Original subtitles

2020.

Since the 1980s,

it's been a magical year for science fiction writers,

a year of predictions about the future

and the ruthless power of technology.

Humanity would be bound together by a world wide web,

artificial intelligence would exponentially expand

the powers of the human mind,

and the world would be dominated and controlled

by information-based megacorporations

without need for government intervention.

But all of that turned out to be a technocratic illusion

when nature set loose a terrible disease

that took advantage

of the very connectivity we had manufactured.

In Seattle, the day of reckoning was January 20th,

when America's first patient tested positive for COVID-19.

On that same day in Seoul,

the first case in South Korea would also be confirmed.

Korea moved quickly to contain the disease

and save its economy using a variation

on an American plan.

But in the United States,

politics got in the way of science,

Allowing the virus to spread invisibly and fast.

More than 200,000 people have died.

In the first three months of the pandemic,

30 million people lost their jobs.

No more tyranny. No more tyranny.

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.

You know that, right?

This is their new hoax.

Who's scared of coronavirus?

- Let go of my fucking cart! - Are you recording me, dawg?

I have the right to buy food without being forced

to participate in a false flag pandemic.

At a moment of crisis,

the world's most powerful nation

didn't rise to the occasion.

It descended into division and chaos.

Back up!

What the fuck is your problem?

Why did the United States

fail to reckon with a danger

for which it should have been so well prepared?

It's one person coming in from China.

It will go away. Just stay calm, it'll go away.

In a couple of days it's gonna be down to close to zero.

We have it totally under control.

It's gonna be just fine.

Breathe in and hold your breath.

Filming during the time of COVID

presented unique challenges.

Okay, and I hold it...

- There's, like, two handles. - Yup.

Wow, you guys have really figured this out, okay.

One work-around was a camera system we invented,

built off-site, and sent to subjects.

We dubbed it "the COVID-cam."

So I was able... can I hear you?

- Hello, yeah! - Hi, it's working!

I'm Scott Becker.

I'm the chief executive officer

of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

How about this? Now, this is really something.

It's an actual board game.

My wife said,

"You know, we should really get it out and play it."

I'm like, "We're living through it!

I don't need the game!"

One of the functions public health labs have

is looking for those early indications of an outbreak.

And when did you first hear about the coronavirus?

It was January 7th, I believe,

that I first communicated with some of our staff.

They had sent me an email saying, "We're watching this.

"We just talked to CDC and they're gonna

be standing up their emergency operations center."

And I said, "Well, thanks for the update.

"I've been watching this. I'm concerned about it.

And happy new year."

In early 2020,

Trump was indifferent to the looming pandemic.

He was reckoning with simmering conflicts

and the upcoming presidential election.

♪ Time ♪

We begin tonight with the U.S. and Iran on the brink

for the drone strike that killed Qasem Soulemani.

Our economy is booming, wages are rising,

poverty is plummeting, crime is falling,

and America is the envy of the entire world.

♪ That you wanna be free ♪

♪ I won't have to cry no more ♪

The whole impeachment thing is a hoax.

It's a total sham.

♪ Yeah, yeah, time, time ♪

This morning, President Trump signed phase one

of a trade deal between the U.S. and China.

The pact comes after months of escalating tariffs

between the world's two biggest economies.

And we just broke the 29,000 mark on the DOW

just now as we're walking in.

Market's up substantially today.

Up until coronavirus, the way that Donald Trump

was gonna win reelection to a second term

was largely going to be on the strength of the economy.

I covered all of Barack Obama's two terms,

so I was there during the Zika outbreak,

the Ebola response.

As a White House reporter, we sort of cover everything,

so, you know, I've bounced around every topic

that you can possibly imagine in the Trump term

and had just finished covering the president's impeachment

in the House, and the trial in the Senate,

and was thinking that

we might actually get a little bit of a break

on the White House beat, such as it is.

And then a few weeks later, COVID happened.

One of the first indications

that the United States government had that

this was a potential problem was a conversation

that the CDC director, a guy named Robert Redfield,

had with his counterpart, a gentleman

by the name of Dr. Gao, who was essentially the head

of the Chinese CDC, and that occurred on January 3rd.

Chinese health authorities are still working

to identify the virus behind a pneumonia outbreak

in the central city of Wuhan.

Gao basically said, "Look, this is really serious.

"You need to be aware of this.

It's not something we've ever seen before."

I heard about a novel respiratory virus

circulating in China, and my ears perked up.

There you are!

I've been at BARDA for about ten years

in the Department of Health and Human Services.

BARDA's role is to lead the development

between government and industry

of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tests.

So I'm very interested, and have been my entire career,

of tracking early blips of novel viruses

that are infecting people.

It's not unusual for us to hear of a new virus emerging

in these wet markets of China.

They can spill over into the human population,

especially the people working in those wet markets.

But then we started seeing China take actions

like build hospitals rapidly, urgently.

All I could get at that point was anecdotal stories

on Twitter, for example.

But anyone who'd worked in preparing

for pandemic outbreaks knew that we were dealing with

something very unusual, very concerning, and very deadly.

You'll get to it. Don't rush.

Here we go. Now you got so exhausted.

So interesting about birds...

we had an earthquake, and they were able to alert us

15 minutes before the earthquake.

Because they are connected to the earth's compass,

so they felt the earth vibrating before it happens.

But you are also a predictor of things before they happen.

Yes, I am obsessed with predicting things,

but that's just part of my mathematical training.

Dr. Lee's training allows her

to act like a canary in a coal mine.

She's world-famous for the way her mathematical modeling

can predict the likely spread of disease

and assess the risk of a pandemic.

I have built so many models

to describe many different type of diseases.

