On Feb. 5, senators urged the administration in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.
On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of “quarantine and isolation measures,” per the Times. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.
On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives, per the Times.
On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.
