Currently experts expect over 1 million deaths in the U.S. since the virus was not contained & we cannot even test for it.

This will be recorded as a major preventable public health disaster. I will try to relate what I learned from a long day of calls about what is happening.

The original sin is Trump’s months long denial and his dismantling of public health and response infrastructure.

That wasn’t all, but it led to other fatal mistakes. 2/

The public health infrastructure could have been prepared. What does that mean: nasal swabs, respirators, ventilators, RNA kits to read tests, machines, gloves.

We can at best do 10,000 tests/day. We should be able to do millions. 3/

All of this could have ramped up and solved in January & February and right now we would be talking about containment. We could have also allowed labs to produce tests earlier or gotten WHO tests.

We did not. Why? In part Federal workers could not be seen contradicting Trump. 4/

If you don’t think that’s right, remember only weeks before Trump firing justice department officials who weren’t loyal to him. But worse, tweeting out their names for savage mobs to attack. 5/

Still today, people in the CDC are well aware of the fatality estimates at the top of this thread. Yet they are muzzled. They are aware of the shortages. Yet they are muzzled.

Worse, they are being asked to call the press and tell them they are not being muzzles. 6/

That story will get told. But I’d like to shift who’s responsible to what we do about it. I’ve offered help to this Administration, Congress, governor, mayor, health official, lab or hospital. I’m nothing special but it is time to pull together & put aside differences. 7/

This got broken somehow: https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1238308334509469697?s=21