When you see the first case,

it does not mean you only have first case.

It means you have one case plus many other cases

that you don't see.

It's by the time you have 41 cases,

and it is, like, at the end of December,

then that means you have hundreds of others.

So I was really, really nervous at that time.

I absolutely believe there's

human-to-human transmission in China.

If there are travelers coming back to the U.S. or Europe

for celebration of new year, that would be truly a vector

to really transmit the disease all over the world,

so I do feel that we are marching to a pandemic

in the early part of January.

Starting tonight, we're going to begin

screening passengers arriving from Wuhan

at the three airports

that see the majority of those passengers:

JFK, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Nancy Messonnier was in charge

of public messaging for COVID

at the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC.

An experienced public health official

and expert in vaccines,

she had played a leading role in the CDC's response

to the anthrax attacks in 2001.

Just this week...

Our laboratory is using genetic sequences

provided by the Chinese.

We're working on a specific diagnostic test

to detect this virus.

We'll be distributing this test

to state health departments.

This is a respiratory virus.

It is spreading silently, invisibly,

person to person,

in the air, on the surfaces.

Every moment counts to be able to recognize

where the virus is

and to learn as much as we can about it

so we can make life-saving vaccines and drugs

and diagnostic tests.

So did the government have some kind of plan or playbook

that they could look to in the event of something like this?

There's absolutely a playbook.

We've updated playbooks through the various years,

and we actually used those playbooks

to exercise what we would do

in an emerging, viral pandemic

the fall before this virus emerged.

"Crimson Contagion" was

a federal government exercise conducted in 12 states.

It simulated a pandemic with eerie similarities

to the coronavirus that was to come.

It was a very thorough exercise,

highly detailed, with a highly lethal influenza virus

that emerged in Asia

and spread quickly around the world.

We were getting daily "pseudo-reports"

on the outbreak, the death count.

The mistakes made during "Crimson Contagion"

played like a preview of coming attractions

for the failures of the COVID response.

So why did the government fail to learn the lessons needed

to prepare for what was to come?

The challenge has always been who's in charge.

We would have disaster leadership group meetings,

where we would bring together

the Health and Human Services network of experts,

and the ASPR would convene these meetings.

Who was, in fact, the ASPR?

The ASPR was Dr. Bob Kadlec.

The threats our country faces in the 21st century

are very real and very serious.

A 26-year Air Force veteran,

Kadlec was a specialist

in biological and chemical weapons.

As ASPR, he downplayed the danger of pandemics,

cut spending on emerging infectious diseases,

and his office eliminated a program

to manufacture N95 masks.

January 18th, I asked Dr. Kadlec

if we could convene a disaster leadership group meeting.

To my shock, his response was,

"I don't see a sense of urgency."

I just don't think he thought there was a real opportunity

for this virus to come into the United States.

The same day Rick Bright reached out to Kadlec,

Kadlec's boss, Alex Azar,

did try to get the president's attention.

Azar was in charge of the CDC and the FDA

as the secretary of HHS, Health and Human Services.

After the previous secretary had resigned in scandal,

Azar was appointed

to bring a businessman's approach to government.

As a former Big Pharma executive at Eli Lily,

Azar was infamous for having tripled the price of insulin.

I actually knew him in grad school.

Very conservative, very ambitious.

Went on to clerk for Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Within the administration,

Azar was known for his belief that the free market

would meet America's healthcare needs.

We, the government, do not have the solutions

to healthcare.

We're usually the cause of the problems.

With COVID, Azar sensed that the government

might have to play some limited role.

On January 18th, he knew that the president

was leaving town in a couple of days to go to Davos,

and Azar decided, "You know what?

"I think I'd better make sure

the president is aware of this virus."

Trump was actually on the golf course down at Mar-a-Lago

when Azar called.

Azar's pitch to the president

was one, this could be serious,

but also he wanted to convey a sense of kind of,

"We got this."

Of those two messages, the one

that President Trump appears to have really internalized

was the "we got it" message.

The CDC has identified a case of coronavirus

in Washington State.

Have you been briefed by the CDC...

I have.

Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?

No, not at all, and we're...

we have it totally under control.

It's one person coming in from China.

And we have it under control. It's gonna be just fine.

I actually think we were very fortunate

that the first case occurred in the Seattle region.

I sometimes call Seattle sort of the CDC of the West

because there are so many public health researchers

and public health people that end up in Seattle,

so in some ways I felt like, "Okay, they're on top of it,

and we're in good hands."

My name's Alex Greninger,

and I'm the assistant director of the Clinical Virology Lab

here at the University of Washington Medical Center.

Hello.

Everything about that first case from Washington

was just so positive.

I mean, like... let's go through all the positivity there.

You know, someone self-identifies,

says, "Hey, I just flew in from Wuhan and I have a fever."

The sample was sent overnight to the CDC,

where they turned around a test, which is crazy.

They actually had a test for the virus,

where the genome had just gone online 10 days prior.

CDC also sent a team out immediately

upon that confirmation.

They, you know, looked at all of his contacts

and there was no onward transmission.

We never identified another case in

the state of Washington until the last week of February.

But if you recall, he was not tested

until four days after when he became ill.

And he took a share ride back home from the airport,

he had lunch with his colleagues,

and he did a lot of things within four days.

And so I estimate that that is at least in the order

of 2,000 people that has to be tested,

and so we end up missing a lot of the cases.

We're not doctors, but we know a doctor,

and he's actually an expert in viruses.

Dr. Alex Greninger at UDub, you're one of the leading...

I just became an assistant professor,

and so for this new virus, you know, they sort of invited me

to go on the news to talk about it.

