper.pdf
3/23/13
Fiscal restraints imposed by Republicans in Congress in the early years of the Obama administration leave the U.S. less prepared to respond to the coronavirus pandemic today.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/02/22/weekly-address-congress-must-act-now-stop-sequester#transcript
Requests for funding to purchase protective equipment and train medical staff to prepare for future outbreaks were denied by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that was filled with Tea Party-affiliated politicians.
Under sequestration, the CDC, which managed the stockpile at the time, faced a 5% budget cut. In its 2013 budget submission, HHS decreased its stockpile funding request from the previous year, asking for $486 million, a cut of nearly $48 million. “The SNS is a key resource in maintaining public health preparedness and response,” the administration said. “However, the current fiscal climate necessitates scaling back.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stockpile-funding-unprepared-coronavirus
Obama emphasizes the need for emergency Congressional authorization of resources to ensure that the nation's research and public health efforts will lead as quickly as possible to an end to the Ebola outbreak.
Obama stresses the importance of investing in research for the long term, warns of a future deadly airborne disease.
“We have to put in place an infrastructure…. that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly… "If and when a new strain of flu, like the Spanish flu, crops up five years from now or a decade from now, we've made the investment and we're further along to be able to catch it," he said. "It is a smart investment for us to make. It's not just insurance; it is knowing that down the road we're going to continue to have problems like this - particularly in a globalized world where you move from one side of the world to the other in a day."
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/02/remarks-president-research-potential-ebola-vaccines
https://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalHealthMatters/november-december-2014/Pages/ebola-funding-president-obama-nih-visit.aspx
2017
1/11/17
Fauci warns of pandemic.
During a forum on pandemic preparedness at Georgetown University held shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Fauci said the Trump administration will not only be challenged by ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise disease outbreak.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-warned-trump-infectious-disease-pandemic-danger-2017-2020-4
1/13/17
Outgoing Obama administration holds briefing intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration regarding a pandemic and the need to coordinate a simultaneous international and domestic response. National Security Council (NSC) prepares a 69-page, color-coded document, the “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797
4/8/17
Experts in health and national security raise concerns that the Trump administration has failed to fill crucial public health positions across the government, "leaving the nation ill-prepared to face one of its greatest potential threats: a pandemic outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, according to experts in health and national security." They called the administration to task for not having filled senior positions critical to responding to an outbreak.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-trump-administration-is-ill-prepared-for-a-global-pandemic/2017/04/08/59605bc6-1a49-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html
5/11/17
DNI Daniel Coats highlights World Bank assessment predicting that a pandemic would cost the world around 5% of GDP.
“The United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
2018
2/1/18
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) anticipating being forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out, started dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries. The agency would focus on 10 priority countries, including China.
[Note:The CDC cuts were ultimately avoided because Congress provided other funding.]
https://web.archive.org/web/20200314145657/https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/
3/21/18
AIDS Researcher Robert R. Redfield Named to Lead the CDC.
[“Then, his biggest priorities had been fighting the opioid epidemic and the spread of H.I.V. Suddenly, a man who preferred treating patients in Haiti or Africa to being in the public glare was facing a new pandemic threat.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/health/cdc-robert-redfield-aids.html]
3/27/18
State Department cables warn of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
Beginning in January, U.S. Embassy officials visit a WIV research facility several times and send two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting studies on coronaviruses from bats.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
Homeland Security adviser, Tom Bossert, who had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks, is fired.
4/27/18
Bill Gates claims to have raised the issue of pandemic preparedness with President Trump since the 2016 presidential election. "In his most recent meeting last month, Gates said he laid out the increasing risk of a bioterrorism attack and stressed the importance of U.S. funding for advanced research on new therapeutics, including a universal flu vaccine, which would protect against all or most strains of influenza."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/27/bill-gates-calls-on-u-s-to-lead-fight-against-a-pandemic-that-could-kill-millions/
5/7/18
Trump budget plans [ed note: did not happen.] called for stripping more than $15 billion in previously approved spending, with the hope that it will temper conservative angst over ballooning budget deficits. White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-calls-on-congress-to-pull-back-15-billion-in-spending-including-on-childrens-health-insurance-program/2018/05/07/9427de18-5216-11e8-a551-5b648abe29ef_story.html
5/8/18
Trump signs Recission Bill R18-27, which, among many other things, cuts $252 million in emergency response funding that had been set aside in the 2015 fiscal year during the Ebola epidemic and cuts the State Department’s $30m Complex Crises Fund.
The State Department’s Complex Crises Fund (CCF)is meant to be a contingency fund allowing deployment of diplomats, disease experts, famine relief supplies, and disaster programs to de-escalate crisis situations that threaten to blow up into all-out wars or mass catastrophes.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/POTUS-Rescission-Transmittal-Package-5.8.2018.pdf
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/09/ebola-is-back-and-trump-is-trying-to-kill-funding-for-it/
5/10/18
Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer, the Trump administration's senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council leaves post abruptly and the global health security team he oversaw was disbanded as part of a reorganization under national security adviser John Bolton.
"Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack."
7/1/18
A key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China is eliminated.
[Dr. Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases.
“The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China's disease control agency, left her post in July. Quick left amid a bitter U.S. trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September.”]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/
9/18/18
National Biodefense Strategy and Presidential Memorandum on the Support for National Biodefense is issued warning that “the evolving biological threat landscape requires a comprehensive approach, and the United States recognizes the following principles.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/National-Biodefense-Strategy.pdf
2019
1/29/19Worldwide Threat Assessment issued - For the third year in a row, it warns: The U.S. will “remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support,” the threat report warned.
“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support,”
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/2019-ATA-SFR---SSCI.pdf
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6824-2019-10-key-findings-and-after/05bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
4/17/19
The Biodefense Summit aimed to engage the biodefense stakeholder community to inform national biodefense enterprise efforts to counter biological threats, reduce risk, prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from biological incidents. The Summit informed stakeholders of the implementation of the National Biodefense Strategy.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Tim Morrison, then a special assistant to the President and senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefense on the National Security Council, attended.
"Of course, the thing that people ask: 'What keeps you most up at night in the biodefense world?' Pandemic flu, of course. I think everyone in this room probably shares that concern," Azar said, before listing efforts to mitigate the impact of flu outbreaks.
https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/biodefense-strategy/Pages/biodefense-summit-transcripts.aspx
7/25/19
FEMA: National Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment, identifies the “greatest threats and hazards” to the United States and warning concerning the social, economic and personal devastation that a pandemic could cause, foreseeing current impacts, including overwhelmed hospitals and disruptions in essential services.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fema-report-warned-of-pandemic-vulnerability-months-before-covid-19/
https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1563998211160-f5da0c60ffeb239845d2e577c953f136/2019NTHIRA_20190725_508c.pdf
8/13/19
The last phase of a HHS 8-month-long simulated pandemic exercise begins. Ultimately it shows the nation critically unprepared. The exercise, code named “Crimson Contagion,” had eerie and prophetic similarities to the current real-life coronavirus pandemic. The exercise involved officials from more than a dozen federal agencies, several states and hospitals responding to a scenario in which a pandemic flu that began in China was spread by international tourists and was deemed a pandemic 47 days after the first outbreak.
The simulation report concluded that federal government lacks sufficient funding to respond to a severe influenza pandemic;
participants lacked clarity on the roles of different federal agencies, and what information was important to pass along to federal partners;
HHS had issues providing accurate and relevant information to hospitals and other public health organizations;
There was confusion between HHS, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security on which federal agency would take the lead in the crisis; the United States lacks the production capacity to meet the demands for protective equipment and medical devices such as masks and ventilators imposed by a pandemic; and states were unable to efficiently request resources due to the lack of a standardized request process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/politics/hhs-pandemic-simulation-crimson-contagion-report/index.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-coronavirus-outbreak-warnings-20200319-gtmd3dgwt5ce3fczvehxmmtjpq-story.html
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e744105c5b6eab7794560e6
9/15/19
White House Council of Economic Advisers: Mitigating the Impact of Pandemic Influenza through Vaccine Innovation, estimates more than 500,000 deaths and economic devastation from an influenza pandemic.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Mitigating-the-Impact-of-Pandemic-Influenza-through-Vaccine-Innovation.pdf
11/18/19
Bipartisan group of lawmakers and experts issue Ending the Cycle of Crisis and Complacency in U.S. Global Health Security A Report of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security, formally recommending that health security leadership on the NSC be restored.
https://healthsecurity.csis.org/final-report/
11/17/19
First case reported in China
[NCMI report detects China cases.
A confidential report issued in late November 2019 by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence warned of a contagion sweeping through Wuhan, China, which was assessed as a possibly “cataclysmic” event. Sources told ABC that the report was briefed to the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the White House, although the Defense secretary, Mark Esper, denied any awareness of it.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273
12/1/2019
Symptom onset questioned.
(See 1/24/20 Lancet Article)
12/10/2019
Three more China cases.
(See 1/24/20 Lancet Article)
12/15/2019
Cluster of cases, out of 41 - 14 not related to Wuhan Seafood Market.
(See 1/24/20 Lancet Article)
12/27/19
Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that the disease was caused by a new coronavirus. By that date, more than 180 people had been infected, though doctors might not have been aware of all of them at the time.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back
12/30/2019
Wuhan Health Commission reports continuous pneumonia cases associated with Wuhan Seafood Market.
12/31/2019
Wuhan Health Commission issues public health notice of link between Wuhan Seafood Market and cases and that there is "no evidence of human to human transmission".
12/31/2019
National Health Commission arrives in Wuhan and establishes standards for evaluating cases.
12/31/19
China reports a totally new viral disease, now called COVID-19.
12/31/19
World Health Organization issues warning about the virus.
2020
January
[01/01/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]1/1/20
China has 381 cases.
1/1/20
Wuhan Seafood Market ordered closed and scrubbed.
1/2/20
Institute of Virology reminds Wuhan lab regarding prohibition on disclosure of information.
1/2/20
The punishment of eight doctors for “rumor-mongering” is broadcast on China’s national television.
https://apnews.com/6f2e666485e9abae4bb112251eca77be
1/3/20
Dr. Gao Fu, head of China’s disease control agency, informs his U.S. counterpart, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, in an emotional telephone call that the outbreak was growing out of control.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nsc/as-trump-administration-debated-travel-restrictions-thousands-streamed-in-from-china-idUSKBN21N0EJ
1/3/20
Chinese authorities at National Health Commission issue information lock-down.
[01/04/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
Tension escalates with Iran
[01/05/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
Iran abandons nuclear deal
1/5/20
Zhang Yungzhen and team isolate and complete genome sequence.
1/5/20
Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre reports the genome discovery to the National Health Commission along with preventative measure recommendations.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951662.htm
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf
1/5/20
WHO reports a "pneumonia of unknown cause" in Wuhan, China.
The health organization advises against restrictions to China: "WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the current information available on this event."
https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/
1/7/20
China sends genetic map of the viral DNA to the world community.
1/7/20
Nature: "A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory desease." CoVid19 is closely related to CoVZC45 and CoVZXC21 bat samples.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2008-3
1/7/20
CDC creates an “incident management system” for the coronavirus and advises travelers to Wuhan to take precautions.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200123-sitrep-3-2019-ncov.pdf
[From March 28 NYT article: Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.
The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing. The CDC, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.
But as the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives. The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.
The CDC also tightly restricted who could get tested and was slow to conduct “community-based surveillance,” a standard screening practice to detect the virus’s reach. Had the United States been able to track its earliest movements and identify hidden hot spots, local quarantines might have confined the disease.
A shortage of test kits and technical flaws in the United States significantly delayed more widespread testing of the virus, letting it spread undetected for weeks.
1/8/20
China's National Health Commission revises December 31 standards for determining who has virus.
1/8/20
An outbreak of an unidentified and possibly new viral disease in central China prompts officials across Asia to take heightened precautions ahead of the busy Lunar New Year travel season.
Officials in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines will begin setting up quarantine zones or scanning passengers from China for signs of fever or other pneumonia-like symptoms that may indicate a new disease possibly linked to a wild animal market in Wuhan."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/specter-of-possible-new-virus-emerging-from-central-china-raises-alarms-across-asia/2020/01/08/3d33046c-312f-11ea-971b-43bec3ff9860_story.html
1/9/20
WHO releases statement announcing the source of the disease: "Chinese authorities have made a preliminary determination of a novel (or new) coronavirus, identified in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan."
"In the coming weeks, more comprehensive information is required to understand the current status and epidemiology of the outbreak, and the clinical picture."
https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/09-01-2020-who-statement-regarding-cluster-of-pneumonia-cases-in-wuhan-china
[1/9/20 Campaign Rally (Toledo, Ohio)]
1/10/20
Chinese government publishes the pathogen’s genetic sequence. The sequence, a long string of letters representing the RNA structure of SARS-CoV-2 describes a coronavirus never before seen in humans.
1/14/20
China’s National Health Commission head, Ma Xiaowei, lays out a grim assessment of the situation in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials and conveys instructions from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan.
Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.”
In response to the teleconference, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing initiates the highest-level emergency response internally, level one, the following day. It assigns top CDC leaders to 14 working groups tasked with getting funds, training health workers, collecting data, doing field investigations and supervising laboratories.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834431383/taiwan-reports-no-new-coronavirus-cases-adding-to-success-in-fighting-pandemic
WHO officials give conflicting signals about whether there is human-to-human transmission.
At a press conference in Geneva, Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO's emerging diseases unit tells a Reuters reporter: "From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families, but it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission." However, that same day WHO tweeted a different take, stating that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China." and also tells an NPR reporter that Van Kerkhove had been misunderstood and there was in fact no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
From 5/14/20 reports:
Trump accuses WHO of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus." He also said the organization is overly influenced by China and was too trusting of that country, particularly in the early phase of the outbreak.
Through the middle of January, he said, the WHO "parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary." The president also said the health agency had delayed raising the alarm on the threat posed by the new coronavirus, which is now confirmed to have infected more than 2 million people.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing/
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme responds to a U.S. accusations.
"We alerted the world on January the 5th...Systems around the world, including the U.S., began to activate their incident management systems on January the 6th. And through the next number of weeks, we've produced multiple updates to countries, including briefing multiple governments, multiple scientists around the world, on the developing situation — and that is what it was, a developing situation."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/835179442/we-alerted-the-world-to-coronavirus-on-jan-5-who-says-in-response-to-u-s
[1/14/20 Campaign Rally (Milwaukee)]
1/17/20
German lab publishes recipe for a test to detect the virus. WHO quickly adopts the German-developed test that can identify a unique part of the virus’ DNA, publishing technical guidelines with the instructions necessary for any country to manufacture coronavirus tests. That same day, a top US health official says that the CDC has developed an early version of its own test.
[The U.S. did not actively turn down testing kits from the WHO. It did not request them. The kits are primarily intended for lower income nations without testing capacity. Most countries develop their own. The WHO test was not “a bad test,” as claimed by Trump. The test is highly accurate and has performed well.
“Quality testing for our American people is paramount to us,” Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the U.S. coronavirus response, said last week. “It doesn’t help to put out a test where 50% or 47% are false positives.”
WHO responds that the agency had shipped 1.5 million of the German testing kits to 120 countries with no such problems emerging.
“The test has been validated in three external laboratories, adapted by WHO and manufactured in line with international quality standards,” he said. “It has shown consistently good performance in laboratory and clinical use, and neither a significant number of false-positive nor false-negative results have been reported.”]
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/23/us/politics/ap-us-virus-outbreak-testing-missteps.html
https://q13fox.com/2020/03/18/who-and-cdc-never-discussed-providing-international-test-kits-to-the-us-global-health-agency-says/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-wasted-months-before-preparing-for-virus-pandemic
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/biden-trump-wrong-about-who-coronavirus-tests/
1/17/20
NSC proposes restricting flights from China but meets resistance from other cabinet-level agencies because of concerns about spooking the markets and scaring the public.
After a week-long internal NSC debate concerning the screening of travelers from China, CDC officials ultimately announce enhanced medical screenings for travelers from Wuhan at three international airports, in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York’s John F. Kennedy, expanding them to 20 U.S. airports by Jan. 28.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html
[01/18/2020 Golf Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
1/18/20
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president. Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-dismissed-azar-coronavirus-warnings-as-alarmist-wapo-2020-4
[01/19/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
1/20/20
President Xi issues first public comments on the virus, saying the outbreak “must be taken seriously” and every possible measure pursued. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announces for the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on national television.
https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9
https://apnews.com/14d7dcffa205d9022fa9ea593bb2a8c5
1/20/20
South Korea has first confirmed case of COVID-19.1/20/20
Just two weeks after Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the virus, the CDC has developed its own test, as usual, and deployed it to detect the country’s first coronavirus case.
[“That’s our prime mission,” Dr. Redfield said later in an interview, “to get eyes on this thing.”
1/21/20
Azar assures Americans the U.S. government is prepared. While coronavirus in Wuhan, China, was “potentially serious, it "was one for which we have a playbook.”
“We developed a diagnostic test at the CDC, so we can confirm if somebody has this....We will be spreading that diagnostic around the country so that we are able to do rapid testing on site.”
As is now widely known, two agencies Azar oversaw as HHS secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, wouldn’t come up with viable tests for five and half weeks, even as other countries and the World Health Organization had already prepared their own.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hhschief-speci/special-report-former-labradoodle-breeder-tapped-to-lead-u-s-pandemic-task-force-idUSKCN2243CE
WHO says the virus risk globally is high.
1/21/20
First US case reported. U.S. becomes the fifth country outside of China to report cases of the virus, provisionally known as 2019-nCoV. Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have picked up a handful of cases, all in people who had recently been in Wuhan.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/21/cdc-expected-to-detail-first-u-s-case-of-novel-virus-spreading-in-china/
1/21/20
Science China Life Sciences: "Evolution of the novel coronavirus from the ongoing Wuhan Outbreak and modeling of its spike protein".
http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCLS/63/3/10.1007/s11427-020-1637-5
[1/21/20 Attends World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland]
1/21/20
"Ignore the prophets of Doom...."This is not a time for pessimism." (re: climate change)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/trump-davos-apocalypse-greta-climate/
1/22/20
While at Davos Trump touts sustained growth in the American economy as well as his his recent trade agreements with Mexico and Canada, and China. During a lengthy interview he is asked about the Washington state virus case and whether he was worried that, like SARS, it could impact on the GDP and trade.
“No. Not at all. And-- we're-- we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's—going to be just fine.
“Do you trust that we're going to know everything we need to know from China?”, he was asked.
“I do. I do. I have a great relationship with President Xi. We just signed probably the biggest deal ever made. It certainly has the potential to be the biggest deal ever made.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/davos-2020-cnbcs-full-interview-with-president-trump.html
1/22/20
Virus has spread from China to four other countries. China starts to take drastic measures and is on the verge of closing off the city of Wuhan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html
1/22/20
Two days after Chinese officials first publicized the serious threat posed by the new virus ravaging the city of Wuhan, the chief of the World Health Organization holds the first of what would be months of almost daily media briefings, sounding the alarm, telling the world to take the outbreak seriously.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/health/WHO-Trump-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/who-issues-warning-on-coronavirus-testing-theres-no-evidence-antibody-tests-show-immunity.html
1/23/20
Wuhan a city of 11 million is completely locked down. Starting within hours of the announcement, transport into and out of the city is closed, with no exceptions even for personal and medical emergencies.
1/23/20
WHO declines to declare China virus outbreak a global health emergency.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says in a statement that it was too early to declare the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. "Make no mistake. This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one."
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/23/who-declines-to-declare-china-virus-outbreak-a-global-health-emergency/
[Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/
https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-china/en/]
Pledging to build a hospital within 10 days, Wuhan's 1,000-bed Huoshenshan facility, begins construction and receives its first patients 2/4/20.
1/23/20
President Trump receives intelligence briefings on the coronavirus.
[FROM 5/3/20:
"Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the Coronavirus subject matter until late into January... Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner."
"On Jan. 23, I was told that there could be a virus coming in, but it was of no real import. In other words, it wasn't, 'Oh, we've got to do something, we've got to do something.' It was a brief conversation, and it was only on Jan. 23.... 9Intelligence professionals0 said it very matter-of-factly, and it was not a big deal."]
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/02/849619486/trump-received-intelligence-briefings-on-coronavirus-twice-in-january
Lancet: "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 coronavirus in Wuhan China". The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” says Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31986264
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally
1/24/20
Tweet: "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!”
1/25/20
U.S. diplomats in Wuhan are being brought home on chartered planes — a sign that the public health risk was significant. At the State Department, personnel are nervously tracking early reports about the virus.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/25/politics/coronavirus-us-evacuate-americans-china/index.html
1/25/20
Wuhan's Leishenshan Hospital, which broke ground Jan. 25 is finished by 2/6/20.
1/26/20
Institute of Virology of China CDC issues report that 33 of 585 samples contain coronavirus nucleic acid and that Wuhan Seafood Market is suspected.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/27/c_138735677.htm
1/26/20
"The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It's a very, very low risk to the United States," Dr. Fauci said on The CATS Roundtable. "It isn't something that the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about."
[Redfield: “At that time in January the information coming out of China suggested "they were pretty certain that this was not transmitted human to human....Obviously that became corrected as they saw in the first three, four weeks in January that human to human spread was not only occurring it's actually, as I said, more infectious and I think that led to the situation that we're in today. I think no one could have predicted how transmissible, how infectious this virus really is,"
https://radio.foxnews.com/2020/03/27/cdc-director-reacts-to-resurfaced-tape-of-dr-anthony-fauci-downplaying-virus-threat/]
1/27/20
White House aides huddle with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argues that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html
[1/28/20 Campaign Rally (Wildwood, N.J.)]
1/28/20
[in government and academic institutions around the nation an elite group of infectious disease doctors and medical experts who would become known as the Red Dawn Group start conversing via email. Hosted by DHS' chief medical officer Dr. Duane C. Caneva these "Red Dawn emails" sought to “provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to Covid-19.” They start studying the little date available from sources such as the Diamond Princess victims and considering prophylactic measures.]
As a member, Carter Mecher sends out email: The chatter on the blogs is that WHO and CDC are behind the curve. I'm seeing comments from people asking why WHO and CDC seem to be downplaying this. I'm certainly no public heralth expert (just a dufus from the VA), but no matter how I look at this, it looks bad. If we assume the same case ascertainment rate as the spring wave of 2009 HiN1, this looks nearly as transmissible as flu (but with a longer incubation period and greater Ro). The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-red-dawn-emails-trump.html
Scientists race to answer coronavirus questions. HHS Secretary Alex Azar praises the CDC for developing a coronavirus test in one week: "This was really a historic accomplishment."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/03/coronavirus-cdc-test-kits-public-health-labs/
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/28/the-coronavirus-questions-that-scientists-are-racing-to-answer/
1/28/20
Wall Street Journal Op/Ed: "Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb lay out a menu of what has to be done instantly to avert disaster.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/act-now-to-prevent-an-american-epidemic-11580255335
1/28/20
President Trump receives intelligence briefings on the coronavirus.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/02/849619486/trump-received-intelligence-briefings-on-coronavirus-twice-in-january
“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to Woodward book Rage which was released in mid-September. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.” Trump's head "popped up," Woodward writes.
1/28/20
CDC expands enhanced medical screenings for travelers to 20 U.S. airports.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html
1/29/20
As families tell of pneumonia-like deaths in Wuhan, some wonder if China virus count is too low.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-families-tell-of-pneumonia-like-deaths-in-wuhan-some-wonder-if-china-virus-count-is-too-low/2020/01/22/0f50b1e6-3d07-11ea-971f-4ce4f94494b4_story.html
1/29/20
World Health Organization announces it will reconvene its expert committee to weigh whether the outbreak amounts to a global health emergency. Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said, "The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter or other epicenter that becomes established."
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/29/who-reconvene-expert-committee-coronavirus/
[FROM LATER REPORTS:
Repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief. The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19
PDB references to the virus included comprehensive articles on aspects of the global outbreak, but also smaller digest items meant to keep Trump and senior administration officials updated on the course of the contagion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/virus-threat-trump-says-intel-agencies-offered-weak-warnings-n1199511?cid=sm_fb_maddow]
1/29/20
The White House forms a coronavirus response task force, initially led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who Trump and several of his advisers would come to privately mock as alarmist.
1/29/20
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testifies at the Senate Intelligence committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-worldwide-threats
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-worldwide-threats#
1/29/20
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, warns in a memo that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death and makes the case for "an immediate travel ban on China."
“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil....This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/navarro-warning-trump-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare
[1/30/20 Campaign Rally (Des Moines, Iowa)]
1/30/20
WHO reconvenes. Declares pandemic. WHO's Tedros announces that the outbreak had become a "public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus."
Advises regarding countermeasures. "countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread of 2019-nCoVinfection, and to share full data with WHO. Travel restrictions are not recommended at this time based on currently available information.
1/30/20
US travel to from China restricted.
1/30/20
Campaign rally: (again) "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. ... we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it."
1/30/20
WHO Situation Report 30 announces person to person not a danger.
1/30/20
Lancet: "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" discusses similarity to two bat-derived (Zhousan) SARS virii.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext
1/31/20
Declaration of Public Health Emergency for 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Secretary Azar declares Public Health Emergency for United States.
"These prudent and targeted actions will decrease the pressure on public health officials screening incoming travelers, expedite the processing of U.S. citizens returning from China, and ensure resources are focused on the health and safety of the American people."
https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/secretary/speeches/2020-speeches/secretary-azar-delivers-remarks-on-declaration-of-public-health-emergency-2019-novel-coronavirus.html
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/01/31/secretary-azar-declares-public-health-emergency-us-2019-novel-coronavirus.html
1/31/20
Members of coronavirus team lay out plans, threat level, etc.
Fauci: "The issue now with this is that there’s a lot of unknowns. As you can see just from the media, the number of cases have steeply inclined each and every day. You know that, in the beginning, we were not sure if there were asymptomatic infection, which would make it a much broader outbreak than what we’re seeing. Now we know for sure that there are."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-members-presidents-coronavirus-task-force/
1/31/20
Decision to impose travel restrictions imposed on non-U.S. citizens coming from China made; Flights from China banned (effective Feb. 2).
1/31/20
Senate votes not to hear any more witnesses in impeachment trial.
[02/01/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf ]
[02/02/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
2/2/20
Referring to his administration’s Jan. 31 order partially banning travel from China, Trump told Sean Hannity, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Restrictions applied only to foreign nationals traveling to the United States after visiting the People's Republic of China, with specific exemptions for travelers coming from the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. U.S. citizens and permanent residents were also exempt from the restrictions, and incoming flights did not stop landing at U.S. airports until several weeks later.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-read-looked-memo-warning-possible-coronavirus-pandemic-1496707
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-restrictions/index.html
2/3/20
Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan. Over 2,600 guests and over 1,000 crew. Within two days, over 40 people test positive for COVID-19, including eight Americans.
2/3/20
China accuses the United States of contributing to public hysteria over the deadly novel coronavirus, as the struggle to contain the illness adds further strain to diplomatic relations.
2/3/20
Nature: P4 Lab viral expert Shi Zhengli ("bat woman") co-publishes "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origen."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7
[2/3/20: Iowa Democratic Caucus]
2/4/20
FDA approves CDC test making it the country’s only accepted test for the novel coronavirus, essentially hamstringing private development. Public health officials in New York City, Nebraska, Colorado, Minnesota, New York State and elsewhere began receiving them four days later.
2/4/20
At a WHO briefing, Tedros urges that there be no travel bans, maintaining that such measures could increase “fear and stigma” within the international community. He also called on member states to “facilitate rapid collaboration between the public and private sectors to develop the diagnostics, medicines and vaccines,” in order to bring the outbreak under control.
"We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit. ... Where such measures have been implemented, we urge that they are short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks and are reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves."
https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-02-04-20/h_267d4c445f4bf4730abca05eccc62c67
2/4/20
Chen Wei, People's Liberation Army biological weapons expert, assumes control of Wuhan's P4 lab.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3064677/meet-major-general-chinas-coronavirus-scientific-front-line
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-epidemic-draws-scrutiny-to-labs-handling-deadly-pathogens-11583349777
2/5/20
Administration officials decline an offer of early congressional funding assistance during a meeting to discuss the coronavirus. The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said they “didn’t need emergency funding, that they would be able to handle it within existing appropriations.”
Sen. Chris Murphy tweets: “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/senator-says-white-house-turned-down-emergency-coronavirus-funding-in-early-february/ar-BB11OvE1
2/5/20
CDC begins sending test kits to state health agencies. But there was a hitch. The tests needed clean reagents, chemicals essential to providing reliable results. Some of the reagents were tainted and states had to send their samples to be tested back to the CDC.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/03/coronavirus-cdc-test-kits-public-health-labs/
2/5/20
Dems attack travel ban as anti-immigrant.
[2/5/20 Impeachment trial ends.]
2/6/20
Tissue samples taken during late April autopsies of two people who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., tested positive for the virus, local health officials said in a statement. The victims died on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, with another on March 6.
Initially, the nation’s earliest coronavirus fatality was thought to have occurred on Feb. 29, in Kirkland, Wash., a suburb of Seattle that rapidly became a hot spot. In March, health officials there linked two Feb. 26 deaths to covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.
Both of the Santa Clara County deaths occurred as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tightly restricted tests to those who displayed respiratory symptoms and recently traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person. Cody said local officials often had to call the CDC and discuss the specifics of individual cases before the agency would grant permission for testing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/22/death-coronavirus-first-california/
2/6/20
Dr Li Wenliang dies after contracting the virus while treating patients in Wuhan. At the end of December, the 34-year-old ophthalmologist had tried to send a message to other medics warning them about a new virus in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province.
2/6/20
WHO: there are more than 28,000 coronavirus cases around the globe.
2/6/20
Trump holds press conference vindicating his acquittal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/trump-impeachment.html
https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/secretary/speeches/2020-speeches/remarks-at-coronavirus-press-briefing.html
CDC expands enhanced medical screenings for travelers to 20 U.S. airports.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html
1/29/20
As families tell of pneumonia-like deaths in Wuhan, some wonder if China virus count is too low.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-families-tell-of-pneumonia-like-deaths-in-wuhan-some-wonder-if-china-virus-count-is-too-low/2020/01/22/0f50b1e6-3d07-11ea-971f-4ce4f94494b4_story.html
1/29/20
World Health Organization announces it will reconvene its expert committee to weigh whether the outbreak amounts to a global health emergency. Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said, "The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter or other epicenter that becomes established."
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/29/who-reconvene-expert-committee-coronavirus/
[FROM LATER REPORTS:
Repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief. The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19
PDB references to the virus included comprehensive articles on aspects of the global outbreak, but also smaller digest items meant to keep Trump and senior administration officials updated on the course of the contagion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/virus-threat-trump-says-intel-agencies-offered-weak-warnings-n1199511?cid=sm_fb_maddow]
1/29/20
The White House forms a coronavirus response task force, initially led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who Trump and several of his advisers would come to privately mock as alarmist.
1/29/20
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testifies at the Senate Intelligence committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-worldwide-threats
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-worldwide-threats#
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, warns in a memo that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death and makes the case for "an immediate travel ban on China."
“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil....This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/navarro-warning-trump-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare
[1/30/20 Campaign Rally (Des Moines, Iowa)]
1/30/20
WHO reconvenes. Declares pandemic. WHO's Tedros announces that the outbreak had become a "public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus."
Advises regarding countermeasures. "countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread of 2019-nCoVinfection, and to share full data with WHO. Travel restrictions are not recommended at this time based on currently available information.
1/30/20
US travel to from China restricted.
1/30/20
Campaign rally: (again) "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. ... we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it."
1/30/20
WHO Situation Report 30 announces person to person not a danger.
1/30/20
Lancet: "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" discusses similarity to two bat-derived (Zhousan) SARS virii.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext
1/31/20
Declaration of Public Health Emergency for 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Secretary Azar declares Public Health Emergency for United States.
"These prudent and targeted actions will decrease the pressure on public health officials screening incoming travelers, expedite the processing of U.S. citizens returning from China, and ensure resources are focused on the health and safety of the American people."
https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/secretary/speeches/2020-speeches/secretary-azar-delivers-remarks-on-declaration-of-public-health-emergency-2019-novel-coronavirus.html
1/31/20
Members of coronavirus team lay out plans, threat level, etc.
Fauci: "The issue now with this is that there’s a lot of unknowns. As you can see just from the media, the number of cases have steeply inclined each and every day. You know that, in the beginning, we were not sure if there were asymptomatic infection, which would make it a much broader outbreak than what we’re seeing. Now we know for sure that there are."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-members-presidents-coronavirus-task-force/
1/31/20
Decision to impose travel restrictions imposed on non-U.S. citizens coming from China made; Flights from China banned (effective Feb. 2).
1/31/20
Senate votes not to hear any more witnesses in impeachment trial.
February
[02/01/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf ]
[02/02/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL]
2/2/20
Referring to his administration’s Jan. 31 order partially banning travel from China, Trump told Sean Hannity, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Restrictions applied only to foreign nationals traveling to the United States after visiting the People's Republic of China, with specific exemptions for travelers coming from the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. U.S. citizens and permanent residents were also exempt from the restrictions, and incoming flights did not stop landing at U.S. airports until several weeks later.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-read-looked-memo-warning-possible-coronavirus-pandemic-1496707
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-restrictions/index.html
Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan. Over 2,600 guests and over 1,000 crew. Within two days, over 40 people test positive for COVID-19, including eight Americans.
2/3/20
China accuses the United States of contributing to public hysteria over the deadly novel coronavirus, as the struggle to contain the illness adds further strain to diplomatic relations.
