by Bob Woodward
“I think we scared the shit out of them,” Fauci said after the meeting.
The official press release from the Department of Health and Human Services describing the meeting read: “The panel reiterated that while this is a serious public health matter, the risk to the American public remains low at this time, and that the federal government will continue working in close coordination with state and local governments to keep it that way.”
The next day, President Trump said publicly three times—once at the White House, once on TV and once at a New Hampshire rally—that the virus would go away on its own. “When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he said at the packed rally. “I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they’re all getting better.”
* * *
Fauci attended a public conference in Aspen, Colorado, on February 11. The moderator, Helen Branswell of STAT News, a well-respected science news outlet, said, “You’ve been quite vocal about wanting more information out of China. What would you like to get your hands on?”
“We really need to know the scope of this,” Fauci said. “The degree of asymptomatic transmission” would be the crucial piece of information. “That has a real impact on how you make certain policy decisions.” If people who didn’t show symptoms were giving others the disease, it would be much harder to contain.
Fauci repeated several times that the virus was low-risk. Clearly skeptical, Branswell said, “Explain to me why the risk is low. Because to me, when I look at this virus, it’s spreading very efficiently.”
“It’s the message,” Fauci said frankly. Americans didn’t need to be frightened. “Right now we have 13 people.” But again he hedged: “Is there a risk that this is going to turn into a global pandemic? Absolutely, yes.”
Branswell asked about the danger of possibly downplaying the risk the virus posed to the U.S.
Fauci said, “The risk is really relatively low.” He posed a hypothetical: How would it be, he asked, if he got up and said, “ ‘I’m telling you we’ve really, really got a big risk of getting completely wiped out,’ and then nothing happens?” Then, he said, “your credibility is gone.”
Fauci knew he was walking the finest of lines. The U.S. would never shut down with so few cases. If he proposed extreme remedies too soon, not only would he lose his credibility, but no one would listen or take action.
He didn’t say it, but he thought, “Take a look at what’s happening in China.” The outbreak was severe.
During this period, from February 11 to 14, Trump repeatedly said the U.S. had only about 12 cases.
At an event a week later at the Council on Foreign Relations, Fauci was again the voice of reassurance. “To our knowledge, there aren’t individuals in society in the United States that are infected” who aren’t travel-related, he said. “We don’t think so.” But he added, “We don’t know 100 percent, because they could have kind of come in under the radar screen.”
Asked by another panel member to reiterate that the public should not be buying respirator masks needed by health care workers, Fauci laughed. “I don’t want to denigrate people who walk around wearing masks” but masks, he said, should be worn by sick people. “Put a mask on them, not yourself.” He later added, to laughter from the audience, “I don’t want to be pejorative against cruise ships, but if there’s one thing you don’t want to do right now, it’s to take a cruise in Asia.”
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In a meeting at the White House on February 18, Pottinger cast the virus in geopolitical terms. North Korea had shut its border to China, cutting off its most crucial trading partner to keep out infection.
“The coronavirus is probably doing more to advance our maximum pressure campaign than anything at the moment,” Pottinger said.
* * *
I reached President Trump by phone at 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, February 19, 2020. He was on Air Force One, flying to Arizona for a rally. The coronavirus was not yet a focus.
What I wanted from the president, I said, “is what was going through your mind as you said what you said or made whatever decision it was on a range of issues in foreign policy, China, North Korea, Russia—”
“Soleimani was a very big event,” Trump said, referring to his decision to have the head of the Iranian Quds Force killed in a drone strike on January 3. “The head of Pakistan, the prime minister of Pakistan, Khan, said the biggest event of his lifetime. I had no idea. Other people have said the same thing: it was an earth-shattering event.” Trump and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan had met privately in Davos on January 21, but I was not able to confirm if Kahn had said what Trump claimed.
Six days earlier, Attorney General Bill Barr had blasted Trump in a remarkable television interview, saying that Trump’s tweets were making it “impossible for me to do my job.”
Barr made the comments after Trump posted a tweet around 2:00 a.m. on February 11 protesting the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation of up to nine years for his political associate Roger Stone. The afternoon of February 11, the Justice Department filed a revised sentencing recommendation suggesting a sentence for Stone of three to four years. All four prosecutors withdrew from the case, one resigning from the Justice Department entirely.
“So what’s this with Attorney General Barr going on now?” I asked Trump.
Anyone who has watched Trump’s press conferences knows how he avoids issues, splits hairs and won’t deal with hard questions. This is only amplified in a one-on-one setting—that maddening, convoluted dodging that drove Mattis, Tillerson, Coats and others crazy.