I remember later that day, I was in a second interview,

and like, in the middle of the interview,

the interviewer stopped it and said, "Oh,

"they just shut down, like, the city of Wuhan

and there's no more transport in and out of it."

11 million people are under quarantine,

and you're just kind of like, "Wow, that just

doesn't even seem like it's what's gonna happen."

Like, you've just never seen, like, a parallel world

like that, what was gonna happen here too.

How do you look at that more than one month

of not having any other cases in the state of Washington?

Oh, yeah, it was a total lie.

In terms of, like, you know, whether there was actual, like,

you know, whether there were no cases there, right?

I mean "lie" is not the right word,

but just a sort of a... you know, it was a delusion.

The delusion was

that the first COVID patient was the only one.

In fact, the disease was already spreading

inside the United States.

The challenge for scientists was to convince politicians

to mobilize the country

to fight a virus no one could see.

In a meeting on January 23rd,

Rick Bright made his pitch to Alex Azar.

My assignment, remember in BARDA,

is to make sure that we start making

drugs, vaccines, and those tests as quickly as possible.

We were told the CDC was working diligently on a test,

and we were relying solely on the CDC.

I raised the need to get started immediately

on commercial test development drugs and vaccines,

and the need for money to do it.

The secretary looked at me

and said, "You need money?"

And I said, "Yes, we've exercised

that it would take about $10 billion."

Without that experience and knowledge,

I might not have walked into that room

and asked for those things,

but I knew exactly what was needed.

I learned after that meeting, actually,

that a lot of the people were pretty offended

that I would come into a meeting with the Secretary

on day one and ask for money.

And it caused quite a shit storm,

is how it was described to me,

that I ruffled a lot of feathers.

In fact, I wasn't invited back to those meetings

for some time.

In the U.S., political appointees tightened

their purse strings and hoped the virus would just go away.

South Korea reacted very differently.

When it came to this disease response

here in South Korea,

the politicians largely stayed out of the response

and it was left in the hands of professionals.

After confirming its first case of the new coronavirus,

South Korea is stepping up precautionary measures.

- Hello. - Hello.

The first case was a 35-year-old woman

who had entered the country from Wuhan, China.

- Okay? - No.

No?

MERS was a coronavirus

that terrified South Korea,

killing 38 people and sickening hundreds more.

The government was vilified for its response.

Soon after, legislators pursued

a series of critical reforms.

As a result of that, they passed a law

in order to speed up the approval process

of these kits in a time of emergency.

On January 27th,

South Korean health officials summoned representatives

from more than 20 medical companies

to put in place a national testing program.

It was such an urgent request that they just met

in a conference room at one of the train stations in Seoul.

The head of the equivalent of the CDC, he basically said,

"Manufacture me these tests now

and forget about the approval process."

You know, "Start using them, start testing.

"We will come back to make sure it's accurate,

but we'll do that while you're already in the field."

Within a matter of days after that,

the first diagnostic test kit was approved,

and it's a process that typically can take

upwards of a year.

There were four cases at the time,

and it would be another few weeks before there was a death,

but they really felt the need for diagnostic testing

to be able to see where the problem was

and to deal with the threat.

By January 27th,

South Korea was on its way to containing the virus

and preventing an economic shutdown.

Good morning, everyone.

And thank you for joining us here today at HHS.

In the United States,

Azar continued to emphasize the response

that had so pleased President Trump:

"We've got this."

The playbook for responding to an infectious disease

outbreak is relatively simple and multi-tiered.

You identify cases, isolate people,

diagnose them, and treat them.

Then you track down all the contacts

of the infected person, and you do the same with those people,

and the same with contacts of contacts if necessary.

It sounded like a perfect plan,

but it was missing a key detail.

There was no comprehensive national testing

and tracing program.

Even so, the CDC stuck to a version of the script

drafted by Azar.

The CDC will continue

its aggressive public health response strategy,

working to protect the health and safety

of the American public.

Right now, there is no spread of this virus

in our communities here at home.

Appointed by Trump

after his predecessor left in disgrace,

Redfield was a controversial virologist

with no experience leading a public health agency.

During the AIDS crisis, he preached a religious approach,

calling for abstinence as a solution.

With his former assistant, Deborah Birx,

Redfield's attempts to push an unproven HIV vaccine

were twice investigated for scientific misconduct.

Redfield is a little bit of an oddity for the CDC.

The CDC is an institution filled with scientists

and researchers who don't like to be told that science has

to compromise for economics or for politics.

You know, they want to be purists.

Donald Trump is a president who has expressed

an incredible disdain for science

since before he took office.

Inside the West Wing,

they refer to the CDC as the Deep State.

Certainly many of the people at the CDC saw Redfield

as not having the kind of backbone that they would like

to have seen in a CDC director

to stand up to the president

both privately, but also publicly.

Some scientists were willing to push back.

Public health officials from around the country

shared doubts that the CDC was responding to the virus

with enough speed and concern.

They circulated an email chain,

which included Trump officials, called "Red Dawn."

What's going on here, my friend?

It was a tongue-and-cheek nod

to a 1984 movie about a small band of American citizens

who fight back against a Russian invasion.

This is the Emergency Broadcast System.

We are under attack by...

We were a little bit like the Wolverines

from that movie.

They know who all of you are.

They're looking for you.

A group of teenagers that are fighting back,

and one of us thought it would be funny

to use "Red Dawn" as the subject title.

That email chain, it's a group

of former and current state and local officials

within the federal government.

These are all very dear colleagues that have been

in public health and emergency response for a long time.

In late January, we were consciously monitoring,

trying to assess when it hit us,

how big the scope of the calamity

that we are looking into. and how to mitigate it.