2/3/20
Nature: P4 Lab viral expert Shi Zhengli ("bat woman") co-publishes "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origen."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7
[2/3/20: Iowa Democratic Caucus]
2/4/20
FDA approves CDC test making it the country’s only accepted test for the novel coronavirus, essentially hamstringing private development. Public health officials in New York City, Nebraska, Colorado, Minnesota, New York State and elsewhere began receiving them four days later.
2/4/20
At a WHO briefing, Tedros urges that there be no travel bans, maintaining that such measures could increase “fear and stigma” within the international community. He also called on member states to “facilitate rapid collaboration between the public and private sectors to develop the diagnostics, medicines and vaccines,” in order to bring the outbreak under control.
"We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit. ... Where such measures have been implemented, we urge that they are short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks and are reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves."
https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-02-04-20/h_267d4c445f4bf4730abca05eccc62c67
Chen Wei, People's Liberation Army biological weapons expert, assumes control of Wuhan's P4 lab.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3064677/meet-major-general-chinas-coronavirus-scientific-front-line
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-epidemic-draws-scrutiny-to-labs-handling-deadly-pathogens-11583349777
2/5/20
Administration officials decline an offer of early congressional funding assistance during a meeting to discuss the coronavirus. The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said they “didn’t need emergency funding, that they would be able to handle it within existing appropriations.”
Sen. Chris Murphy tweets: “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/senator-says-white-house-turned-down-emergency-coronavirus-funding-in-early-february/ar-BB11OvE1
2/5/20
CDC begins sending test kits to state health agencies. But there was a hitch. The tests needed clean reagents, chemicals essential to providing reliable results. Some of the reagents were tainted and states had to send their samples to be tested back to the CDC.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/03/coronavirus-cdc-test-kits-public-health-labs/
2/5/20
Dems attack travel ban as anti-immigrant.
[2/5/20 Impeachment trial ends.]
2/6/20
Tissue samples taken during late April autopsies of two people who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., tested positive for the virus, local health officials said in a statement. The victims died on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, with another on March 6.
Initially, the nation’s earliest coronavirus fatality was thought to have occurred on Feb. 29, in Kirkland, Wash., a suburb of Seattle that rapidly became a hot spot. In March, health officials there linked two Feb. 26 deaths to covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.
Both of the Santa Clara County deaths occurred as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tightly restricted tests to those who displayed respiratory symptoms and recently traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person. Cody said local officials often had to call the CDC and discuss the specifics of individual cases before the agency would grant permission for testing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/22/death-coronavirus-first-california/
2/6/20
Dr Li Wenliang dies after contracting the virus while treating patients in Wuhan. At the end of December, the 34-year-old ophthalmologist had tried to send a message to other medics warning them about a new virus in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province.
2/6/20
WHO: there are more than 28,000 coronavirus cases around the globe.
2/6/20
Trump holds press conference vindicating his acquittal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/trump-impeachment.html
https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/secretary/speeches/2020-speeches/remarks-at-coronavirus-press-briefing.html
2/7/20
In an interview with Bob Woodward, Trump tells him that “This is deadly stuff....You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed...And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
2/7/20
US Government airlifts nearly 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China.
[These were donations by private charities and public companies for Project HOPE, an international health-care organization that has been operating in Wuhan for a quarter-century and helped establish a nursing school there. Usually, donors to Project HOPE arrange for charter aircraft to take their donations overseas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/22/did-trump-ship-17-tons-american-masks-china/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-sent-millions-of-face-masks-to-china-early-this-year-ignoring-pandemic-warning-signs/2020/04/18/aaccf54a-7ff5-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html]
[2/10/20 Campaign Rally (Manchester, N.H.)]
2/10/20
Campaign rally: Trump suggests that the virus would be gone by April, a claim he frequently repeats, even though his advisers warn him that much about the virus is still not known.
2/10/20
Trump submits 2021 budget proposal that calls for a 9% reduction in CDC funding, although there is a modest increase for the division that combats global pandemics.
2/11/20
WHO names the new disease COVID-19. Tedros urges world leaders to give priority to containing the virus.
"To be honest, a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack. A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action, and that's true. If the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as Public Enemy Number 1, I don't think we will learn our lessons."
[2/11/20 New Hampshire Primary]
2/12/20
Joseph Maguire (Acting) Director of National Intelligence (DNI) schedules an appearance to deliver the Worldwide Threat Assessment, the annual intelligence report. It’s postponed without explanation. Report alleges, as it has for the last three years, that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic,
“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html
2/13/20
In an interview CDC director Redfield notes that nearly six weeks after the CDC's first offered to help China with the coronavirus outbreak, it still had not been accepted.
“Novel coronavirus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year.” Thinks asymptomatic transmission of the novel coronavirus is possible and concerning.
"What I've learned in the last two weeks is that the spectrum of this illness is much broader than was originally presented. There's much more asymptomatic illness," Redfield said. "A number of the confirmed cases that we confirmed actually just presented with a little sore throat."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/health/coronavirus-cdc-robert-redfield-gupta-intv/index.html
2/14/20
CDC and state labs have tested just under 2,200 samples. South Korea has performed over 7,900 tests.
2/14/20
Trump discusses the "very small" number of U.S. coronavirus cases with Border Patrol Council members:
"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."
[02/15/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL, Golfing]
2/14/20
CDC announces plan to perform the screening in five high-risk cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. An agency official said it could provide “an early warning signal to trigger a change in our response strategy.” But most of the cities could not carry it out.
“Had we had done more testing from the very beginning and caught cases earlier,” said Dr. Nuzzo, of Johns Hopkins, “we would be in a far different place.”
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0214-covid-19-update.html.html
2/18/20
Twenty Seven Democratic senators send a letter to National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien to ask him to appoint a new global health security expert to the NSC.
https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021320%20NSC%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20Letter%20final%20pdf.pdf
[2/19/20 Campaign Rally (Phoenix)]
2/19/20
First patient at that Seattle nursing home taken to the hospital for acute respiratory symptoms with what we now know was COVID.
2/19/20
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire leaves office, purportedly as a result of Trump’s displeasure over Maguire’s testimony concerning Russian election interference.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/21/politics/joseph-maguire-director-of-national-intelligence/index.html
[2/20/20 Campaign Rally (Colorado Springs)]
2/20/20
WHO reports nearly 77,000 cases worldwide in 27 countries.
[2/21/20 Campaign Rally (Las Vegas) ]
2/22/20
Trump: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
[2/22/20 Nevada Primary]
[2/24/20 Trump in India]
2/24/20
Stock market plummets as Dow Jones Industrials falls more than 1,000 points.
The same day, Trump asks for $1.25 billion in emergency aid. It grows to $8.3 billion in Congress. He tweets that the virus "is very much under control" and the stock market "starting to look very good to me!"
2/24/20
Tweet: "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!"
2/24/20
Stock market plummets as Dow Jones Industrials fall more than 1,000 points.
2/24/20
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claims Trump administration made drastic cuts to the global health division: “In 2018, CDC was forced to reduce the number of countries it operated in from 49 to 10.” Three days later Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut makes a similar claim.
2/24/20
Pelosi attacks Trump corovavirus measures as anti-immigrant; visits San Francisco’s Chinatown to show it was “very safe to be in Chinatown”.
2/25/20
Pelosi tweet: Knocks Trump’s response to the emerging crisis as inadequate.
Americans need a coordinated, fully-funded, whole-of-government response to keep them and their loved ones safe. The President’s request for coronavirus response funding is long overdue and completely inadequate to the scale of this emergency.
2/25/20
HHS Secretary Azar tells Congress that the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), a reserve of emergency medical supplies, contained “30 million surgical masks and 12 million of the more protective N95 masks. He said there were an additional 5 million N95 masks that may have passed their expiration date” in the stockpile, which at that time had not yet been tapped to deal with COVID-19.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/hospital-makes-face-masks-covid-19-shields-from-office-supplies
2/25/20
Azar holds a press conference, states that “Thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts,” the novel coronavirus “is contained.”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?469708-1/hhs-officials-hold-news-conference-coronavirus
2/25/20
Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, joins CNBC's Kelly Evans to discuss the possible impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. economy. Coronavirus will not be economic tragedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XiKVZJRuU&feature=youtu.be
2/25/20
CDC Confirms First Possible Community Transmission of Coronavirus in U.S. The case was announced shortly after President Trump concluded a news briefing in which he said that aggressive public health containment measures and travel entry restrictions had successfully limited the spread of coronavirus in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-cdc-usa.html
Trump addresses media saying that he thinks 'that whole situation will start working out'.
2/25/20
President at news conference; “The risk to the American people remains very low,” flanked by top health officials from several government agencies. “We have the greatest experts, really in the world, right here.” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.” She said that hospitals and schools should begin preparing for an outbreak, and that she had even spoken with her own family about “significant disruption of our lives.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-cdc.html
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/cdc-expects-community-spread-of-coronavirus-as-top-official-warns-disruptions-could-be-severe/
2/25/20
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow claims containment. “I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/25/kudlow-white-house-coronavirus-117402
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-118600
2/25/20
World Health Organization announces findings: new data from China confirms fears about coronavirus' high fatality rate.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-buttress-fears-about-high-coronavirus-fatality-rate-who-expert-says/
2/25/20
Trump: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
2/25/20
Trump: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
[2/25/20 Mardi Gras Day]
2/25/20
Laura Ingraham of Fox News accuses his opponents of exploiting the crisis. “A coronavirus, that’s a new pathway for hitting President Trump.”
2/25/20
U.S. military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence raises warning to WATCHCON 1 at all levels inside the U.S. government, indicating that the pandemic was now considered a full-bore threat.
https://apnews.com/da45eec432d6ff4cc9e0825531e454a6
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/28/1941003/-They-didn-t-just-ignore-COVID-19-they-engaged-in-a-cover-up-NYTimes-Op-Ed
2/26/20
The first case emerges in California that has no clear source, suggesting community spread of the virus.
2/26/20
Trump holds first news conference claims virus will not spread further.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-contradicts-cdc-warning-inevitable-coronavirus-spread-us-says-he-doesnt-think-its-1489351
2/26/20
White House news conference, commenting on the country’s first reported cases: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”
2/26/20
Trump: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
2/26/20
Trump: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
2/26/20
In a news conference that day, Trump says the United States is "really prepared." He puts Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the White House task force.
2/26/20
"This is a flu. This is like a flu."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/
2/26/20
Trump defends decision to cut pandemic force from NSC.
“Some of the people we cut, they haven’t been used for many, many years....I’m a business person—I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/
https://www.politicalflare.com/2020/03/trump-said-he-knew-nothing-about-firing-obamas-pandemic-team-heres-a-video-of-him-talking-about-doing-it/
2/26/20
Dr. Fauci, concerned that the stalled testing had become an urgent issue that needed to be addressed, calls Brian Harrison, Azar’s chief of staff, and asks him to gather the group of officials overseeing screening efforts.
2/27/20
Drs. Hahn and. Redfield and top aides from the FDA and HHS dial in to a conference call. Harrison begins with an ultimatum: “No one leaves until we resolve the lag in testing. We don’t have answers and we need them....Get it done.”
By the end of the day, the group agreed that the FDA should loosen regulations so that hospitals and independent labs could move forward quickly with their own tests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html
https://covidtracking.com/
2/27/20
White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/trump-coronavirus-science-analysis
2/27/20
North Carolina's Senator Richard Burr, the Intelligence Committee chairman, speaking to members of Capitol Hill Club, warns them of potential travel restrictions, school closings, and lockdowns.
"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
"We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere," Burr said at the luncheon. "It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make. And we're going to have medical professionals supplemented by local staff to treat the people that need treatment."
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19
[2/28/20 Campaign Rally (Charleston, S.C.)]
2/28/20
WHO raises the global risk of the coronavirus from "high" to "very high."
2/28/20
Cases rise across Europe, including Italy, Germany, France, England, Switzerland and Belarus.
2/28/20
Trump: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
2/28/20
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa.” “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rallies-in-north-charleston-on-eve-of-south-carolina-primary
2/28/20
South China Morning Post: Chinese lab that first reported genome ordered closed.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chinese-laboratory-first-shared-coronavirus-genome-world-ordered
2/29/20
FDA issues new policy to help expedite availability of diagnostics, relaxing regulations that scientists said had hindered private laboratories from deploying their own tests.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-new-policy-help-expedite-availability-diagnostics
[2/29/20 Nevada Primary]
2/29/20
Only 472 patients have been tested nationwide, with just 22 cases confirmed, according to CDC data. Of those, nine cases were not related to travel but had spread person-to-person. South Korea had its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Jan. 20, the same day as the U.S. Officials there used a test that focused on the same gene targets as the WHO test, according to the website of a test manufacturer. They then quickly permitted private-sector labs to run the samples. As a result, a nation with less than one-sixth the population of the U.S. mobilized to test more than 20,000 people a day.
https://apnews.com/c335958b1f8f6a37b19b421bc7759722
[2/29/20 DEATH TOLL 1]
2/23/20
Navarro's second memo is a request for supplemental appropriation."There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls."
The memo highlights the needs for an "immediate supplemental appropriation of at least $3 billion" to support efforts at prevention, treatment, inoculation and diagnostics. It described expected needs for "Personal Protective Equipment" for health care workers and secondary workers in facilities such as elder care and skilled nursing. He estimated that over a four-to-six-month period, "We can expect to need at least a billion face masks, 200,000 Tyvek suits, and 11,000 ventilator circuits, and 25,000 PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirators)."
https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onhrs
Health and Human Services announces investigation into manufacturing defect in the CDC tests.
[The CDC botches its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories.
A promised replacement took several weeks, and still did not permit state and local laboratories to make final diagnoses. And the CDC essentially ensured that Americans would be tested in very few numbers by imposing stringent and narrow criteria.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html]
3/1/20
First virus case in New York.
[3/2/20 North Carolina Campaign Rally]
3/2/20
Trump: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
3/2/20
Trump: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
3/2/20
Surgeon general Adams: "risk as American citizens remains low," but Fauci, characterizes it as the "beginning of community spread" in the U.S. and "really quite concerning,"
"You're going to wind up seeing a lot more cases than you would have predicted."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-118600
3/2/20
Dr. Stephen Hahn, FDA commissioner, claims the nation will have the capacity to test a million people by the end of the week.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/485587-fda-official-expects-1m-coronavirus-tests-to-be-available-by-weeks
3/2/20
US Food and Drug Administration grants CDC request for emergency use authorization (EUA) allowing health care personnel to use certain National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) approved respirators - not currently regulated by the FDA - during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/04/hhs-to-procure-n95-respirators-to-support-healthcare-workers-in-covid-19-outbreaks.html
3/2/20
Mark T. Esper directed overseas officers not to run afoul of the White House’s messaging and asked them to clear decisions on protecting their troops.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/us/politics/esper-trump-military-coronavirus.html
[3/2/20: DEATH TOLL 6]
3/3/20
Public and private labs say that contrary to what the FDA Commissioner has said the previous day, they’re not even close to reaching the federal government’s promises that thousands, if not a million, tests for the virus could be “performed” soon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/health/coronavirus-tests-fda.html
3/3/20
The CDC lifts federal restrictions on coronavirus testing to allow any American to be tested for coronavirus, “subject to doctor’s orders.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/world/coronavirus-live-news-updates.html
[3/3/20 Super Tuesday]
3/3/20
House passes coronavirus bipartisan funding measure.
3/4/20
Trump: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
3/4/20
House passes $8.3 billion emergency bill, aimed mainly at the immediate health response to the virus.
3/4/20
In a Fox News interview, Trump deflects criticism to his response by saying the Obama administration (including the vice president, Joe Biden) "didn't do anything about" swine flu.
3/4/20
Trump continues to blame the Obama administration in an exchange with reporters at the White House.
“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Mr. Trump said. “That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.”
...
[Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, whose members had complained that the Food and Drug Administration took too long to approve their tests, said the association, which represents state and local government labs, was not aware of any Obama-era rules that changed how the labs were regulated or how applications in a public health crisis were reviewed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-obama.html]
3/4/20
HHS announces intention to purchase 500 million N95 masks, with plans to distribute them over the next 18 months.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/04/hhs-to-procure-n95-respirators-to-support-healthcare-workers-in-covid-19-outbreaks.html
3/4/20
Secretary Azar announces HHS is transferring $35 million to the CDC to help state and local communities that have been impacted most by the coronavirus.
https://www.coronavirustoday.com/hhs-funds-monitoring-travelers-data-management-lab-equipment-supplies-staffing-shipping-infection
3/5/20
WHO Director-General makes remarks at a media briefing setting out the status of the disease and calling for immediate action. "This is not a drill," he said.
"...epidemic can be pushed back, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government."
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-march-2020
Tedros praises China and the U.S. for taking "the right approach."
"After our visit to Beijing and seeing China's approach, and President Xi leading that, and also in the U.S., President Trump himself, and also for regular coordination, designating the vice president. These are the approaches we're saying are the right ones, and these are the approaches we're saying are going to mobilize the whole government."
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-final-05mar2020.pdf
3/5/20
Senate passes $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill, more than three times what the White House had originally asked for.
3/5/20
Trump: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
3/5/20
Trump: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/09/highlighting-low-numbers-coronavirus-cases-trump-distracts-worrying-trend/
3/5/20
Fox News town hall: Trump says "It's going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm. It's all going to work out."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fox-news-town-hall-scranton-pa/
3/6/20
Trump signs $8.3 billion coronavirus bill.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486182-trump-signs-83b-coronavirus-package
3/6/20
Trump: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
3/6/20
Trump: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
3/6/20
Trump: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-thinks-he-may-have-natural-ability-address-viral-outbreaks-n1153061
3/6/20
Grand Princess cruise ship with over 2,000 passengers waits to dock off the California coast. Asked about the docking of the Grand Princess, Trump says the following:
"I would rather (Grand Princess passengers stay aboard) because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship."
Trump went on to say that he thought it was more important for passengers to debark than to keep the numbers down.
“From my standpoint, I want to rely on people. I have great experts, including our vice president who is working 24 hours a day on this stuff. They would like to have the people come off,” he said, wearing a baseball cap promoting his reelection campaign. “I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/07/which-is-trump-more-worried-about-coronavirus-numbers-or-coronavirus-patients/
3/6/20
Trump and HHS Secretary Alex Azar visit the CDC lab in Atlanta, praising the agency’s performance and promising 4 million test kits will be available by the end of the following week. CDC and state health labs process about 25,200 COVID-19 tests in the following seven days. While there, he brags that he has a predisposition toward science because of his ‘super genius’ uncle. He praises his own “natural ability” to grasp scientific theories, and then he likened the quality of the test to a White House recounting of a phone call: “The transcription was perfect, right?” he asked reporters. “This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”
[03/07/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf while quarantined cruise passengers wait.]
[3/7/20 Golf]
3/7/20
(Standing next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil at Mar-a-Lago, asked if he was concerned that the virus was spreading closer to Washington): “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.”
3/7/20
Mick Mulvaney pushed out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51779902
[03/08/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf /Washington Nationals]
3/8/20
To Republican donors at Mar-a-Lago: Claims that his political opponents were “trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools — you know, destroy the country."
3/8/20
“We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
3/9/20
Trump again compares coronavirus to the flu. Tweets that the coronavirus is not as perilous .
"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!"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mixed-messages-idUSKBN2102GY
3/9/20
Trump: “This blindsided the world.”
3/9/20
Tweet: "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"..."the risk is low".”
3/10/20
Washington Post reports on the shortage of face masks as a result of the reserves being depleted by the H1N1 pandemic.
[“With a limited budget of about $600 million annually, officials in charge of the stockpile focused on what they say was a more pressing priority: lifesaving drugs and equipment for diseases and disasters that emerged before the new coronavirus, which has no vaccine or specific anti-viral treatment."]
3/10/20
Trump: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
3/10/18
CDC refutes claims made by Shumer and others regarding cuts to its global anti-pandemic work, saying that the CDC is actually working in “more than 60 countries” — not 10 — to address the threat of global infectious diseases and outbreaks.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200314145657/https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/
[3/10/20 Super Tuesday.2]
3/11/20
Trump announces Europe travel ban targeting ‘foreign nationals’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/03/11/us-suspends-all-travel-from-europe-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/#37773e3b1335.
3/11/20
Deaths at Seattle facility account for more than half the COVID deaths in the US.
3/12/20
FEMA administrator sidesteps questions about whether FEMA should have been involved sooner with the pandemic and whether the agency knew as early as last July about the possible consequences of an outbreak involving a novel strain of the influenza virus. He tells the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, “I have personally not had any conversations” with HHS.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fema-report-warned-of-pandemic-vulnerability-months-before-covid-19/
3/12/20
Most travel from countries in the European Union prohibited.
3/12/20
HHS orders $4.8 million N95 masks from 3M.
3/13/20
Trump is pressed on his decision to disband the pandemic response team on the NSC in 2018. While responsibility for monitoring threats from infectious diseases was shifted to another group within the NSC, the move was reportedly interpreted as a downgrading of the administration’s priority for global health security.
“Well, I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump fires back when asked about the closure. “I don’t know anything about it. I mean, you say we did that. I don’t know anything about it. Disbanding, no, I don’t know anything about it.”
3/13/20
Trump declares a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-mobilized-full-resources-federal-government-respond-coronavirus/
3/13/20
Trump: “I don't take responsibility at all”
3/13/20
Beth Cameron, previously the senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council, criticizes closure of the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. She criticizes the government’s “slow and inadequate response”, saying that it underscored the need for “organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
3/13/20
Trump promises Americans they would soon be able to access a new website that would ask them about their symptoms and direct them to nearby coronavirus testing sites. Google, he said “has 1,700 engineers working on” a website that would help people figure out if they needed a coronavirus test and to direct them to testing sites. Google immediately clarifies the scope of their limited project.
3/13/20
Trump announces Public-Private partnerships to open up drive-through testing collection sites.
3/13/20
Food and Drug Administration grants Roche AG an emergency approval for automated coronavirus testing kits and Issues an emergency approval to Thermo Fisher for a coronavirus test within 24 hours of receiving the request.
3/13/20
HHS announces funding for the development of two new rapid diagnostic tests, which would be able to detect coronavirus in approximately 1 hour.
3/14/20
Coronavirus Relief Bill passes House of Representatives.
3/14/20
Administration announces the European travel ban will extend to the UK and Ireland.
3/14/20
John Bolton responds to claims that streamlining the NSC structures impaired the nation's bio defense, saying they are false. “Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/487581-bolton-defends-decision-to-shutter-nsc-pandemic-office
3/15/20
HHS announces it is projected to have 1.9 million COVID-19 tests available in 2,000 labs this week.
3/15/20
Details of Google/Trump arrangement clarified.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-coronavirus-site-testing-trump-pence/
3/16/20
Trump holds tele-conference with governors to discuss coronavirus preparedness and response and participates in G7 call; leaders commit to increasing coordination in response to the coronavirus and restoring global economic confidence.
3/16/20
NIH clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins. Trump announces that the first potential vaccine for coronavirus has entered a phase one trial in a record amount of time.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-investigational-vaccine-covid-19-begins
3/16/20
Trump announces “15 days to slow the spread” coronavirus guidance.
“Listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/15-days-slow-spread/
3/16/20
FDA authorizes state-developed tests.
3/16/20
Asst. Secretary for HHS confirms the availability of 1 million coronavirus tests, and projects that 2 million tests will be available the next week with 5 million more the following week.
3/16/20
Trump: "I give myself a 10 out of 10"
3/16/20
"You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don't know who is infected," WHO's Tedros says at a Geneva briefing.
"We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/16/816428320/coronavirus-u-s-enters-quarantine-life-as-many-schools-and-businesses-close
3/16/20
Trump issues orders to control the spread of the virus in the U.S.
"My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people. Avoid discretionary travel. And avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and public food courts. If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus. And we're going to have a big celebration all together. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-3/
3/16/20
White House briefing: Trump claims that the outbreak will “wash” away this summer: “So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say, wash — it washes through. Other people don’t like that term. But where it washes through.”
3/16/20
Tim Morrison former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council responds to criticisms that the pandemic response teams and had been eliminated. NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people. That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/no-white-house-didnt-dissolve-its-pandemic-response-office/
3/16/20
Fox reports on a small French study highlighting the effectiveness of the drug hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/trump-administration-not-ruling-out-domestic-travel-restrictions-amid-coronavirus-pandemic
3/17/20
St Patrick's Day
“This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html
3/17/20
"It snuck up on us," Trump claims at a White House briefing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/18/trump-mcconnell-cant-self-quarantine-political-fallout/
3/17/20
Nature: "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2". Researchers compare the genome with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms."
"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus".
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
3/17/20
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announces partnership between USDA, Baylor University, McLane Global, and Pepsi Co. to provide one million meals per week to rural children in response to widespread school closures.
3/17/20
Treasury Department contributes $10bil through the economic stabilization fund to the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper funding facility.
3/17/20
DOD announces it will make available to HHS up to five million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators.
[3/17/20 Fl, Az, Il primaries]
[ 3/18/20 DEATH TOLL 150]
3/18/20
Trump announces temporary closure of the U.S.-Canada border to non-essential traffic and plans to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to increase the number of necessary supplies needed to combat coronavirus.
3/18/20
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper: 1 million masks are now immediately available.
3/18/20
Trump meets with 130 CEOs of the Business Roundtable to discuss on-going public-private partnerships in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
3/18/20
Trump announces a willingness to invoke Defense Production Act.
"I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/23/has-president-donald-trump-invoked-defense-product/
3/19/20
Asked what conditions would be needed to put the Defense Production Act into effect: "Well, if we were desperately in need of something — and we, frankly, will know about that very shortly. We don't want to do it as it happens, but before it happens."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-6/
3/19/20
Whitehouse Briefing: Could not explain the gap between his assertion that there are thousands of coronavirus tests available and the shortages being reported on the ground nationwide.
[“I cannot explain a gap. I’m hearing very good things on the ground. We had to ramp up, they had an obsolete system and they had a system simultaneously that was not meant for this… nobody knew that there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before,” he said, adding that he was working with local governments to get states the supplies they need.
The system is starting to work out very well but we had to break a system like breaking an egg because the system we had was obsolete and didn’t work and that was the system we inherited.”
They had an obsolete system, and they had a system, simultaneously, that was not meant for this. It wasn’t meant for this. Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.
Suggests that obtaining medical equipment should be up to individual governors because “we’re not a shipping clerk.”]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-is-hearing-good-things-on-the-ground-about-coronavirus-testing-despite-shortage
3/19/20
Trump vows to make hydroxychloroquine more widely available.
“It’s shown very encouraging – very, very encouraging early results,” he said at a press conference. “And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it – they took it down from many, many months to immediate.”
At the same press conference, FDA administrator Hahn said regulators were taking “a closer look.”
“That’s a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at, as to whether an expanded-use approach to that could be done to actually see if that benefits patients.”
US Government airlifts nearly 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China.
[These were donations by private charities and public companies for Project HOPE, an international health-care organization that has been operating in Wuhan for a quarter-century and helped establish a nursing school there. Usually, donors to Project HOPE arrange for charter aircraft to take their donations overseas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/22/did-trump-ship-17-tons-american-masks-china/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-sent-millions-of-face-masks-to-china-early-this-year-ignoring-pandemic-warning-signs/2020/04/18/aaccf54a-7ff5-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html]
[2/10/20 Campaign Rally (Manchester, N.H.)]
2/10/20
Campaign rally: Trump suggests that the virus would be gone by April, a claim he frequently repeats, even though his advisers warn him that much about the virus is still not known.
2/10/20
Trump submits 2021 budget proposal that calls for a 9% reduction in CDC funding, although there is a modest increase for the division that combats global pandemics.
2/11/20
WHO names the new disease COVID-19. Tedros urges world leaders to give priority to containing the virus.
"To be honest, a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack. A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action, and that's true. If the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as Public Enemy Number 1, I don't think we will learn our lessons."
[2/11/20 New Hampshire Primary]
2/12/20
Joseph Maguire (Acting) Director of National Intelligence (DNI) schedules an appearance to deliver the Worldwide Threat Assessment, the annual intelligence report. It’s postponed without explanation. Report alleges, as it has for the last three years, that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic,
“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html
2/13/20
In an interview CDC director Redfield notes that nearly six weeks after the CDC's first offered to help China with the coronavirus outbreak, it still had not been accepted.
“Novel coronavirus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year.” Thinks asymptomatic transmission of the novel coronavirus is possible and concerning.
"What I've learned in the last two weeks is that the spectrum of this illness is much broader than was originally presented. There's much more asymptomatic illness," Redfield said. "A number of the confirmed cases that we confirmed actually just presented with a little sore throat."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/health/coronavirus-cdc-robert-redfield-gupta-intv/index.html
2/14/20
CDC and state labs have tested just under 2,200 samples. South Korea has performed over 7,900 tests.
2/14/20
Trump discusses the "very small" number of U.S. coronavirus cases with Border Patrol Council members:
"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."
[02/15/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL, Golfing]
2/14/20
CDC announces plan to perform the screening in five high-risk cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. An agency official said it could provide “an early warning signal to trigger a change in our response strategy.” But most of the cities could not carry it out.
“Had we had done more testing from the very beginning and caught cases earlier,” said Dr. Nuzzo, of Johns Hopkins, “we would be in a far different place.”
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0214-covid-19-update.html.html
2/18/20
Twenty Seven Democratic senators send a letter to National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien to ask him to appoint a new global health security expert to the NSC.
https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021320%20NSC%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20Letter%20final%20pdf.pdf
[2/19/20 Campaign Rally (Phoenix)]
2/19/20
First patient at that Seattle nursing home taken to the hospital for acute respiratory symptoms with what we now know was COVID.
2/19/20
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire leaves office, purportedly as a result of Trump’s displeasure over Maguire’s testimony concerning Russian election interference.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/21/politics/joseph-maguire-director-of-national-intelligence/index.html
[2/20/20 Campaign Rally (Colorado Springs)]
2/20/20
WHO reports nearly 77,000 cases worldwide in 27 countries.
[2/21/20 Campaign Rally (Las Vegas) ]
2/22/20
Trump: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
[2/22/20 Nevada Primary]
[2/24/20 Trump in India]
2/24/20
Stock market plummets as Dow Jones Industrials falls more than 1,000 points.
The same day, Trump asks for $1.25 billion in emergency aid. It grows to $8.3 billion in Congress. He tweets that the virus "is very much under control" and the stock market "starting to look very good to me!"
2/24/20
Tweet: "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!"
2/24/20
Stock market plummets as Dow Jones Industrials fall more than 1,000 points.
2/24/20
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claims Trump administration made drastic cuts to the global health division: “In 2018, CDC was forced to reduce the number of countries it operated in from 49 to 10.” Three days later Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut makes a similar claim.
2/24/20
Pelosi attacks Trump corovavirus measures as anti-immigrant; visits San Francisco’s Chinatown to show it was “very safe to be in Chinatown”.
2/25/20
Pelosi tweet: Knocks Trump’s response to the emerging crisis as inadequate.
Americans need a coordinated, fully-funded, whole-of-government response to keep them and their loved ones safe. The President’s request for coronavirus response funding is long overdue and completely inadequate to the scale of this emergency.
2/25/20
HHS Secretary Azar tells Congress that the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), a reserve of emergency medical supplies, contained “30 million surgical masks and 12 million of the more protective N95 masks. He said there were an additional 5 million N95 masks that may have passed their expiration date” in the stockpile, which at that time had not yet been tapped to deal with COVID-19.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/hospital-makes-face-masks-covid-19-shields-from-office-supplies
2/25/20
Azar holds a press conference, states that “Thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts,” the novel coronavirus “is contained.”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?469708-1/hhs-officials-hold-news-conference-coronavirus
2/25/20
Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, joins CNBC's Kelly Evans to discuss the possible impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. economy. Coronavirus will not be economic tragedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XiKVZJRuU&feature=youtu.be
2/25/20
CDC Confirms First Possible Community Transmission of Coronavirus in U.S. The case was announced shortly after President Trump concluded a news briefing in which he said that aggressive public health containment measures and travel entry restrictions had successfully limited the spread of coronavirus in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-cdc-usa.html
Trump addresses media saying that he thinks 'that whole situation will start working out'.
2/25/20
President at news conference; “The risk to the American people remains very low,” flanked by top health officials from several government agencies. “We have the greatest experts, really in the world, right here.” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.” She said that hospitals and schools should begin preparing for an outbreak, and that she had even spoken with her own family about “significant disruption of our lives.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-cdc.html
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/cdc-expects-community-spread-of-coronavirus-as-top-official-warns-disruptions-could-be-severe/
2/25/20
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow claims containment. “I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/25/kudlow-white-house-coronavirus-117402
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-118600
2/25/20
World Health Organization announces findings: new data from China confirms fears about coronavirus' high fatality rate.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-buttress-fears-about-high-coronavirus-fatality-rate-who-expert-says/
2/25/20
Trump: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
2/25/20
Trump: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
[2/25/20 Mardi Gras Day]
2/25/20
Laura Ingraham of Fox News accuses his opponents of exploiting the crisis. “A coronavirus, that’s a new pathway for hitting President Trump.”
2/25/20
U.S. military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence raises warning to WATCHCON 1 at all levels inside the U.S. government, indicating that the pandemic was now considered a full-bore threat.
https://apnews.com/da45eec432d6ff4cc9e0825531e454a6
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/28/1941003/-They-didn-t-just-ignore-COVID-19-they-engaged-in-a-cover-up-NYTimes-Op-Ed
2/26/20
The first case emerges in California that has no clear source, suggesting community spread of the virus.
