Trump ignored warning by US military on Covid-19

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Trump Admits Coronavirus Could Kill 240,000 Americans – But Document Shows The U.S. Army Had Warned Him 2 Months Ago.

In January 22, as the nation saw the first American diagnosed with Coronavirus after returning from China, President Donald Trump told CNBC – “We have it under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” He was asked during the interview if people should be worried about the outbreak turning into a “pandemic”.

Some eight days later (Jan 30), the president was still not worried at all. Despite 6 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, he said – “We have very little problem in this country at this moment.” Hours before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global emergency, the president assured the people that the virus would have “a very good ending for us.”

At a press conference on Feb 10, the U.S. president suggested that the highly infectious Covid-19 which began in Wuhan, China, would simply “go away” in April, as temperatures warm. Trump was still satisfied with 12 cases of Coronavirus in the country. As of Feb 13, the virus had infected more than 46,000 people and killed at least 1,116.





For the entire month of February, Donald Trump, like a broken record, had repeated almost the same message – the Coronavirus is very much under control in the United States. Heck, on Feb 27, the president even said – “It’s going to disappear. One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.” Two days later, he boastfully said a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and “very rapidly.”

Up until March 10, the U.S. president continued to assure the people that he was not concerned at all. To prove his point, he actually compared 546 confirmed cases of Coronavirus with 22 deaths on March 9 to the 37,000 deaths in the U.S. due to common flu in 2019. A day later (March 11), WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic.

By March 17, the pandemic had spread to all 50 states in America – infected 5,894 people and killed at least 100 Americans. The president had finally taken notice of the seriousness of the virus, but still managed to brag, saying he had believed the Coronavirus outbreak was “a pandemic, long before it was called a pandemic.”





Today (April 3), global cases have breached 1-million with over 50,000 deaths. The U.S. top the chart with 259,750 confirmed Coronavirus cases with 6,603 deaths. In a dramatic change of tone, President Donald Trump finally admits that between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans could die – even if the people followed the social distancing guidelines.

Even on the low end of the projection, the estimated 100,000 deaths will be more than the 90,220 total deaths of American soldiers in the Vietnam War (1955-1975). And it will be about double the deaths in the Korean War (1950-1953). In the World War I (1917-1918), there were 116,516 U.S. deaths while 405,399 Americans were killed in the second world war (1941-1945).

As President Trump and his boys took the easy way out by blaming China, continuously calling the pandemic “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”, an unclassified briefing document on the Coronavirus has been revealed by the U.S. military showing that as early as Feb 3, the Army had warned the White House that the pathogen could kill at least 150,000 Americans.





The document – “Black Swan” analysis – which was prepared on Feb 3 had projected that between 80,000 and 150,000 people could die while up to 80 million Americans could be infected by the Covid-19. The briefing paper also projected that between 300,000 and 500,000 may require hospitalization, not to mention between 15 to 25 million could require care.

The assessment, based on a worst-case scenario, was apparently prepared by the U.S. Army-North. Looking back, a month after the Army’s briefing to Donald Trump and his staffs, on March 4, the president told Fox News that the WHO’s fatality rate of 3.4% as a result of the Coronavirus death worldwide was a “false number”. Instead, Trump believed the actual mortality rate was way under 1%.

Regardless of the mortality rate, the fact remains that the POTUS had been briefed and warned, but he chose to downplay the U.S. Army’s assessment. Revealed by the Daily Beast, the document also reached the highest levels within the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) – tasked to provide command and control of homeland defense efforts and to coordinate defense support of civil authorities.





Even before the preparation of “Black Swan” analysis dated Feb 3, the U.S. intelligence agency – presumably CIA and Director of National Intelligence – had briefed and warned the Trump administration as early as January about the global danger posed by the Coronavirus. But President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take the necessary actions.

The fact that Senator Kelly Loeffler, who sits on the Senate Health Committee, began selling stock holdings worth at least US$18.7 million on January 24 – the same day that the committee held a private all-members’ session on Covid-19 – is the clearest proof that lawmakers, including Trump, knew about the severity of the pandemic. Loeffler continued selling more shares in February and March, triggering suspicion of insider trading.

Yes, had the Trump administration listened to the Army’s warning exactly 2 months ago, it might have prepared the country to prevent an outbreak, or at least strategized a plan to slow down the spread of the pathogen. The president had chosen to ignore all the warnings until it was too late. He did not want to spook the stock market. And now he’s blaming the Chinese for not telling him earlier.