I think in January,

the cat was already out of the bag

in terms of we had cases in the U.S.,

we had human-to-human transmission going on

in the U.S.,

and we were going to be dealing with COVID-19.

I mean, I wasn't able to sleep.

I couldn't stop thinking about

what could go wrong for us.

The "Red Dawn" emails would be full

of warnings and recommendations

from experts in pandemic response.

But politicians failed to recognize

that there were lessons to be learned.

There's never been anything like this in history.

There's never been and nobody has ever seen anything

like this.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

To be ready for the perils of the future,

all one had to do is look clearly at the past.

In 1918, in the midst of war,

influenza marched across the earth from country to country.

Epidemic lurked everywhere.

To ward off contagion, special precautions were taken.

With no vaccine and few treatment options,

simple but effective precautionary measures

like masks were all people had.

The H1N1 flu infected 500 million people,

1/3 of the world's population at the time.

The death toll can only be estimated

somewhere between 20 and 50 million people.

Since 1918, scientific advancements

like the invention of the electron microscope

have allowed us to see the "invisible enemy."

But even with vaccines and advances in pathology,

the growth of global transportation

made other pandemics ever more likely.

In 2003, a deadly SARS coronavirus

spread from bats to humans was quickly contained.

In 2009, the Obama Administration

faced a challenge when a new strain of H1N1 emerged.

Good afternoon, everybody.

There's no doubt that every president should learn

from what has happened before.

President Obama felt it very important from the beginning

and all the way through our dealing with H1N1

that the scientists make the calls.

H1N1 influenza is here.

I'm Dr. Tom Frieden.

I directed the CDC from 2009 to 2017.

I just sprayed down the chair with Lysol.

All right.

We dealt with epidemics

of Zika, Ebola, MERS, and H1N1 influenza.

Our Emergency Operations Center was activated

more than 90% of the time that I was there.

That's the way of reducing exposures,

if there is a lot of H1N1.

We do think there may be some challenges, though,

practical challenges.

President Obama made it very clear that HHS was in the lead

and that I would be the spokesperson for the flu,

as he would call me, the face of the flu.

H1N1 was very scary

because children were particularly vulnerable.

Hi, it's Elmo.

And I'm Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Elmo and Secretary Sebelius...

Teaching kids to sneeze into their elbows was a big thing.

First, you learn to sneeze into the bend of your arm like this.

- Achoo. - Oh, very good.

13,000 Americans died from H1N1

and the Obama Administration

mishandled vaccine distribution,

but scientists gave the administration high marks

for moving quickly

and being open with the press and the public.

Just four years later,

the Obama Administration's response to the Ebola crisis

would be criticized for being too slow.

In the case of Ebola I remember being in the room,

in the White House briefing room.

You guys are up here talking about,

"We have this great and perfect system that's going

"to be able to, you know, contain this virus

because we've done all this preparation,"

and yet it doesn't look like it's working.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

I can look back at any outbreak I worked on

and say, "I made a series of mistakes there."

We all do, but the key is,

are they unforced errors?

I think it is important to reflect

on whatever lessons we learn, we build and incorporate.

After the Ebola crisis passed,

the Obama National Security Council had essentially

created a unit within the National Security Council

dedicated to sort of pandemic response.

No, I cannot see Ben.

I can see his hand when he moves it out here,

but he's got a face shield on.

It's pretty good. Hardcore.

Beth Cameron was in charge of countering

biological threats for the Obama Administration.

We set up a new directorate

on global health security and biodefense,

and I was honored to be able to lead that directorate,

and also to be able to take on a lot of the lessons

that we really had learned after the Ebola epidemic.

In 2016,

Beth Cameron and her team at the NSC

drafted a 69-page playbook on how to deal with a pandemic.

The playbook was intended

to allow people in the White House to ask questions.

What should we do?

And also, what do we need to do

to get ahead so that we're not constantly reacting?

So what happened to this playbook?

So the playbook is reported to not have been used.

The Obama Administration did not leave

to this administration any kind of game plan

for something like this.

I have no idea why Mitch McConnell said

that he didn't know about the playbook.

There were a large number of copies

that were spiral bound of this playbook.

It was briefed to the incoming administration.

It did become politicized.

Some have erroneously suggested

that the Trump Administration

threw out the pandemic response playbook

left by the Obama-Biden Administration.

What the critics failed to note, however,

is that this thin packet of paper was replaced

by two detailed, robust, pandemic response reports

commissioned by the Trump Administration.

The last thing that they wanted was to pay attention

to what the Obama people wanted them

to pay attention to.

They were trying to make a clean break

from what they saw as a disastrous presidency,

and this was the Trump presidency.

♪ And I'm proud to be An American ♪

♪ Where at least I know I'm free ♪

I think it's important to understand

that biological threats are not the thing

that is always top of mind for a senior leader.

♪ And I'd gladly stand up ♪

But there really was a lot of pressure

on all of the civil servants

in between Barack Obama and Donald Trump

to explain why we need high-level officials

who are looking at that issue all the time.

After I left, I continued to work with the Trump team

in my new position outside of government

until the directorate was dissolved in May of 2018.

The Global National Security Team was disbanded

under a reorganization

by Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton.

It was really shocking that any administration

would get rid of so much experience and expertise

and the collaboration and coordination

that comes with that... those years.

From the moment of Trump's inauguration,

the guiding slogan of staffing was not "you're hired,"

but "you're fired."

Key positions went unfilled.

Many more were eliminated.

And when people were hired,

experience was not nearly as important as loyalty.

On January 29th, the White House announced the formation

of an official task force

to confront the threat of the coronavirus.

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Alex Azar.

Led by Azar,

the task force had little scientific expertise.

Most were businessmen and lawyers, seemingly chosen

for their political or religious beliefs.