“It’s a false statement,” Trump answered. “Well, he made the statement about Twitter. I don’t call it Twitter, I call it social media,” as if that would make a difference. Barr had been explicit, and his public challenge to Trump was big news. Trump had continued to tweet complaints about the Justice Department, but hadn’t targeted or responded to Barr directly.
Trump’s mention of social media set him off. “Without social media, number one, I wouldn’t have won, and number two, you know, I’m number one on Facebook. Zuckerberg,” the CEO of Facebook, “came to the White House two weeks ago.”
In early 2020, with 80 million followers, Trump had the ninth-most followed Twitter account, behind former president Barack Obama and several celebrities. In terms of likes and followers, his Facebook page ranks below dozens of others.
“So what’s going on between you and the attorney general, sir?” I tried to persist.
Trump was still on Mark Zuckerberg. “Said, congratulations, you’re number one on Facebook.”
“This is all for the history,” I said, trying to get some explanation about Barr.
“And I’m number one on Twitter,” Trump said. “When you’re number one and when you have hundreds of millions of people, whether they’re against you or not they still read what you say. I don’t need commercials. When you’re number one, you don’t need commercials. And number two is Modi, but he’s got 1.5 billion people. I have 350. You know? So it’s a little different.” Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has over 50 million followers, are the two highest-ranking current world leaders on Twitter.
“So tell me about the—this is all for the serious history, Mr. President.”
“Social media,” Trump said. He was on his track and would stay there. “I wouldn’t probably be talking to you right now if it weren’t for social media. At least not in this capacity. In Air Force One, beautifully riding to the great state of Arizona. You know? I wouldn’t be talking to you probably. So it’s very important.”
“Sir, what did Barr say to you? This, again, is for serious history. You know, it’s got a lot of people all in a twitter about it, to use that term.”
“Good, that’s what I like. I like that everybody’s in a twitter. That’s okay with me. Keep them that way.”
“Well, it’s working,” I said.
He shifted the conversation to polling. “I put out
a statement on that today, I don’t know if you saw.”
Earlier that day he had tweeted “Internal REAL Polls show I am beating all of the Dem candidates. The Fake News Polls (here we go again, just like 2016) show losing or tied. Their polls will be proven corrupt on November 3rd, just like the Fake News is corrupt!”
“The internal polls, we’re beating everybody,” he said. “But the fake news is at it again. They like to put in polls where I’m not” winning.
“Okay, now sir,” I said, “anyone who knows the Constitution realizes you as president have authority over every department, including the Justice Department.”
“Yep. That’s right. Total. And I haven’t exercised that authority. I’ve let people run it.”
I noted that lots of people thought he shouldn’t intervene, repeating the assertion I had made to him at Mar-a-Lago.
“This was the greatest crime, political crime in the history of our country,” Trump said, referring to the investigation into his 2016 campaign, completed almost a year earlier. “They spied on this campaign. The opposite party, in control of the nation, spied on their opponent and their opponent’s political campaign. They caused tremendous injustice. They caused tremendous damage. And they destroyed many lives.”
“I’m looking at that really closely,” I said.
“They got caught,” the president said. “People that vote for me” know this, he said. “This was a treasonous act. This was a terrible act. These people would’ve been in jail. For 50 years they would’ve gone to jail. They would’ve spent 50 years in jail, meaning they would’ve died in jail. One of the most important things I did was firing the sleazebag named Comey.”
He would not let go of these issues, and returned to them at every opportunity. But he seemed to provide just a recitation, without apparent emotion.
When I was able to take a turn to speak again, I laughed and said, “I’ve heard your views on that six times, sir.” I suggested he ask his friend and adviser Lindsey Graham whether he thought it was a good idea for Trump to get in a public fight with the attorney general about his authority. “Is that a good thing for you to do?”
“I do want everyone to know that I do have the authority,” Trump said, “but I’ve decided not to use it.” He blamed the media. “They cut it up and they slice it up. You don’t see the real deal.
“There has been no president even close that has done what I’ve done in three years,” Trump said. “You know it and so does everybody else.” He added in a challenging tone, “Let’s see whether or not you’re willing to write it.”
* * *
In late February, China finally allowed World Health Organization scientists to enter the country to investigate. Redfield had wanted to send his team of investigators but only one CDC official was allowed in the group. Fauci’s deputy director, Dr. Clifford Lane, was the only other American allowed to join the delegation to China from February 16 to February 24. The report released by the group indicated that asymptomatic infection was “relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission” and praised China for “perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”
Lane, who had never before been to China and had no experience with Chinese handlers, reported personally to Fauci that there was a lot of disease there and it was spreading rapidly. But he said the Chinese seemed to be doing everything they could to contain the virus. Everything was locked down. No one was allowed out of their apartment except for food. Sick and healthy people alike were locked in their homes. If they decided to go out for something other than food, their neighbors would report them to the police, who would then come and question them. It was absolute, with almost no concern for human rights.
