The Trump administration knew this was coming as early as Jan. 3 -- 4 months ago -- but it did nothing. Yes, the Chinese lied to us about its scale and impact. But we knew they were lying at the time, and still we did nothing.
They didn't fool us; we fooled ourselves. 1/13

First steps? Inventory stocks of masks, gowns, ventilators. How many do we have? How many will we need? How should we get them? Then we start ordering more ... lots more. We did none of that. It's inconceivable to still be facing such shortages 4 months later, yet we are. 2/13

We also should have been ready to produce massive numbers of tests once the virus genome was sequenced, which came Jan. 12. The failure to do so is monumental, and is a direct consequence of the lack of seriousness communicated from the top. Other countries managed. Not us. 3/13

Why? By now Trump has so traumatized the US civil service that they fear taking any step that might be perceived as contrary to his whims, and since his whims change so whimsically, they have been paralyzed. Steps that should be taken on auto-pilot aren't being taken at all. 4/13

Yes, Trump did restrict air traffic from China. But he didn't do so until AFTER the major airlines had already announced they were halting those flights. The supposed "uproar" that Trump claims he bucked is an invention to make him seem heroic. It simply did not happen. 5/13

And OMG the incompetence. We announced that passengers arriving from hard-hit regions would be screened. They weren't. We announced a month ago that millions of tests were available. They still aren't. No Google website, no drive-thru testing. All lies. 6/13

For many crucial weeks, Trump refused to face reality. By late Feb., he was still holding mass rallies and was still scheduling new ones, and the fed bureaucracy took its lead from its supposed leader. As if that wasn't bad enough .... 7/13

... once Trump finally did begin to grasp the enormity of our crisis, he flat-out "chocked" under pressure. He didn't want to order a national shelter-in-place rule; he didn't want the feds to take the lead on logistics; he literally said he took no responsibility at all. 8/13

A pandemic requires a national response. All the plans & prep for this kind of thing are predicated on the federal gov't taking a lead role in logistics, purchasing, public-health decisions, etc. If the feds abdicate that role, then you're left with what we see: chaos. 9/13

There is no way in hell that we should have 50 states and the federal government bidding against each other for badly needed supplies; there is no way in hell that should be happening, and it is direct evidence of an abdication of leadership. 10/13

Social distancing and shelter-in-place have been haphazardly announced, obeyed and enforced, but why is that? One of the prime responsibilities of federal leadership is to send an early, consistent, believable and science-based message; its message was none of those things. 11/13

The early messaging was that this was nothing to worry about, that the uproar was an anti-Trump hoax, right up until the panic moment, when the goal became keeping the death toll under 200,000. The fed role is to stop confusion, instead it became the prime source. 12/13

Again that's an abdication of leadership. Trump is a promoter, a carnival barker. He can't break bad news -- hell, he can't even fire people in person-- and he has shown that he panics in crisis. He is weak, indecisive and scared, and tens of thousands will die as a result. 13/13