n New Year’s Day 2020, I was zipping up my fleece to head outside when the phone in the kitchen rang. I picked it up to find a reporter on the line. “Dr. Fauci,” he said, “there’s something strange going on in Central China. I’m hearing that a bunch of people have some kind of pneumonia. I’m wondering, have you heard anything?”
Dr. Fauci first hears of COVID-19
HRSA MADE COVID-19UNINSURED PROGRAMPAYMENTS TO PROVIDERS ONBEHALF OF INDIVIDUALS WHOHAD HEALTH INSURANCECOVERAGE AND FOR SERVICESUNRELATED TO COVID-19
February 25 telebriefing
Here is the briefing: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/a0225-covid-19-update.html
On February 9,2020, using publicly available data, a senior health official from the U.S. Department of VeteransAffairs warned key senior officials that COVID-19 was more transmissible and deadlier thanH1N1 and the U.S. was only a “couple of weeks” behind the spread in China
A search fails to reveal these communications.
In its February 24, 2020supplemental funding request, the Office of Management and Budget wrote, “[t]o this point, noagency has been inhibited in response efforts due to resources or authorities.
Here is some reporting on this supplemental reporting request. But I am unable to find the funding request itself.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/24/trump-coronavirus-budget-request-117275
The Strategic National Stockpile distributed the last of its PPE held for states on April 19,2020—the same day it made the decision to begin allocating PPE based on need, not population.
I cannot find this information in other places easily.
in May 2020 when the federal governmentdecided to extend a one-year federal PPE contract to that same PPE manufacturer, the companydeclined the contract offer
Have not been able to find record of this decline.
When one domestic PPE manufacturer sent multiple warnings and requests toramp up U.S. production throughout the months of January, February, and March 2020, thefederal government declined to engage
Have not been able to find this. Which PPE manufacturer? Are these warnings published?
conflicting internal accounts of not only whatwent wrong, but also the reasons for those failures
Begs the question. Why did the CDC efforts fail initially.
. Ultimately, the Trump Administration waited until March16, 2020—fifty-five days from the date of the first confirmed case—to implement its first widescale attempt at nationwide mitigation of viral spread.
Here is the link to the text of that announcement and a link to the Youtube video for that event.
Alex Azar declared a public health emergency
as early as mid-December 2019
The apparent source of this information is a study done by the CDC in Nov 2019.
initiating export bans on personalprotective equipment (PPE
Here is one such article on the EU banning the export of PPE.
identified rapid construction of a new 1,000 bed hospital in Wuhan,
Here is one such report from NPR.
China Builds A Medical Center From Scratch In Under 2 Weeks
This article was published Feb 2 2020.
U.S. Department of Health andHuman Services’ (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) learned of anemerging novel pathogen, now known as SARS-CoV-2
First learned of Virus.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve lost 360,000. These are people that have died from the flu — from what we call the flu. “Hey, did you get your flu shot?” And that’s something.
President Trump admitting that he was not aware that influenza was a public health problem.
The Johns Hopkins, I guess — is a highly respected, great place — they did a study, comprehensive: “The Countries Best and Worst Prepared for an Epidemic.” And the United States is now — we’re rated number one. We’re rated number one for being prepared
This study appears to be the Global Health Security Index 2019 report, which is hosted by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health along with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), with help from the Economist.
This is the annotation of the United States favorable score.