April 2018 – Trump disbands Obama-Era pandemic task force

2020 – January 7: COVID-19 Virus first identified

• January 24 (Tweet) – “it will all work out well.”
• January 28 – (Tweet) – “Johnson & Johnson to create coronavirus vaccine.” (False)
• January 30 – “We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”
• February 10 – “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,”
• February 19 – “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”

Late February – The blame game starts

• February 26 – “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
“This is a flu. This is like a flu”; “Now, you treat this like a flu”; “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”
• February 27 – “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
The U.S. has “15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
• February 28 – At a South Carolina rally, Trump claims — falsely — that “the Democrat policy of open borders” had brought the virus into the country.
• February 29 – Trump says a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and “very rapidly” and praised his administration’s actions as “the most aggressive taken by any country.” None of this is true.
• March 2 – “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than from the flu.
• March 4 – “It’s very mild” (On Sean Hannity)
Trump: “[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. 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.” – This is an absolute lie.
• March 6 – “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”
Alex Azar – (Sec’y of Health and Human Services): “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.”

Trump: (on tour of CDC): “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.”
• March 7 – “I’m not concerned at all.”
• March 9 – Compares COVID-19 to flu, tweeting that “life & economy go on”
Trump: (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.”
• March 10 – “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

The Shift – Trump now acknowledges the crisis, but the lies continue.

• March 17 – “I have always known. This is a real pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic…. I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”
• March 19 – Trump touts Chloroquine and Remdesivir as “game-changing” drugs to treat COVID-19 that are approved or “close to being approved” by the FDA. Neither has been proven effective and neither has been approved by the FDA.
• March 20 – Early in the crisis, the Trump administration passed on the opportunity to get tests from the WHO, opting instead to manufacture a test of its own, which later proved to be defective. Trump later claims that the WHO test “was a bad test,” when in fact it is highly accurate and has performed well.
• March 21 – When asked about when he first learned of the virus, Trump claims that it was around January 31, about the same time he issued travel restrictions on China, saying, “I wish they told us three months sooner that this was a problem.” China first reported mysterious cases of pneumonia to the WHO on December 31 and the US was aware of the problem by early January, at the latest.
• March 24 – Trump: “You can’t compare this to 1918 where close to 100 million people died. That was a flu, which — a little different. But that was a flu where if you got it you had a 50/50 chance, or very close, of dying.” Actual estimates range around 20 million fatalities with a mortality rate of about 3.5%.
• March 25 – Trump claims there’s “very strong evidence” that hydroxychloroquine “might work” for COVID-19. In fact, while chloroquine has shown to have some effect in test tubes, it did not work in animals or people and in some cases, actually made the infections worse. Additionally, because chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can trigger abnormal heart rhythms and many of the sickest COVID-19 patients are elderly and may have heart problems, it’s possible the drugs could “increase the risk of cardiac death.”
• March 26 – Trump claims the US is outperforming South Korea on testing for COVID-19, also saying the the US test is “better.” (There is no evidence to support this.) The statement on test numbers is highly-misleading because South Korea is so much smaller than the US. On a per-capita bases, South Korea had tested seven times as many of its people.
Trump accuses NY Governor Andrew Cuomo of having “rejected” buying ventilators and of establishing “death panels” and”lotteries”. This is a vicious lie most likely culled from a right-wing website.
• March 27 – On March 21, Trump claimed that automakers, including Ford and General Motors, were manufacturing much needed ventilators “right now.” In fact, manufacturers say that it could be May or June before they can start to produce ventilators en masse.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, misleadingly claimed that 19 states — “almost 40% of the country” — “have less than 200 cases” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. In fact, 17 states with 7.2% of the U.S. population have fewer than 200 confirmed cases each.
• March 30 – Trump insinuates that masks in New York hospitals may be “going out the back door” and that NY Governor Cuomo is stockpiling ventilators he doesn’t need. The accusations are particularly heinous as health care workers in New York are increasingly succumbing to infection as some are working around the clock.
• April 1 – Trump (on the CDC): “This administration inherited a broken system, a system that was obsolete, a system that didn’t work. It was okay for a tiny, small group of people, but once you got beyond that, it didn’t work.” He added, “We have built an incredible system.” This is not true. CDC tests were never supposed to meet the entire need for the United States. The blame lies with the Trump administration in failing to heed clear warnings for months.
• April 3 – On the National Stockpile, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he “started off with an empty shelf” without “very much in terms of medical product.” Although details aren’t public, there are numerous independent reports that warehouses were well-stocked with sufficient supplies to deal with emergencies. The National Stockpile, however, is not intended to be the complete solution to a national disaster; it is meant to be a bridge between the occurrence of a disaster and when private industry is able to ramp up production to deal with it. Bizarrely, on April 2, Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner said, “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” That is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Kushner saying that it’s “our stockpile” is, at best, confusing and at worst, disturbing.
• April 5 – Once again, Trump forcefully touts hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, despite that fact that it has not been proven to be effective and that it could well be harmful, particularly for patients with heart conditions. For a second consecutive day, he suggested even those without coronavirus symptoms might consider taking it. Trump says the government has stockpiled 29 million pills of the drug, which is also used to treat lupus. This has now led to a shortage of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, raising concerns for those who need it.
• April 6 – Trump is now acting increasingly erratically at his daily news conferences, each of which is becoming a torrent of lies too large to print here. Trump claims that hospitals are “thrilled” with what his administration is doing (they are in crisis), Trump’s challenges a report by his own Department of Health and Human Services describing “unprecedented” federal failure (Trump claims – falsely – that it is politically-motivated) and Trump makes demonstrably false statements about various topics, including China and about the Obama administration. Instead, he uses the time to deflect blame and attack reporters. Go here for a CNN fact-check.
• April 7 – Trump attacks the WHO, who warned the White House of the pandemic threat in January – a warning he ignored. Trump threatens to withhold funding from WHO, a decision experts say could lead to “many more body bags.”
• April 8 – Trump has taken a stand against voting by mail, even though he himself last voted by mail. Trump claims that vote-by-mail is subject to rampant voter fraud, which is utterly untrue.