Fact-checking Trump’s attempt to erase his previous coronavirus response
CNNWashington CNN — President Donald Trump tried Tuesday to cast himself as the wise leader who rejected the advice of a “group” of people who had portrayed the coronavirus as a mere flu and had argued that life should go on as normal. Asked Tuesday about the period when he was downplaying the coronavirus, Trump said that, during that time, “people didn’t know that much about it, even the experts.” Though there is still more to learn about the virus, Trump’s minimization efforts continued into late February and early March – when it was abundantly clear to experts inside and outside the government, and millions of laypeople, that the virus was much worse than the flu and that the US was likely to face a severe problem. Trump also accused New York on Tuesday of getting off to a “very late start” in fighting the virus – implicitly contrasting New York’s leaders with himself. Travel restrictions “We stopped all of Europe,” Trump said of travel restrictions his administration passed to slow the spread of coronavirus. Days later, on February 12 Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases warned that the US “should be prepared for this new virus to gain a foothold” in the country and that “at some point we are likely to see community spread in the US or other countries.” By February 19, the Chinese CDC, in a study of more than 72,000 confirmed and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus, found that the virus was more contagious than the related viruses that cause SARS and MERS.