We now know that our worst case suspicions were all true.
Trump was told “at the time” of a January 29 memo by trade adviser Peter Navarro warning that half a million U.S. deaths were possible—Trump later denied this. Trump was also personally warned by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Jan 30: Trump called him “alarmist.”
In February, the Azar-led White House Task Force “gathered for a tabletop exercise” replaying past pandemic wargaming, says the Times. The exercise resulted in the conclusion that “aggressive” social distancing would have to be adopted “soon” to avoid catastrophic effects….
The federal response to a national crisis collapsed, because Donald Trump dismissed all warnings, became furious when those warnings went public without him, and tasked Mike Pence with sabotaging future warnings.