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JUST POSTED:As the death toll continues to rise in the US, The NYT takes a deep look at the weeks of inaction by President Trump despite growing alarm by some of his top health & WH advisers w @SangerNYT @shearm @maggieNYT @MarkMazzettiNYT @julianbarnes https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html
As part of our reporting, The NYT obtained hundreds of emails among a group of the top pandemic experts in the US--doctors at HHS, DHS, State, VA, as well as former gov drs--as they watched the pandemic unfold in the United States. Here are some of their observations.
The group called itself Red Dawn, an inside joke based on the 1984 movie about a band of Americans trying to save the country after a foreign invasion. They were alarmed from the start.
The biggest concern was the fixation by President Trump and his team that the virus could be "contained" meaning using border control to keep it out of the US. Yet they were slow to move to Plan B, for when inevitable spread happened. NPI=closing schools/busineses etc
What this team of doctors realized--in emails sent to HHS, DHS, VA, State, USDA, DOT--was that the virus was spreading uncontrollably. A cruise ship became laboratory to study its spread, and what was coming soon to the US.
Soon, their concern turned to alarm. And then fear. As they could see a wave of death coming to the US, unless President Trump & his team acted, urging states with hot spots to move social distancing/targeted closures. Dr Mecher is a medical adviser at Veterans Administration.
This alarm reached to near the top at HHS, when solid evidence emerged that people without any symptoms were spreading COVID19. It meant the whole US strategy to contain it was flawed. Dr. Kadlec is in charge of COVID19 at HHS.
And now came the hardest part. President Trump's top medical advisers by late February concluded the time had come for him to call for targeted mitigation efforts, school closures, business shutdowns, etc. Trump reacted angrily. He wanted to wait. Governors were on their own.
When Trump gave his speech from the White House, announcing that US would ban flights from Europe, the medical experts--including some of his own advisers--were baffled. The virus was ALREADY here and spreading fast. Bossert served in Trump White House
I interviewed several of these doctors, who have spent their lives preparing for potential disease outbreaks like what is happening now. They are devastated over what is happening, like CDC questioning in mid March value of closing schools
These pandemic experts told me that they can now spot the cities in the United States where so called NPIs took place too late. If you wait just too weeks too late, the number of deaths surge. If you don't have a vaccine, you only have NPIs.
What are some of those locations--where the deaths are higher because of a slow call for mitigation: Here are some of the places on the list: NY, Michigan, NJ, Conn, Mass, Louisiana, Rhode Island.
This is an extraordinary calamity. A mark in U.S. history that will never be forgotten. The historical record matters. So we assembled a large collection of these emails and have posted them here online. Here they are for you all to read. Click on link: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6879-2020-covid-19-red-dawn-rising/66f590d5cd41e11bea0f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
As newspaper reporter-living through this in real time obviously as we are all-it was chilling to read these emails and watch this disaster unfold, day by day, as fed gov medical experts attempted to urge political leaders to act. "Flying blind"
Here again is our in-depth examination of the warnings given to @realDonaldTrump and the White House about the virus, and the failure to heed them as weeks passed. @maggieNYT @SangerNYT @MarkMazzettiNYT @julianbarnes Please read it. You are living it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html
One thing I often think abt as a reporter is that we often assume history is fated somehow to occur the way it did. Not so. It is individual choices made by powerful people (and sometimes not so powerful ones) during critical history-defining moments. Like this one.
JUST POSTED ADD ON: Readers Guide to"RED DAWN" Emails. Vital historical documents that give unvarnished guide to pandemic of 2020 in the US. Researchers will turn to them for decades to come. Not the nightly WH news conferences. Read them yourself. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-red-dawn-emails-trump.html
