“This is deadly stuff,” then-President Donald Trump stated about the coronavirus on February 7, 2020, just one day after the first known fatal case of coronavirus in the United States. Unfortunately, Trump stated that not during a press conference, but on a confidential call to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward.
Unfortunately, Trump’s statements to the public were far less cautious, telling people that the coronavirus was no worse than the flu and encouraging people to act like everything was normal. Trump never presented a unified response to the pandemic, leading to the United States to have one of the highest infection and fatality rates in the world.
Had Trump been as candid with the American people as he was with Woodward–telling the public that the coronavirus was deadly and urging people to take commonsense precautions–no one knows how many of the 900,000 Americans would still be alive today.