2/26/20
Trump holds first news conference claims virus will not spread further.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-contradicts-cdc-warning-inevitable-coronavirus-spread-us-says-he-doesnt-think-its-1489351
2/26/20
White House news conference, commenting on the country’s first reported cases: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”
2/26/20
Trump: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
2/26/20
Trump: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
2/26/20
In a news conference that day, Trump says the United States is "really prepared." He puts Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the White House task force.
2/26/20
"This is a flu. This is like a flu."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/
Trump defends decision to cut pandemic force from NSC.
“Some of the people we cut, they haven’t been used for many, many years....I’m a business person—I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/
https://www.politicalflare.com/2020/03/trump-said-he-knew-nothing-about-firing-obamas-pandemic-team-heres-a-video-of-him-talking-about-doing-it/
2/26/20
Dr. Fauci, concerned that the stalled testing had become an urgent issue that needed to be addressed, calls Brian Harrison, Azar’s chief of staff, and asks him to gather the group of officials overseeing screening efforts.
2/27/20
Drs. Hahn and. Redfield and top aides from the FDA and HHS dial in to a conference call. Harrison begins with an ultimatum: “No one leaves until we resolve the lag in testing. We don’t have answers and we need them....Get it done.”
By the end of the day, the group agreed that the FDA should loosen regulations so that hospitals and independent labs could move forward quickly with their own tests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html
https://covidtracking.com/
White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/trump-coronavirus-science-analysis
2/27/20
North Carolina's Senator Richard Burr, the Intelligence Committee chairman, speaking to members of Capitol Hill Club, warns them of potential travel restrictions, school closings, and lockdowns.
"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
"We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere," Burr said at the luncheon. "It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make. And we're going to have medical professionals supplemented by local staff to treat the people that need treatment."
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19
2/28/20
WHO raises the global risk of the coronavirus from "high" to "very high."
2/28/20
Cases rise across Europe, including Italy, Germany, France, England, Switzerland and Belarus.
2/28/20
Trump: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
2/28/20
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa.” “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rallies-in-north-charleston-on-eve-of-south-carolina-primary
2/28/20
South China Morning Post: Chinese lab that first reported genome ordered closed.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chinese-laboratory-first-shared-coronavirus-genome-world-ordered
2/29/20
FDA issues new policy to help expedite availability of diagnostics, relaxing regulations that scientists said had hindered private laboratories from deploying their own tests.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-new-policy-help-expedite-availability-diagnostics
[2/29/20 Nevada Primary]
2/29/20
Only 472 patients have been tested nationwide, with just 22 cases confirmed, according to CDC data. Of those, nine cases were not related to travel but had spread person-to-person. South Korea had its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Jan. 20, the same day as the U.S. Officials there used a test that focused on the same gene targets as the WHO test, according to the website of a test manufacturer. They then quickly permitted private-sector labs to run the samples. As a result, a nation with less than one-sixth the population of the U.S. mobilized to test more than 20,000 people a day.
https://apnews.com/c335958b1f8f6a37b19b421bc7759722
[2/29/20 DEATH TOLL 1]
2/23/20
Navarro's second memo is a request for supplemental appropriation."There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls."
The memo highlights the needs for an "immediate supplemental appropriation of at least $3 billion" to support efforts at prevention, treatment, inoculation and diagnostics. It described expected needs for "Personal Protective Equipment" for health care workers and secondary workers in facilities such as elder care and skilled nursing. He estimated that over a four-to-six-month period, "We can expect to need at least a billion face masks, 200,000 Tyvek suits, and 11,000 ventilator circuits, and 25,000 PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirators)."
https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onhrs
March
3/1/20Health and Human Services announces investigation into manufacturing defect in the CDC tests.
[The CDC botches its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories.
A promised replacement took several weeks, and still did not permit state and local laboratories to make final diagnoses. And the CDC essentially ensured that Americans would be tested in very few numbers by imposing stringent and narrow criteria.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html]
3/1/20
First virus case in New York.
[3/2/20 North Carolina Campaign Rally]
3/2/20
Trump: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
3/2/20
Trump: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
3/2/20
Surgeon general Adams: "risk as American citizens remains low," but Fauci, characterizes it as the "beginning of community spread" in the U.S. and "really quite concerning,"
"You're going to wind up seeing a lot more cases than you would have predicted."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-118600
3/2/20
Dr. Stephen Hahn, FDA commissioner, claims the nation will have the capacity to test a million people by the end of the week.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/485587-fda-official-expects-1m-coronavirus-tests-to-be-available-by-weeks
US Food and Drug Administration grants CDC request for emergency use authorization (EUA) allowing health care personnel to use certain National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) approved respirators - not currently regulated by the FDA - during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/04/hhs-to-procure-n95-respirators-to-support-healthcare-workers-in-covid-19-outbreaks.html
3/2/20
Mark T. Esper directed overseas officers not to run afoul of the White House’s messaging and asked them to clear decisions on protecting their troops.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/us/politics/esper-trump-military-coronavirus.html
[3/2/20: DEATH TOLL 6]
3/3/20
Public and private labs say that contrary to what the FDA Commissioner has said the previous day, they’re not even close to reaching the federal government’s promises that thousands, if not a million, tests for the virus could be “performed” soon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/health/coronavirus-tests-fda.html
3/3/20
The CDC lifts federal restrictions on coronavirus testing to allow any American to be tested for coronavirus, “subject to doctor’s orders.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/world/coronavirus-live-news-updates.html
3/3/20
House passes coronavirus bipartisan funding measure.
3/4/20
Trump: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
3/4/20
House passes $8.3 billion emergency bill, aimed mainly at the immediate health response to the virus.
3/4/20
In a Fox News interview, Trump deflects criticism to his response by saying the Obama administration (including the vice president, Joe Biden) "didn't do anything about" swine flu.
3/4/20
Trump continues to blame the Obama administration in an exchange with reporters at the White House.
“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Mr. Trump said. “That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.”
...
[Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, whose members had complained that the Food and Drug Administration took too long to approve their tests, said the association, which represents state and local government labs, was not aware of any Obama-era rules that changed how the labs were regulated or how applications in a public health crisis were reviewed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-obama.html]
HHS announces intention to purchase 500 million N95 masks, with plans to distribute them over the next 18 months.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/04/hhs-to-procure-n95-respirators-to-support-healthcare-workers-in-covid-19-outbreaks.html
Secretary Azar announces HHS is transferring $35 million to the CDC to help state and local communities that have been impacted most by the coronavirus.
https://www.coronavirustoday.com/hhs-funds-monitoring-travelers-data-management-lab-equipment-supplies-staffing-shipping-infection
WHO Director-General makes remarks at a media briefing setting out the status of the disease and calling for immediate action. "This is not a drill," he said.
"...epidemic can be pushed back, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government."
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-march-2020
Tedros praises China and the U.S. for taking "the right approach."
"After our visit to Beijing and seeing China's approach, and President Xi leading that, and also in the U.S., President Trump himself, and also for regular coordination, designating the vice president. These are the approaches we're saying are the right ones, and these are the approaches we're saying are going to mobilize the whole government."
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-final-05mar2020.pdf
3/5/20
Senate passes $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill, more than three times what the White House had originally asked for.
3/5/20
Trump: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
3/5/20
Trump: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/09/highlighting-low-numbers-coronavirus-cases-trump-distracts-worrying-trend/
3/5/20
Fox News town hall: Trump says "It's going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm. It's all going to work out."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fox-news-town-hall-scranton-pa/
3/6/20
Trump signs $8.3 billion coronavirus bill.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486182-trump-signs-83b-coronavirus-package
3/6/20
Trump: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
3/6/20
Trump: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
3/6/20
Trump: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-thinks-he-may-have-natural-ability-address-viral-outbreaks-n1153061
3/6/20
Grand Princess cruise ship with over 2,000 passengers waits to dock off the California coast. Asked about the docking of the Grand Princess, Trump says the following:
"I would rather (Grand Princess passengers stay aboard) because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship."
Trump went on to say that he thought it was more important for passengers to debark than to keep the numbers down.
“From my standpoint, I want to rely on people. I have great experts, including our vice president who is working 24 hours a day on this stuff. They would like to have the people come off,” he said, wearing a baseball cap promoting his reelection campaign. “I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/07/which-is-trump-more-worried-about-coronavirus-numbers-or-coronavirus-patients/
3/6/20
Trump and HHS Secretary Alex Azar visit the CDC lab in Atlanta, praising the agency’s performance and promising 4 million test kits will be available by the end of the following week. CDC and state health labs process about 25,200 COVID-19 tests in the following seven days. While there, he brags that he has a predisposition toward science because of his ‘super genius’ uncle. He praises his own “natural ability” to grasp scientific theories, and then he likened the quality of the test to a White House recounting of a phone call: “The transcription was perfect, right?” he asked reporters. “This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”
[03/07/20 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf while quarantined cruise passengers wait.]
[3/7/20 Golf]
3/7/20
(Standing next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil at Mar-a-Lago, asked if he was concerned that the virus was spreading closer to Washington): “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.”
3/7/20
Mick Mulvaney pushed out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51779902
[03/08/2020 Trump Intl, West Palm Beach, FL Played Golf /Washington Nationals]
3/8/20
To Republican donors at Mar-a-Lago: Claims that his political opponents were “trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools — you know, destroy the country."
3/8/20
“We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
3/9/20
Trump again compares coronavirus to the flu. Tweets that the coronavirus is not as perilous .
"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!"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mixed-messages-idUSKBN2102GY
Trump: “This blindsided the world.”
3/9/20
Tweet: "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"..."the risk is low".”
3/10/20
Washington Post reports on the shortage of face masks as a result of the reserves being depleted by the H1N1 pandemic.
[“With a limited budget of about $600 million annually, officials in charge of the stockpile focused on what they say was a more pressing priority: lifesaving drugs and equipment for diseases and disasters that emerged before the new coronavirus, which has no vaccine or specific anti-viral treatment."]
3/10/20
Trump: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
3/10/18
CDC refutes claims made by Shumer and others regarding cuts to its global anti-pandemic work, saying that the CDC is actually working in “more than 60 countries” — not 10 — to address the threat of global infectious diseases and outbreaks.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200314145657/https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/
[3/10/20 Super Tuesday.2]
3/11/20
Trump announces Europe travel ban targeting ‘foreign nationals’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/03/11/us-suspends-all-travel-from-europe-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/#37773e3b1335.
[Research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html]
3/11/20
Fauci contradicts Trump’s 3/9/20 statement comparing the flu to the coronavirus:
"This is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,"
3/11/20
3/11/20
Fauci contradicts Trump’s 3/9/20 statement comparing the flu to the coronavirus:
"This is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,"
NYC Mayor de Blasio press conference: “If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life.”
Deaths at Seattle facility account for more than half the COVID deaths in the US.
3/12/20
FEMA administrator sidesteps questions about whether FEMA should have been involved sooner with the pandemic and whether the agency knew as early as last July about the possible consequences of an outbreak involving a novel strain of the influenza virus. He tells the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, “I have personally not had any conversations” with HHS.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fema-report-warned-of-pandemic-vulnerability-months-before-covid-19/
3/12/20
Most travel from countries in the European Union prohibited.
3/12/20
HHS orders $4.8 million N95 masks from 3M.
3/13/20
Trump is pressed on his decision to disband the pandemic response team on the NSC in 2018. While responsibility for monitoring threats from infectious diseases was shifted to another group within the NSC, the move was reportedly interpreted as a downgrading of the administration’s priority for global health security.
“Well, I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump fires back when asked about the closure. “I don’t know anything about it. I mean, you say we did that. I don’t know anything about it. Disbanding, no, I don’t know anything about it.”
3/13/20
Trump declares a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-mobilized-full-resources-federal-government-respond-coronavirus/
3/13/20
Trump: “I don't take responsibility at all”
3/13/20
Beth Cameron, previously the senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council, criticizes closure of the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. She criticizes the government’s “slow and inadequate response”, saying that it underscored the need for “organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
3/13/20
Trump promises Americans they would soon be able to access a new website that would ask them about their symptoms and direct them to nearby coronavirus testing sites. Google, he said “has 1,700 engineers working on” a website that would help people figure out if they needed a coronavirus test and to direct them to testing sites. Google immediately clarifies the scope of their limited project.
3/13/20
Trump announces Public-Private partnerships to open up drive-through testing collection sites.
3/13/20
Food and Drug Administration grants Roche AG an emergency approval for automated coronavirus testing kits and Issues an emergency approval to Thermo Fisher for a coronavirus test within 24 hours of receiving the request.
3/13/20
HHS announces funding for the development of two new rapid diagnostic tests, which would be able to detect coronavirus in approximately 1 hour.
3/14/20
Coronavirus Relief Bill passes House of Representatives.
3/14/20
Administration announces the European travel ban will extend to the UK and Ireland.
3/14/20
John Bolton responds to claims that streamlining the NSC structures impaired the nation's bio defense, saying they are false. “Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/487581-bolton-defends-decision-to-shutter-nsc-pandemic-office
3/15/20
HHS announces it is projected to have 1.9 million COVID-19 tests available in 2,000 labs this week.
3/15/20
Details of Google/Trump arrangement clarified.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-coronavirus-site-testing-trump-pence/
3/16/20
Trump holds tele-conference with governors to discuss coronavirus preparedness and response and participates in G7 call; leaders commit to increasing coordination in response to the coronavirus and restoring global economic confidence.
3/16/20
NIH clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins. Trump announces that the first potential vaccine for coronavirus has entered a phase one trial in a record amount of time.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-investigational-vaccine-covid-19-begins
3/16/20
Trump announces “15 days to slow the spread” coronavirus guidance.
“Listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/15-days-slow-spread/
3/16/20
FDA authorizes state-developed tests.
3/16/20
Asst. Secretary for HHS confirms the availability of 1 million coronavirus tests, and projects that 2 million tests will be available the next week with 5 million more the following week.
Trump: "I give myself a 10 out of 10"
3/16/20
"You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don't know who is infected," WHO's Tedros says at a Geneva briefing.
"We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/16/816428320/coronavirus-u-s-enters-quarantine-life-as-many-schools-and-businesses-close
3/16/20
Trump issues orders to control the spread of the virus in the U.S.
"My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people. Avoid discretionary travel. And avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and public food courts. If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus. And we're going to have a big celebration all together. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-3/
3/16/20
White House briefing: Trump claims that the outbreak will “wash” away this summer: “So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say, wash — it washes through. Other people don’t like that term. But where it washes through.”
3/16/20
Tim Morrison former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council responds to criticisms that the pandemic response teams and had been eliminated. NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people. That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/no-white-house-didnt-dissolve-its-pandemic-response-office/
3/16/20
Fox reports on a small French study highlighting the effectiveness of the drug hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/trump-administration-not-ruling-out-domestic-travel-restrictions-amid-coronavirus-pandemic
3/17/20
St Patrick's Day
“This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html
3/17/20
"It snuck up on us," Trump claims at a White House briefing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/18/trump-mcconnell-cant-self-quarantine-political-fallout/
3/17/20
Nature: "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2". Researchers compare the genome with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms."
"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus".
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
3/17/20
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announces partnership between USDA, Baylor University, McLane Global, and Pepsi Co. to provide one million meals per week to rural children in response to widespread school closures.
3/17/20
Treasury Department contributes $10bil through the economic stabilization fund to the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper funding facility.
3/17/20
DOD announces it will make available to HHS up to five million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators.
[3/17/20 Fl, Az, Il primaries]
[ 3/18/20 DEATH TOLL 150]
3/18/20
Trump announces temporary closure of the U.S.-Canada border to non-essential traffic and plans to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to increase the number of necessary supplies needed to combat coronavirus.
3/18/20
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper: 1 million masks are now immediately available.
3/18/20
Trump meets with 130 CEOs of the Business Roundtable to discuss on-going public-private partnerships in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
3/18/20
Trump announces a willingness to invoke Defense Production Act.
"I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/23/has-president-donald-trump-invoked-defense-product/
3/19/20
Asked what conditions would be needed to put the Defense Production Act into effect: "Well, if we were desperately in need of something — and we, frankly, will know about that very shortly. We don't want to do it as it happens, but before it happens."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-6/
3/19/20
Whitehouse Briefing: Could not explain the gap between his assertion that there are thousands of coronavirus tests available and the shortages being reported on the ground nationwide.
[“I cannot explain a gap. I’m hearing very good things on the ground. We had to ramp up, they had an obsolete system and they had a system simultaneously that was not meant for this… nobody knew that there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before,” he said, adding that he was working with local governments to get states the supplies they need.
The system is starting to work out very well but we had to break a system like breaking an egg because the system we had was obsolete and didn’t work and that was the system we inherited.”
They had an obsolete system, and they had a system, simultaneously, that was not meant for this. It wasn’t meant for this. Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.
Suggests that obtaining medical equipment should be up to individual governors because “we’re not a shipping clerk.”]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-is-hearing-good-things-on-the-ground-about-coronavirus-testing-despite-shortage
3/19/20
Trump vows to make hydroxychloroquine more widely available.
“It’s shown very encouraging – very, very encouraging early results,” he said at a press conference. “And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it – they took it down from many, many months to immediate.”
At the same press conference, FDA administrator Hahn said regulators were taking “a closer look.”
“That’s a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at, as to whether an expanded-use approach to that could be done to actually see if that benefits patients.”
3/19/20
In another interview with Woodward, Trump admits that “I wanted to always play it down.” “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.”
3/19/20
China exonerates Dr. Li Wenliang who was officially reprimanded for warning about the coronavirus outbreak and later died of the disease is issued a “solemn apology”.
Li became the face of simmering anger at the ruling Communist Party’s controls over information and complaints that officials lie about or hide disease outbreaks, industrial accidents, natural disasters and financial frauds, while punishing whistleblowers and independent journalists.
https://apnews.com/6f2e666485e9abae4bb112251eca77be
Trump touts an anti-malarial drug as a potential cure-all, prompting Fauci to offer a more nuanced view.
3/20/20
U.K. study finds positive effects among COVID-19 patients who take a combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin.
[Although the study garnered international attention, many have since criticized the small sample size (26 people) and the fact that it was non-controlled (the patients were all at different hospitals).]
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/trump-comments-on-hydroxychloroquine-as-treatment-for-coronavirus-fact-checked-by-malaria-expert-003056251.html
3/21/20
Trump blames previous administrations for the fact that front line medical workers facing a spike in cases were reporting urgent shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE), notably N95 respirator masks that filter out particles in the air.
[When asked by a reporter about protective medical gear shortages:
“So, many administrations preceded me. For the most part, they did very little, in terms of what you’re talking about,”
Asserts that he has used the Defense Production Act to spur the production of “millions of masks.” ]
3/21/20
Trump resists appeals from state and local officials and hospital administrators for more aggressive action, saying he would not compel companies to make face masks and other gear that protects front-line health workers from the virus.
The president insisted he has used the Defense Production Act, but said at a briefing that “we are literally being besieged” by companies “that want to do the work and help our country.”
Appears to contradict prior day’s statement regarding his emergency powers to compel production, saying companies will voluntarily provide much-needed protective gear.
Vice President Pence said the federal government had placed orders for “hundreds of millions” of the N-95 face masks that can shield medical workers from the virus. Neither Trump nor Pence would say when the masks would be ready.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/opinion/coronavirus-face-mask.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/defense-production-act-virus.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-supplies.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/business/coronavirus-masks-hanes-trump.html
Tweet: "HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents)....."
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1241367239900778501
3/21/20
CDC issues Information for Clinicians on Treatment Options for COVID-19 Patients.
The document describes possible prescription information for coronavirus patients, while at the same time proposing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a restricted option in coronavirus treatment.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-guidance-exclu/exclusive-pressed-by-trump-u-s-pushed-unproven-coronavirus-treatment-guidance-idUSKBN21M0R2
3/21/20
HHS follows up with a larger mask order which is slated for delivery at the end of April.
3/21/20
Google finally launches its coronavirus portal.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/15/21180518/coronavirus-google-verily-website-testing-trump
[ 3/21/20 DEATH TOLL 301]
3/22/20
President’s News conference: "It is absolutely critical that Americans continue to follow the federal government's guidelines. So important about social distancing, non-essential travel, and hand-washing."
3/22/20
Democrats impede passage of relief package.
3/22/20
Tweet: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,”
3/22/20
Dr. Fauci tries to make the White House listen to facts of the pandemic.
I’m going to keep pushing."
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/i-m-going-keep-pushing-anthony-fauci-tries-make-white-house-listen-facts-pandemic#
Relief package again delayed. Democratic concerns focus on a $500 billion funding program Republicans want to create for loans and loan guarantees, with some Democrats calling it a "slush fund" that lacked any oversight because the Treasury Department would have broad discretion over who received the money. Asked about this Monday evening, Trump responded, "I'll be the oversight." The vote Monday was 49 to 46, well short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation for a final debate.
3/23/20
Some media outlets follow suit concerning supply shortages, focusing the blame on the Obama administration. “Report: Obama Admin Depleted Stockpile of N95 Masks, Never Restored,” a Breitbart.com headline read. “Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News: Federal stockpile of N95 masks was depleted under Obama and never restocked,” Washington Examiner reported.
3/23/20
FDA’s Hahn tells Fox News host Tucker Carlson that preliminary data showed the drugs might indeed help treat the disease.
3/23/20
WHO's Tedros at briefing: "Using untested medicines without the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good."
He also warns that the "pandemic is accelerating. ... It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000 cases and just four days for the third 100,000 cases."
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---23-march-2020
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/820290984/coronavirus-who-head-says-nations-must-attack-as-pandemic-is-accelerating
3/24/20
Worst one-day stock market slide in two years, the S and P 500 closes down 3 percent. The S and P 500 ends down about 0.4 percent, bringing its losses for the week to close to more than 6 percent. Trump considers reopening the economy and easing coronavirus restrictions at Fox News town hall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-considers-reopening-the-economy-and-easing-coronavirus-restrictions-in-fox-news-town-hall/2020/03/24/6ecf4143-33e0-40fb-8ef5-f994656fca98_video.html
3/24/20
Trump: "Easter is a very special day for me. And I see it sort of in that timeline that I'm thinking about. And I say, wouldn't it be great to have all of the churches full?"
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1242537995103846400
3/24/20
Trump asks South Korea for coronavirus testing kits.
https://www.stripes.com/news/south-korea-says-trump-asked-for-coronavirus-testing-kits-offers-to-send-what-it-can-1.623622
[ 3/24/20 DEATH TOLL 780]
3/25/20
American Medical Association, American Pharmacists Association and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists issue joint statement on ordering, prescribing or dispensing COVID-19 medications.
We are aware that some physicians and others are prophylactically prescribing medications currently identified as potential treatments for COVID-19 (e.g., chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin) for themselves, their families, or their colleagues; and that some pharmacies and hospitals have been purchasing excessive amounts of these medications in anticipation of potentially using them for COVID-19 prevention and treatment. We strongly oppose these actions.
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/joint-statement-ordering-prescribing-or-dispensing-covid-19
3/26/20
Trump cites a Johns Hopkins University study that he said showed the United States as the most prepared country in the world to confront a virus. Tens of thousands of people die from the flu each year, he noted, contrasting that number with the several dozen currently infected with the coronavirus.
[“We’re very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it’s going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not, we’re, you know, we’re at that very low level.” ]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-cdc.html
3/26/20
Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the US have topped the totals in China and Italy, making the US the center of the global outbreak.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-us-has-worlds-biggest-outbreak-topping-china-2020-3
3/26/20
University of Washington model: assuming social distancing stays in place until June 1, U.S. deaths over the next four months would most likely be about 81,000.
[By April 8, it will have made more than five revisions to get to the estimate of 60,415 deaths.]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/without-mass-testing-were-flying-blind-through-this-crisis/2020/04/09/bf61e178-7a9b-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
3/26/20
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx warns the public not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic's spread. "Models are models," she said. "When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't have data that matches that based on our experience." She said the media should not "make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it's not going to be there, or a ventilator, it's not going to be there, we don't have evidence of that."
3/26/20
White House coronavirus task force briefing: Trump mentions the number of respirators, face shields and ventilators that had so far been distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the president said: “We took over an empty shelf. We took over a very depleted place, in a lot of ways.” Right wing media continues to blames the Obama administration for mask shortages.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/obama-admin-allegedly-depleted-federal-stockpile-of-n95-masks-never-replaced-reports-say
3/26/20
Azar, on Capitol Hill, defends his work, telling lawmakers that he was overseeing “the smoothest interagency process I’ve experienced in my 20 years of dealing with public health emergencies.”
[He said that the CDC had already exhausted the $105 million rapid-response fund that the federal government had been using in its initial response efforts. He has proposed shifting $136 million from other health programs to the coronavirus to replenish the government’s efforts. Schumer proposes increasing the president’s emergency request drastically, to $8.5 billion in new funds, including $3 billion for a public health emergency fund, $1.5 billion for the CDC, $1 billion for vaccine development and $2 billion for reimbursing states and cities for efforts they have so far made to monitor and prepare for potential cases of the virus.]
3/26/20
"We are at war with a virus that threatens to tear us apart," Tedros tells world leaders in a special virtual summit on the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/822123471/we-are-at-war-who-head-says-warning-millions-could-die-from-covid-19
[3/26/20 DEATH TOLL 1295]
3/27/20
Health care giant Abbott gets emergency approval for a portable test that could detect the virus in five minutes.
https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-03-27-Abbott-Launches-Molecular-Point-of-Care-Test-to-Detect-Novel-Coronavirus-in-as-Little-as-Five-Minutes
Dr Birx raises eyebrows with her comments praising Trump’s grasp of scientific literature and data details.
["He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data....I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.”]
3/27/20
Trump again said he inherited “an empty shelf” that he had to refill.
3/27/20
Trump invokes Defense Production Act to require GM to make ventilators.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/politics/general-motors-ventilators-defense-production-act/index.html
3/27/20
Passing the House of Representatives by a voice vote and immediately being signed by the President, the relief package, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, is the largest economic relief bill in U.S. history and will allocate $2.2 trillion in support to individuals and businesses affected by the pandemic and economic downturn.
https://taxfoundation.org/cares-act-senate-coronavirus-bill-economic-relief-plan/
https://taxfoundation.org/federal-coronavirus-relief-bill-cares-act/
Trump announces that all Americans should continue to avoid nonessential travel, going to work, eating at bars and restaurants, or gathering in groups of more than 10 for at least another month and perhaps until June.
3/29/20
FDA grants anti-malarial drugs Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine EAU (emergency use authorization).
3/29/20
More than 831,000 tests have been conducted.
3/29/20
Trump ponders whether health care workers were responsible for the shortage of protective masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
[ 3/29/20 DEATH TOLL 2,583]
3/30/20
Congress passes $2.2 trillion CARES Act (H.R. 748) which contains the Paycheck Protection Program providing 100 percent federally-backed loans for certain payroll expenses through June 30, with up to eight weeks of forgiveness for small businesses, certain nonprofits and self-employed individuals.
https://taxfoundation.org/sba-paycheck-protection-program-cares-act/
3/31/20
Trump walks back his prior claims, made as recently as the prior week, that the flu was comparable, now takes an ominous tone.
https://news.yahoo.com/now-trump-says-wrong-compare-coronavirus-regular-flu-003125676.html
3/31/20
Trump puts best possible face on a terrifying set of metrics—100,000 to 200,000 dead Americans, even if, as Dr. Deborah Birx underscores, safety measures are continued.
3/31/20
A paper in Annals of Internal Medicine, “Use of Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine During the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Every Clinician Should Know” warns that “data to support the use of HCQ and CQ for COVID-19 are limited and inconclusive.”
https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764199/use-hydroxychloroquine-chloroquine-during-covid-19-pandemic-what-every-clinician
3/31/20
Mitch McConnell argues that the government might have been too distracted by impeachment proceedings to focus on the impending pandemic.
April
4/1/20Trump administration backtracks from its intention, announced in December, to shutter a US Agency for International Development surveillance program tasked with detecting new, potentially dangerous infectious diseases and helping foreign labs stop emerging pandemic threats around the world, granting an emergency six-month extension for the PREDICT program. PREDICT staff were deployed to several countries almost immediately to provide technical assistance with testing and additional supplies as needed.
The PREDICT program, launched in 2009, was tasked with monitoring zoonotic infectious diseases -- those that normally exist in animals but can jump to humans -- in an effort to help stop pandemics before they emerge. Nearly 75% of all new, emerging or re-emerging diseases affecting humans at the beginning of the 21st Century are zoonotic, according to USAID.
The extension came more than two months after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed on US soil and after the coronavirus outbreak had already been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization and had claimed the lives of more than 4,300 people in the US.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/politics/trump-usaid-prevent-program-coronavirus/index.html
4/1/20
Trump boasts about being “number one of Facebook” during a daily White House briefing as the COVID-19 death toll in the United States neared 5,000. Days earlier he sent a series of tweets about the television ratings of his news coronavirus outbreak conferences, which at the time had killed more than 2,300.
4/1/20
Florida Governor issues stay-at-home order.
https//www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/coronavirus-florida-de-santis-trump.html
[4/1/20 DEATH TOLL 5,102]
4/2/20
Trump invokes Defense Production Act for ventilator equipment and N95 masks.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/politics/defense-production-act-ventilator-supplies/index.html
4/2/20
Dr. Fauci cautions states to stop allowing any exemptions to social-distancing guidelines, and warns that forcing people to stay home across the nation is the “only thing we have” in the federal government’s arsenal to fight back against the coronavirus pandemic, stopping short of telling President Donald Trump to order a national stay-at-home order at the federal level, saying states are still able to make their own rules.
https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-urges-states-issue-strict-122019331.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=fb
4/2/20
Spain's death toll is 950 people in the previous 24 hours.
4/3/20
Trump briefing: “I said it was going away and it is going away.”
4/3/20
HHS OIG reports that “severe shortages of testing supplies and extended waits for test results limited hospitals' ability to monitor the health of patients and staff.”
https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-20-00300.asp?utm_source=web&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=covid-19-hospital-survey-04-06-2020
https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-20-00300.pdf
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-berates-reporters-during-coronavirus-briefing-you-will-never-make-it-012004775.html
[4/3/20 DEATH TOLL 7,121]
[4/4/20 DEATH TOLL 8,452]
4/5/20
Trump tells Woodward that the virus “It’s a horrible thing. It’s unbelievable.”
4/5/20
CDC acknowledges that it only counts deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html
4/5/20
Animal tests positive for virus.
https://news.yahoo.com/tiger-nycs-bronx-zoo-tests-205150772.html
[4/5/20 DEATH TOLL 9,534]
4/6/20
Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said you can't lift a lockdown all at once.
"You need to say, 'We will stop doing this element of the shutdown, and then we will wait, and we will look at the data. If that works, we go to the next stage and the next stage.' So a careful, calibrated stepwise exit from lock-down."
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/world-health-organization-briefing-april-6-lady-gaga-joins-the-press-conference
4/6/20
Administration orders 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine.
[4/6/20 DEATH TOLL 10,748]
4/7/20
CDC removes guidance to doctors about hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-cdcguidance/cdc-removes-unusual-guidance-to-doctors-about-drug-favored-by-trump-idUSKBN21P39R
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928336
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/no-miraculous-recovery-some-icu-doctors-say-hydroxychloroquine-isn-t-n1177556
https://www.newsweek.com/swedish-hospitals-chloroquine-covid-19-side-effects-1496368
https://www.newsweek.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-france-heart-cardiac-1496810
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug
https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/cardiologist-warns-of-serious-side-effects-with-drug-touted-as-coronavirus-treatment-81792069619
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mayo-clinic-cardiologist-inexcusable-ignore-hydroxychloroquine-side-effects-n1178776
4/7/20
Trump criticizes WHO as having been slow to respond to the crisis.
"The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1247540701291638787
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack-on-the-who/
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/07/829244345/trump-criticizes-who-and-threatens-to-pull-u-s-funding
4/7/20
Trump says he didn't see Navarro memos.
"I don’t think it would’ve changed it, because I basically did what the memo said," Trump said, referring to his decision at the end of January to restrict travel from China.]
"I heard he wrote some memos talking about a pandemic," Trump said. "I didn't see them, I didn't look for them either."
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-read-looked-memo-warning-possible-coronavirus-pandemic-1496707
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/491669-trump-says-he-didnt-see-navarro-memos-but-would[nt-have-changed-course
4/7/20
The US Food and Drug Administration gives approval for clinical trials of
the Japanese antiviral drug favipiravir.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/fda-approves-first-us-trial-of-flu-drug-for-coronavirus/
[4/7/20 Wisconsin Primary]
[4/7/20 DEATH TOLL 12,627]
4/8/20
Trump says he never saw November's intelligence reports detailing officials' concerns over a then-newly discovered coronavirus spreading among humans in Wuhan, China.
The intelligence analysts' conclusion was that a new contagion spreading through China "could be a cataclysmic event," and that conclusion was shared with the White House on multiple occasions, culminating in a detailed description of the problem appearing in Trump's President's Daily Brief (PDB) in early January.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-saw-intelligence-community-reports-initial-coronavirus-outbreak-1496958
4/8/20
US Coronavirus cases trending down. University of Washington model has now made more than five death toll forecasts to get to the current number of estimated deaths: 60,415.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html
4/8/20
Several hospitals, UAB among then, announce the beginning of trials for a new potential treatment for coronavirus on some of its sickest patients.
For the study, patients who are unable to breathe on their own and attached to mechanical ventilators are given a gas called nitric oxide, which is produced naturally by the human body and can help stimulate the lungs.
https://trib.al/aClf33k
4/8/20
"Please don't politicize this virus," Tedros said in a briefing in Geneva after he was asked about Trump's remarks the day before. He later urged political leaders to "please quarantine politicizing COVID."