Lane also said he’d been impressed with the high-tech capabilities of the hospitals in Beijing. But neither American on the delegation had been allowed into Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.
The WHO report contained a stark warning: “Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain Covid-19 in China. These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize” the spread of the coronavirus. Those measures included surveillance, public engagement, cancellation of mass gatherings, traffic controls, rapid diagnosis, immediate case isolation, and “rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts.”
* * *
As February drew to a close, the virus spread through Europe, most prominently in Italy, Asia and the Middle East. Global markets dipped.
The upbeat messages from the administration continued. “We have it very much under control,” Trump told reporters on February 23. “Very interestingly, we’ve had no deaths.” The next day he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” and added, “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
But on February 25, as Trump boarded Air Force One to return from a state visit to India, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, issued a stark public warning. Schools might have to close, conferences might be curtailed, and businesses may have to have employees work from home. “The disruption to everyday life may be severe,” she told reporters. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
Some conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, immediately jumped on Messonnier as part of a deep state conspiracy to use the virus to undermine Trump. They pointed out that Messonnier was the sister of Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, who had overseen the Mueller investigation and resigned in spring 2019.
Redfield knew Messonnier well and had a lot of respect for her. Their careers had been intertwined at federal public health agencies since the 1990s. Sometimes, he thought, you just have to say it the way you see it. She had given her honest assessment and tried to get people to prepare for what could happen.
The headlines echoed her warnings: “Viral Crisis in U.S. Is Deemed Likely,” The New York Times said. “Threat to Americans called ‘inevitable,’ ” The Washington Post reported. The S&P 500 fell more than 3 percent for the second day in a row. Trump, on his way back to the U.S. from India, called Azar and threatened to fire Messonnier.
On February 26, Trump announced at a news conference that Vice President Pence would replace Azar as the head of the Coronavirus Task Force. “When you have 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,” the president said. “This is a flu. This is like a flu.”
Asked whether schools should prepare for the coronavirus spreading, Trump said, “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared,” but added, “I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
* * *
Redfield continued urgently monitoring the summary of all the data coming into the CDC. His job was to keep America safe 24/7 from disease.
She was called Case #15. On February 15, an otherwise healthy woman in her 40s was hospitalized in Vacaville, California, with a severe respiratory illness. Intubated and on a ventilator, her condition worsened and she was transferred to University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento on February 19. The UC Davis staff requested a Covid test, but since she didn’t fit the CDC criteria—virus symptoms and recent travel to China, or known contact with someone who had the virus—the test was not immediately administered. The CDC finally approved a Covid test days later when she continued to deteriorate.
Ten CDC staffers sent to California started tracing her contacts. None with a connection to China or other places with the virus could be found.
For Redfield she was a tipping point. Community spread, a public health term for an infection where the source is
unknown, would open a new front in the battle against Covid in the U.S.
Then Case #16 came in, also from California, with no traceable source of infection. Redfield called it “non-linked transmission.”
“There’s evidence, now, that this virus has established community transmission in the country,” he told others. “We are going to be in a fight.”
The evidence of community spread gave Fauci his own sinking feeling. All of a sudden it was a case here and a case there. “Holy shit!” he said to himself. “Here we go.”
Then, a few days later, Redfield saw an increase in influenza-like illness in New York. But the CDC’s flu surveillance showed cases way, way down. It was not flu. He called Howard Zucker, the New York State health commissioner.
“Howard,” Redfield said, “we’ve got a big problem in New York.”
A couple of additional Covid cases in New York were diagnosed in people who had not come into the United States from China. They came from Italy. The light bulb went off and remained glowing.
Redfield didn’t know where the virus was coming from, and didn’t feel he had his hands around it.
* * *
In testimony before the House on the 27th, Azar said, “The immediate risk to the public remains low.” He added, “It will look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season.”
* * *
The coronavirus finally began to enter the consciousness of Trump’s reelection campaign. On the morning of February 28, Jared Kushner spoke by phone with Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager.
“We need more visuals,” Parscale told Kushner. Trump should be “standing in front of amazing things. Put the white coat on. Look at the vaccine being made. Show America we’re doing stuff.”
That day the stock market fell for the seventh day in a row, reaching its worst week since 2008.