[Pete F.]

Three things are important for leadership in a crisis.

Consistency
Truth
Trust

They can't exist independently.

March 10, 2020: Tests
Trump: And when people need a test, they can get a test.

March 11, 2020: Coronavirus Insurance
Trump: Earlier this week, I met with the leaders of [the] health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.

March 13, 2020:Google and Drive Thru Testing
Trump: At the same time, we’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-thru tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals. The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.

I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website. It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location. We have many, many locations behind us, by the way.

We cover the—this country in large part.

So the world, by the way—we’re not going to be talking about the world right now. But we cover very, very strongly our country. Stores in virtually every location. Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. They’ve made tremendous progress.

March 14, 2020: Paid Sick Leave
Trump:It also provides paid sick and family medical leave for those who need it, including for those who have the virus, for caregivers, and those looking after children affected by school closures. So that’s all taken care of also. And we’ll continue all of these different actions. We have other things planned.

March 17, 2020: Pandemic
Trump:I’ve always known this is a real, this is a pandemic,” Trump said. “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.

March 19, 2020: Chloroquine
Trump: Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like [chloroquine], and it’s—it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved by prescription.

March 20, 2020: Defense Production Act
Trump:I invoked the Defense Production Act, and last night, we put it into gear. . . . We invoked it, I think, the day before we signed it—the evening of the day before—and invoked it yesterday. We have a lot of people working very hard to do ventilators and various other things. Yes.

March 21, 2020: Ventilators
Trump:But there’s tremendous amounts of—not only masks—of ventilators and respirators and everything you can think of. It’s all being—much of it and almost, I could say, all of it is being manufactured right now. . . . I had three calls yesterday directly. Without having to institute—like, “You will do this”—these companies are making them right now. But to think of these numbers, it’s pretty—it’s pretty mind boggling.

March 23rd, 2020: Open For Business
Trump: America will again, and soon, be open for business—very soon—a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem.

March 25, 2020: Widespread Testing
Question: Dr. Ashish Jha, who is the head of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, says the key to getting this economy open as soon as possible is to test everyone who needs testing so we can quarantine all infected individuals and allow everyone else to go back to work immediately. Would you subscribe to that strategy?

Trump: Look, I saw him. I saw his statement. We have tested, by far, more than anybody. We’re testing more than anybody right now. There’s nobody even close. And our tests are the best tests.

March 26, 2020: China Travel Ban
Trump: We got very lucky when we made a decision not to allow people in from China at a very early date. I say that because some people don’t want to accept it.

March 27, 2020: 22 Days Ago, Nobody Saw This Coming
Trump: Even 22 days to be exact—right?—when we first started seeing some real signs of problems. . . . They were—I don’t want to say unprepared, but nobody was prepared for this. What we’ve done, nobody can even imagine. . . . Well, they say I had classified briefings a long time ago, which wasn’t true. But we’ve had briefings.

March 30, 2020: Nobody Had Any Idea
Trump: A month ago nobody ever heard of this—nobody had any idea.

March 31, 2020: Other People Were Downplaying The Virus
Trump:A lot of people have said, ride it out, don’t do anything, think of it as the flu. But it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.

On March 31st it went from, the I stopped it narrative, to it is an awful Plague and I alone can save you, otherwise millions will die. If only 200,000 die I will have done a great job.

I'm find it hard to believe that anyone's MAGA hat is that tight.

South Korea and the USA had first cases on the same day.

Both are democracies.

US has 294,000 positive test and 8000 deaths
South Korea has 10,500 positive test and 177 deaths
Exponential growth doesn't care about total population

Great job