One had been Sarah Palin's foreign policy advisor.

Another was a climate change denier

who opposed homosexuality as an act against nature.

The only two public health officials

were Redfield and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

At the National Institute of Health,

Fauci had advised six presidents

and had been at the forefront of every epidemic response

for the last 40 years.

The issue now with this is that there's a lot of unknowns.

As you can see just from the media,

the number of cases have steeply inclined

each and every day.

At the first briefing,

they announced no concrete programs

to contain the virus

inside the borders of the United States.

Instead, they offered a variation

of a familiar Trump refrain... "build a wall."

Foreign nationals, other than immediate family

of U.S. citizens and permanent residents

who have traveled in China within the last 14 days

will be denied entry into the United States for this time.

In the months after that, tens of thousands of people

from China still make their way into the United States,

mostly Americans who are returning home

and are not blocked by that ruling.

"Diamond Princess," this is your captain speaking

from the bridge.

We have been notified that

10 additional people

have tested positive for coronavirus.

The captain of the "Diamond Princess"

had docked his vessel in Yokohama

after learning a passenger had tested positive for COVID-19.

The Japanese government ordered a 14-day quarantine.

Eventually, over 700 passengers

would test positive.

That made the "Diamond Princess"

the largest known outbreak of the virus outside of China.

Donald Trump, save us.

Get us a government-based airplane.

- Not even that, just like... - Get us off the ship.

I received a phone call

that a disaster medical assistance team

was being assembled to do a rescue operation

to go pull American citizens off of the "Diamond Princess"

and bring them back to the U.S.

And I was asked if I would be willing to go

as an expert to go help the team.

Okay, they've got a bunch of people in white coats.

They're not white coats. They're white hazmat suits.

They're white hazmat suits.

They've got these little tunnels down here.

The E.T. Tunnels, I call them.

At the time, we still didn't know a lot

about the transmission dynamics

or even the severity and lethality of the disease.

The "Diamond Princess" confirmed

many, many of what I was nervous about.

First of all, it shows

how it spread in a confined environment

with lots of people, right?

Even though all of them has their own cubicle,

but that's exactly like apartment complexes

in New York City, and you go out, right?

You go to places confined in a mall, and in classrooms,

in dormitories, in many, many settings.

It basically gave us a very parallel world

of what could be happening to us.

Even after the ship went into quarantine

and passengers were really restricted to their rooms,

the fact that the outbreak continued to grow demonstrated

that there may be more to transmission phenomenon

than we initially thought.

So when we saw that, that really hit home to us

that this is a pretty explosive situation.

Okay, they quarantine, but yet the spread is like fire.

It shows... it really highlights strategic tests is a must.

Eva Lee began to sound the alarm

in the "Red Dawn" emails about asymptomatic spread

and the need to test widely.

She knew in early February

what federal officials refused to recognize.

Only a vast infrastructure for mass testing

could spot and contain a virus

that was already moving invisibly across the country.

Then I thought to myself, "That is it."

We will have no chance to contain.

If we are not going to take actions now,

we would regret and we would be late, late, late.

The trifecta is test, trace, and isolate.

You need to have all three of those working in tandem

to be able to take down any infectious disease.

I'm from Hong Kong,

and I grew up during SARS,

so I guess that was my first experience with an outbreak,

which has turned out to be an interesting reference point

during this outbreak.

My boss was like, "You should cover the coronavirus."

So my question's gonna be,

where are we deviating from the playbook?

That's where I hold the government accountable.

So the CDC made a test that worked in their lab

before the first case of COVID

landed in the state of Washington on January 20.

What they saw as their next step was sending test kits

based on their design

to public labs around the country.

So CDC can't just make a test and send it out.

They have to apply for Emergency Use Authorization.

This week, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization

for the CDC's diagnostic test.

Having a declaration of an emergency

allows you to, like, cut through a lot of red tape

where, like, you don't have to

approve things the traditional pathway,

which takes many, many years.

So it's like going through the precheck line at the airport.

FDA issued the EUA to CDC really on February 4th,

and test kits were available on the 5th.

The test kits will start shipping

to the over 100 U.S. public health labs.

Each test kit can perform up to 800 patient samples.

It works in about four to five hours' time.

And that's pretty heroic, in two weeks,

to develop test kits for the country.

So, so far, speaking of the playbook,

everything was going right.

The first thing public health labs have to do

after they get the test is they have to verify

that the test works in their hands,

in their laboratory, with their scientists.

So on Saturday, February 8th,

labs opened up their boxes

and they started to get the test up and running.

And then, the next morning,

I see a number of emails

from public health laboratory directors saying,

"We're seeing this problem with one of the components

"of the test, the N3,

and is anyone else seeing that?"

Then my phone started to blow up.

It became apparent that we actually had a real problem.

And I thought to myself,

"Oh, my God.

This is a nightmare."

There were many labs that were having the same problem.

So that was an indication

that this was coming from the CDC labs.

There are three components to the CDC-designed tests.

They are called the N1, N2, and N3 assay,

and the N1 and N2 assay, together,

look specifically for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

And then they had a 3rd component, the N3 assay,

which was designed to look for any coronavirus.

And I don't know why they decided

to throw that third part in.

They didn't need it, but that third part

is the part that caused all the problems.

It was a contamination problem.

This was just a huge lightbulb moment

where... wow, we could really be on pause.

The CDC says they're working with states now

to fix the tests.

They did not say how many of the kits have flaws.

Now, this was really frustrating

to a lot of lab directors because they were like,

"Look, the N1 and N2 part of this test are working

"totally fine,

"so why don't we just ignore the part

that isn't working?"

Under an Emergency Use Authorization,

you're not supposed to do that.