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/829944795/please-don-t-politicize-this-virus-who-head-says-after-trump-threatens-funding
[4/8/20 DEATH TOLL 14,814]
4/9/20
South Korea Ramps-up Exports of COVID-19 Testing Kits.
[Once an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea’s success in containing the virus to date can mainly be attributed to widespread testing for the disease. As the situation is worsening globally, South Korea’s ability to send diagnostic kits abroad not only translates into immediate commercial gains, but helps to secure its long-term economic security more generally as well.
South Korea has tested nearly 500,000 people for COVID-19. At the height of the domestic crisis in late February and early March, South Korea was testing around 20,000 people per day; that has recently dipped to under 10,000 as other efforts to contain the virus take hold. Still, the South Korean companies behind the kits are now churning out enough to test at least 135,000 people per day. The stabilizing situation at home has enabled these firms to export more of this extra capacity.]
https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/south-korea-ramps-up-exports-of-covid-19-testing-kits/
4/9/20
Trump: a widespread COVID-19 testing program to assess whether workers can safely return to their workplaces is "never going to happen" in the United States.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-widespread-coronavirus-testing-would-never-happen-isnt-needed-reopen-country-1497210
[4/9/20 DEATH TOLL 16,693]
4/10/20
US records the deadliest day from the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, becomes the first country to mark 2,000 deaths in 24 hours as number of infections reaches 500,000.
http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates
4/10/20
CDC Director: 'Very Aggressive' Contact Tracing Needed For U.S. To Return To Normal
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/10/831200054/cdc-director-very-aggressive-contact-tracing-needed-for-u-s-to-return-to-normal
4/10/20
“… We’re in great shape in every way,” Trump says during his briefing. “We’re in great shape with ventilators. We’re in great shape with protective clothing.
“We have additional planeloads coming in. But we’re not getting any calls from governors at this moment. … We’re getting very few calls from governors or anybody else needing anything. They’re in great shape for this surge that’s coming in certain areas in particular, and that’s a good job.”
https://www.bkreader.com/2020/04/29/regarding-nyc-testing-and-pe-disbelieve-everything-trump-says/
4/10/20
Russia confirms virus.
A surge of coronavirus cases pushes Moscow’s health care system to its limit. The deputy mayor responsible for health said that the number of people hospitalized in the city had more than doubled over the past week, to 6,500.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/world/europe/coronavirus-russia-moscow-putin.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-nytimes&fbclid=IwAR0bG_8GvEDDJ5lIOTZYw6yjOEfHlf_LUZ43l_8WN_NCNgpq4ug9MY7y6p0
[4/10/20 DEATH TOLL 20,061]
4/12/20
Trump retweets an attack on Dr. Fauci for criticizing his slow initial response to the pandemic: “Time to #FireFauci”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/trump-fauci-coronavirus.html
CDC acknowledges that it only counts deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html
4/5/20
Animal tests positive for virus.
https://news.yahoo.com/tiger-nycs-bronx-zoo-tests-205150772.html
[4/5/20 DEATH TOLL 9,534]
4/6/20
Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said you can't lift a lockdown all at once.
"You need to say, 'We will stop doing this element of the shutdown, and then we will wait, and we will look at the data. If that works, we go to the next stage and the next stage.' So a careful, calibrated stepwise exit from lock-down."
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/world-health-organization-briefing-april-6-lady-gaga-joins-the-press-conference
Administration orders 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine.
[4/6/20 DEATH TOLL 10,748]
4/7/20
CDC removes guidance to doctors about hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-cdcguidance/cdc-removes-unusual-guidance-to-doctors-about-drug-favored-by-trump-idUSKBN21P39R
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928336
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/no-miraculous-recovery-some-icu-doctors-say-hydroxychloroquine-isn-t-n1177556
https://www.newsweek.com/swedish-hospitals-chloroquine-covid-19-side-effects-1496368
https://www.newsweek.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-france-heart-cardiac-1496810
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug
https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/cardiologist-warns-of-serious-side-effects-with-drug-touted-as-coronavirus-treatment-81792069619
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mayo-clinic-cardiologist-inexcusable-ignore-hydroxychloroquine-side-effects-n1178776
4/7/20
Trump criticizes WHO as having been slow to respond to the crisis.
"The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1247540701291638787
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack-on-the-who/
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/07/829244345/trump-criticizes-who-and-threatens-to-pull-u-s-funding
4/7/20
Trump says he didn't see Navarro memos.
"I don’t think it would’ve changed it, because I basically did what the memo said," Trump said, referring to his decision at the end of January to restrict travel from China.]
"I heard he wrote some memos talking about a pandemic," Trump said. "I didn't see them, I didn't look for them either."
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-read-looked-memo-warning-possible-coronavirus-pandemic-1496707
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/491669-trump-says-he-didnt-see-navarro-memos-but-would[nt-have-changed-course
4/7/20
The US Food and Drug Administration gives approval for clinical trials of
the Japanese antiviral drug favipiravir.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/fda-approves-first-us-trial-of-flu-drug-for-coronavirus/
[4/7/20 Wisconsin Primary]
[4/7/20 DEATH TOLL 12,627]
4/8/20
Trump says he never saw November's intelligence reports detailing officials' concerns over a then-newly discovered coronavirus spreading among humans in Wuhan, China.
The intelligence analysts' conclusion was that a new contagion spreading through China "could be a cataclysmic event," and that conclusion was shared with the White House on multiple occasions, culminating in a detailed description of the problem appearing in Trump's President's Daily Brief (PDB) in early January.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-he-never-saw-intelligence-community-reports-initial-coronavirus-outbreak-1496958
4/8/20
US Coronavirus cases trending down. University of Washington model has now made more than five death toll forecasts to get to the current number of estimated deaths: 60,415.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html
4/8/20
Several hospitals, UAB among then, announce the beginning of trials for a new potential treatment for coronavirus on some of its sickest patients.
For the study, patients who are unable to breathe on their own and attached to mechanical ventilators are given a gas called nitric oxide, which is produced naturally by the human body and can help stimulate the lungs.
https://trib.al/aClf33k
4/8/20
"Please don't politicize this virus," Tedros said in a briefing in Geneva after he was asked about Trump's remarks the day before. He later urged political leaders to "please quarantine politicizing COVID."
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/829944795/please-don-t-politicize-this-virus-who-head-says-after-trump-threatens-funding
4/9/20
South Korea Ramps-up Exports of COVID-19 Testing Kits.
[Once an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea’s success in containing the virus to date can mainly be attributed to widespread testing for the disease. As the situation is worsening globally, South Korea’s ability to send diagnostic kits abroad not only translates into immediate commercial gains, but helps to secure its long-term economic security more generally as well.
South Korea has tested nearly 500,000 people for COVID-19. At the height of the domestic crisis in late February and early March, South Korea was testing around 20,000 people per day; that has recently dipped to under 10,000 as other efforts to contain the virus take hold. Still, the South Korean companies behind the kits are now churning out enough to test at least 135,000 people per day. The stabilizing situation at home has enabled these firms to export more of this extra capacity.]
https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/south-korea-ramps-up-exports-of-covid-19-testing-kits/
Trump: a widespread COVID-19 testing program to assess whether workers can safely return to their workplaces is "never going to happen" in the United States.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-widespread-coronavirus-testing-would-never-happen-isnt-needed-reopen-country-1497210
[4/9/20 DEATH TOLL 16,693]
4/10/20
US records the deadliest day from the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, becomes the first country to mark 2,000 deaths in 24 hours as number of infections reaches 500,000.
http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates
4/10/20
CDC Director: 'Very Aggressive' Contact Tracing Needed For U.S. To Return To Normal
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/10/831200054/cdc-director-very-aggressive-contact-tracing-needed-for-u-s-to-return-to-normal
4/10/20
“… We’re in great shape in every way,” Trump says during his briefing. “We’re in great shape with ventilators. We’re in great shape with protective clothing.
“We have additional planeloads coming in. But we’re not getting any calls from governors at this moment. … We’re getting very few calls from governors or anybody else needing anything. They’re in great shape for this surge that’s coming in certain areas in particular, and that’s a good job.”
https://www.bkreader.com/2020/04/29/regarding-nyc-testing-and-pe-disbelieve-everything-trump-says/
4/10/20
Russia confirms virus.
A surge of coronavirus cases pushes Moscow’s health care system to its limit. The deputy mayor responsible for health said that the number of people hospitalized in the city had more than doubled over the past week, to 6,500.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/world/europe/coronavirus-russia-moscow-putin.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-nytimes&fbclid=IwAR0bG_8GvEDDJ5lIOTZYw6yjOEfHlf_LUZ43l_8WN_NCNgpq4ug9MY7y6p0
[4/10/20 DEATH TOLL 20,061]
4/12/20
Trump retweets an attack on Dr. Fauci for criticizing his slow initial response to the pandemic: “Time to #FireFauci”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/trump-fauci-coronavirus.html
4/13/20
Trump tells Woodward “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.”
4/13/20
Acting intelligence chief Grenell shares Instagram post appearing to mock stay-at-home orders; meme that features an image of the US Constitution with the caption "signed permission slip to leave your house."
Grenell would later explain his post, saying that he "is a fan of the constitution."
https://www.cbs58.com/news/acting-intelligence-chief-shares-instagram-post-appearing-to-mock-stay-at-home-orders
4/13/20
Massachusetts launches $44 million contact tracing program.
https://amp.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/18/contact-tracing-massachusetts-covid19-coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-massachusetts-contact-tracing.html
4/13/20
In Brazil, a study involving chloroquine’s effect on coronavirus patients was stopped after 11 of the 81 participants died, and others developed irregular heart rates, which can increase the risk of potentially fatal arrhythmia.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-chloroquine-study-stopped-early.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/13/headlines/chloroquine_study_in_brazil_halted_after_patients_develop_irregular_heart_rate
4/14/20
Taiwan, population around 23 million, has 393 confirmed COVID-19 cases; six deaths.
4/14/20
N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count.
The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-deaths.html
4/14/20
Trump directs halt to U.S. payments to the World Health Organization pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China.
"Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus".
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834588506/trump-says-he-will-halt-who-funding-pending-review
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/correcting-trumps-press-conference-misinformation/
[Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.
After the Beijing visit, though, WHO said in a statement that it appreciated “especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated.” Only after the meeting did it declare, on Jan. 30, a public health emergency of international concern. And after China reported only a few new cases each day, WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11—even though it had spread globally weeks before.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/trump-threatens-defund-world-health-organization/610030/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/]
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-funding-cuts
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/15/834848225/as-dangerous-as-it-sounds-reaction-to-u-s-plan-to-defund-who-during-a-pandemic
[4/14/20 DEATH TOLL 25,949]
4/15/20
Nationally, an average of 145,000 people have been tested for the virus each day over the past week, according to the Covid Tracking Project, which reported a total of nearly 3.1 million tests across the United States as of today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-testing-trump.html
4/15/20
"We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in funding to the World Health Organization," said Tedros at a news conference.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/who-responds-trump-stop-funding/index.html
4/15/20
Responding to the U.S. accusations, Ryan of the WHO said, "In the first weeks of January, the WHO was very, very clear."
"We alerted the world on January the 5th," Ryan said. "Systems around the world, including the U.S., began to activate their incident management systems on January the 6th. And through the next number of weeks, we've produced multiple updates to countries, including briefing multiple governments, multiple scientists around the world, on the developing situation — and that is what it was, a developing situation."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/835179442/we-alerted-the-world-to-coronavirus-on-jan-5-who-says-in-response-to-u-s?live=1
4/16/20
Trump announces that it was not yet time to open state businesses, and that state governors should make their own decisions about when to restart their economies during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
[4/16/20 DEATH TOLL 34,619]
4/16/20
SBA's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) $349 billion emergency small business lending program officially taps out.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/small-business-loan-fight-congress-negotiations/index.html
4/17/20
Tweets: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
4/17/20
White House issues guidelines on reopening U.S. after coronavirus shutdowns.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/16/coronavirus-latest-news/
4/17/20
New estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering.
An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-testing-states.html
4/17/20
White House says payroll tax cut for employees could come in 'Phase 4' coronavirus relief package.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-payroll-tax-cut-for-employees-phase-4-coronavirus-relief-package
[4/17/20 DEATH TOLL 37,147]
4/18/20
Trump claims test availability, criticizing governors as complainers.
Partisan voices, "are attempting to politicize the issue of testing, which they shouldn't be doing, because I inherited broken junk, just as they did with ventilators," he said, referring to his criticism that the Obama administration had not done enough to build up the national stockpile of ventilators.
Seeking praise for his administration's "sweeping response," Trump noted that complaints about inadequate testing were simply a Democratic talking point, comparing it to the desperate pleas by governors for more ventilators several weeks ago.
"We have done a job that nobody believed. ... We marched," Trump said during the briefing. "Unfortunately, the other side -- they're viewing it as an election. 'How did President Trump do?' 'Oh, he did terribly.'"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/trump-governors-coronavirus-testing/index.html
4/18/20
Trump blasts governors for ‘unreasonable’ coronavirus lockdowns.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/19/trump-blasts-governors-for-unreasonable-coronavirus-lockdowns/
[4/18/20 DEATH TOLL 39,014]
Governors dispute claims that there are adequate testing supplies.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/trump-governors-coronavirus-testing/index.html
[4/19/20 DEATH TOLL 40,575]
4/20/20
Responding to Trump's claims that there are enough tests to reopen the country, governors push back, among them Republican Larry Hogan, who says that's "absolutely false"
Trump: They don't want to use all of the capacity that we've created. We have tremendous capacity, The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that — they're the ones that are complaining.
Trump insisted that there was “tremendous capacity” for coronavirus testing at U.S. labs. He said governors such as Hogan needed “to get a little knowledge” about the testing situation.
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/20/governors-call-trumps-bluff-on-testing-capacity-the-president-is-simply-lying/
“It’s a perilous set of circumstances trying to figure out how to make this work,” Gordon said last week, “and until we’ve got the testing up to speed – which has got to be part of the federal government stepping in and helping – we’re just not going to be there.”
The country’s largest private labs said they have plenty of capacity to test samples sent from medical offices and hospitals, but governors said in a wide array of states health care providers can’t conduct the tests because of a lack of supplies such as swabs and a chemical known as a “reagent” crucial to the process.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/21/coronavirus-trump-claims-there-plenty-tests-states-disagree/2997841001/
4/20/20
Trump criticizes Maryland's Governor Hogan — chair of the National Governors Association — for turning to a foreign source to buy coronavirus tests.
Trump was upset because Hogan and his wife — Yumi Hogan, a Korean immigrant — not only announced earlier Monday that they purchased 500,000 test kits from suppliers in South Korea, but also because Hogan indirectly criticized him during an interview with the New York Times.
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/20/21228817/trump-larry-hogan-coronavirus-testing-kits
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/larry-hogan-wife-yumi-korea-coronavirus-tests.html
[4/20/20 DEATH TOLL 42,514]
4/21/20
FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery David Bibo tells the House Oversight and Reform Committee that the demand for medical equipment and testing materials “outstrips supply considerably,” and that FEMA has been forced to prioritize urgent needs and recommend reusing protective equipment.
https://www.bkreader.com/2020/04/29/regarding-nyc-testing-and-pe-disbelieve-everything-trump-says/
4/21/20
Panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/21/840341224/nih-panel-recommends-against-drug-combination-trump-has-promoted-for-covid-19
4/21/20
Senate approves new $584 billion coronavirus aid bill, nearly all for businesses, hospitals and testing.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-coronaviruto benefits-small-business-aid-congress-20200421-tnsdsqc6ujelzg6iz65elm64qu-story.html
4/21/20
CDC director Redfield warns that second wave of coronavirus this winter set to be even more devastating. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/21/coronavirus-secondwave-cdcdirector/
4/21/20
Trump suspends U.S. immigration for 60 days, citing coronavirus crisis and jobs shortage, will allow temporary workers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/coronavirus-trump-suspend-immigration/2020/04/21/464e2440-838d-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html
Around 18 percent of the workforce is currently unemployed.
As Emily Badger and Alicia Parlapiano reported, systems that were devised to treat each unemployment case as potentially fraudulent are now rushing to deal with millions of newly unemployed people.
The state unemployment systems that were supposed to help millions of jobless workers were full of boxes to check and mandates to meet that couldn’t possibly apply in a pandemic.
States required workers to document their job searches, weekly; to register with employment services, in person; to take a wait period before their first check, up to 10 days.
Such requirements increased in the years following the Great Recession, as many states moved to tighten access to or reduce unemployment benefits. With them, most states cut the share of jobless workers they helped.
Now these requirements have been getting in the way. Effectively, many states have been trying to scale up aid with systems built to keep claims low.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/jobless-claims-top-30-million-coronavirus-continues-devastate-economy-n1196276
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html
4/30/20
S&P 500 gains nearly 13% in April, its sharpest rise since 1987.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
4/30/20
Commerce Department reports consumer spending in March fell by 7.5 percent from February’s level.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-spending/coronavirus-sends-u-s-consumer-spending-into-record-fall-in-march-idUSKBN22C2E7
4/30/20
U.S. intelligence agencies in a rare public statement agree with "the widespread scientific consensus" that the COVID-19 virus was "not man-made or genetically modified" but say that they are investigating whether it emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/495449-intelligence-agency-confirms-investigation-into-origins-of
4/30/20
Trump complains that the “ventilator problem” was a result of previous administration having completely depleted supplies.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-wrong-about-ventilators/
4/30/20
Trump says he is confident that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese virology lab.
https://apnews.com/c9499f7b8ab2ae7097c8588f1ccdddea
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/trump-confident-coronavirus-originated-chinese-lab-200501003915123.html
4/30/20
Federal guidelines on social distancing won’t be renewed.
https://time.com/5829434/trump-federal-social-distancing/
[4/30/20 DEATH TOLL 63,856]
5/1/20
White House blocks Fauci from testifying before House panel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/05/01/congress-fauci-coronavirus/
5/1/20
Administration replaces watchdog who identified critical medical shortages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/us/politics/trump-health-department-watchdog.html?referringSource=articleShare
5/1/20
NIH abruptly cuts coronavirus research funding, abruptly cancelled funding for a long-standing research project by US and Chinese scientists to examine how coronaviruses leap from bats to humans, potentially causing devastating pandemics.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nih-cuts-coronavirus-funding-amid-trump-comments-and-conspiracy-theories/
5/1/20
CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) reports that
various factors contributed to the accelerated spread of the virus during February–March 2020, including continued travel-associated importations, large gatherings, introductions into high-risk workplaces and densely populated areas, and cryptic transmission resulting from limited testing and asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, citing targeted and community-wide mitigation efforts as needed to slow transmission.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6918e2.htm?s_cid=mm6918e2_w
5/1/20
Administration rejects detailed guidelines from CDC experts to help schools, restaurants, churches and other establishments safely reopen, saying they are "overly prescriptive".
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework, was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
5/1/20
Anne Schuchat, second in command at the CDC, says a lack of testing and a delay in travel alerts contributed to the galloping spread of COVID-19 in the US, saying that the government was slow to react to the looming coronavirus pandemic as it spread from Europe, which led to rocketing rates of infection and death in the country.
“We clearly didn’t recognize the full importations that were happening....The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread...I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier.”
https://nypost.com/2020/05/02/cdc-official-says-us-reacted-too-slowly-to-curb-coronavirus/
[5/1/20 DEATH TOLL 65,753]
5/2/20
Fauci says US should double its testing over next several weeks.
"We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will," he said on the National Academy of Sciences Covid-19 Update webcast. He estimated that the US is conducting approximately 1.5 to 2 million Covid-19 tests per week, but noted that "testing is an important part, but it's not the only part."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/politics/fauci-us-double-diagnostic-testing-coronavirus/index.html
5/2/20
Texas posts third straight day of 1,000 new cases as state reopens.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-live-updates.html
5/2/20
Italy reports lowest daily death toll since first day of lockdown.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/495876-italys-coronavirus-death-toll-new-cases-drop-sharply
[5/2/20 Job losses over the past seven weeks are at nearly 33.5 million.]
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/07/coronavirus-unemployment-claims-numbers-242131
[5/2/20 DEATH TOLL 67,444]
5/3/20
Pompeo says there's "enormous evidence" coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab.
https://www.axios.com/pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-5f305526-9ceb-49af-943a-fd8291a6d5d9.html
5/3/20
Trump relaunches his election campaign with a live television event inside the iconic Lincoln Memorial, promising an early coronavirus vaccine and urging Americans to put the pandemic behind them to embrace an "incredible" future.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-pandemic-victory-lap-tv-town-hall-084901630.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb
5/3/20
Trump claims intelligence officials did not raise coronavirus until late January and that they did it in a casual manner.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/03/politics/trump-coronavirus-us-intelligence/index.html
5/3/20
Trump repeats his April 6 complaint that he inherited an "empty" or “bare”cupboard of medical supplies such as masks and ventilators from the Obama administration.
And not only are the cupboards full now, we have ventilators; we’re the king in the world of ventilators. We have thousands and thousands of them now being delivered.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/08/donald-trump/trump-said-obama-admin-left-him-bare-stockpile-wro/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/donald-trump-fox-lincoln-memorial/index.html
5/3/20
Trump announces that a vaccine will be available by the end of the year.
5/3/20
Dr. Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator spoke over the weekend about testing and the when a vaccine might be available. "We have to realize that we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing." While experts have estimated that it would take 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine, she said that "on paper" it is possible by the start of 2021, “but it will require the proper execution”, she continued, as she laid out how that would be done.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/birx-u-s-needs-breakthrough-antigen-testing-aid-re-opening-n1192901
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-05-03/deborah-birx-coronavirus-vaccine-possible-by-january-as-countries-see-largest-single-day-jumps
5/3/20
Birx on death toll: “our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other how to social distance.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/03/birxs-fox-news-sunday-interview-lays-bare-discord-trumps-coronavirus-response/
[5/3/20 DEATH TOLL 68,598]
5/4/20
Coronavirus model projects 134,000 deaths in US, nearly double its last estimate. In addition, a Trump administration model projects a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths in the weeks ahead, up to about 3,000 daily deaths in the US by June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.
The sharp increases in the two models are tied to relaxed social distancing and increased mobility in the US. States across the country -- including Florida, Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska and South Carolina -- have eased restrictions in an attempt to revive a sputtering economy and calm restless residents.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6926-mayhhsbriefing/af7319f4a55fd0ce5dc9/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
5/4/20
Trump administration issues new guidelines barring coronavirus task force members from accepting invitations to appear before congressional panels this month unless White House chief of staff Mark Meadows grants permission.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496016-white-house-prohibits-coronavirus-task-force-members-from-testifying
5/4/20
Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech announce human trials of their that their potential coronavirus vaccine. If successful, the vaccine could be ready for emergency use as early as September.
“There’s a long way to go from that to a scalable technology that works.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/health/pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus.html
5/4/20
Doctors warn about a mysterious illness affecting children, ages 2 to 15, with symptoms associated with toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, a rare illness in children that involves inflammation of the blood vessels, including coronary arteries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/nyregion/children-Kawasaki-syndrome-coronavirus.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/29/more-cases-of-rare-syndrome-in-children-reported-globally
5/4/20
World leaders pledge to fight coronavirus, without US and Russia participation. The roster of leaders who spoke live or sent video messages included all of the G7 except for Trump.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/04/world-leaders-pledge-to-fight-coronavirus-234352
5/4/20
Scientists have identified an antibody in a lab that they say can prevent the novel coronavirus from infecting cells. The team hopes the antibody could be used to create treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
https://trib.al/Vgf3HTx
5/4/20
Chinese push back on US claims regarding etiology of the coronavirus.
https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-state-media-demands-us-show-evidence-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-accuses-mike-pompeo-bluffing-1501729
5/4/20
Trump says “everybody” enjoyed his White House coronavirus briefings — including himself — and vows that they will be back, just not daily.
“We set every record with those press conferences. Six million people all the time. You know we had tremendous numbers, literally, it was in [Fox News host] Bret Baier’s slot, and we did like 30 in a row.”
“I heard, is this true? It was the highest-rated hour in cable television history. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s true.”
https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/trump-says-coronavirus-briefings-will-return-blasts-cbs-news/
5/4/20
A pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, characterized by persistent fever and features of Kawasaki disease and/or toxic shock syndrome as well as abdominal symptoms, recently reported by authorities in the United Kingdom, is also being observed among children and young adults in New York City and elsewhere in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/nyregion/kawasaki-disease-coronavirus.html
[5/4/20 DEATH TOLL 69,921]
5/5/20
White House is considering winding down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks. Pence said it was "a reflection of the tremendous progress we've made as a country. We are bringing our country back."
https://bbc.in/3bblum6
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-updates.html
5/5/20
Rick Bright, formerly the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response and the director of BARDA files whistleblower complaint alleging coronavirus warnings were ignored.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/rick-bright-complaint/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ousted-hhs-official-files-whistleblower-complaint-coronavirus-response-n1200681
5/5/20
Fauci dismisses the theory that coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-dismisses-wuhan-lab-source-coronavirus-contradicting-trump-pompeo-1501924
5/5/20
Fauci will be allowed to testify before the Senate next week, but government's top infectious diseases experts will be prevented from appearing before the House because Trump believes it's full of "Trump haters."
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496133-trump-wont-allow-fauci-to-testify-before-house-because-its-a-bunch-of
5/5/20
Trump nominates Brian D. Miller, currently the White House lawyer for special inspector general.
The nomination has not been received well by Democrats, who insisted on strict oversight as a condition of passing the rescue package.In an unusual signing statement, Trump suggested he had the power to decide what information the inspector general intended to monitor the fund could share with Congress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/trump-signing-statement-coronavirus.html
5/5/20
NPR contacts Justin Lessler of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, the epidemiologist regarding the projections in the internal administration document. (see 5/4/20) He says the projections cited in the document do not represent his final forecast. Rather they were part of work that's still very much in progress.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/05/848729029/fact-check-trump-administration-document-and-its-3-000-deaths-a-day-scenario
5/5/20
White House reported to be relying on the "cubic model" devised by Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser, that shows COVID-19 deaths plummeting to zero by mid-May.
This model, released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) contradicts all other data and modeling.
https://news.yahoo.com/trumps-advisers-released-beyond-stupid-191328441.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=fb
[5/5/20 Trump heads to Arizona for first cross-country trip.]
[5/5/20 DEATH TOLL 72,271]
5/6/20
Trump reverses, says coronavirus task force will 'continue on indefinitely,' shifts focus to reopening, vaccines.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/06/coronavirus-trump-says-task-force-continue-indefinitely/5171043002/
5/6/20
Pompeo walks back allegation that “enormous evidence” linked the coronavirus outbreak to the Wuhan laboratory, now saying “we don’t have certainty”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/06/pompeo-backtracks-about-wuhan-lab-the-latest-in-the-controversial-coronavirus-origin-theory/#4677e89c2f72
[5/6/20 DEATH TOLL 74,799]
5/7/20
New study finds that nearly everyone who gets the disease eventually makes antibodies to the virus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/coronavirus-updates.html?campaign_id=166&emc=edit_uscb_20200507&instance_id=0&nl=u.s.-coronavirus-briefing-alerts®i_id=65600354&segment_id=26824&user_id=ac81a1845cdda7d8be66566a63e44067#link-4d432793
5/7/20
One of Trump's personal West Wing valets tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/military-official-working-white-house-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1202061?cid=eml_nbn_20200507
5/7/20
Overwhelmed by demand, the SBA slashes Economic Injury Disaster Loan program's loan limit from $2 million to $150,000 and shuts out nearly all new applicants.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/07/sba-disaster-loans/
[5/7/20 DEATH TOLL 76,928]
5/8/20
A lack of a comprehensive governmental plan for distribution of remdesivir, itself in short supply, leaves doctors and pharmacists on the front lines in the dark about the process for accessing the drug.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/health/remdesivir-access-transparency/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/health/remdesivir-rationing-doctors-coronavirus/index.html
5/8/20
Pence staff member tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/pence-staff-member-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1202946?cid=eml_nbn_20200508
5/8/20
FDA approves the first home saliva test for the virus.The RUCDR test kits will cost about $100 each and must be ordered by a physician.
https://www.fda.gov/media/137773/download
5/8/20
Trump Declares COVID-19 Will Vanish "Without A Vaccine" .
“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine. It’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”
He does admit there might be some “flare-ups” before COVID-19 goes away, but “maybe not,” and predicted, “we’ll be able to put them out.”
http://huffp.st/yqg2J1P
5/8/20
Three members of the White House coronavirus task force place themselves in quarantine: Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/2-members-of-white-house-virus-task-force-in-quarantine
[5/8/20 DEATH TOLL 78,615]
5/9/20
More Than 4 Million People Have Been Infected With COVID-19; US death toll tops 80,000.
The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-live-updates-global-covid-19-death-toll/story?id=70592970
5/9/20
Christi A. Grimm, the principal HHS deputy inspector general who wrote a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic is replaced.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/yet-another-inspector-general-quietly-ousted-after-angering-trump-n1199061
[5/9/20 DEATH TOLL 80,037]
5/10/20
Administration officials spend weekend doing contact tracing for Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary who tested positive for coronavirus last week. But they had not identified who Miller contracted the virus from, raising concerns inside the White House about how to contain the outbreak.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/politics/katie-miller-contract-tracing-coronavirus/index.html
[5/10/20 DEATH TOLL 80,787]
5/11/20
Pence Denies He's Self Isolating.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/05/11/mike-pence-denies-hes-self-isolating-as-coronavirus-rattles-whitehouse-staff/
5/11/20
White House staff begin to don masks. Trump reiterates that he will not wear a mask himself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/us/politics/white-house-masks-trump-coronavirus.html
5/11/20
Trump administration announces $11 billion will go to states for coronavirus testing.
"This has all been approved, we've gotten it done, completed. The money is going out....This major investment will ensure that America continues to conduct more tests than any country on Earth by far."
The relief package signed on April 24 included $25 billion for testing, with $11 billion for states, localities, territories and tribes.
Admiral Brett Giroir cautioned that the federal government is "going to be very specific" in requirements for states to receive funding.
"There needs to be minimum numbers to be planned to test. They have to have plans for their vulnerable communities, including nursing homes, including those who are disabled, including those in prisons or who have working environments that they may have a more likelihood to spread the infection."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/11/coronavirus-trump-says-us-pass-10-million-tests-states-get-11-billion/3111814001/
5/11/20
Flanked by large posters that proclaimed “America leads the world in testing,” Trump declares that the United States was “unmatched and unrivaled” in its testing capacity.
“If somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested,” Mr. Trump said that his administration was working with states to allow them to conduct 12.9 million tests in May, insisting that the testing ability in the United States compares favorably with other countries.
“We are testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland and many other countries,”
“we have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/us/politics/white-house-masks-trump-coronavirus.html
5/11/20
CDC report finds that California's airport screening wasn’t very effective at stopping coronavirus.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/California-s-coronavirus-screening-of-nearly-15261768.php
[5/11/20 DEATH TOLL 81795]
5/12/20
The Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee opens a hearing with top health officials saying that the level of coronavirus testing currently available in the United States is “impressive — but not nearly enough” to give Americans a comfort level about going back to work and school. Fauci testifies that the consequence of reopening the country too early could be "really serious" if states don't have the capability to respond to new coronavirus infections. Americans will experience “needless suffering and death” if the country opens up prematurely.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/coronavirus-updates.html
5/12/20
Countries that have eased social distancing restrictions are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases. In Wuhan, where the virus was first discovered, millions of residents will be tested in a little over a week after case numbers rose despite months of lock-down measures. Germany and South Korea are also seeing spikes. Germany records more than 900 new cases in 24 hours. France extends state of emergency: The country will remain under emergency measures, which have now been extended through July 10. The extension comes a day after lock-down measures were eased in parts of France. Spain imposes 14-day quarantine for international arrivals
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-testing-china-intl-hnk/index.html
5/12/20
"Development and Validation of a Clinical Risk Score to Predict the Occurrence of Critical Illness in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19" paper is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finding 10 biomarkers researchers say could predict a patient's risk, turning risk predictors — high LDH levels and low levels of lymphocytes plus age, history of cancer, shortness of breath — into a coronavirus risk "calculator."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766086
5/12/20
"Early Safety Indicators of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma in 5,000 Patients"
national study shows treatment known as convalescent plasma transfusions appears to be safe and could be a worthwhile treatment after it is studied more.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, and Johns Hopkins University looked at 5,000 coronavirus patients around the country who received convalescent plasma transfusions from recovered patients.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.12.20099879v1
5/12/20
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is hospitalized with coronavirus.
[5/12/20 DEATH TOLL 83,425]
5/13/20
Trump says coronavirus testing ‘overrated,’ claims fewer cases if no testing.
“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,”
“When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-says-coronavirus-testing-overratedclaims-fewer-cases-if-no-testing-2020-05-14
5/13/20
Administration pressures CDC to lower death toll by changing how it counts coronavirus fatalities.
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/13/trump-pressures-cdc-to-lower-death-toll-by-changing-how-it-counts-coronavirus-fatalities-report/
[5/13/20 DEATH TOLL 85,540]
5/14/20
Trump says U.S. will overcome the coronavirus crisis with or without an effective vaccine, saying that the disease will “go away at some point” either way.
“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back. And we’re starting the process. In many cases, they don’t have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/trump-downplays-need-for-coronavirus-vaccine-itll-go-away-at-some-point.html
“If we don’t, we’re going to be like so many other cases where you had a problem come in, it’ll go away at some point, it’ll go away.”
