After years of boasting about his economy, President Donald Trump now claims that increased market instability and skyrocketing unemployment due to the global pandemic couldn't have been predicted or prevented.
This is constantly proving to be untrue.
Numerous instances have come to light of Trump and his administration repeatedly ignoring warnings that the United States wasn't ready for a pandemic of this proportion.
In 2019, a Health and Human Services (HHS) training simulation of a hypothetical virus spreading from China to the United States predicted the inefficient testing and sub-par containment issues we face today. Intelligence officials warned Trump as early as January about the oncoming pandemic, including information about it in his intelligence reports for weeks, to no avail.
Now, a new report indicates that—in addition to HHS and intelligence officials—White House economy experts were warning of the impact of a flu-like pandemic, predicting the economic fallout it's currently wreaking today.
The warning came in a study from the National Security Council, and predicted a sudden economic halt much like the one Americans are currently experiencing as stay-at-home orders are observed across the country.
It even predicted some of the dismissals that were commonplace in the early stages of the outbreak:
"People may conflate the high expected costs of pandemic flu with the far more common, lower-cost seasonal flu. It is not surprising that people might underappreciate the economic and health risks posed by pandemic flu and not invest in ways to reduce these risks."
Trump himself did this less than a month ago:
This news is the latest to indicate that Trump's White House dismissed information which could've significantly lessened the impact of the current pandemic.
People had theories for why the President couldn't be bothered to read it.
Health officials now predict that deaths from the virus could surpass 200,000—and that's only if social distancing measures remain rigorous.