You have to run that test exactly as it's assigned.

As it turned out,

over 90% of public health labs

had tests that were not working.

So it was really as if we were flying blind,

and we knew it, and frankly,

there was nothing we could do except wait.

There was a working effective test

that was created in a German laboratory

that was being distributed by the World Health Organization

to countries all around the world.

It is available now

and we are shipping an essential component to labs

to really start working immediately.

The WHO test quite frankly is used

for low and moderately income countries.

I think it would've been very unusual

to use another country's test, and not for political reasons.

Just, I guess, because of maybe scientific hubris.

We've never had a failure like this.

Despite the technical problems at the CDC,

the Trump Administration could have insisted

on an alternate plan.

Public labs could have pivoted to the WHO test

or removed the N3 element.

Test manufacturers and clinical labs

were eager to start making their own tests,

but for reasons that remain unexplained,

the FDA put the brakes on the approval process.

Yeah.

Looks like the setup is pretty good.

Oh, good, doctor approved?

Yup, exactly.

My name is Taison Bell.

I'm an infectious disease and critical care physician

at the University of Virginia.

I'm the director of the COVID ICU.

It's really important to know

who's positive in the community

and to be able to test in a widespread, aggressive fashion

so we can really stop the chain of transmission

of the virus.

Traditionally, there's a lot of leeway

when it comes to federal regulations

and hospital laboratories' ability

to set up their in-house testing,

but the thing about the emergency declaration

was that it made the diagnostic innovation

more difficult because now it had to go through the FDA.

So now, all of a sudden,

any university laboratory that has the experience

and the know-how to set up their own in-house testing

now has to clear it in order to make this work.

We're not a public health lab.

As a clinical lab, we're not part of this system.

You know, the CDC and the state public health labs

are fantastic,

but clinical labs,

like hospital clinical labs, commercial labs,

perform 90% to 95% of testing.

We really are the front lines of the public health system,

and so it's really important

that we're a part of that conversation as well.

So we're trying to figure out, is it better

to just deal with the FDA and the backlog there

and set up our own in-house testing,

or do we just wait for the CDC

to fix the issues with the test?

We decided initially to wait,

and that was the wrong decision.

Many labs gave up

rather than face the thicket of bureaucratic rules.

But Alex Greninger did not give up,

and instead began

to slog through the FDA regulatory process.

So at that point, you had to really go fully in.

You gotta make your own test.

So we got the template and the paperwork.

You couldn't get the comments back

until you mail in the document.

Even though you'd email a document,

you had to burn it to a CD or a USB

and physically send the document as well.

The original process suggested

testing 50 positive samples,

but in that case in the U.S., there were 14 known cases.

But even getting that one sample,

that one positive sample, was the hardest part.

And obtaining clinical material from the CDC

is very difficult.

And I think that was when you realize

that the FDA and the CDC maybe hadn't talked a ton.

Swing your partner around and 'round.

And around. And around.

While federal agencies failed

to talk to each other, the virus swirled in mid-February

through a series of square dances in suburban Seattle.

With every do-si-do, the virus changed partners.

But without testing,

scientists couldn't follow the spread.

The emergency steps meant for speed and innovation

slowed the process down to a crawl.

The White House could have cut through the red tape.

The mystery is why those in power

didn't force the bureaucracy to find a quick solution.

While we were on pause,

the anxiety level of our members just increased

exponentially, day after day.

There was just more frustration, concern,

frankly sadness, because we weren't

able to do our job.

That was really tough.

While testing in the U.S. was stalled,

in South Korea, the government was already moving

to contain the virus by utilizing

a comprehensive national testing and tracing program.

I think they did a much better job.

I think starting from the testing roll-out,

a lot of our jealousy early on

was just how rapidly they were able

to test a large proportion of their population.

And they were testing

relatively younger asymptomatic people

as well as older people who had more severe diseases,

and they were able to do contact tracing.

Because of the laws that were passed in 2016,

enabling contact tracers to obtain vast amounts

of information in the name of disease control,

there was a large amount of data

that authorities here can access.

Cell tower information,

CCTV footage, credit card data.

And this information was pushed out

to the general public using cell phone alerts.

♪ To glance behind ♪

♪ The Phantom of the Opera ♪

♪ Is here ♪

If two people singing

could spread the disease,

imagine thousands singing in one room.

A major outbreak was traced to the Shincheonji Church,

a doomsday Christian cult.

Led by a self-proclaimed messiah, Chairman Lee.

- Hallelujah. - "Hallelujah."

The Korean government descended

on the city of Daegu,

where the church had its primary place of worship.

By testing, tracing, and isolating

the followers of Chairman Lee,

officials tried to prevent the virus

from spreading to the rest of the city.

Thousands of additional people had been exposed.

It led to South Korea's numbers soaring.

Because South Korea had already started ramping up

diagnostic test production, they were able to seek out

every member of this church in Daegu

and get them tested.

The President of South Korea has put the country

on the highest possible alert after the number of cases

jumped to more than 760 and the death toll rose to 7.

Because of the surge of cases in Daegu,

South Korea started opening up these centers.

Drive-through testing

and special testing booths protected healthcare workers

while dramatically increasing testing capacity.

And manufacturers were able to keep up with the volume.

South Korea also stepped up production of PPE

to protect health workers and the public alike.

Early adoption of testing would save South Korea.

At the same moment in the United States,

testing was still halted, and the nation was blind

to where and how the virus was spreading.

Because of all we've done,

the risk to the American people remains very low.

When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days

is going to be down to close to zero, we're doing great.

Other countries have not been doing great.

Our consumer is very, very strong,

very powerful economically.