Trump’s remarks downplaying the need for a vaccine came at an event unveiling his administration’s beefed-up efforts to fast-track the development and distribution of a vaccine for Covid-19.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/trump-downplays-need-for-coronavirus-vaccine-itll-go-away-at-some-point.html
5/14/20
Administration unveils beefed-up efforts to fast-track the development and distribution of a vaccine for Covid-19. The new project, dubbed “Operation Warp Speed,” aims to have hundreds of millions of doses of an effective vaccine available by the end of the year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/watch-live-trump-discusses-coronavirus-vaccine-efforts.html
5/14/20
Researchers in China report in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence that an analysis of blood samples taken from 485 coronavirus patients in Wuhan discovered biomarkers that can predict whether a coronavirus patient will die within 10 days, with more than 90 percent accuracy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-0180-7
5/14/20
Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of BARDA and formerly the key federal office charged with developing medical countermeasures, testifies before Congress that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and warns that the the US will face "unprecedented illness and fatalities" without additional preparations.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/rick-bright-testimony-congress/index.html
5/14/20
Trump repeats claim that the Wuhan Institute of Virology received $7.5 million dollars in grant money and that he had suspended those payments.
Yeah. As I understand it, before I got here, $7.5 million in 2014. And look, they said they were studying different things and you know, things like that happen. But, you know, money was given by the Obama administration early on. … I ended it. … I took a lot of heat too. They said, “Oh, we’re studying all sorts of stuff.” You saw what happened. I ended it.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-spreads-distorted-claim-on-wuhan-lab-funding/
5/14/20
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany claims the administration had a pandemic plan all along.
https://www.msnbc.com/11th-hour/watch/trump-white-house-now-claims-it-had-a-pandemic-plan-all-along-83490373706
[5/14/20 DEATH TOLL 87,293]
5/15/20
Trump blames uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations on an increase in testing.
"We’d Have Very Few Cases’ Without Testing."
“When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-testing-claim-pennsylvania_n_5ebdf19bc5b6c9c187419778
5/15/20
FDA halts Bill Gates coronavirus testing program.
The program sought to send test kits to the homes of people both healthy and sick to try to bring the country to the level of testing officials say is necessary before states can begin safely reopening. The program, which had already gone through thousands of tests, found dozens of cases that had been previously undiagnosed.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/498104-fda-halts-bill-gates-coronavirus-testing-program
[5/15/20 DEATH TOLL 88,895]
[5/16/20 DEATH TOLL 90,113]
5/17/20
Pompeo backs away from theory that coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html
[5/17/20 DEATH TOLL 90.978]
5/18/20
Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that for “a couple weeks” he had been taking hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/19/trump-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-white-house
5/18/20
Moderna announces that its potential COVID-19 vaccine showed promising early results in clinical trials.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/19/business/hope-covid-19-vaccine-attracts-investors-cambridge-biotech/
5/18/20
Korean CDC finds recovered coronavirus patients who tested positive aren't infectious.
South Korean health authorities will no longer consider COVID-19 patients infectious after they recover, and won't require additional tests after patients are discharged from their isolation period. Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 COVID-19 survivors who initially recovered from the illness but then tested positive again. They found these patients' virus samples couldn't be grown in culture, suggesting the patients had indeed recovered and were actually shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles, rather than suffering from a lingering infection.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-19/covid-patients-testing-positive-after-recovery-aren-t-infectious
5/18/20
China's President Xi Jinping tells the WHO’s annual assembly that he supports an international review once the health emergency ends, adding that China will provide $2 billion over two years to help other countries respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-xi-backs-who-led-review-of-covid-19-outbreak-proposes-aid-for-developing-world/2020/05/18/911a1544-98df-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html
6/16/29
Coronavirus model once used by White House now predicts 200,000 U.S. deaths by October
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-white-house-model-prediction-200000-deaths-october/
[6/16/20 DEATH TOLL 119,132]
6/17/20
Trump says coronavirus is "dying out".
"No, because if you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It's dying out. By the way, we're doing very well in vaccines and therapeutics."
https://www.fullcourtgreta.com/2020/06/17/trump-talks-police-reform-coronavirus-election-one-on-one-interview/
6/17/20
Trump calls coronavirus testing "overrated," says it "makes us look bad".
On the issue of face masks:
"They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth. And then they don’t know how they caught it?"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-talks-juneteenth-john-bolton-economy-in-wsj-interview-11592493771
https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-testing-overrated-cf847872-20d0-48b1-95dd-34af301642c0.html
[6/17/20 DEATH TOLL 119,941]
Florida sets new one-day high with 3,207 new COVID-19 cases.
https://weartv.com/news/local/florida-sets-new-one-day-high-with-3207-new-covid-19-cases
6/18/20
US stockpile stuck with 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine.
"Nationally, we put a great emphasis on one drug, hydroxychloroquine," said David Holtgrave, the dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, who co-authored a study of the drug as a treatment for coronavirus. "I worry that history will judge this as having over-invested in one treatment pathway as opposed to looking more broadly at a larger number of treatment candidates."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/health/hydroxychloroquine-national-stockpile/index.html
[6/20/20 Trump Rally in Tulsa]
6/20/20
Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence dismiss surges of the virus in some states by claiming that increased testing accounts for surges of the virus. At the Tulsa rally, he called testing “a double edged sword,” adding that the US has tested 25 million people.
“Here’s the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more cases.”
“A young man, 10 years old who’s “got the sniffles, he’s gonna recover in about 15 minutes. That’s a case!”
“I said to my people ‘slow the testing down please.'”
“When you have all those tests, you have more cases...We want to do testing. We want to do everything, but they use it to make us look bad.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/06/20/trump-claims-he-instructed-his-team-to-slow-down-coronavirus-testing/#3cca6b7a6a93
[6/20/20 DEATH TOLL 123,817]
[6/23/20 TRUMP RALLY IN PHOENIX]
6/23/20
Trump addresses a crowd of students in Phoenix, claims the virus isn't really a serious threat to the public and rising infection surge rates are simply due to increased testing.
"It's going away."
"Our people are stronger. And our people are smarter. And we are the elite. We are the elite."
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/23/881641178/after-disappointing-tulsa-rally-trump-campaign-moves-to-arizona
6/23/20
Coronavirus task force produces internal document showing surges in ten metropolitcan areas, including Phoenix.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-says-coronavirus-going-away-his-own-task-force-disagrees-n1232061
6/23/20
EU considers blocking US tourists.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/eu-considering-blocking-us-tourists-over-botched-covid-19-containment-us-media/
6/23/20
Trump says he wasn't kidding when he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing, contradicting staff.
"I don't kid."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html
[6/23/20 DEATH TOLL 125,319]
6/24/20
US Breaks Single-Day Record of Coronavirus Cases seeing a record number of new coronavirus cases in a single day, with 45,557 diagnoses reported.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hits-highest-single-day-coronavirus-cases-36-358-n1232065
6/24/20
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut impose 14-day quarantine on travelers from coronavirus hot-spot states.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/new-york-new-jersey-and-connecticut-impose-14-day-quarantine-on-travelers-from-coronavirus-hotspot-states.html
6/24/20
The federal government is ending its support for 13 community-based drive-thru coronavirus testing sites on June 30, urging states to take over their operations.
“We are not withdrawing federal support” for coronavirus testing, the Trump administration’s testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, told reporters. “We are providing federal support in a different way. We are going to increase testing, both in the number and the quality, and in the targeting on social media.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/coronavirus-federal-government-to-end-funding-some-covid-19-test-sites.html
6/24/20
WHO Warns of Oxygen Concentrator Shortage.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-milestone/who-warns-of-oxygen-shortage-as-covid-cases-set-to-top-10-million-idUSKBN23V2FG
6/24/20
U.S. hits highest single day of new coronavirus cases with more than 45,500.
Cases top the previous highest daily count from April 26 — during the first peak of the pandemic in the U.S. — by more than 9,000 cases
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hits-highest-single-day-coronavirus-cases-36-358-n1232065
6/24/20
University of Washington computer model of the outbreak projects nearly 180,000 deaths by October 1.
https://apnews.com/32cb14de009bfff91bc76a967323c621
6/24/20
Second wave of infections is traced to a wholesale market in Beijing.
Beijing’s 55-day stretch without any locally transmitted Covid-19 cases comes to a halt. Authorities confirm there were 256 local cases between June 11 and June 23. The virus is reported to have spread from the city to four other provinces in mainland China.
https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/3090290/beijing-coronavirus-outbreak/index.html
6/24/20
COVID-19 Cases Approach 10 Million Worldwide.
[6/24/20 DEATH TOLL 126,131]
6/25/20
Texas pauses reopenings amid COVID-19 surge.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/504518-texas-pauses-reopenings-amid-covid-19-spike
6/25/20
CDC chief says coronavirus cases may be 10 times higher than reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/25/coronavirus-cases-10-times-larger/
[6/25/20 DEATH TOLL 126,780]
6/26/20
Florida reports 8,942 new covid-19 cases, blowing past its single-day high of 5,511 set on Wednesday. It is the 19th day in a row the state has hit a new average high. Average cases are now up about 77 percent from a week ago, and 526 percent since Memorial Day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/26/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
6/26/20
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott orders all bars shut down and puts strict limits on restaurant dining one day after he hit the pause button on Texas’ plans to reopen and as the number of new cases continue to soar.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-close-bars-limit-restaurant-dining-due-explosion-covid-19-n1232233
[6/26/20 DEATH TOLL 128,195]
[6/27/20 DEATH TOLL surpasses 1/2 million worldwide]
[6/27/20 DEATH TOLL 128,707]
6/30/20
Economists: National mask mandate could save 5 percent of GDP. The Goldman Sachs report notes the United States is a global outlier with respect to face mask use, which is widespread in Asia and currently mandated in many European countries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/30/mask-mandate-gdp-economy-goldman-sachs/
6/30/20
Fauci warns Congress that new US coronavirus cases could rise to 100,000 a day.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/fauci-redford-testimony-senate-coronavirus/index.html
6/30/20
European Union bars travelers from the U.S as it reopens its borders, citing America's growing coronavirus outbreak.
A European briefing last week noted that the U.S. had seen 107 cases per 100,000 people in the previous 14 days, whereas the average across the E.U. was 16 cases per 100,000 people.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/european-union-bars-travelers-u-s-citing-coronavirus-concerns-n1232333
6/30/20
WHO to send second team into China to seek coronavirus source.
As number of cases tops 10 million and WHO warns that the pandemic is far from over, an investigative team will go to China next week
Experts are skeptical that an inquiry more than six months after first outbreak can find definitive answers about the origin of the virus.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3091195/who-send-second-team-china-seek-source-new-coronavirus
6/30/20
FDA to require covid-19 vaccine to prevent disease in 50 percent of recipients to win approval.
The standards apply to full approvals. But the agency didn’t rule out temporary approvals, called emergency use authorizations, which typically are based on less stringent requirements.
The 50 percent requirement for approval of a covid-19 vaccine got mixed reviews. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that the 50 percent figure was “a realistic goal but not a very high bar.” He said it probably reflected the FDA’s realization that the first vaccines likely to emerge “will be, at best, partially effective.”
Stephen Ostroff, former acting FDA commissioner, said he thought the 50 percent figure was too high. “A vaccine that has efficacy of less than 50 percent may still be very beneficial for people at high risk of developing the disease.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/30/coronavirus-vaccine-approval-fda/
[6/30/20 DEATH TOLL 130,122]
7/1/20
Pfizer publishes encouraging early covid-19 vaccine data: Phase 1/2 Study to Describe the Safety and Immunogenicity of a COVID-19 RNA Vaccine Candidate (BNT162b1) in Adults 18 to 55 Years of Age: Interim Report
An experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech triggered stronger immune responses in recipients than those seen in people recovering from a natural infection in a small study published online Wednesday.
The work has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it is still unclear what level of immune response will protect a person from getting sick. But outside scientists praised the company for publishing the data on 45 patients and said the results support moving to a larger clinical trial that can test whether the vaccine is safe and effective.
“It’s the first positive data I’ve seen coming out of Operation Warp Speed,” said Peter Jay Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I’m really happy Pfizer took the initiative to publish it, whereas the others haven’t. I think we need to see more of this.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.20142570v1.full.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/pfizer-reports-encouraging-early-covid-19-vaccine-data/
7/1/20
US records 52,770 cases, the first time it has surpassed 50,000 new daily cases and the fifth this week where records were surpassed.
https://news.law/us-coronavirus-cases-top-50000-in-single-day/
7/1/20
Yale study shows death toll "Substantial Undercount".
https://news.law/covid-19-death-toll-is-a-substantial-undercount-yale-study-shows/
7/1/20
Researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans have recently shown that a synthetic antibody could neutralize SARS-CoV-2. This could help prevent infection as well as treat COVID-19.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/synthetic-antibody-could-prevent-and-treat-covid-19
7/1/20
Trump says he's 'all for masks,' but believes coronavirus will "disappear".
"Actually, I had a mask on. I sort of liked the way I looked. It was OK. It was a dark, black mask and I thought it think and if people feel good about it they should do it."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-masks-coronavirus/index.html
[7/1/20 DEATH TOLL 130,798]
7/2/20
Trump toutsUS testing record.
“There is a rise in Coronavirus cases because our testing is so massive and so good, far bigger and better than any other country. This is great news, but even better news is that death, and the death rate, is down.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278897430378041344
7/2/20
Coronavirus testing czar: "We are not flattening the curve right now"
“There is no question that the more testing you get, the more you will uncover, but we do believe this is a real increase in cases because of the percent positivities are going up. So this is real increases in cases,” Adm. Brett Giroir, the Department of Health and Human Services official overseeing the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts, told Congress.
https://www.axios.com/brett-giroir-coronavirus-testing-curve-f7e7a2c7-808a-4c03-8418-82f6232c4865.html
7/2/20
A Henry Ford Health System report published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, a peer-reviewed, open-access online publication of the International Society of Infectious Diseases shows that treatment with Hydroxychloroquine cut death rate significantly in COVID-19 patients.
In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities; however, patients were monitored for a heart condition routinely pointed to as a reason to avoid the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
[7/2/20 DEATH TOLL 131,448]
7/3/20
White House repeatedly denied the CDC permission to brief the public on the coronavirus, report says.
https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-denied-permission-to-brief-public-about-coronavirus-yahoo-2020-7
7/3/20
White House readies new message for the nation on coronavirus; "We need to live with it".
Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic, after struggling to offer clear directives amid a crippling surge in cases across the country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/we-need-live-it-white-house-readies-new-message-nation-n1232884
7/4/20
Trump claims that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless".
“We have tested over 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have — not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.”
https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-fourth-of-july-independence-day-july-4-2020
[7/4/20 DEATH TOLL 132,339]
7/6/20
Trump gives notice of U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization. Withdrawal requires a year's notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506214-trump-administration-formally-withdraws-us-from-WHO-
7/6/20
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) launches portable, Rapid Point-of-Care Antigen Test. FDA grants Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for a rapid, point-of-care, SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test for use with its broadly available BD Veritor™ Plus System.
The launch of this new assay that delivers results in 15 minutes on an easy-to-use, highly portable instrument is critical for improving access to COVID-19 diagnostics because it enables real-time results and decision making while the patient is still onsite.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bd-launches-portable-rapid-point-of-care-antigen-test-to-detect-sars-cov-2-in-15-minutes-dramatically-expanding-access-to-covid-19-testing-301088216.html
7/6/20
Tweet: Trump touts Henry Ford Health System report. Sets off tweet war.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280328830218051584?s=20
[but, see "A flawed Covid-19 study gets the White House’s attention — and the FDA may pay the price"]
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-gets-the-white-houses-attention-and-the-fda-may-pay-the-price/
7/6/20
EPA approves first surface disinfectant products (Lysol) tested on the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-approves-first-surface-disinfectant-products-tested-sars-cov-2-virus
[7/6/20 DEATH TOLL 132,979]
7/7/20
US to Pay Novavax $1.6B for COVID-19 vaccine to expedite the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/u-s-paying-novavax-1-6b-to-ramp-up-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturing/
7/7/20
LabCorp launches at-home COVID-19 testing service to screen patients for COVID-19 infections before they proceed with surgeries and other important medical treatments.
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/07/07/labcorp-launches-new-at-home-covid-19-test/
7/7/20
Brazil’s Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus.
7/7/20
US Records 3 Millionth Coronavirus Case.
There were 3,000,012 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 11 p.m.Tuesday and around 10 percent of those (317,654) were reported since July 1, figures compiled by NBC News showed.
Meanwhile, the death toll was 131,661 and rising as the pandemic maintained a tragic trajectory.
President Donald Trump, who just a week ago was saying the coronavirus would “just disappear,” insisted in a tweet that COVID-19 deaths rates were down 39 percent and that the U.S. had the lowest death rate “in the world.”
Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina lead the world in new cases over the last seven days
https://news.law/us-records-3-millionth-coronavirus-case
[7/7/20 DEATH TOLL 133,972]
7/8/20
A comparison of the observed case-fatality rate of the 20 countries most affected by covid-19, calculates that the United States ranked seventh worst, with 4.4 percent. The United States ranks second-worst in terms of deaths per 100,000 people.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
7/8/20
Trump trashes CDC school reopening guidelines.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/politics/trump-cdc-school-guidelines-funding/index.html
7/8/20
CDC will issue new guidance on school openings, Pence says, after criticism from Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-officials-downplay-guidance-from-health-experts-as-they-push-to-reopen-schools/2020/07/08/236a6c5e-c13b-11ea-b178-bb7b05b94af1_story.html
7/8/20
Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain (ENE-COVID): a nationwide, population-based seroepidemiological study published in Lancet casts doubt on COVID-19 herd immunity after patient antibodies disappear. Immunity to the virus might not be long-lasting in people who develop only mild or no symptoms.
"Immunity can be incomplete, it can be transitory, it can last for just a short time and then disappear."
https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-in-some-cases-antibodies-can-disappear-after-mere-weeks
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31483-5/fulltext
[7/8/20 DEATH TOLL 134,862]
7/9/20
Florida Emerges As Global COVID-19 Epicenter. Florida reported nearly 10,000 new cases. There are nearly 220,500 positive cases statewide, and the test positivity rate has been above 14 percent for more than a week.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/506492-florida-emerges-as-worlds-new-epicenter-for-covid-19
7/9/20
CDC Redfield says CDC will not revise its guidelines for reopening schools despite calls from President Donald Trump and the White House to do so.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/politics/cdc-guidelines-school-reopenings/index.html
7/9/20
WHO expands coronavirus guidance on "aerosols" to include the possibility in certain circumstances of airborne transmission, in which the virus could be spread through tiny droplets that linger in the air.
The update came after more than 200 scientists signed an open letter pressing the agency this week to acknowledge the risk of airborne transmission among people in crowded, indoor settings for prolonged periods of time.
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-how-is-covid-19-transmitted
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/what-airborne-transmission-who-adds-guidance-aerosols-coronavirus-spread-n1233383
7/10/20
Federal Disaster Medical Teams Deployed As Texas Coronavirus Cases Surge.
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-disaster-medical-teams-deployed-texas-coronavirus-cases-surge-1516892
[7/10/20 DEATH TOLL 136,671]
7/11/20
Arizona’s Maricopa County medical examiner’s office hits 97 percent of capacity; state calls in refrigerated trucks to store fatalities. Arizona reports 4,221 new coronavirus cases and 44 more deaths.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/506855-arizona-county-requests-refrigerated-trucks-as-morgues-hit-97-capacity
[7/11/20 DEATH TOLL 137,402]
7/12/20
Florida shatters single-day infection record with 15,300 new cases.
Deaths trended upward over the weekend in a majority of states, including many beyond the hard-hit Sun Belt. Five states — Arizona, California, Florida, Mississippi and Texas — broke records for average daily fatalities in that period. At least 3.3 million cases and more than 132,000 (135,176) deaths have been reported in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/13/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
7/12/20
White House attacks Fauci.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/507027-white-house-goes-public-with-attacks-on-fauci
7/12/20
WHO announces another one day record number of cases, with more than 230,000 cases reported globally.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-coronavirus-updates-covid-19-cases-surge-20200712-sm55firkpfa3zphvpggkc5odcu-story.html
[7/12/20 DEATH TOLL 137,782]
7/13/20
Gov. Gavin Newsom orders every county in California to halt indoor dining and bars; shuts down churches, gyms and hair salons for 80 percent of the population.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Newsom-orders-all-California-counties-to-close-15405030.php
7/13/20
WHO sounds alarm as coronavirus cases rise by 1 million in five days;
Global infections hit 13 million, with more than 570,000 dead
World Health Organisation chief warns there will be no return to normal for foreseeable future:
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” he told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva. If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go, it is going to get worse and worse and worse. But it does not have to be this way.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3093033/who-sounds-alarm-coronavirus-cases-rise-1-million-five-days
7/13/20
China confirms WHO advance team is in Beijing to pave way for an origins search; aimed at reassuring domestic audience about source of the pathogen.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3093007/coronavirus-china-confirms-who-advance-team-beijing-pave-way
7/13/20
Florida adds 132 deaths, highest fatality toll, as coronavirus cases surpass 290,600. Oklahoma adds 993 cases, a single-day record for the state, and three states break their records for the most deaths in a single day: Florida (132), Utah (10) and Alabama (40).
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article244212102.html
7/13/20
Trump retweets post accusing the CDC of lying about the coronavirus to prevent his reelection.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-retweet-post-says-cdc-lying-about-virus-election-2020-7
[7/13/20 DEATH TOLL 138,247]
7/14/20
Biotech company Moderna announces that 45 participants from its phase I clinical vaccine trial developed antibodies key to fighting the virus at levels up to four times the amount found in patients who got sick and then recovered from the virus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-vaccine-moderna-begin-final-human-trial-end-july-n1233788
7/14/20
Four former directors of the CDC accuse the president of undermining the agency with “partisan potshots”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/14/cdc-directors-trump-politics/
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/13/cdc-apolitical-island-defenseless/
Acting intelligence chief Grenell shares Instagram post appearing to mock stay-at-home orders; meme that features an image of the US Constitution with the caption "signed permission slip to leave your house."
Grenell would later explain his post, saying that he "is a fan of the constitution."
https://www.cbs58.com/news/acting-intelligence-chief-shares-instagram-post-appearing-to-mock-stay-at-home-orders
4/13/20
Massachusetts launches $44 million contact tracing program.
https://amp.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/18/contact-tracing-massachusetts-covid19-coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-massachusetts-contact-tracing.html
In Brazil, a study involving chloroquine’s effect on coronavirus patients was stopped after 11 of the 81 participants died, and others developed irregular heart rates, which can increase the risk of potentially fatal arrhythmia.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-chloroquine-study-stopped-early.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/13/headlines/chloroquine_study_in_brazil_halted_after_patients_develop_irregular_heart_rate
4/14/20
Taiwan, population around 23 million, has 393 confirmed COVID-19 cases; six deaths.
4/14/20
N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count.
The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-deaths.html
4/14/20
Trump directs halt to U.S. payments to the World Health Organization pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China.
"Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus".
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834588506/trump-says-he-will-halt-who-funding-pending-review
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/correcting-trumps-press-conference-misinformation/
[Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.
After the Beijing visit, though, WHO said in a statement that it appreciated “especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated.” Only after the meeting did it declare, on Jan. 30, a public health emergency of international concern. And after China reported only a few new cases each day, WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11—even though it had spread globally weeks before.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/trump-threatens-defund-world-health-organization/610030/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/]
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-funding-cuts
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/15/834848225/as-dangerous-as-it-sounds-reaction-to-u-s-plan-to-defund-who-during-a-pandemic
[4/14/20 DEATH TOLL 25,949]
4/15/20
Nationally, an average of 145,000 people have been tested for the virus each day over the past week, according to the Covid Tracking Project, which reported a total of nearly 3.1 million tests across the United States as of today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-testing-trump.html
4/15/20
"We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in funding to the World Health Organization," said Tedros at a news conference.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/who-responds-trump-stop-funding/index.html
4/15/20
Responding to the U.S. accusations, Ryan of the WHO said, "In the first weeks of January, the WHO was very, very clear."
"We alerted the world on January the 5th," Ryan said. "Systems around the world, including the U.S., began to activate their incident management systems on January the 6th. And through the next number of weeks, we've produced multiple updates to countries, including briefing multiple governments, multiple scientists around the world, on the developing situation — and that is what it was, a developing situation."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/835179442/we-alerted-the-world-to-coronavirus-on-jan-5-who-says-in-response-to-u-s?live=1
4/16/20
Trump announces that it was not yet time to open state businesses, and that state governors should make their own decisions about when to restart their economies during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
[4/16/20 DEATH TOLL 34,619]
4/16/20
SBA's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) $349 billion emergency small business lending program officially taps out.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/small-business-loan-fight-congress-negotiations/index.html
4/17/20
Tweets: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
4/17/20
White House issues guidelines on reopening U.S. after coronavirus shutdowns.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/16/coronavirus-latest-news/
4/17/20
New estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering.
An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-testing-states.html
4/17/20
White House says payroll tax cut for employees could come in 'Phase 4' coronavirus relief package.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-payroll-tax-cut-for-employees-phase-4-coronavirus-relief-package
[4/17/20 DEATH TOLL 37,147]
4/18/20
Trump claims test availability, criticizing governors as complainers.
Partisan voices, "are attempting to politicize the issue of testing, which they shouldn't be doing, because I inherited broken junk, just as they did with ventilators," he said, referring to his criticism that the Obama administration had not done enough to build up the national stockpile of ventilators.
Seeking praise for his administration's "sweeping response," Trump noted that complaints about inadequate testing were simply a Democratic talking point, comparing it to the desperate pleas by governors for more ventilators several weeks ago.
"We have done a job that nobody believed. ... We marched," Trump said during the briefing. "Unfortunately, the other side -- they're viewing it as an election. 'How did President Trump do?' 'Oh, he did terribly.'"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/trump-governors-coronavirus-testing/index.html
4/18/20
Trump blasts governors for ‘unreasonable’ coronavirus lockdowns.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/19/trump-blasts-governors-for-unreasonable-coronavirus-lockdowns/
[4/18/20 DEATH TOLL 39,014]
Governors dispute claims that there are adequate testing supplies.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/trump-governors-coronavirus-testing/index.html
[4/19/20 DEATH TOLL 40,575]
4/20/20
Responding to Trump's claims that there are enough tests to reopen the country, governors push back, among them Republican Larry Hogan, who says that's "absolutely false"
Trump: They don't want to use all of the capacity that we've created. We have tremendous capacity, The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that — they're the ones that are complaining.
Trump insisted that there was “tremendous capacity” for coronavirus testing at U.S. labs. He said governors such as Hogan needed “to get a little knowledge” about the testing situation.
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/20/governors-call-trumps-bluff-on-testing-capacity-the-president-is-simply-lying/
“It’s a perilous set of circumstances trying to figure out how to make this work,” Gordon said last week, “and until we’ve got the testing up to speed – which has got to be part of the federal government stepping in and helping – we’re just not going to be there.”
The country’s largest private labs said they have plenty of capacity to test samples sent from medical offices and hospitals, but governors said in a wide array of states health care providers can’t conduct the tests because of a lack of supplies such as swabs and a chemical known as a “reagent” crucial to the process.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/21/coronavirus-trump-claims-there-plenty-tests-states-disagree/2997841001/
4/20/20
Trump criticizes Maryland's Governor Hogan — chair of the National Governors Association — for turning to a foreign source to buy coronavirus tests.
Trump was upset because Hogan and his wife — Yumi Hogan, a Korean immigrant — not only announced earlier Monday that they purchased 500,000 test kits from suppliers in South Korea, but also because Hogan indirectly criticized him during an interview with the New York Times.
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/20/21228817/trump-larry-hogan-coronavirus-testing-kits
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/larry-hogan-wife-yumi-korea-coronavirus-tests.html
[4/20/20 DEATH TOLL 42,514]
4/21/20
FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery David Bibo tells the House Oversight and Reform Committee that the demand for medical equipment and testing materials “outstrips supply considerably,” and that FEMA has been forced to prioritize urgent needs and recommend reusing protective equipment.
https://www.bkreader.com/2020/04/29/regarding-nyc-testing-and-pe-disbelieve-everything-trump-says/
4/21/20
Panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/21/840341224/nih-panel-recommends-against-drug-combination-trump-has-promoted-for-covid-19
4/21/20
Senate approves new $584 billion coronavirus aid bill, nearly all for businesses, hospitals and testing.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-coronaviruto benefits-small-business-aid-congress-20200421-tnsdsqc6ujelzg6iz65elm64qu-story.html
4/21/20
CDC director Redfield warns that second wave of coronavirus this winter set to be even more devastating. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/21/coronavirus-secondwave-cdcdirector/
4/21/20
Trump suspends U.S. immigration for 60 days, citing coronavirus crisis and jobs shortage, will allow temporary workers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/coronavirus-trump-suspend-immigration/2020/04/21/464e2440-838d-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html
4/22/20
Trump criticizes Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for his decision to reopen state. “I think it’s too soon,” he said joining several mayors in questioning the decision to reopen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/trump-georgia-governor-kemp-coronavirus.html
4/21/20
Rick Bright, one of the nation’s leading vaccine development experts and the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is dismissed.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/21/rick-bright-out-at-barda/
4/22/20
Trump responds to Redfield’s earlier comments of a second wave for the disease. “It may not come back at all”.
"He's talking about a worst-case scenario where you have a big flu and you have some (coronavirus). And if it does come back, it's not going to come back ... like it was. Also, we have much better containment now."
"Before nobody knew about it. Nobody knew anything about it. Now, if we have pockets, a little pocket here or there, we're going to have it put out. It goes out, and it’s going to go out fast. We’re going to be watching for it. But it’s also possible it doesn’t come back at all."
Fauci: "We will have coronavirus in the fall," he said. "I am convinced of that because of the degree of transmissibility that it has, the global nature. What happens with that will depend on how we’re able to contain it when it occurs."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/fauci-contradicts-trump-nobody-can-predict-intensity-of-coronavirus-in-the-fall/2020/04/22/c936d77b-60d2-464b-b3c6-901d6396cfb5_video.html
[4/22/20 DEATH RATE 47,520]
4/23/20
Working to develop and validate their own antibody tests, researchers in New York announce their preliminary finding that one of every five New York City residents tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus, suggesting that the virus had spread far more widely than known and that its death rate was significantly lower.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-antibodies-test-ny.html
4/23/20
Trump rebuffs concerns from Dr. Anthony Fauci that the country was behind with coronavirus testing, saying “I don’t agree with him.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-i-dont-agree-with-fauci-over-us-testing-capabilities-to-curb-coronavirus
4/23/20
Congress Passes $484 billion Economic Relief Package to Confront Coronavirus
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/842706630/congress-passes-latest-economic-relief-package-to-confront-coronavirus
[4/23/20 DEATH RATE 50,236]
4/24/20
FDA cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-cautions-against-use-hydroxychloroquine-or-chloroquine-covid-19-outside-hospital-setting-or
4/24/20
WHO cautions that there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19
4/24/20
Capping a series of confrontations signaling that the Trump administration's battle with WHO has gone far beyond aid suspension, the US refuses to participate in the launch of a global effort on vaccines and drugs related to coronavirus.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-expands-battle-with-world-health-organization-far-beyond-aid-suspension/2020/04/25/72c754e6-856e-11ea-9728-c74380d9d410_story.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/world-leaders-launch-plan-to-speed-covid-19-drugs-vaccine-u-s-stays-away-idUSKCN2261M7
[4/24/20 DEATH TOLL 52,191]
4/25/20
Trump rejects notion of a reoccurence of the virus, claims Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield was "totally misquoted" by the Washington Post in an interview in which he said the coronavirus could "actually be even more difficult" in the fall when the flu season returns; is contradicted by Fauci.
Trump: "you may not even have corona coming back."
Fauci: "We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that because of the degree of... transmissibility that it has, the global nature."
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/trump-claims-you-may-not-even-have-corona-coming-back-dr-fauci-says-i-am-convinced-it-will_partner/
[4/26/20 DEATH TOLL 55,413]
4/27/20
PPP loan website collapses after launching its second round of funding.
https://www.pymnts.com/news/2020/ppp-loan-site-flatlines-apple-cuts-back-iphone-production/
4/27/20
Trump questions whether federal government should provide financial assistance to “poorly run” states led by Democrats
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-27/trump-questions-whether-u-s-should-aid-democratic-states
[4/27/20 DEATH TOLL 56.797]
4/27/20
Trump instructs states to "maximize the use of all available testing platforms and venues" as they begin to plan their reemergence from coronavirus lockdown.
4/27/20
Trump acknowledges more Americans would die of the coronavirus than he has recently projected, now saying that the nationwide death toll is likely to be between 60,000 and 70,000.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27/trump-death-toll-projection-coronavirus-213314
4/28/20
Trump suggests that "the worst days" of the coronavirus pandemic are over.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/495112-trump-says-worst-days-of-coronavirus-are-behind-us
4/28/20
United States tops 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
4/28/20
SBA announces that it will cap the dollar amount each bank can lend through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
4/28/20
Total deaths in seven states hit hard by the coronavirus is nearly 50 percent higher than normal over a five-week span during the pandemic, according to new statistics released by the CDC.The newly released data is partial and most likely undercounts the recent death toll.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/
4/28/20
Trump Says U.S. Will Run 5 Million Daily Virus Tests 'Very Soon.' but the top official overseeing testing strategy told TIME earlier in the day that goal wasn’t feasible given current technology.
Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health in charge of the government’s testing response, said during an interview that “there is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day.”
https://time.com/5828843/trump-coronavirus-testing-giroir/
[4/28/20 DEATH TOLL 59,265]
4/29/20
Trump downplays his April 27 edict and muses that perhaps blanket testing isn't necessary as states move to reopen.
