WASHINGTON – By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late.
Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state. “We have it totally under control,” Trump said on CNBC. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.
It’s going to be just fine.” In the 11 weeks since that interview, the coronavirus has reached every corner of the globe. It has infected more than 500,000 Americans and killed at least 20,000.