The Dow Jones plummeted by over 2,000 points on Monday as cases of COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, continue to spread across the United States and the rest of the world.
President Donald Trump has largely dismissed the highly contagious virus as little more than a mild case of the flu, in an attempt to stabilize the stock market, whose prosperity has been one of his largest talking points in favor of his reelection in November.
The Dow Jones opened at 1,800 points down and continued to drop well over 2,000 points. The S&P 500 fell seven percent, triggering an automatic temporary halt on trading to avoid a free fall.
Given the state of the stock market on Monday, a two week old tweet from Trump declaring the virus "very much under control" and that the stock market was "starting to look very good" received renewed attention.
While the market has plummeted, cases of coronavirus have only grown, with over 500 cases in 32 states. Twenty-two people have died in the United States due to the virus. The number of diagnosed cases may be undercounted, given the bungled rollout of crucial testing kits.
Nevertheless, Trump continued to downplay the severity of the outbreak as recently as Monday morning.
But the tweet claiming the virus was "under control" and the stock market "starting to look very good" hasn't aged well.
For many of Trump's stances during his tenure as President, there's "always a tweet" from years before that directly contradicts his current position.
In this case, people realized that window of time was growing shorter.
Trump may be starting to learn that a potential pandemic can't be edited away with a sharpie—it requires decisive action toward containment, informed by experts.