"You'll see some astonishing numbers -- I don't know that all of that's even necessary," Trump said of nationwide testing efforts. "You have some governors that love the tests, you have others that like doing it a different way, an old-fashioned way, with some testing."
The comments -- contradicting his own administration's previous guidance and rebutting the expertise of health officials -- were the latest in a string of confusing steps that appear to pit Trump against his own advice as he pivots to a post-pandemic American revival.
While never meant as compulsory measures, the various playbooks offered by the administration on how to safely return to normal have been flouted by Trump and his team in some settings even as they encourage their use in others.
https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/42070850/trump-downplays-need-for-testing-in-another-whiplash-contradiction
4/29/20
Trump says he is planning to resume campaign rallies.
“We’re going to start to move around and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other. I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full – every sixth seat’s empty for every one that you have full. That wouldn’t look too good...I hope we’re going to be able to do some good old-fashioned 25,000-person rallies where everyone is going wild because they love our country.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/president-trump-plans-to-resume-massive-rallies-without-social-distancing.html
4/29/20
“We think we really have crossed a big boundary and much better days are ahead,” Trump says at a televised meeting at the White House with business leaders. “We did all the right moves. If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe two million people die.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/us/politics/trump-kushner-coronavirus-revisionist-history.html
4/29/20
Jared Kushner claims the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak has been a “great success story.”
“We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed....The federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6152850277001
4/29/20
Describing the trial results of the drug remdesivir as “very optimistic”, Dr. Fauci reports that “the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-antiviral-treatment-could-cut-covid-19-recovery-time-by-nearly-a-third
4/29/20
The Lancet publishes the results of a separate remdesivir study conducted on 237 patients across 10 hospitals in China’s Hubei province. The authors of that study found remdesivir “was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.” However, the Chinese trial did find that the drug reduced the time required for a patient’s condition to improve among those showing symptoms for 10 days or less, prompting the authors to recommend further study. "Remdesivir (GS-5734), a nucleoside analogue prodrug, has inhibitory effects on pathogenic animal and human coronaviruses."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext
4/29/20
WHO cautions that relying on any single study is unlikely to be the solution in finding an effective treatment for the coronavirus.
“Typically, you don’t have one study that will come out that will be a game changer,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, who is leading the WHO’s technical response to the coronavirus pandemic. “Once we look at all of the studies, and we judge them collectively, we can come away with some kind of a conclusion of ‘yes we see an effect’ or ‘no we don’t,’”
https://www.healthpolicy-watch.org/first-remdesivir-rct-shows-no-significant-clinical-benefit-for-severe-covid-19-patients-but-experts-urge-for-more-research/
4/29/20
GDP falls at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter.
[4/29/20 DEATH TOLL 61,655]
4/30/20
Jobless claims top 30 million as coronavirus continues to devastate economy
Trump criticizes Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for his decision to reopen state. “I think it’s too soon,” he said joining several mayors in questioning the decision to reopen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/trump-georgia-governor-kemp-coronavirus.html
4/21/20
Rick Bright, one of the nation’s leading vaccine development experts and the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is dismissed.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/21/rick-bright-out-at-barda/
4/22/20
Trump responds to Redfield’s earlier comments of a second wave for the disease. “It may not come back at all”.
"He's talking about a worst-case scenario where you have a big flu and you have some (coronavirus). And if it does come back, it's not going to come back ... like it was. Also, we have much better containment now."
"Before nobody knew about it. Nobody knew anything about it. Now, if we have pockets, a little pocket here or there, we're going to have it put out. It goes out, and it’s going to go out fast. We’re going to be watching for it. But it’s also possible it doesn’t come back at all."
Fauci: "We will have coronavirus in the fall," he said. "I am convinced of that because of the degree of transmissibility that it has, the global nature. What happens with that will depend on how we’re able to contain it when it occurs."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/fauci-contradicts-trump-nobody-can-predict-intensity-of-coronavirus-in-the-fall/2020/04/22/c936d77b-60d2-464b-b3c6-901d6396cfb5_video.html
[4/22/20 DEATH RATE 47,520]
4/23/20
Working to develop and validate their own antibody tests, researchers in New York announce their preliminary finding that one of every five New York City residents tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus, suggesting that the virus had spread far more widely than known and that its death rate was significantly lower.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-antibodies-test-ny.html
4/23/20
Trump rebuffs concerns from Dr. Anthony Fauci that the country was behind with coronavirus testing, saying “I don’t agree with him.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-i-dont-agree-with-fauci-over-us-testing-capabilities-to-curb-coronavirus
4/23/20
Congress Passes $484 billion Economic Relief Package to Confront Coronavirus
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/842706630/congress-passes-latest-economic-relief-package-to-confront-coronavirus
[4/23/20 DEATH RATE 50,236]
4/24/20
FDA cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-cautions-against-use-hydroxychloroquine-or-chloroquine-covid-19-outside-hospital-setting-or
4/24/20
WHO cautions that there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19
4/24/20
Capping a series of confrontations signaling that the Trump administration's battle with WHO has gone far beyond aid suspension, the US refuses to participate in the launch of a global effort on vaccines and drugs related to coronavirus.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-expands-battle-with-world-health-organization-far-beyond-aid-suspension/2020/04/25/72c754e6-856e-11ea-9728-c74380d9d410_story.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/world-leaders-launch-plan-to-speed-covid-19-drugs-vaccine-u-s-stays-away-idUSKCN2261M7
[4/24/20 DEATH TOLL 52,191]
4/25/20
Trump rejects notion of a reoccurence of the virus, claims Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield was "totally misquoted" by the Washington Post in an interview in which he said the coronavirus could "actually be even more difficult" in the fall when the flu season returns; is contradicted by Fauci.
Trump: "you may not even have corona coming back."
Fauci: "We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that because of the degree of... transmissibility that it has, the global nature."
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/trump-claims-you-may-not-even-have-corona-coming-back-dr-fauci-says-i-am-convinced-it-will_partner/
[4/26/20 DEATH TOLL 55,413]
4/27/20
PPP loan website collapses after launching its second round of funding.
https://www.pymnts.com/news/2020/ppp-loan-site-flatlines-apple-cuts-back-iphone-production/
4/27/20
Trump questions whether federal government should provide financial assistance to “poorly run” states led by Democrats
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-27/trump-questions-whether-u-s-should-aid-democratic-states
[4/27/20 DEATH TOLL 56.797]
4/27/20
Trump instructs states to "maximize the use of all available testing platforms and venues" as they begin to plan their reemergence from coronavirus lockdown.
4/27/20
Trump acknowledges more Americans would die of the coronavirus than he has recently projected, now saying that the nationwide death toll is likely to be between 60,000 and 70,000.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27/trump-death-toll-projection-coronavirus-213314
Trump suggests that "the worst days" of the coronavirus pandemic are over.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/495112-trump-says-worst-days-of-coronavirus-are-behind-us
4/28/20
United States tops 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
4/28/20
SBA announces that it will cap the dollar amount each bank can lend through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
4/28/20
Total deaths in seven states hit hard by the coronavirus is nearly 50 percent higher than normal over a five-week span during the pandemic, according to new statistics released by the CDC.The newly released data is partial and most likely undercounts the recent death toll.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/
4/28/20
Trump Says U.S. Will Run 5 Million Daily Virus Tests 'Very Soon.' but the top official overseeing testing strategy told TIME earlier in the day that goal wasn’t feasible given current technology.
Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health in charge of the government’s testing response, said during an interview that “there is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day.”
https://time.com/5828843/trump-coronavirus-testing-giroir/
[4/28/20 DEATH TOLL 59,265]
4/29/20
Trump downplays his April 27 edict and muses that perhaps blanket testing isn't necessary as states move to reopen.
"You'll see some astonishing numbers -- I don't know that all of that's even necessary," Trump said of nationwide testing efforts. "You have some governors that love the tests, you have others that like doing it a different way, an old-fashioned way, with some testing."
The comments -- contradicting his own administration's previous guidance and rebutting the expertise of health officials -- were the latest in a string of confusing steps that appear to pit Trump against his own advice as he pivots to a post-pandemic American revival.
While never meant as compulsory measures, the various playbooks offered by the administration on how to safely return to normal have been flouted by Trump and his team in some settings even as they encourage their use in others.
https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/42070850/trump-downplays-need-for-testing-in-another-whiplash-contradiction
4/29/20
Trump says he is planning to resume campaign rallies.
“We’re going to start to move around and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other. I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full – every sixth seat’s empty for every one that you have full. That wouldn’t look too good...I hope we’re going to be able to do some good old-fashioned 25,000-person rallies where everyone is going wild because they love our country.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/president-trump-plans-to-resume-massive-rallies-without-social-distancing.html
4/29/20
“We think we really have crossed a big boundary and much better days are ahead,” Trump says at a televised meeting at the White House with business leaders. “We did all the right moves. If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe two million people die.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/us/politics/trump-kushner-coronavirus-revisionist-history.html
4/29/20
Jared Kushner claims the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak has been a “great success story.”
“We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed....The federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6152850277001
4/29/20
Describing the trial results of the drug remdesivir as “very optimistic”, Dr. Fauci reports that “the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-antiviral-treatment-could-cut-covid-19-recovery-time-by-nearly-a-third
4/29/20
The Lancet publishes the results of a separate remdesivir study conducted on 237 patients across 10 hospitals in China’s Hubei province. The authors of that study found remdesivir “was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.” However, the Chinese trial did find that the drug reduced the time required for a patient’s condition to improve among those showing symptoms for 10 days or less, prompting the authors to recommend further study. "Remdesivir (GS-5734), a nucleoside analogue prodrug, has inhibitory effects on pathogenic animal and human coronaviruses."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext
4/29/20
WHO cautions that relying on any single study is unlikely to be the solution in finding an effective treatment for the coronavirus.
“Typically, you don’t have one study that will come out that will be a game changer,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, who is leading the WHO’s technical response to the coronavirus pandemic. “Once we look at all of the studies, and we judge them collectively, we can come away with some kind of a conclusion of ‘yes we see an effect’ or ‘no we don’t,’”
https://www.healthpolicy-watch.org/first-remdesivir-rct-shows-no-significant-clinical-benefit-for-severe-covid-19-patients-but-experts-urge-for-more-research/
4/29/20
GDP falls at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter.
[4/29/20 DEATH TOLL 61,655]
4/30/20
Jobless claims top 30 million as coronavirus continues to devastate economy
Around 18 percent of the workforce is currently unemployed.
As Emily Badger and Alicia Parlapiano reported, systems that were devised to treat each unemployment case as potentially fraudulent are now rushing to deal with millions of newly unemployed people.
The state unemployment systems that were supposed to help millions of jobless workers were full of boxes to check and mandates to meet that couldn’t possibly apply in a pandemic.
States required workers to document their job searches, weekly; to register with employment services, in person; to take a wait period before their first check, up to 10 days.
Such requirements increased in the years following the Great Recession, as many states moved to tighten access to or reduce unemployment benefits. With them, most states cut the share of jobless workers they helped.
Now these requirements have been getting in the way. Effectively, many states have been trying to scale up aid with systems built to keep claims low.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/jobless-claims-top-30-million-coronavirus-continues-devastate-economy-n1196276
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html
4/30/20
S&P 500 gains nearly 13% in April, its sharpest rise since 1987.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
4/30/20
Commerce Department reports consumer spending in March fell by 7.5 percent from February’s level.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-spending/coronavirus-sends-u-s-consumer-spending-into-record-fall-in-march-idUSKBN22C2E7
4/30/20
U.S. intelligence agencies in a rare public statement agree with "the widespread scientific consensus" that the COVID-19 virus was "not man-made or genetically modified" but say that they are investigating whether it emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/495449-intelligence-agency-confirms-investigation-into-origins-of
4/30/20
Trump complains that the “ventilator problem” was a result of previous administration having completely depleted supplies.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-wrong-about-ventilators/
4/30/20
Trump says he is confident that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese virology lab.
https://apnews.com/c9499f7b8ab2ae7097c8588f1ccdddea
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/trump-confident-coronavirus-originated-chinese-lab-200501003915123.html
Federal guidelines on social distancing won’t be renewed.
https://time.com/5829434/trump-federal-social-distancing/
[4/30/20 DEATH TOLL 63,856]
5/1/20
White House blocks Fauci from testifying before House panel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/05/01/congress-fauci-coronavirus/
5/1/20
Administration replaces watchdog who identified critical medical shortages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/us/politics/trump-health-department-watchdog.html?referringSource=articleShare
5/1/20
NIH abruptly cuts coronavirus research funding, abruptly cancelled funding for a long-standing research project by US and Chinese scientists to examine how coronaviruses leap from bats to humans, potentially causing devastating pandemics.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nih-cuts-coronavirus-funding-amid-trump-comments-and-conspiracy-theories/
5/1/20
CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) reports that
various factors contributed to the accelerated spread of the virus during February–March 2020, including continued travel-associated importations, large gatherings, introductions into high-risk workplaces and densely populated areas, and cryptic transmission resulting from limited testing and asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, citing targeted and community-wide mitigation efforts as needed to slow transmission.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6918e2.htm?s_cid=mm6918e2_w
5/1/20
Administration rejects detailed guidelines from CDC experts to help schools, restaurants, churches and other establishments safely reopen, saying they are "overly prescriptive".
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework, was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
5/1/20
Anne Schuchat, second in command at the CDC, says a lack of testing and a delay in travel alerts contributed to the galloping spread of COVID-19 in the US, saying that the government was slow to react to the looming coronavirus pandemic as it spread from Europe, which led to rocketing rates of infection and death in the country.
“We clearly didn’t recognize the full importations that were happening....The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread...I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier.”
https://nypost.com/2020/05/02/cdc-official-says-us-reacted-too-slowly-to-curb-coronavirus/
[5/1/20 DEATH TOLL 65,753]
5/2/20
Fauci says US should double its testing over next several weeks.
"We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will," he said on the National Academy of Sciences Covid-19 Update webcast. He estimated that the US is conducting approximately 1.5 to 2 million Covid-19 tests per week, but noted that "testing is an important part, but it's not the only part."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/politics/fauci-us-double-diagnostic-testing-coronavirus/index.html
5/2/20
Texas posts third straight day of 1,000 new cases as state reopens.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-live-updates.html
5/2/20
Italy reports lowest daily death toll since first day of lockdown.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/495876-italys-coronavirus-death-toll-new-cases-drop-sharply
[5/2/20 Job losses over the past seven weeks are at nearly 33.5 million.]
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/07/coronavirus-unemployment-claims-numbers-242131
[5/2/20 DEATH TOLL 67,444]
5/3/20
Pompeo says there's "enormous evidence" coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab.
https://www.axios.com/pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-5f305526-9ceb-49af-943a-fd8291a6d5d9.html
5/3/20
Trump relaunches his election campaign with a live television event inside the iconic Lincoln Memorial, promising an early coronavirus vaccine and urging Americans to put the pandemic behind them to embrace an "incredible" future.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-pandemic-victory-lap-tv-town-hall-084901630.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb
5/3/20
Trump claims intelligence officials did not raise coronavirus until late January and that they did it in a casual manner.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/03/politics/trump-coronavirus-us-intelligence/index.html
5/3/20
Trump repeats his April 6 complaint that he inherited an "empty" or “bare”cupboard of medical supplies such as masks and ventilators from the Obama administration.
And not only are the cupboards full now, we have ventilators; we’re the king in the world of ventilators. We have thousands and thousands of them now being delivered.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/08/donald-trump/trump-said-obama-admin-left-him-bare-stockpile-wro/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/donald-trump-fox-lincoln-memorial/index.html
5/3/20
Trump announces that a vaccine will be available by the end of the year.
5/3/20
Dr. Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator spoke over the weekend about testing and the when a vaccine might be available. "We have to realize that we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing." While experts have estimated that it would take 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine, she said that "on paper" it is possible by the start of 2021, “but it will require the proper execution”, she continued, as she laid out how that would be done.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/birx-u-s-needs-breakthrough-antigen-testing-aid-re-opening-n1192901
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-05-03/deborah-birx-coronavirus-vaccine-possible-by-january-as-countries-see-largest-single-day-jumps
5/3/20
Birx on death toll: “our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other how to social distance.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/03/birxs-fox-news-sunday-interview-lays-bare-discord-trumps-coronavirus-response/
[5/3/20 DEATH TOLL 68,598]
5/4/20
Coronavirus model projects 134,000 deaths in US, nearly double its last estimate. In addition, a Trump administration model projects a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths in the weeks ahead, up to about 3,000 daily deaths in the US by June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.
The sharp increases in the two models are tied to relaxed social distancing and increased mobility in the US. States across the country -- including Florida, Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska and South Carolina -- have eased restrictions in an attempt to revive a sputtering economy and calm restless residents.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6926-mayhhsbriefing/af7319f4a55fd0ce5dc9/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
5/4/20
Trump administration issues new guidelines barring coronavirus task force members from accepting invitations to appear before congressional panels this month unless White House chief of staff Mark Meadows grants permission.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496016-white-house-prohibits-coronavirus-task-force-members-from-testifying
5/4/20
Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech announce human trials of their that their potential coronavirus vaccine. If successful, the vaccine could be ready for emergency use as early as September.
“There’s a long way to go from that to a scalable technology that works.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/health/pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus.html
5/4/20
Doctors warn about a mysterious illness affecting children, ages 2 to 15, with symptoms associated with toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, a rare illness in children that involves inflammation of the blood vessels, including coronary arteries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/nyregion/children-Kawasaki-syndrome-coronavirus.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/nhs-warns-of-rise-in-children-with-new-illness-that-may-be-linked-to-coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/29/more-cases-of-rare-syndrome-in-children-reported-globally
5/4/20
World leaders pledge to fight coronavirus, without US and Russia participation. The roster of leaders who spoke live or sent video messages included all of the G7 except for Trump.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/04/world-leaders-pledge-to-fight-coronavirus-234352
5/4/20
Scientists have identified an antibody in a lab that they say can prevent the novel coronavirus from infecting cells. The team hopes the antibody could be used to create treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
https://trib.al/Vgf3HTx
5/4/20
Chinese push back on US claims regarding etiology of the coronavirus.
https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-state-media-demands-us-show-evidence-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-accuses-mike-pompeo-bluffing-1501729
5/4/20
Trump says “everybody” enjoyed his White House coronavirus briefings — including himself — and vows that they will be back, just not daily.
“We set every record with those press conferences. Six million people all the time. You know we had tremendous numbers, literally, it was in [Fox News host] Bret Baier’s slot, and we did like 30 in a row.”
“I heard, is this true? It was the highest-rated hour in cable television history. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s true.”
https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/trump-says-coronavirus-briefings-will-return-blasts-cbs-news/
5/4/20
A pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, characterized by persistent fever and features of Kawasaki disease and/or toxic shock syndrome as well as abdominal symptoms, recently reported by authorities in the United Kingdom, is also being observed among children and young adults in New York City and elsewhere in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/nyregion/kawasaki-disease-coronavirus.html
[5/4/20 DEATH TOLL 69,921]
5/5/20
White House is considering winding down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks. Pence said it was "a reflection of the tremendous progress we've made as a country. We are bringing our country back."
https://bbc.in/3bblum6
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-updates.html
5/5/20
Rick Bright, formerly the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response and the director of BARDA files whistleblower complaint alleging coronavirus warnings were ignored.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/rick-bright-complaint/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ousted-hhs-official-files-whistleblower-complaint-coronavirus-response-n1200681
5/5/20
Fauci dismisses the theory that coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-dismisses-wuhan-lab-source-coronavirus-contradicting-trump-pompeo-1501924
5/5/20
Fauci will be allowed to testify before the Senate next week, but government's top infectious diseases experts will be prevented from appearing before the House because Trump believes it's full of "Trump haters."
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496133-trump-wont-allow-fauci-to-testify-before-house-because-its-a-bunch-of
5/5/20
Trump nominates Brian D. Miller, currently the White House lawyer for special inspector general.
The nomination has not been received well by Democrats, who insisted on strict oversight as a condition of passing the rescue package.In an unusual signing statement, Trump suggested he had the power to decide what information the inspector general intended to monitor the fund could share with Congress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/trump-signing-statement-coronavirus.html
5/5/20
NPR contacts Justin Lessler of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, the epidemiologist regarding the projections in the internal administration document. (see 5/4/20) He says the projections cited in the document do not represent his final forecast. Rather they were part of work that's still very much in progress.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/05/848729029/fact-check-trump-administration-document-and-its-3-000-deaths-a-day-scenario
5/5/20
White House reported to be relying on the "cubic model" devised by Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser, that shows COVID-19 deaths plummeting to zero by mid-May.
This model, released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) contradicts all other data and modeling.
https://news.yahoo.com/trumps-advisers-released-beyond-stupid-191328441.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=fb
[5/5/20 Trump heads to Arizona for first cross-country trip.]
[5/5/20 DEATH TOLL 72,271]
5/6/20
Trump reverses, says coronavirus task force will 'continue on indefinitely,' shifts focus to reopening, vaccines.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/06/coronavirus-trump-says-task-force-continue-indefinitely/5171043002/
5/6/20
Pompeo walks back allegation that “enormous evidence” linked the coronavirus outbreak to the Wuhan laboratory, now saying “we don’t have certainty”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/06/pompeo-backtracks-about-wuhan-lab-the-latest-in-the-controversial-coronavirus-origin-theory/#4677e89c2f72
[5/6/20 DEATH TOLL 74,799]
5/7/20
New study finds that nearly everyone who gets the disease eventually makes antibodies to the virus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/coronavirus-updates.html?campaign_id=166&emc=edit_uscb_20200507&instance_id=0&nl=u.s.-coronavirus-briefing-alerts®i_id=65600354&segment_id=26824&user_id=ac81a1845cdda7d8be66566a63e44067#link-4d432793
5/7/20
One of Trump's personal West Wing valets tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/military-official-working-white-house-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1202061?cid=eml_nbn_20200507
5/7/20
Overwhelmed by demand, the SBA slashes Economic Injury Disaster Loan program's loan limit from $2 million to $150,000 and shuts out nearly all new applicants.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/07/sba-disaster-loans/
[5/7/20 DEATH TOLL 76,928]
5/8/20
A lack of a comprehensive governmental plan for distribution of remdesivir, itself in short supply, leaves doctors and pharmacists on the front lines in the dark about the process for accessing the drug.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/health/remdesivir-access-transparency/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/health/remdesivir-rationing-doctors-coronavirus/index.html
5/8/20
Pence staff member tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/pence-staff-member-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1202946?cid=eml_nbn_20200508
5/8/20
FDA approves the first home saliva test for the virus.The RUCDR test kits will cost about $100 each and must be ordered by a physician.
https://www.fda.gov/media/137773/download
5/8/20
Trump Declares COVID-19 Will Vanish "Without A Vaccine" .
“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine. It’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”
He does admit there might be some “flare-ups” before COVID-19 goes away, but “maybe not,” and predicted, “we’ll be able to put them out.”
http://huffp.st/yqg2J1P
5/8/20
Three members of the White House coronavirus task force place themselves in quarantine: Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/2-members-of-white-house-virus-task-force-in-quarantine
[5/8/20 DEATH TOLL 78,615]
5/9/20
More Than 4 Million People Have Been Infected With COVID-19; US death toll tops 80,000.
The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/coronavirus-live-updates-global-covid-19-death-toll/story?id=70592970
5/9/20
Christi A. Grimm, the principal HHS deputy inspector general who wrote a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic is replaced.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/yet-another-inspector-general-quietly-ousted-after-angering-trump-n1199061
[5/9/20 DEATH TOLL 80,037]
5/10/20
Administration officials spend weekend doing contact tracing for Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary who tested positive for coronavirus last week. But they had not identified who Miller contracted the virus from, raising concerns inside the White House about how to contain the outbreak.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/politics/katie-miller-contract-tracing-coronavirus/index.html
[5/10/20 DEATH TOLL 80,787]
5/11/20
Pence Denies He's Self Isolating.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/05/11/mike-pence-denies-hes-self-isolating-as-coronavirus-rattles-whitehouse-staff/
5/11/20
White House staff begin to don masks. Trump reiterates that he will not wear a mask himself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/us/politics/white-house-masks-trump-coronavirus.html
5/11/20
Trump administration announces $11 billion will go to states for coronavirus testing.
"This has all been approved, we've gotten it done, completed. The money is going out....This major investment will ensure that America continues to conduct more tests than any country on Earth by far."
The relief package signed on April 24 included $25 billion for testing, with $11 billion for states, localities, territories and tribes.
Admiral Brett Giroir cautioned that the federal government is "going to be very specific" in requirements for states to receive funding.
"There needs to be minimum numbers to be planned to test. They have to have plans for their vulnerable communities, including nursing homes, including those who are disabled, including those in prisons or who have working environments that they may have a more likelihood to spread the infection."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/11/coronavirus-trump-says-us-pass-10-million-tests-states-get-11-billion/3111814001/
5/11/20
Flanked by large posters that proclaimed “America leads the world in testing,” Trump declares that the United States was “unmatched and unrivaled” in its testing capacity.
“If somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested,” Mr. Trump said that his administration was working with states to allow them to conduct 12.9 million tests in May, insisting that the testing ability in the United States compares favorably with other countries.
“We are testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland and many other countries,”
“we have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/us/politics/white-house-masks-trump-coronavirus.html
5/11/20
CDC report finds that California's airport screening wasn’t very effective at stopping coronavirus.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/California-s-coronavirus-screening-of-nearly-15261768.php
[5/11/20 DEATH TOLL 81795]
5/12/20
The Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee opens a hearing with top health officials saying that the level of coronavirus testing currently available in the United States is “impressive — but not nearly enough” to give Americans a comfort level about going back to work and school. Fauci testifies that the consequence of reopening the country too early could be "really serious" if states don't have the capability to respond to new coronavirus infections. Americans will experience “needless suffering and death” if the country opens up prematurely.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/coronavirus-updates.html
5/12/20
Countries that have eased social distancing restrictions are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases. In Wuhan, where the virus was first discovered, millions of residents will be tested in a little over a week after case numbers rose despite months of lock-down measures. Germany and South Korea are also seeing spikes. Germany records more than 900 new cases in 24 hours. France extends state of emergency: The country will remain under emergency measures, which have now been extended through July 10. The extension comes a day after lock-down measures were eased in parts of France. Spain imposes 14-day quarantine for international arrivals
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-testing-china-intl-hnk/index.html
5/12/20
"Development and Validation of a Clinical Risk Score to Predict the Occurrence of Critical Illness in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19" paper is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finding 10 biomarkers researchers say could predict a patient's risk, turning risk predictors — high LDH levels and low levels of lymphocytes plus age, history of cancer, shortness of breath — into a coronavirus risk "calculator."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766086
5/12/20
"Early Safety Indicators of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma in 5,000 Patients"
national study shows treatment known as convalescent plasma transfusions appears to be safe and could be a worthwhile treatment after it is studied more.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, and Johns Hopkins University looked at 5,000 coronavirus patients around the country who received convalescent plasma transfusions from recovered patients.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.12.20099879v1
5/12/20
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is hospitalized with coronavirus.
[5/12/20 DEATH TOLL 83,425]
5/13/20
Trump says coronavirus testing ‘overrated,’ claims fewer cases if no testing.
“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,”
“When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-says-coronavirus-testing-overratedclaims-fewer-cases-if-no-testing-2020-05-14
5/13/20
Administration pressures CDC to lower death toll by changing how it counts coronavirus fatalities.
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/13/trump-pressures-cdc-to-lower-death-toll-by-changing-how-it-counts-coronavirus-fatalities-report/
[5/13/20 DEATH TOLL 85,540]
5/14/20
Trump says U.S. will overcome the coronavirus crisis with or without an effective vaccine, saying that the disease will “go away at some point” either way.
“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back. And we’re starting the process. In many cases, they don’t have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/trump-downplays-need-for-coronavirus-vaccine-itll-go-away-at-some-point.html
“If we don’t, we’re going to be like so many other cases where you had a problem come in, it’ll go away at some point, it’ll go away.”
Trump’s remarks downplaying the need for a vaccine came at an event unveiling his administration’s beefed-up efforts to fast-track the development and distribution of a vaccine for Covid-19.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/trump-downplays-need-for-coronavirus-vaccine-itll-go-away-at-some-point.html
5/14/20
Administration unveils beefed-up efforts to fast-track the development and distribution of a vaccine for Covid-19. The new project, dubbed “Operation Warp Speed,” aims to have hundreds of millions of doses of an effective vaccine available by the end of the year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/watch-live-trump-discusses-coronavirus-vaccine-efforts.html
5/14/20
Researchers in China report in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence that an analysis of blood samples taken from 485 coronavirus patients in Wuhan discovered biomarkers that can predict whether a coronavirus patient will die within 10 days, with more than 90 percent accuracy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-0180-7
5/14/20
Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of BARDA and formerly the key federal office charged with developing medical countermeasures, testifies before Congress that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and warns that the the US will face "unprecedented illness and fatalities" without additional preparations.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/rick-bright-testimony-congress/index.html
5/14/20
Trump repeats claim that the Wuhan Institute of Virology received $7.5 million dollars in grant money and that he had suspended those payments.
Yeah. As I understand it, before I got here, $7.5 million in 2014. And look, they said they were studying different things and you know, things like that happen. But, you know, money was given by the Obama administration early on. … I ended it. … I took a lot of heat too. They said, “Oh, we’re studying all sorts of stuff.” You saw what happened. I ended it.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-spreads-distorted-claim-on-wuhan-lab-funding/
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany claims the administration had a pandemic plan all along.
https://www.msnbc.com/11th-hour/watch/trump-white-house-now-claims-it-had-a-pandemic-plan-all-along-83490373706
[5/14/20 DEATH TOLL 87,293]
5/15/20
Trump blames uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations on an increase in testing.
"We’d Have Very Few Cases’ Without Testing."
“When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-testing-claim-pennsylvania_n_5ebdf19bc5b6c9c187419778
5/15/20
FDA halts Bill Gates coronavirus testing program.
The program sought to send test kits to the homes of people both healthy and sick to try to bring the country to the level of testing officials say is necessary before states can begin safely reopening. The program, which had already gone through thousands of tests, found dozens of cases that had been previously undiagnosed.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/498104-fda-halts-bill-gates-coronavirus-testing-program
[5/15/20 DEATH TOLL 88,895]
[5/16/20 DEATH TOLL 90,113]
5/17/20
Pompeo backs away from theory that coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html
[5/17/20 DEATH TOLL 90.978]
5/18/20
Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that for “a couple weeks” he had been taking hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/19/trump-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-white-house
5/18/20
Moderna announces that its potential COVID-19 vaccine showed promising early results in clinical trials.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/19/business/hope-covid-19-vaccine-attracts-investors-cambridge-biotech/
5/18/20
Korean CDC finds recovered coronavirus patients who tested positive aren't infectious.
South Korean health authorities will no longer consider COVID-19 patients infectious after they recover, and won't require additional tests after patients are discharged from their isolation period. Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 COVID-19 survivors who initially recovered from the illness but then tested positive again. They found these patients' virus samples couldn't be grown in culture, suggesting the patients had indeed recovered and were actually shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles, rather than suffering from a lingering infection.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-19/covid-patients-testing-positive-after-recovery-aren-t-infectious
5/18/20
China's President Xi Jinping tells the WHO’s annual assembly that he supports an international review once the health emergency ends, adding that China will provide $2 billion over two years to help other countries respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-xi-backs-who-led-review-of-covid-19-outbreak-proposes-aid-for-developing-world/2020/05/18/911a1544-98df-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html
5/19/20
Trump dismisses hydroxychloroquine study that undermines him as a “Trump enemy statement”
“I worked with doctors,” he began. “If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape, they were very old, almost dead. It was a Trump enemy statement.”
5/20/20
CDC releases more guidance for reopening.
5/20/20
Experiments on monkeys at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston are examining whether vaccines might fight the coronavirus pathogens.
A prototype vaccine has protected monkeys from the coronavirus, researchers report, a finding that offers new hope for effective human vaccines.
5/20/20
WHO reports 106,000 new cases of infections in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. worldwide coronavirus cases approach five million.
5/20/20
Brazil records its worst daily death toll from coronavirus.
5/20/20
GlaxoSmithKline teams up with gene editing start-up Mammoth for COVID-19 test; CRISPR gene-editing tool could diagnose COVID-19 in 20 minutes.
The test would use Mammoth's CRISPR gene-editing technology as a diagnostic tool, returning results from a nasal swab within 20 minutes. Eventually, the two companies want to make the tests available for consumers over the counter, but they will start in clinics and hospitals.
"Using this CRISPR-based technology, you can actually create accurate tests, giving similar quality to what's in the lab but in a 'decentralized' format," said Mammoth CEO Trevor Martin. The companies expect to seek Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization by the end of 2020
5/21/20
AstraZeneca secures orders for virus vaccine testing.
Anglo-Swedish drug maker AstraZeneca sealed its first agreements to provide 400 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it is developing. The company said it had received more than $1 billion from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARD) for getting the vaccine produced and delivered starting in the fall. AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said the investment by the U.S. vaccine agency would help speed up development of the vaccine.