Underneath the booming economic wave

was an invisible undertow of disease.

By mid-February, pandemic models indicate

that there were thousands of cases spreading

through Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York.

By mid to late February, the sort of top experts...

Robert Redfield, Nancy Messonnier,

Anthony Fauci, Azar...

they decide, "We gotta tell the president

"that we have to become more aggressive

"about warning the American public

that this is where we're headed."

The problem was the president just that next day

left for another foreign trip to India.

Well, I look forward to being with the people of India.

We're gonna have many millions and millions of people.

They wanted to brief the president obviously

before you sort of made this sort of...

right turn on messaging.

Yeah, we're very much involved.

We're very...

very cognizant of everything going on.

We have it very much under control.

Thank you very much, everybody.

And the doctors knew that this wasn't the kind of thing

that you brief over the telephone,

so they decided, "We'll set up a briefing

for the president the day he gets back."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

rolled out the red carpet for President Trump.

Namaste. Namaste.

President Trump often judges events based on their size.

The bigger the better, so it's fitting

that this stadium was absolutely packed

with more than 100,000 people.

The rally kicked off a whirlwind trip

packed with the pageantry that the president so loves.

As of this morning, we still have only 14 cases

of the China coronavirus

detected here in the United States.

We have three cases

among Americans repatriated from Wuhan,

and we have 40 cases among American passengers

repatriated from the "Diamond Princess" in Japan.

We're trying to engage in radical transparency

with the American public as we go through this.

This morning, Dr. Messonnier from the CDC

provided the usual tele-briefing.

There was a bit of confusion,

and it was Nancy Messonnier's understanding

that the green light had been given

for that new message

to be delivered before briefing the president.

So at her next conference call for reporters,

she went to town.

I remember being shocked,

thinking, "Does she realize what she just said?"

I can't say that I know

what was in Nancy Messonnier's mind,

but it wouldn't be hard to guess

that there must have been a level of frustration

built up inside the CDC

about a president who doesn't take this seriously.

I mean, you know, that was palpable.

Statements were made for the first time

to prepare the psyche of Americans

for what we, the scientists, knew was coming.

It was a turning point in this outbreak

because the truth was finally broken through that shell

of so many people standing there every day

telling Americans, "We have it under control.

"We have it contained. It's not a problem.

It's going away."

Those were the messages every day up until that point.

She gives that briefing at virtually the exact moment

that Trump is walking up the steps

on "Air Force One" in India.

On a larger scale, communities and cities

may need to modify, postpone, or cancel mass gatherings.

Nancy Messonnier's comments tank the market.

1,000 point drop in the DOW.

Stocks fall sharply as fears spread

that growing coronavirus will slow the global economy.

It was essentially a kind of freak out.

The stock market taking another beating

after a sharp new warning from the CDC.

Also, tonight...

Trump doesn't like to be surprised.

The one gleaming, wonderful thing

that was giving him and his advisors hope was the economy.

It was the silver bullet.

That was how he was going to win a second term.

That, combined with Messonnier's threat

of what she was suggesting... shut the country down...

"You're saying something

"that's gonna threaten the economy,

and by definition, threaten my reelection."

It's an 18-hour flight back.

By the time Trump lands,

the whole thing had spun out of control, and he was livid.

He calls up Alex Azar, wakes him up,

screaming at him... what had happened?

"Do you know Nancy Messonnier

had scared the shit out of people?"

The CDC said yesterday that they believe it's inevitable

that the virus will spread in the United States,

and it's not a question of if, but when.

Do you agree with that assessment?

Whatever happens, we're totally prepared.

We have the best people in the world.

Notably missing

from "the best people in the world"

was Dr. Nancy Messonnier.

It didn't surprise me that the moment she said that,

that she would be removed from that platform.

I'm going to be announcing exactly right now

that I'm gonna be putting our Vice President, Mike Pence,

in charge.

I'm gonna ask Mike Pence to say a few words, please.

Thank you. Mike?

After the episode with Nancy Messonnier,

when Pence's team takes over from Azar,

essentially the message gets contained.

Not in the least.

I was delighted that I get to have the Vice President helping

in this way.

Delighted. Absolutely.

Now at the helm of the task force,

Pence promptly promoted Deborah Birx,

a doctor and a diplomat, to be a spokesperson.

Dr. Birx, who is our right arm at the White House on this,

and frankly, one of the leading experts in the world

on infectious disease, I think is...

Pence trusted Birx

on account of her Christian faith and political instincts.

She'd become a go-to-explainer for a White House interested

in packaging science to serve partisan goals.

We really want to understand

where the virus is spreading, who we have to protect,

who's the most vulnerable.

That would have been easy to understand

if there had been a national testing program,

but that was still stalled.

While countries all over the world

were testing thousands of cases,

the United States was testing fewer than 100 a day.

At that stage, the only labs across the country

that could legally test for COVID

were a few public health laboratories

and the CDC itself.

The frustration was just boiling over,

and I remember going to these meetings

with our clinical lab director,

and she'sliterally on the phone with the FDA and the CDC

like, "You need to help us! You need to help us."

After almost a month

of labs across the country being unable to test,

the Trump Administration finally made a decision

it could have made weeks earlier.

On February 26th,

the FDA and the CDC laid out the strategy,

and that was that we would be able to get up and running

by using the original test kit,

but by throwing out the N3 component.

Overnight with, you know,

with some crossing out of lines on some paper,

the same test kits that had been shipped out

to the state public health labs were functional.

That amended EUA was Wednesday, February 26th,

and you can watch the testing curve in the United States.

I mean it really didn't start going up

until that week.

Here in Washington State at the state lab,

they had positive results the very first time

they performed authorized tests.