5/22/20
China's Cansino Biologics claims success in vaccine human trials.
https://indianexpress.com/article/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-latest-updates-6425121/
5/22/20
Lancet Article claims that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not help coronavirus patients and may have done harm; People who received the drugs were more likely to have abnormal heart rhythms.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext
5/22/20
Cuba credits two drugs with slashing coronavirus death toll. One is itolizumab, a monoclonal antibody produced in Cuba and elsewhere. The other is a peptide that Cuba says its biotech industry discovered and has been testing for rheumatoid arthritis in Phase II clinical trials.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cuba/cuba-credits-two-drugs-with-slashing-coronavirus-death-toll-idUSKBN22Y2Y4
[5/22/20 DEATH TOLL 97,645]
[5/25/20 Memorial Day]
5/25/20
China's Cansino Biologics claims success in vaccine human trials.
https://indianexpress.com/article/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-latest-updates-6425121/
5/22/20
Lancet Article claims that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not help coronavirus patients and may have done harm; People who received the drugs were more likely to have abnormal heart rhythms.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext
5/22/20
Cuba credits two drugs with slashing coronavirus death toll. One is itolizumab, a monoclonal antibody produced in Cuba and elsewhere. The other is a peptide that Cuba says its biotech industry discovered and has been testing for rheumatoid arthritis in Phase II clinical trials.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cuba/cuba-credits-two-drugs-with-slashing-coronavirus-death-toll-idUSKBN22Y2Y4
[5/22/20 DEATH TOLL 97,645]
[5/25/20 Memorial Day]
5/25/20
Shi Zhengli China’s "Bat Woman" Warns Coronavirus Is Just Tip of the Iceberg
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3086180/chinas-bat-woman-centre-coronavirus-theories-says-her-work
5/25/20
Brazil surpasses U.S. with the most reported coronavirus fatalities over a 24-hour period. The South American country now has the second-largest outbreak in the world behind the United States.
5/26/20
Brazil leads daily virus deaths for fifth straight day.
5/26/20
White House travel bans travel from Brazil.
U.S. citizens and green-card holders are exempt from the prohibition, intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus from Latin America’s hardest-hit country. But foreigners in Brazil have struggled to leave the country in recent weeks. The State Department on Tuesday advised all Americans who wished to leave to do so immediately.
5/26/20
French study bolsters hopes antibodies may protect against COVID-19
Researchers at France's Pasteur Institute and university hospitals in Strasbourg said Tuesday that in a study of 160 doctors and nurses who experienced mild cases of COVID-19, all but one developed antibodies within two weeks that could prevent reinfection. The preliminary findings, not yet peer-reviewed, bolstered hopes that patients who survive the new coronavirus, even if they never got seriously ill, would be protected. Almost all of the volunteers in the study had produced antibodies capable of neutralizing the virus — or preventing it from replicating — within 41 days. Pasteur's Arnaud Fontanet and his colleagues suggested the findings support the use of antibody tests.
The research addresses a crucial question regarding the new coronavirus: whether people who had Covid-19, and especially those who didn’t get severely ill, develop antibodies capable of protecting them against reinfection. (See April 24 for WHO remarks that there is no evidence yet that people who have recovered and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-26/hospital-staff-with-covid-19-had-protective-antibodies-in-study
5/26/20
Maryland Biotech company begins injecting the coronavirus vaccine in human subjects. Novavax begins clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccine; results expected in July. the biotechnology company rolls out its first human trials for its coronavirus vaccine.
Novavax already tested its vaccine on animals in low doses and found it successful. The Maryland-based company will inject 131 volunteers in the Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane, with results of the clinical trial expected to be made public in July. Phase 1 of the trial is a "randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled trial" that assesses two different dosage sizes of the vaccine among healthy participants age 18 to 59. Novavax is one of several pharmaceutical companies racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, with Pfizer and Moderna launching human trials earlier this month.
5/26/20
Race Is On to Create Rapid Covid-19 Tests for the Fall.
Fast, accessible, and reliable testing is key to containing the coronavirus pandemic, and experts are scrambling to develop "next-stage technologies" that could make such rapid tests widely available in the United States. OraSure Technologies says it's hoping to submit an at-home test to the FDA this September.
There's also a Shark Tank-esque competition underway launched by the National Institutes of Health seeking to accelerate development of COVID-19 testing technologies, laying out an ambitious goal of making "millions of accurate and easy-to-use tests per week available to all Americans by the end of summer 2020." According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 280 groups have applied for the competition. But it's still an "open question" whether millions of rapid tests can be produced per week by the fall, the Journal notes. Quest Diagnostics' Gary Samuels said that it's "hard to imagine getting to the numbers that people are talking about without some sort of technical breakthrough, and that's what everyone's searching for."
Health officials said “rapid, extensive, and widely available, timely testing is essential” for reopening the country and that the U.S. will be able to perform at least 40 to 50 million tests per month by September.
5/26/20
China signals its going to be a world player in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine. President Xi Jinping is throwing the might of the Chinese state behind the country’s vaccine developers. Five vaccines developed by Chinese companies are being tested on humans, the most in any country. Beijing has mobilized its health authorities, drug regulators and research institutes to work around the clock with local companies. Xi Jinping has pledged to share any vaccine globally.
The sheer scale and speed of China’s effort ratchets up pressure on the U.S., where President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a program called Operation Warp Speed to accelerate vaccine research and development. Xi has promised to share any successful vaccine globally, and the Chinese president would wield immense geopolitical clout if his country produces one of the world’s first working shots.
The Chinese efforts were on show late Friday, when an early-stage study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, showed that an experimental vaccine from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. was safe and generated an immune response. It’s too early to predict the product’s eventual success, and investors beat down CanSino’s stock amid concerns it could have shortcomings.
https://indianexpress.com/article/coronavirus/china-covid-vaccine-xi-jinping-6429222/
5/26/20
China signals its going to be a world player in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine. President Xi Jinping is throwing the might of the Chinese state behind the country’s vaccine developers. Five vaccines developed by Chinese companies are being tested on humans, the most in any country. Beijing has mobilized its health authorities, drug regulators and research institutes to work around the clock with local companies. Xi Jinping has pledged to share any vaccine globally.
The sheer scale and speed of China’s effort ratchets up pressure on the U.S., where President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a program called Operation Warp Speed to accelerate vaccine research and development. Xi has promised to share any successful vaccine globally, and the Chinese president would wield immense geopolitical clout if his country produces one of the world’s first working shots.
The Chinese efforts were on show late Friday, when an early-stage study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, showed that an experimental vaccine from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. was safe and generated an immune response. It’s too early to predict the product’s eventual success, and investors beat down CanSino’s stock amid concerns it could have shortcomings.
https://indianexpress.com/article/coronavirus/china-covid-vaccine-xi-jinping-6429222/
5/26/20
China Nears Goal of Coronavirus screening and testing of 11 Million Wuhan citizens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/world/asia/coronavirus-wuhan-tests.html
5/26/20
WHO warns of ‘immediate second peak’ if countries reopen too soon. Global cases near 5.5 million
“Right now, we’re not in the second wave,” Dr. Mike Ryan, a WHO executive director, said Monday. “We’re right in the middle of the first wave globally.
“We’re still very much in a phase where the disease is actually on the way up,” he told reporters, pointing to South America, South Asia and other areas seeing burgeoning numbers of infections.
5/27/20
Brazil leads world in daily number of coronavirus deaths.
5/27/20
Yale professor of epidemiology Harvey S. Risch publishes article in the American Journal of Epidemiology: "Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis".
Dr. Risch refers to five clinical trials, including two controlled trials, which showed “significant major out-patient efficacy” of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromyxin (HCQ+AZT). He concluded that theoretical fears of cardiac events were not borne out in real-world usage and were vastly overshadowed by lives saved.
[But, see 6/2/20 "Hydroxychloroquine Misinformation Can Be Deadly: Let Patients Decide".
https://aapsonline.org/hydroxychloroquine-misinformation-can-be-deadly-let-patients-decide/]
5/27/20
Yale professor of epidemiology Harvey S. Risch publishes article in the American Journal of Epidemiology: "Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis".
Dr. Risch refers to five clinical trials, including two controlled trials, which showed “significant major out-patient efficacy” of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromyxin (HCQ+AZT). He concluded that theoretical fears of cardiac events were not borne out in real-world usage and were vastly overshadowed by lives saved.
[But, see 6/2/20 "Hydroxychloroquine Misinformation Can Be Deadly: Let Patients Decide".
https://aapsonline.org/hydroxychloroquine-misinformation-can-be-deadly-let-patients-decide/]
5/27/20
France revokes the authorization allowing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 patients, a day after halting the use of the malaria drug in clinical trials. Both steps come on the back of moves by the World Health Organization to temporarily remove the drug from global trials over safety concerns.
5/28/20
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have developed an experimental test that could detect the coronavirus in someone as early as their first day of infection.
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2020/UM-School-of-Medicine-Researchers-Develop-Experimental-Rapid-COVID-19-Test-Using-Innovative-Nanoparticle-Technique.html
5/28/20
Wastewater testing gains traction as a Covid-19 early warning system.
The U.S. is waiting for a lab-to-lab comparison before rolling out a uniform nationwide sewage testing regimen, but Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands have already launched national programs of their own. This all may prove key as states move to reopen, as wastewater could show if COVID-19 is spiking again before patients start to arrive in hospitals.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20051540v1
5/28/20
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have developed an experimental test that could detect the coronavirus in someone as early as their first day of infection.
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2020/UM-School-of-Medicine-Researchers-Develop-Experimental-Rapid-COVID-19-Test-Using-Innovative-Nanoparticle-Technique.html
5/28/20
Wastewater testing gains traction as a Covid-19 early warning system.
The U.S. is waiting for a lab-to-lab comparison before rolling out a uniform nationwide sewage testing regimen, but Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands have already launched national programs of their own. This all may prove key as states move to reopen, as wastewater could show if COVID-19 is spiking again before patients start to arrive in hospitals.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20051540v1
5/28/20
Update on status of cases that are rising and where falling.
5/29/20
Scientists question validity of May 22 Lancet hydroxychloroquine study.
5/29/20
CDC recommends workplace changes: employees should get a temperature and symptom check; inside the office, desks should be six feet apart; if that isn’t possible, employers should consider erecting plastic shields around them; seating should be barred in common areas; and face coverings should be worn at all times.
6/1/20
Eli Lilly and Company starts human testing in trials for a COVID-19 antibody treatment with drug derived from blood of survivor.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eli-lilly-begins-testing-covid-19-drug-derived-from-blood-of-survivor-11591007400
6/1/20
Global study affirms masks significantly reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The risk of transmitting the virus without a mask or respirator is 17.4 percent, but with a mask that falls to just 3.1 percent. Keeping a distance of less than 1 meter (3.3 feet) and no other protective measure carried a transmission risk of 12.8 percent, cut to 2.6 percent when the distance was more than 1 meter and even lower at 2 meters (6.6. feet). There was also a sharp cut in risk with eye protection.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext
6/1/20
Eli Lilly and Company starts human testing in trials for a COVID-19 antibody treatment with drug derived from blood of survivor.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eli-lilly-begins-testing-covid-19-drug-derived-from-blood-of-survivor-11591007400
6/1/20
Global study affirms masks significantly reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The risk of transmitting the virus without a mask or respirator is 17.4 percent, but with a mask that falls to just 3.1 percent. Keeping a distance of less than 1 meter (3.3 feet) and no other protective measure carried a transmission risk of 12.8 percent, cut to 2.6 percent when the distance was more than 1 meter and even lower at 2 meters (6.6. feet). There was also a sharp cut in risk with eye protection.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext
6/1/20
Russia has approved an anti-influenza drug, Aviifavir, to treat Covid-19 and will start delivering it to hospitals this month,
6/3/20
Hydroxychloroquine does not prevent healthy people exposed to someone with covid-19 from getting the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study is the first randomized clinical trial that tested the antimalarial drug as a preventive measure, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School who conducted the trial. It showed that hydroxychloroquine was no more effective than a placebo — in this case, a vitamin — in protecting people exposed to covid-19.
Hydroxychloroquine does not prevent healthy people exposed to someone with covid-19 from getting the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study is the first randomized clinical trial that tested the antimalarial drug as a preventive measure, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School who conducted the trial. It showed that hydroxychloroquine was no more effective than a placebo — in this case, a vitamin — in protecting people exposed to covid-19.
6/5/20
Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine does not save lives one of the world's largest trials shows. The drug has been pulled from the UK's Recovery trial, which is run by the University of Oxford.
Due to mounting controversy about the drug, the UK's drugs regulator last night asked the Oxford researchers to review their data.
The results showed 25.7% of people taking hydroxychloroquine had died after 28 days. This compared with 23.5% who were given standard hospital treatment. "This is not a treatment for Covid," said Prof. Martin Landray, part of the Recovery trial. The trial immediately stopped using the drug.
6/5/20
Trump claims US has 2 million coronavirus vaccine doses ‘ready to go’(...once scientists figure out whether it is safe and effective).
“We’re doing incredibly well” on vaccines, adding, “I think you’re going to have some very positive surprises and therapeutics likewise we’re doing extremely well. Cures, we’re doing well.”
6/8/20
14 states and Puerto Rico hit highest seven-day average of new coronavirus infections.
6/9/20
Fauci: 'Nightmare' coronavirus pandemic is far from over.
The bleak outlook from Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, comes as the US continues to slowly reopen from lockdown while grappling with massive protests in cities over the police killing of George Floyd.
“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Fauci said during a virtual appearance at a conference held by Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”
6/9/20
The W.H.O. walks back an earlier assertion that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare.’
6/10/20
Second US Virus Wave Emerges as Cases Top 2 Million.
"The surge numbers are real," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness, who is a public health analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
He said more testing will inevitably capture more positive tests, "but to deny the fact that we're having an ongoing pandemic with continued spread is contrary to all evidence that we have and everything that we know about the behavior of the virus."
6/11/20
US Passes 2 Million Coronavirus Cases.
6/15/20
Food and Drug Administration revokes its emergency use authorizations for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.
6/15/20
Trump suggests that not testing for the coronavirus could be one way of reducing reported cases. Vice President Pence supports the president’s statement, saying the number of cases "has flattened".
“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”
6/15/20
Calling Dr. Fauci part of the "Medical Deep State", Laura Ingraham advises the president to ignore the “alarmist COVID drivel” and get on with his campaign rallies.
6/16/20
Dexamethasone, a common steroid that has been used for decades to treat conditions from altitude sickness to eye infections has been shown to reduce deaths by a third in the sickest hospitalized COVID-19 patients, researchers at the University of Oxford say.
"The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment," Dr. Peter Horby, a professor at the University of Oxford, said. The drug “is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide."
6/16/20
Coronavirus Cases Surge In Alabama, South Carolina And Oklahoma.
New cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled in Alabama and South Carolina in the second week of June compared to the prior seven days, a Reuters analysis found, as 17 U.S. states reported weekly increases in the spread of the novel coronavirus.
6/16/20
Coronavirus cases reach more than 8 million worldwide as outbreak expands in Latin America.
6/16/29
Coronavirus model once used by White House now predicts 200,000 U.S. deaths by October
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-white-house-model-prediction-200000-deaths-october/
[6/16/20 DEATH TOLL 119,132]
6/17/20
Trump says coronavirus is "dying out".
"No, because if you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It's dying out. By the way, we're doing very well in vaccines and therapeutics."
https://www.fullcourtgreta.com/2020/06/17/trump-talks-police-reform-coronavirus-election-one-on-one-interview/
Trump calls coronavirus testing "overrated," says it "makes us look bad".
On the issue of face masks:
"They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth. And then they don’t know how they caught it?"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-talks-juneteenth-john-bolton-economy-in-wsj-interview-11592493771
https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-of-president-trumps-interview-with-the-wall-street-journal-11592501000
https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-testing-overrated-cf847872-20d0-48b1-95dd-34af301642c0.html
[6/17/20 DEATH TOLL 119,941]
Florida sets new one-day high with 3,207 new COVID-19 cases.
https://weartv.com/news/local/florida-sets-new-one-day-high-with-3207-new-covid-19-cases
6/18/20
US stockpile stuck with 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine.
"Nationally, we put a great emphasis on one drug, hydroxychloroquine," said David Holtgrave, the dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, who co-authored a study of the drug as a treatment for coronavirus. "I worry that history will judge this as having over-invested in one treatment pathway as opposed to looking more broadly at a larger number of treatment candidates."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/health/hydroxychloroquine-national-stockpile/index.html
[6/20/20 Trump Rally in Tulsa]
6/20/20
Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence dismiss surges of the virus in some states by claiming that increased testing accounts for surges of the virus. At the Tulsa rally, he called testing “a double edged sword,” adding that the US has tested 25 million people.
“Here’s the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more cases.”
“A young man, 10 years old who’s “got the sniffles, he’s gonna recover in about 15 minutes. That’s a case!”
“I said to my people ‘slow the testing down please.'”
“When you have all those tests, you have more cases...We want to do testing. We want to do everything, but they use it to make us look bad.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/06/20/trump-claims-he-instructed-his-team-to-slow-down-coronavirus-testing/#3cca6b7a6a93
[6/20/20 DEATH TOLL 123,817]
[6/23/20 TRUMP RALLY IN PHOENIX]
6/23/20
Trump addresses a crowd of students in Phoenix, claims the virus isn't really a serious threat to the public and rising infection surge rates are simply due to increased testing.
"It's going away."
"Our people are stronger. And our people are smarter. And we are the elite. We are the elite."
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/23/881641178/after-disappointing-tulsa-rally-trump-campaign-moves-to-arizona
6/23/20
Coronavirus task force produces internal document showing surges in ten metropolitcan areas, including Phoenix.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-says-coronavirus-going-away-his-own-task-force-disagrees-n1232061
6/23/20
EU considers blocking US tourists.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/eu-considering-blocking-us-tourists-over-botched-covid-19-containment-us-media/
6/23/20
Trump says he wasn't kidding when he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing, contradicting staff.
"I don't kid."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html
[6/23/20 DEATH TOLL 125,319]
6/24/20
US Breaks Single-Day Record of Coronavirus Cases seeing a record number of new coronavirus cases in a single day, with 45,557 diagnoses reported.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hits-highest-single-day-coronavirus-cases-36-358-n1232065
6/24/20
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut impose 14-day quarantine on travelers from coronavirus hot-spot states.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/new-york-new-jersey-and-connecticut-impose-14-day-quarantine-on-travelers-from-coronavirus-hotspot-states.html
6/24/20
The federal government is ending its support for 13 community-based drive-thru coronavirus testing sites on June 30, urging states to take over their operations.
“We are not withdrawing federal support” for coronavirus testing, the Trump administration’s testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, told reporters. “We are providing federal support in a different way. We are going to increase testing, both in the number and the quality, and in the targeting on social media.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/coronavirus-federal-government-to-end-funding-some-covid-19-test-sites.html
6/24/20
WHO Warns of Oxygen Concentrator Shortage.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-milestone/who-warns-of-oxygen-shortage-as-covid-cases-set-to-top-10-million-idUSKBN23V2FG
6/24/20
U.S. hits highest single day of new coronavirus cases with more than 45,500.
Cases top the previous highest daily count from April 26 — during the first peak of the pandemic in the U.S. — by more than 9,000 cases
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hits-highest-single-day-coronavirus-cases-36-358-n1232065
6/24/20
University of Washington computer model of the outbreak projects nearly 180,000 deaths by October 1.
https://apnews.com/32cb14de009bfff91bc76a967323c621
6/24/20
Second wave of infections is traced to a wholesale market in Beijing.
Beijing’s 55-day stretch without any locally transmitted Covid-19 cases comes to a halt. Authorities confirm there were 256 local cases between June 11 and June 23. The virus is reported to have spread from the city to four other provinces in mainland China.
https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/3090290/beijing-coronavirus-outbreak/index.html
6/24/20
COVID-19 Cases Approach 10 Million Worldwide.
[6/24/20 DEATH TOLL 126,131]
6/25/20
Texas pauses reopenings amid COVID-19 surge.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/504518-texas-pauses-reopenings-amid-covid-19-spike
6/25/20
CDC chief says coronavirus cases may be 10 times higher than reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/25/coronavirus-cases-10-times-larger/
[6/25/20 DEATH TOLL 126,780]
6/26/20
Florida reports 8,942 new covid-19 cases, blowing past its single-day high of 5,511 set on Wednesday. It is the 19th day in a row the state has hit a new average high. Average cases are now up about 77 percent from a week ago, and 526 percent since Memorial Day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/26/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
6/26/20
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott orders all bars shut down and puts strict limits on restaurant dining one day after he hit the pause button on Texas’ plans to reopen and as the number of new cases continue to soar.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-close-bars-limit-restaurant-dining-due-explosion-covid-19-n1232233
[6/26/20 DEATH TOLL 128,195]
[6/27/20 DEATH TOLL surpasses 1/2 million worldwide]
[6/27/20 DEATH TOLL 128,707]
6/30/20
Economists: National mask mandate could save 5 percent of GDP. The Goldman Sachs report notes the United States is a global outlier with respect to face mask use, which is widespread in Asia and currently mandated in many European countries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/30/mask-mandate-gdp-economy-goldman-sachs/
6/30/20
Fauci warns Congress that new US coronavirus cases could rise to 100,000 a day.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/fauci-redford-testimony-senate-coronavirus/index.html
6/30/20
European Union bars travelers from the U.S as it reopens its borders, citing America's growing coronavirus outbreak.
A European briefing last week noted that the U.S. had seen 107 cases per 100,000 people in the previous 14 days, whereas the average across the E.U. was 16 cases per 100,000 people.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/european-union-bars-travelers-u-s-citing-coronavirus-concerns-n1232333
6/30/20
WHO to send second team into China to seek coronavirus source.
As number of cases tops 10 million and WHO warns that the pandemic is far from over, an investigative team will go to China next week
Experts are skeptical that an inquiry more than six months after first outbreak can find definitive answers about the origin of the virus.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3091195/who-send-second-team-china-seek-source-new-coronavirus
6/30/20
FDA to require covid-19 vaccine to prevent disease in 50 percent of recipients to win approval.
The standards apply to full approvals. But the agency didn’t rule out temporary approvals, called emergency use authorizations, which typically are based on less stringent requirements.
The 50 percent requirement for approval of a covid-19 vaccine got mixed reviews. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that the 50 percent figure was “a realistic goal but not a very high bar.” He said it probably reflected the FDA’s realization that the first vaccines likely to emerge “will be, at best, partially effective.”
Stephen Ostroff, former acting FDA commissioner, said he thought the 50 percent figure was too high. “A vaccine that has efficacy of less than 50 percent may still be very beneficial for people at high risk of developing the disease.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/30/coronavirus-vaccine-approval-fda/
[6/30/20 DEATH TOLL 130,122]
7/1/20
Pfizer publishes encouraging early covid-19 vaccine data: Phase 1/2 Study to Describe the Safety and Immunogenicity of a COVID-19 RNA Vaccine Candidate (BNT162b1) in Adults 18 to 55 Years of Age: Interim Report
An experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech triggered stronger immune responses in recipients than those seen in people recovering from a natural infection in a small study published online Wednesday.
The work has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it is still unclear what level of immune response will protect a person from getting sick. But outside scientists praised the company for publishing the data on 45 patients and said the results support moving to a larger clinical trial that can test whether the vaccine is safe and effective.
“It’s the first positive data I’ve seen coming out of Operation Warp Speed,” said Peter Jay Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I’m really happy Pfizer took the initiative to publish it, whereas the others haven’t. I think we need to see more of this.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.20142570v1.full.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/pfizer-reports-encouraging-early-covid-19-vaccine-data/
7/1/20
US records 52,770 cases, the first time it has surpassed 50,000 new daily cases and the fifth this week where records were surpassed.
https://news.law/us-coronavirus-cases-top-50000-in-single-day/
7/1/20
Yale study shows death toll "Substantial Undercount".
https://news.law/covid-19-death-toll-is-a-substantial-undercount-yale-study-shows/
7/1/20
Researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans have recently shown that a synthetic antibody could neutralize SARS-CoV-2. This could help prevent infection as well as treat COVID-19.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/synthetic-antibody-could-prevent-and-treat-covid-19
7/1/20
Trump says he's 'all for masks,' but believes coronavirus will "disappear".
"Actually, I had a mask on. I sort of liked the way I looked. It was OK. It was a dark, black mask and I thought it think and if people feel good about it they should do it."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-masks-coronavirus/index.html
[7/1/20 DEATH TOLL 130,798]
7/2/20
Trump toutsUS testing record.
“There is a rise in Coronavirus cases because our testing is so massive and so good, far bigger and better than any other country. This is great news, but even better news is that death, and the death rate, is down.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278897430378041344
7/2/20
Coronavirus testing czar: "We are not flattening the curve right now"
“There is no question that the more testing you get, the more you will uncover, but we do believe this is a real increase in cases because of the percent positivities are going up. So this is real increases in cases,” Adm. Brett Giroir, the Department of Health and Human Services official overseeing the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts, told Congress.
https://www.axios.com/brett-giroir-coronavirus-testing-curve-f7e7a2c7-808a-4c03-8418-82f6232c4865.html
7/2/20
A Henry Ford Health System report published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, a peer-reviewed, open-access online publication of the International Society of Infectious Diseases shows that treatment with Hydroxychloroquine cut death rate significantly in COVID-19 patients.
In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities; however, patients were monitored for a heart condition routinely pointed to as a reason to avoid the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
[7/2/20 DEATH TOLL 131,448]
7/3/20
White House repeatedly denied the CDC permission to brief the public on the coronavirus, report says.
https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-denied-permission-to-brief-public-about-coronavirus-yahoo-2020-7
7/3/20
White House readies new message for the nation on coronavirus; "We need to live with it".
Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic, after struggling to offer clear directives amid a crippling surge in cases across the country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/we-need-live-it-white-house-readies-new-message-nation-n1232884
7/4/20
Trump claims that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless".
“We have tested over 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have — not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.”
https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-fourth-of-july-independence-day-july-4-2020
[7/4/20 DEATH TOLL 132,339]
7/6/20
Trump gives notice of U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization. Withdrawal requires a year's notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506214-trump-administration-formally-withdraws-us-from-WHO-
7/6/20
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) launches portable, Rapid Point-of-Care Antigen Test. FDA grants Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for a rapid, point-of-care, SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test for use with its broadly available BD Veritor™ Plus System.
The launch of this new assay that delivers results in 15 minutes on an easy-to-use, highly portable instrument is critical for improving access to COVID-19 diagnostics because it enables real-time results and decision making while the patient is still onsite.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bd-launches-portable-rapid-point-of-care-antigen-test-to-detect-sars-cov-2-in-15-minutes-dramatically-expanding-access-to-covid-19-testing-301088216.html
7/6/20
Tweet: Trump touts Henry Ford Health System report. Sets off tweet war.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280328830218051584?s=20
[but, see "A flawed Covid-19 study gets the White House’s attention — and the FDA may pay the price"]
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-gets-the-white-houses-attention-and-the-fda-may-pay-the-price/
7/6/20
EPA approves first surface disinfectant products (Lysol) tested on the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-approves-first-surface-disinfectant-products-tested-sars-cov-2-virus
[7/6/20 DEATH TOLL 132,979]
7/7/20
US to Pay Novavax $1.6B for COVID-19 vaccine to expedite the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/u-s-paying-novavax-1-6b-to-ramp-up-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturing/
7/7/20
LabCorp launches at-home COVID-19 testing service to screen patients for COVID-19 infections before they proceed with surgeries and other important medical treatments.
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/07/07/labcorp-launches-new-at-home-covid-19-test/
7/7/20
Brazil’s Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus.
7/7/20
US Records 3 Millionth Coronavirus Case.
There were 3,000,012 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 11 p.m.Tuesday and around 10 percent of those (317,654) were reported since July 1, figures compiled by NBC News showed.
Meanwhile, the death toll was 131,661 and rising as the pandemic maintained a tragic trajectory.
President Donald Trump, who just a week ago was saying the coronavirus would “just disappear,” insisted in a tweet that COVID-19 deaths rates were down 39 percent and that the U.S. had the lowest death rate “in the world.”
Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina lead the world in new cases over the last seven days
https://news.law/us-records-3-millionth-coronavirus-case
[7/7/20 DEATH TOLL 133,972]
7/8/20
A comparison of the observed case-fatality rate of the 20 countries most affected by covid-19, calculates that the United States ranked seventh worst, with 4.4 percent. The United States ranks second-worst in terms of deaths per 100,000 people.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
7/8/20
Trump trashes CDC school reopening guidelines.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/politics/trump-cdc-school-guidelines-funding/index.html
7/8/20
CDC will issue new guidance on school openings, Pence says, after criticism from Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-officials-downplay-guidance-from-health-experts-as-they-push-to-reopen-schools/2020/07/08/236a6c5e-c13b-11ea-b178-bb7b05b94af1_story.html
7/8/20
Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain (ENE-COVID): a nationwide, population-based seroepidemiological study published in Lancet casts doubt on COVID-19 herd immunity after patient antibodies disappear. Immunity to the virus might not be long-lasting in people who develop only mild or no symptoms.
"Immunity can be incomplete, it can be transitory, it can last for just a short time and then disappear."
https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-in-some-cases-antibodies-can-disappear-after-mere-weeks
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31483-5/fulltext
[7/8/20 DEATH TOLL 134,862]
7/9/20
Florida Emerges As Global COVID-19 Epicenter. Florida reported nearly 10,000 new cases. There are nearly 220,500 positive cases statewide, and the test positivity rate has been above 14 percent for more than a week.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/506492-florida-emerges-as-worlds-new-epicenter-for-covid-19
7/9/20
CDC Redfield says CDC will not revise its guidelines for reopening schools despite calls from President Donald Trump and the White House to do so.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/politics/cdc-guidelines-school-reopenings/index.html
7/9/20
WHO expands coronavirus guidance on "aerosols" to include the possibility in certain circumstances of airborne transmission, in which the virus could be spread through tiny droplets that linger in the air.
The update came after more than 200 scientists signed an open letter pressing the agency this week to acknowledge the risk of airborne transmission among people in crowded, indoor settings for prolonged periods of time.
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-how-is-covid-19-transmitted
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/what-airborne-transmission-who-adds-guidance-aerosols-coronavirus-spread-n1233383
7/10/20
Federal Disaster Medical Teams Deployed As Texas Coronavirus Cases Surge.
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-disaster-medical-teams-deployed-texas-coronavirus-cases-surge-1516892
[7/10/20 DEATH TOLL 136,671]
7/11/20
Arizona’s Maricopa County medical examiner’s office hits 97 percent of capacity; state calls in refrigerated trucks to store fatalities. Arizona reports 4,221 new coronavirus cases and 44 more deaths.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/506855-arizona-county-requests-refrigerated-trucks-as-morgues-hit-97-capacity
[7/11/20 DEATH TOLL 137,402]
7/12/20
Florida shatters single-day infection record with 15,300 new cases.
Deaths trended upward over the weekend in a majority of states, including many beyond the hard-hit Sun Belt. Five states — Arizona, California, Florida, Mississippi and Texas — broke records for average daily fatalities in that period. At least 3.3 million cases and more than 132,000 (135,176) deaths have been reported in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/13/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
7/12/20
White House attacks Fauci.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/507027-white-house-goes-public-with-attacks-on-fauci
7/12/20
WHO announces another one day record number of cases, with more than 230,000 cases reported globally.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-coronavirus-updates-covid-19-cases-surge-20200712-sm55firkpfa3zphvpggkc5odcu-story.html
[7/12/20 DEATH TOLL 137,782]
7/13/20
Gov. Gavin Newsom orders every county in California to halt indoor dining and bars; shuts down churches, gyms and hair salons for 80 percent of the population.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Newsom-orders-all-California-counties-to-close-15405030.php
7/13/20
WHO sounds alarm as coronavirus cases rise by 1 million in five days;
Global infections hit 13 million, with more than 570,000 dead
World Health Organisation chief warns there will be no return to normal for foreseeable future:
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” he told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva. If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go, it is going to get worse and worse and worse. But it does not have to be this way.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3093033/who-sounds-alarm-coronavirus-cases-rise-1-million-five-days
7/13/20
China confirms WHO advance team is in Beijing to pave way for an origins search; aimed at reassuring domestic audience about source of the pathogen.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3093007/coronavirus-china-confirms-who-advance-team-beijing-pave-way
7/13/20
Florida adds 132 deaths, highest fatality toll, as coronavirus cases surpass 290,600. Oklahoma adds 993 cases, a single-day record for the state, and three states break their records for the most deaths in a single day: Florida (132), Utah (10) and Alabama (40).
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article244212102.html
7/13/20
Trump retweets post accusing the CDC of lying about the coronavirus to prevent his reelection.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-retweet-post-says-cdc-lying-about-virus-election-2020-7
[7/13/20 DEATH TOLL 138,247]
7/14/20
Biotech company Moderna announces that 45 participants from its phase I clinical vaccine trial developed antibodies key to fighting the virus at levels up to four times the amount found in patients who got sick and then recovered from the virus.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-vaccine-moderna-begin-final-human-trial-end-july-n1233788
7/14/20
Four former directors of the CDC accuse the president of undermining the agency with “partisan potshots”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/14/cdc-directors-trump-politics/
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/13/cdc-apolitical-island-defenseless/
7/14/20
CDC director: U.S. could get coronavirus "under control" in 4–8 weeks if all wear masks. CDC publishes two reports that studied how wearing face coverings can reduce COVID-19 spread for businesses.
https://www.axios.com/cdc-director-masking-coronavirus-dba00f19-4167-43a0-b021-9a9e66974517.html
7/14/20
It’s not just Florida, Arizona, Texas and California anymore. States including Oklahoma and Nevada are reporting record numbers of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. More than 62,000 new infections were reported nationwide, pushing the total count since the pandemic began past 3.41 million.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/15/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
7/14/20
Report claims federal stockpile of PPE is thin amid coronavirus surge.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/federal-stockpile-thin-amid-coronavirus-surge-documents-show-n1233791
7/14/20
An unpublicized White House Coronavirus Task Force report suggests that more than a dozen states should revert to more stringent protective measures, limiting social gatherings to 10 people or fewer, closing bars and gyms and asking residents to wear masks at all times. Eighteen states are in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week. Eleven states are in the “red zone” for test positivity, meaning more than 10 percent of diagnostic test results came back positive.
https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/exclusive-white-house-document-shows-18-states-in-coronavirus-red-zone-covid-19/
7/14/20
Administration orders hospitals to bypass the CDC and send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/coronavirus-update.html
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdf
[7/14/20 DEATH TOLL 139,153]
7/16/20
Harvard Global Health Institute researchers contradict the CDC head who earlier had suggested a spike in COVID-19 cases in Southern states was caused by people driving there from Northern states to vacation.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvard-researchers-dispute-cdc-heads-claim-that-covid-19-case-spike-in-south-is-due-to-northern-vacationers-2020-07-16
7/16/20
US shatters record for new coronavirus infections as India’s Caseload Hits a Million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/coronavirus-updates.html
7/16/20
Administration backtracks on Fauci attacks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-retreats-from-war-with-anthony-fauci-2020-7
7/16/20
Another study questions efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4207
7/16/20
Previously public data disappears from the CDC website.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/us-coronavirus-data-has-already-disappeared-after-trump-administration-shifted-control-from-cdc-to-hhs.html
7/16/20
Florida’s emergency operations center closes after 12 employees test positive for COVID-19
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/07/16/floridas-emergency-operations-center-closes-after-12-employees-test-positive-for-covid-19/
[7/16/20 DEATH TOLL 141,118]
The findings in "Reopening Primary Schools during the Pandemic", published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are inconclusive regarding whether children pose less of a Covid-19-transmission risk, but evidence from abroad indicates that in countries with low case rates, and where social-distancing precautions are taken, school reopenings have been safe for their communities.
“Covid-19 outbreaks in high schools in France, Israel, and New Zealand did not extend to nearby elementary schools, which suggests that susceptibility, infectiousness, or both are lower among younger children.”
"....the fundamental argument that children, families, educators, and society deserve to have safe and reliable primary schools should not be controversial. If we all agree on that principle, then it is inexcusable to open nonessential services for adults this summer if it forces students to remain at home even part-time this fall."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2024920
It’s not just Florida, Arizona, Texas and California anymore. States including Oklahoma and Nevada are reporting record numbers of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. More than 62,000 new infections were reported nationwide, pushing the total count since the pandemic began past 3.41 million.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/15/coronavirus-live-updates-us/
7/14/20
Report claims federal stockpile of PPE is thin amid coronavirus surge.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/federal-stockpile-thin-amid-coronavirus-surge-documents-show-n1233791
7/14/20
An unpublicized White House Coronavirus Task Force report suggests that more than a dozen states should revert to more stringent protective measures, limiting social gatherings to 10 people or fewer, closing bars and gyms and asking residents to wear masks at all times. Eighteen states are in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week. Eleven states are in the “red zone” for test positivity, meaning more than 10 percent of diagnostic test results came back positive.
https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/exclusive-white-house-document-shows-18-states-in-coronavirus-red-zone-covid-19/
7/14/20
Administration orders hospitals to bypass the CDC and send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/coronavirus-update.html
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdf
[7/14/20 DEATH TOLL 139,153]
7/16/20
Harvard Global Health Institute researchers contradict the CDC head who earlier had suggested a spike in COVID-19 cases in Southern states was caused by people driving there from Northern states to vacation.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvard-researchers-dispute-cdc-heads-claim-that-covid-19-case-spike-in-south-is-due-to-northern-vacationers-2020-07-16
7/16/20
US shatters record for new coronavirus infections as India’s Caseload Hits a Million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/coronavirus-updates.html
7/16/20
Administration backtracks on Fauci attacks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-retreats-from-war-with-anthony-fauci-2020-7
7/16/20
Another study questions efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4207
7/16/20
Previously public data disappears from the CDC website.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/us-coronavirus-data-has-already-disappeared-after-trump-administration-shifted-control-from-cdc-to-hhs.html
7/16/20
Florida’s emergency operations center closes after 12 employees test positive for COVID-19
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/07/16/floridas-emergency-operations-center-closes-after-12-employees-test-positive-for-covid-19/
[7/16/20 DEATH TOLL 141,118]
7/18/20
Trump convenes virtual rallies targeted at supporters in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan and North Carolina across three days, speaking over the phone for roughly 25 minutes in each case. The events were broadcast live on Facebook
7/20/20
Early trial results for the two vaccine candidates — one developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca and the other by the Chinese company CanSino Biologics — show that both were safe and could induce immune responses in participants. But the next phase will be critical to demonstrate that the potential vaccines can protect against infections.
"Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2: a preliminary report of a phase 1/2, single-blind, randomised controlled trial" a study published in Lancet reports that a University of Oxford group and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine candidate was shown in early-stage human trials to be safe and to stimulate a strong immune response.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/vaccine-trials-show-early-promising-results-major-challenges-are-ahead-n1234414
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-phase-1-lancet/2020/07/20/12fbbc92-c857-11ea-a825-8722004e4150_story.html
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31604-4/fulltext
7/20/20
Trump resumes delivering COVID-19 briefings at the White House.
7/21/20
Sweden's top epidemiologist says a rapid decline in new critical COVID-19 cases alongside slowing death rates indicated that Sweden's herd immunity strategy for slowing the epidemic, which has been widely questioned abroad, was working.
https://news.yahoo.com/swedish-epidemiology-boss-says-questioned-151219838.html
7/21/20
CDC study shows COVID-19 cases may be 10 times higher than reported.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/cdc-study-covid-19-cases-may-be-10-times-higher-than-reported-214522682.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-cases-usa-cdc-report-death-toll-today-trump-covid-a9630916.html
7/21/20
In Reversal, Trump Urges Mask Use, Warns Coronavirus Pandemic Will Get Worse
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/21/893230477/watch-live-trump-holds-press-briefing-after-hiatus
7/21/20
Donald Trump defends his handling of COVID-19 and the presidency.
"I'll be right eventually."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/19/ill-right-eventually-donald-trump-defends-his-covid-19-response/5467596002/
Trump convenes virtual rallies targeted at supporters in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan and North Carolina across three days, speaking over the phone for roughly 25 minutes in each case. The events were broadcast live on Facebook
7/20/20
Early trial results for the two vaccine candidates — one developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca and the other by the Chinese company CanSino Biologics — show that both were safe and could induce immune responses in participants. But the next phase will be critical to demonstrate that the potential vaccines can protect against infections.
"Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2: a preliminary report of a phase 1/2, single-blind, randomised controlled trial" a study published in Lancet reports that a University of Oxford group and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine candidate was shown in early-stage human trials to be safe and to stimulate a strong immune response.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/vaccine-trials-show-early-promising-results-major-challenges-are-ahead-n1234414
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-phase-1-lancet/2020/07/20/12fbbc92-c857-11ea-a825-8722004e4150_story.html
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31604-4/fulltext
7/20/20
Trump resumes delivering COVID-19 briefings at the White House.
7/21/20
Sweden's top epidemiologist says a rapid decline in new critical COVID-19 cases alongside slowing death rates indicated that Sweden's herd immunity strategy for slowing the epidemic, which has been widely questioned abroad, was working.
https://news.yahoo.com/swedish-epidemiology-boss-says-questioned-151219838.html
7/21/20
CDC study shows COVID-19 cases may be 10 times higher than reported.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/cdc-study-covid-19-cases-may-be-10-times-higher-than-reported-214522682.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-cases-usa-cdc-report-death-toll-today-trump-covid-a9630916.html
7/21/20
In Reversal, Trump Urges Mask Use, Warns Coronavirus Pandemic Will Get Worse
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/21/893230477/watch-live-trump-holds-press-briefing-after-hiatus
7/21/20
Donald Trump defends his handling of COVID-19 and the presidency.
"I'll be right eventually."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/19/ill-right-eventually-donald-trump-defends-his-covid-19-response/5467596002/
7/21/20
Trump tells Woodward “The virus has nothing to do with me…. It's not my fault. It's — China let the damn virus out."
7/22/20
White House Coronavirus Task Force warns state and local leaders that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take “aggressive” steps to mitigate their outbreaks. The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/warning-from-birx-11-cities-must-take-coronavirus-aggressive-efforts/
7/22/20
U.S. government reaches $1.95 billion deal with Pfizer, BioNTech to distribute millions of doses of potential coronavirus vaccine. The biotechnical companies plan to distribute a jointly produced vaccine for the novel coronavirus starting in December, once Pfizer manufactures it and the Food and Drug Administration approves it.
https://news.law/us-announces-2b-contract-for-covid-19-vaccines/
7/22/20
CDC Updates COVID-19 Isolation Guidelines to 10 Days
https://news.law/cdc-updates-covid-19-isolation-guidelines-to-10-days/
7/22/20
Study Shows School-Aged Children Are Most Likely to Spread Coronavirus
https://news.law/study-shows-school-aged-children-are-most-likely-to-spread-coronavirus/
7/23/20
CDC unveiled new guidelines for schools planning to reopen this fall as well as for people who have mild to moderate COVID-19. They now need to isolate for only 10 days after their symptoms begin.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/07/23/cdc-covid-19-guidelines-schools-wash-hands-wear-masks-dont-touch/5498641002/
7/23/20
"Hydroxychloroquine with or without Azithromycin in Mild-to-Moderate Covid-19" published in New England Journal of Medicine finds that "among patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, the use of hydroxychloroquine, alone or with azithromycin, did not improve clinical status at 15 days as compared with standard care".
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014
https://www.aol.com/article/lifestyle/2020/07/26/new-study-shows-limitations-risks-of-hydroxychloroquine-for-treating-covid-19/24572798/
7/24/20
Staffer for Florida congressman dies of COVID-19
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/staffer-florida-congressman-dies-covid-19/
7/24/20
US Coronavirus Cases Surpass 4 Million.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/23/united-states-coronavirus-cases-deaths-timeline/5485674002/
[7/24/20 Trump Cancels Plans for Republican National Convention in Jacksonville]
7/26/20
US tops 1,000 coronavirus deaths 4 days in a row as experts urge the country to shut down.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/26/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html
[7/26/20 Coronavirus cases top 16 million worldwide]
7/27/20
Moderna Therapeutics begins first phase 3 trials of a vaccine candidate. The study will include 30,000 people at 87 different sites across the country. Moderna partnered with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NAIAD, part of the National Institutes of Health, for its vaccine research.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/main-event-moderna-begins-final-phase-covid-19-vaccine-study-n1234979
7/27/20
Video with “America's Frontline Doctors”. Dr. Stella Immanuel, a primary care physician in Houston, declares that no one need fear the coronavirus that has so far killed more than 150,000 people in the United States and more than 650,000 worldwide. In addition to her comments, also in attendance was Dr. Simone Gold, who claims to head the group,an organization comprised of "some doctors" and others involved in the anti-vaccination movement. Dan Erickson, one of the two YouTube Bakersfield doctors, also spoke at the news conference.
"This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax."
See "Dark money and PAC's coordinated 'reopen' push are behind doctors' viral hydroxychloroquine video".
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/dark-money-pac-s-coordinated-reopen-push-are-behind-doctors-n1235100
https://www.newsweek.com/what-scientific-tests-reveal-about-dr-immanuels-hydroxychloroquine-claims-1521147
7/28/20
Trump doubles down on hydroxychloroquine.
“Many doctors think it is extremely successful, the hydroxychloroquine coupled with the zinc and perhaps the azithromycin,”
....though there is no evidence from at least five rigorous clinical trials that hydroxychloroquine has any impact in preventing the virus or treating mildly to severely ill cases.
Fauci, dismisses the President's medical advice: “The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating the] coronavirus disease.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/fauci-trump-ineffective-coronavirus-treatment-383809
7/28/20
Twitter penalizes Donald Trump Jr. for posting hydroxychloroquine misinformation amid coronavirus pandemic. It ordered the president’s son to delete the misleading tweet and said it would “limit some account functionality for 12 hours.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/28/trump-coronavirus-misinformation-twitter/
7/28/20
Europe scrambles to avoid a second coronavirus wave, as infections rise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/2020/07/28/8dd12632-d0d1-11ea-826b-cc394d824e35_story.html
7/29/20
Trump defends America's Frontline Doctors video.
https://www.today.com/video/trump-defends-debunked-video-doubles-down-on-hydroxychloroquine-88512069757
7/29/20
Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.axios.com/louis-gohmert-coronavirus-f34719b4-79da-4ae7-970d-1b3c73a80c16.html
7/29/20White House Coronavirus Task Force warns state and local leaders that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take “aggressive” steps to mitigate their outbreaks. The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/warning-from-birx-11-cities-must-take-coronavirus-aggressive-efforts/
7/22/20
U.S. government reaches $1.95 billion deal with Pfizer, BioNTech to distribute millions of doses of potential coronavirus vaccine. The biotechnical companies plan to distribute a jointly produced vaccine for the novel coronavirus starting in December, once Pfizer manufactures it and the Food and Drug Administration approves it.
https://news.law/us-announces-2b-contract-for-covid-19-vaccines/
7/22/20
CDC Updates COVID-19 Isolation Guidelines to 10 Days
https://news.law/cdc-updates-covid-19-isolation-guidelines-to-10-days/
7/22/20
Study Shows School-Aged Children Are Most Likely to Spread Coronavirus
https://news.law/study-shows-school-aged-children-are-most-likely-to-spread-coronavirus/
7/23/20
CDC unveiled new guidelines for schools planning to reopen this fall as well as for people who have mild to moderate COVID-19. They now need to isolate for only 10 days after their symptoms begin.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/07/23/cdc-covid-19-guidelines-schools-wash-hands-wear-masks-dont-touch/5498641002/
7/23/20
"Hydroxychloroquine with or without Azithromycin in Mild-to-Moderate Covid-19" published in New England Journal of Medicine finds that "among patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, the use of hydroxychloroquine, alone or with azithromycin, did not improve clinical status at 15 days as compared with standard care".
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014
https://www.aol.com/article/lifestyle/2020/07/26/new-study-shows-limitations-risks-of-hydroxychloroquine-for-treating-covid-19/24572798/
7/24/20
Staffer for Florida congressman dies of COVID-19
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/staffer-florida-congressman-dies-covid-19/
7/24/20
US Coronavirus Cases Surpass 4 Million.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/23/united-states-coronavirus-cases-deaths-timeline/5485674002/
[7/24/20 Trump Cancels Plans for Republican National Convention in Jacksonville]
7/26/20
US tops 1,000 coronavirus deaths 4 days in a row as experts urge the country to shut down.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/26/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html
[7/26/20 Coronavirus cases top 16 million worldwide]
7/27/20
Moderna Therapeutics begins first phase 3 trials of a vaccine candidate. The study will include 30,000 people at 87 different sites across the country. Moderna partnered with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NAIAD, part of the National Institutes of Health, for its vaccine research.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/main-event-moderna-begins-final-phase-covid-19-vaccine-study-n1234979
7/27/20
Video with “America's Frontline Doctors”. Dr. Stella Immanuel, a primary care physician in Houston, declares that no one need fear the coronavirus that has so far killed more than 150,000 people in the United States and more than 650,000 worldwide. In addition to her comments, also in attendance was Dr. Simone Gold, who claims to head the group,an organization comprised of "some doctors" and others involved in the anti-vaccination movement. Dan Erickson, one of the two YouTube Bakersfield doctors, also spoke at the news conference.
"This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax."
See "Dark money and PAC's coordinated 'reopen' push are behind doctors' viral hydroxychloroquine video".
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/dark-money-pac-s-coordinated-reopen-push-are-behind-doctors-n1235100
https://www.newsweek.com/what-scientific-tests-reveal-about-dr-immanuels-hydroxychloroquine-claims-1521147
7/28/20
Trump doubles down on hydroxychloroquine.
“Many doctors think it is extremely successful, the hydroxychloroquine coupled with the zinc and perhaps the azithromycin,”
....though there is no evidence from at least five rigorous clinical trials that hydroxychloroquine has any impact in preventing the virus or treating mildly to severely ill cases.
Fauci, dismisses the President's medical advice: “The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating the] coronavirus disease.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/fauci-trump-ineffective-coronavirus-treatment-383809
7/28/20
Twitter penalizes Donald Trump Jr. for posting hydroxychloroquine misinformation amid coronavirus pandemic. It ordered the president’s son to delete the misleading tweet and said it would “limit some account functionality for 12 hours.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/28/trump-coronavirus-misinformation-twitter/
7/28/20
Europe scrambles to avoid a second coronavirus wave, as infections rise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/2020/07/28/8dd12632-d0d1-11ea-826b-cc394d824e35_story.html
7/29/20
Trump defends America's Frontline Doctors video.
https://www.today.com/video/trump-defends-debunked-video-doubles-down-on-hydroxychloroquine-88512069757
7/29/20
Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert tests positive for coronavirus.
https://www.axios.com/louis-gohmert-coronavirus-f34719b4-79da-4ae7-970d-1b3c73a80c16.html
The findings in "Reopening Primary Schools during the Pandemic", published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are inconclusive regarding whether children pose less of a Covid-19-transmission risk, but evidence from abroad indicates that in countries with low case rates, and where social-distancing precautions are taken, school reopenings have been safe for their communities.
“Covid-19 outbreaks in high schools in France, Israel, and New Zealand did not extend to nearby elementary schools, which suggests that susceptibility, infectiousness, or both are lower among younger children.”
"....the fundamental argument that children, families, educators, and society deserve to have safe and reliable primary schools should not be controversial. If we all agree on that principle, then it is inexcusable to open nonessential services for adults this summer if it forces students to remain at home even part-time this fall."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2024920
7/29/20
Scott Gottlieb, former Trump FDA head says "We can definitively say hydroxychloroquine doesn't work".
7/30/20
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have said scientific evidence does not support claims that hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19, despite its touting by President Donald Trump.
"It's not productive or helpful for me to be making judgments on right or wrong but what I can say is what I've said all along, that the overwhelming body of data from trials that were well run, randomized placebo controlled trials, indicate that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in treating coronavirus disease."
https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-birx-say-hydroxychloroquine-has-no-benefit-against-covid-19-scientists-blast-study-touted-1521869
7/31/20
COVID-19 Hospital Data System That Bypasses CDC Plagued By Delays.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/31/897429054/covid-19-hospital-data-system-that-bypasses-cdc-plagued-by-delays-inaccuracies
7/31/20
Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH, Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC, and Admiral Brett Giroir of HHS testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on examining the urgent need for a national comprehensive plan to address the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/fauci-coronavirus-testimony-07-31-20/index.html
7/31/20
Cases are rising in Spain, Germany, France and Belgium leading to fears of a potential second wave rise across Europe. Madrid’s regional government imposes new restrictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/coronavirus-negligence-driving-increase-in-cases-german-agency
7/31/20
"SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Infection Among Attendees of an Overnight Camp — Georgia, June 2020", a report published by the CDC suggests that children of all ages are susceptible to coronavirus and likely spread it to others. [compare to 7/29/20 findings in "Reopening Primary Schools during the Pandemic"]
Centered on a virus outbreak that occurred last month in Georgia at a sleep away camp, of the 344 campers, who had a median age of 12, and staffers, with a median age of 17, who were tested for the virus, 260 tested positive for the virus —more than three-quarters. "The overall attack rate was 44% (260 of 597), 51% among those aged 6–10 years, 44% among those aged 11–17 years, and 33% among those aged 18–21 years," the CDC noted.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm
7/31/20
Researchers criticize the Henry Ford study as not meeting the standards set for medical research. One researcher set out the problems he saw for an assessment that the the flaws in the analysis made the conclusions reached invalid. In "Clarifying the record on hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID-19" University of Albany researchers also made observations critical of the Henry Ford study. Asked to comment on the efficacy of the study during his Congressional testimony, Dr. Fauci's comments mirrored those criticisms.
Faced with this barrage of detractors claiming heresy, Henry Ford issues a statement: "We've acknowledged the varying conclusions multiple studies have reached, along with the limitations of our retrospective [hydroxychloroquine] study as well as those of other published studies on the topic."
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have said scientific evidence does not support claims that hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19, despite its touting by President Donald Trump.
"It's not productive or helpful for me to be making judgments on right or wrong but what I can say is what I've said all along, that the overwhelming body of data from trials that were well run, randomized placebo controlled trials, indicate that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in treating coronavirus disease."
https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-birx-say-hydroxychloroquine-has-no-benefit-against-covid-19-scientists-blast-study-touted-1521869
7/31/20
COVID-19 Hospital Data System That Bypasses CDC Plagued By Delays.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/31/897429054/covid-19-hospital-data-system-that-bypasses-cdc-plagued-by-delays-inaccuracies
7/31/20
Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH, Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC, and Admiral Brett Giroir of HHS testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on examining the urgent need for a national comprehensive plan to address the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/fauci-coronavirus-testimony-07-31-20/index.html
7/31/20
Cases are rising in Spain, Germany, France and Belgium leading to fears of a potential second wave rise across Europe. Madrid’s regional government imposes new restrictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/coronavirus-negligence-driving-increase-in-cases-german-agency
7/31/20
"SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Infection Among Attendees of an Overnight Camp — Georgia, June 2020", a report published by the CDC suggests that children of all ages are susceptible to coronavirus and likely spread it to others. [compare to 7/29/20 findings in "Reopening Primary Schools during the Pandemic"]
Centered on a virus outbreak that occurred last month in Georgia at a sleep away camp, of the 344 campers, who had a median age of 12, and staffers, with a median age of 17, who were tested for the virus, 260 tested positive for the virus —more than three-quarters. "The overall attack rate was 44% (260 of 597), 51% among those aged 6–10 years, 44% among those aged 11–17 years, and 33% among those aged 18–21 years," the CDC noted.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm
7/31/20
Researchers criticize the Henry Ford study as not meeting the standards set for medical research. One researcher set out the problems he saw for an assessment that the the flaws in the analysis made the conclusions reached invalid. In "Clarifying the record on hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID-19" University of Albany researchers also made observations critical of the Henry Ford study. Asked to comment on the efficacy of the study during his Congressional testimony, Dr. Fauci's comments mirrored those criticisms.
Faced with this barrage of detractors claiming heresy, Henry Ford issues a statement: "We've acknowledged the varying conclusions multiple studies have reached, along with the limitations of our retrospective [hydroxychloroquine] study as well as those of other published studies on the topic."
8/1/20
White House coronavirus testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir says that he “can't recommend” hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.
He said that hydroxychloroquine “looked very promising” at first, but five studies have now found that the anti-malarial drug does not help COVID-19 patients.
“At this point in time, there's been five randomized-controlled, placebo-controlled trials that do not show any benefit to hydroxychloroquine, so at this point in time, we don't recommend that as a treatment.”
8/1/20
Holland's top scientists say there's no solid evidence face masks work and warn they could even damage the fight against Covid-19
8/3/20 (Filmed 7/28)
In an Axios interview Trump claims that the coronavirus in the United States is under control and that the rising death toll "is what it is".
Insisted on using case fatality rates as a metric as opposed to mortality (deaths per capita) rates.
"They are dying, that's true. And you have — it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague."
8/4/20
Yale faculty members, respond with "grave concern" to Dr. Risch's "ardent advocacy" promoting the assertion that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) when given with antibiotics is effective in treating COVID-19, in particular as an early therapeutic intervention for the disease.
While minority opinions, anecdotal evidence, novel interpretations and challenges to orthodoxies in a field can be important, at some point, the application of the scientific method generating evidence from multiple, well-designed clinical trials and observational studies does matter and should be heard over the noise of conspiracy theories, purported hoaxes, and the views of zealots.
8/4/20
Repeats his insistence that the case fatality rates are the guiding metric.
“I think, actually, the numbers are lower than others,....We, proportionately, are lower than almost all countries. We’re at the bottom of the list.”
The U.S. does have a relatively low case fatality rate of 3.3 percent, compared to countries like Canada (7.5 percent), the United Kingdom (15.1 percent), Italy (14.1 percent) and France (13.3 percent).
Among the 20 countries most affected by COVID-19 in the world, according to data compiled by Hopkins, the U.S. is 13th in terms of deaths per confirmed COVID-19 case.
“Case fatality is the chance of dying after you get a positive test. It reflects the amount of testing and access to effective medical care, not the speed at which Americans are dying of COVID,”
“Deaths per capita is a statistic that shows you a national snapshot about how widespread the severe cases are, how well are vulnerable populations being protected and how contained spread is.”
Among the 20 countries most affected by COVID-19 in the world right now, the U.S. has the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, ranking behind only the United Kingdom, Peru and Chile.
Globally, according to Johns Hopkins data, the U.S. is 10th, ahead of some of Europe's hardest-hit countries like Spain, Italy and Sweden that have since taken control and substantially slowed the virus's spread.
8/5/20
Trump calls Arizona a coronavirus success story as state resets after huge spike in cases.
8/5/20
Drop in new coronavirus cases in U.S. is muddied by reporting and testing snags.
California notes a big drop in daily cases, but officials warn a day later that issues with the reporting system were causing an under count. Florida’s numbers, meanwhile, were disrupted by Hurricane Isaias, which led officials to suspend coronavirus testing at dozens of sites.
8/5/20
Facebook removes President Trump’s post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said that children are “almost immune” from covid-19.
8/5/20
Johnson & Johnson announces that it will provide the U.S. government with 100 million doses of its prospective vaccine, following approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
8/5/20
Speaking on “Fox & Friends,” Trump claims the virus was spreading in a “relatively small portion” of the country; said children are “virtually immune” to the virus (they are not); and once again insisted "This thing is going away...It will go away like things go away."
8/5/20
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and a White House press corps member test positive for the coronavirus
8/5/20
Over the last seven days one person died every 80 seconds from the coronavirus in America. And the pace at which those 7,486 people died appears to be accelerating. The US has logged over 4.8 million confirmed cases. And around 1.8 million of those have come since July 7, when the 3 millionth case was reported
8/6/20
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tests positive for the coronavirus ahead of President Trump's visit to the state. DeWine was tested as part of the required protocol before meeting Trump at the airport in Cleveland. The governor returned to Columbus and quarantine.
8/6/20
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report published by American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association reports a 90% increase in child cases over 4 week period.
At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children. However, states should continue to provide detailed reports on COVID-19 cases, testing, hospitalizations, and mortality by age so that the effects of COVID-19 on children’s health can continue to be documented and monitored.
8/7/20
Report claims that more than 100 People have died in U.S. while taking Hydoxychloroquine for COVID-19
In the first half of 2019, 3,251 adverse events were recorded in patients taking hydroxychloroquine or its derivatives, with over 2,441 said to be serious as the individual was hospitalized, disabled or died. In the first half of this year, 6,588 adverse events were recorded, with 6,233 designated serious.
8/7/20
Chinese firm Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products signs licensing deal with AstraZeneca to get access to Oxford University vaccine.
8/11/20
Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden’s prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight, a study carried out by University College London academics and published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that Stockholm and London both have the same coronavirus infection rates, casting doubt on the herd immunity theory.
"The Swedish experience of attempting to achieve this, compared to other Nordic countries responses, resulted in much higher numbers of infections and deaths per capita, in addition to a prolonged outbreak," he continued.
"These findings should prove a salutary warning, that appealing concepts and theories require supporting data when people's lives are at stake and should not be used to fit pre-conceived narratives."
8/11/20
Functional SARS-CoV-2-specific immune memory persists after mild COVID-19 a longitudinal assessment of individuals who have recovered from mildly symptomatic COVID-19 determines that they develop and sustain immunological memory against the virus.
"We found that recovered individuals developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibody and neutralizing plasma, as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells that not only persisted, but in some cases increased numerically over three months following symptom onset."
8/11/20
Vaccinologists tell CNN that 2020 vaccine timeline is unrealistic after they reviewed data from Moderna, the first company to start Phase 3 clinical trials.
8/13/20
Trump introduces Dr. Scott Atlas as the new head of the White House coronavirus task force. He is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a member of Hoover's Working Group on Health Care Policy, and a Fox News commentator.
8/14/20
Detection, prevalence, and duration of humoral responses to SARS-CoV-2 under conditions of limited population exposure a serological study to quantify population-level exposure and define correlates of immunity shows signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear to persist months after infections have resolved — an encouraging echo of the body’s enduring response to other viruses.
8/14/20
"Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild
COVID-19", a study published in the journal Cell sites progress in isolating coronavirus-attacking T cells from the blood of recovered individuals after symptoms have disappeared.
8/16/20
Trump expresses enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit Oleandrin, an extract from the oleander plant, to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19.
8/17/20
Trump adds Dr. Scott Atlas, as new coronavirus adviser. Affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and known for contrary views, his appointment is met with a sounding response from the medical community.
8/18/20
WHO says the pandemic is now driven by younger adults
8/18/20
Hundred of coronavirus cases reported as colleges open back up
8/19/20
Experts reject Oleandrin as COVID treatment
"This is really just nonsense and a distraction," Jonathan Reiner, MD, of George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., said on CNN.
Oleandrin, an extract from the highly toxic Oleander plant, was subject to “multiple iterations” of a neutralization test by the U.S. Army Institute of Infectious Diseases to determine if it could halt Covid-19 infection, Army spokesperson Lori Salvatore told Forbes.
However, Salvatore says, the tests proved “inconclusive” and USAIID discontinued its testing of Oleandrin to focus on “evaluating other therapeutics and compounds to treat and prevent” coronavirus.
8/20/20
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) has tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the second senator known to do so.
8/21/20
Cases over the past week averaged about 47,300, down from a peak average of 67,317 on July 22, Johns Hopkins University data shows.
8/22/20
China has been using Covid-19 vaccine candidate on key workers.
8/22/20
Trump accuses ‘deep state’ at FDA of slow-walking coronavirus vaccines and treatments.
8/23/20
British newspaper The Financial Times reports that Trump is considering fast-tracking UK Covid-19 vaccine before US election.
8/23/20
Trump unveils approval of convalescent plasma treatment during press conference with HHS Secretary Alex Azar and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. He announced that he had cleared up a regulatory “logjam” to grant emergency authorization for convalescent plasma to treat covid-19.
8/24/20
University of Notre Dame team estimates the 1,514 Covid-19 case number in America on March 12 was 1.3 per cent of the estimated actual cases.
The US researchers used testing data from countries such as South Korea, Singapore and China to create mathematical modelling
8/24/20
AstraZeneca denies it is in discussions to fast-track U.S. approval of its COVID-19 vaccine.
8/24/20
Florida judge blocks state order for schools to reopen, grants a temporary injunction against the state’s executive order requiring schools to reopen in-person. Some schools in high-spread areas were allowed to launch the year online, but other districts were required to start in-person, whether they wanted to or not.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/08/24/florida-judge-blocks-state-order-schools-reopen/
8/24/20
After recovering from covid-19 in mid-April, a 33-year-old man in Hong Kong was reinfected by a different strain of the coronavirus months later, a study says. Researchers say it's “the world’s first documentation” of a patient who recovered subsequently being reinfected, and the case has implications for vaccine development. But some immunologists said this case was not a surprise and one called it “no cause for alarm.”
8/25/20
FDA chief Stephen Hahn apologizes for overstating convalescent plasma treatment effect on virus.
“I have been criticized for remarks I made Sunday night about the benefits of convalescent plasma. The criticism is entirely justified. What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction.”
9/2/20
CDC advises state public health officials to be ready to distribute the coronavirus vaccine as soon as late October or early November.
9/8/20
Virus industry issues assurances that the development of vaccines will not be subject to political pressures.
9/9/20
Advanced release of Bob Woodward's Rage causes ripples of outrage concerning allegations that Trump knew the severity of the disease but failed to warn the public.
9/11/20
CDC’s public Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports have been targeted by senior officials in the Health and Human Services’ communications office.
9/11/20
Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly asked the CDC to revise, delay and even scuttle reports on the coronavirus that they believed were unflattering to President Trump and attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19
9/16/20
More than 40 percent of U.S. school employees are at high risk for severe Covid-19 cases, an analysis finds.
9/16/20
CDC Testing Guidance Was Published Against Scientists’ Objections.
A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month, which said that people without symptoms did not need to be tested, was not written by CDC scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections.
9/16/20
Trump claims “Herd Mentality” Will Help COVID-19 “Disappear”.
9/17/20
There are general population concerns about the safety and effectiveness of possible vaccine, pace of approval process.
9/21/20
Trump downplays effects of coronavirus.
“Now we know it affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it. You know, in some states thousands of people— nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody — they have a strong immune system — who knows?....Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”
9/22/20
Fauci pushes back against President Trump’s claim the coronavirus “virtually” affects no young people.
9/22/20
Trump calls on world leaders at the United Nations to “hold China accountable” for the coronavirus pandemic.
9/23/20
Media reports that Dr. Birx is "distressed" with the direction of the task force, describing the situation as nightmarish and questioning how long she can remain on White House task force.
9/25/20
Redfield voices alarm over influence of Trump's new coronavirus task force adviser
CDC Director Robert Redfield took aim at Covid-19 task force member Scott Atlas, telling a colleague in an overheard call that "everything he says is false."
9/25/20
Less than 10 percent of Americans have antibodies to the new coronavirus, suggesting that the nation is even further from herd immunity than had been previously estimated, according to a Lancet study.
The results roughly match those of a CDC analysis to be released next week. The CDC's Dr. Redfield told a congressional committee that 90 percent of all Americans were still vulnerable to the virus.
9/25/20
White House demands FDA justify tough standards for coronavirus vaccine, raising concerns of political interference.
On the same day President Trump blasted the Food and Drug Administration’s plan for tougher standards for a coronavirus vaccine as a “political move,” a top White House aide demanded detailed justifications from the agency in what some fear is an attempt to thwart or block the standards designed to boost public trust in a vaccine.
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