After desperate pleas

from health care providers,

the FDA also relaxed regulations and

let manufacturers and hospital labs use their own tests.

But it was too little, too late.

The disease had spread to half the states in the country.

And test kits were in such short supply

that they were limited to patients

who met rigid guidelines set by the CDC.

Early on, our testing was limited to people

who had traveled from China, or they had had contact

with someone who was known tested positive for COVID-19.

So written in our guidelines,

by necessity because we had a strained testing supply,

it was designed to miss community transmission,

meaning transmission that happens

throughout the community that's not connected to travel,

that we know at some point's gonna happen.

And it's like we're looking in this area,

and we know that transmission's gonna happen

over here, and we're gonna miss it

because we can't test for it.

On February 27th,

the new testing recommendations came out.

Do you mind removing the mask?

- Is that okay? - Oh, no, not at all.

Didn't know what your rules of engagement were there, so...

The new addition was this line that said,

"If you have severe lower respiratory pneumonia,

"severe pneumonia or ARDS...

"Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome...

you should consider testing."

With the updated guidelines,

we initiated testing in two individuals,

and both of those individuals tested positive.

So that evening after we got the first two back,

we looked around the intensive care unit and said,

"Okay, who else is sick with pneumonia

"that has not been diagnosed with influenza

or another respiratory virus?"

And we selected nine more individuals.

Eight of those turned out to be positive for COVID.

It was an astounding revelation.

The revelation was that while testing protocols

were on hold, the disease had spread uncontrollably,

which would lead to economic disaster

and loss of tens of thousands of lives.

The real question is, did more people die?

Did more dislocation and economic problems

and societal change have to happen than did?

The period that in our reporting

that we have called "The Lost Month,"

that really was the time

when things happened in the United States

much more slowly than they happened in,

for example, South Korea,

and it became impossible to do containment.

Because the U.S. failed to contain the virus,

state governments moved to lockdowns

to avoid runaway contagion

and to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Over 100,000 small businesses would close and never reopen.

7 million Americans would be infected by the disease.

But back in late February, the government refused

to confront the reckoning that was about to come.

We have done an incredible job.

We're going to continue.

It's going to disappear one day.

It's like a miracle. It will disappear.

The president is also quoted by saying,

"The virus we're talking about having to do,

"you know, a lot of people think it goes away in April

with the heat."

Dr. Fauci, does this go away in April?

If it acts like influenza,

the heat will actually make it diminish in its impact,

but we have no way of knowing how it's gonna act.

Does the CDC agree that this is a problem

that is going to go away without intervention?

I think it's prudent to assume

that this pathogen will be with us for some time to come.

The President's expressing confidence this team,

the public health infrastructure in this country,

state and local, that we can deal with this.

We will prepare for this. We will work together on this.

He's trying to calm a public that...

we see in China, panic can be as big of an enemy as virus

in these situations,

and so there is always that balance to...

Mr. Secretary, I don't want to panic over this either.

The stock market's crashing.

He's outright contradicting

everything that you all have just said.

Outright contradiction!

I think he's expressing confidence in...

With no medical basis for it!

That's what you've just explained to us.

Come on, sir.

The gentleman's time has expired.

You're doing a great job for the president, Mr. Secretary.

Now the Democrats are

politicizing the coronavirus.

You know that right? Coronavirus.

One of my people came up to me and said,

"Mr. President, they tried to beat you

"on Russia, Russia, Russia.

They tried the impeachment hoax."

And this is their new hoax.

And so far,

we have lost nobody to coronavirus

in the United States.

Nobody.

The next day, that would change.

Today, Public Health... Seattle and King County... is announcing

three new presumptive positive cases of novel coronavirus,

COVID-19, including one person who died.

We have expressed our condolences to the families

of the individual who has passed away.

It was one of the first two patients diagnosed,

it was my patient, and all we saw was a future

of extremely ill individuals like this.

So it was a challenging moment,

a daunting moment, to come to that realization.

Today, health officials in Washington State

announced four new deaths, bringing the total to six,

all in the Seattle area.

By early March, King County, Washington

had become the epicenter of the coronavirus in the U.S.

due to the Lifecare Nursing Home.

They're not answering the phones, the lines are busy.

All the families are really worried,

not knowing if our loved ones are even alive.

It was a blur of activity.

We realized that our hospital

was now the tip of the iceberg.

We soon found out how deep that iceberg went.

Because test kits were in short supply,

access was limited to patients

who were dangerously close to respiratory failure.

The death count began to rise.

COVID began spreading

to health care workers and first responders.

The job situation put them at increased risk.

Nurses' aides in nursing homes

without the protective equipment or training

they needed to be safe and secure.

Individuals who have jobs

that were considered essential jobs,

they're stocking grocery shelves

and helping to pick up trash in communities

and sweep the streets.

While many affluent Americans

worked on computers at home,

low-paid essential workers,

many without masks and the ability to distance,

were jammed into sites of contagion

like delivery depots, industrial farms, factories,

funeral homes, and meatpacking plants.

If the impact of the disease was divided by occupation,

it was also sundered by age and race.

My grandmother used to say,

"You know, when the country gets the flu,

black people get pneumonia."

It's well-known in our circles that we have worse outcomes

when it comes to a lot of these different diseases,

you know, and part of that is systemic racism.

A lot of it is access to healthcare.

If you have the money, you can get the best healthcare

in the world, but without those resources,

you have inadequate care and sporadic care.

So any kind of disease spread then falls hardest

on communities that are already at a health risk.

What are we dealing with?

With this coronavirus, COVID-19?

We're dealing with clearly an emerging infectious disease

that has now reached outbreak proportions

and likely pandemic proportions.

The "Grand Princess" Cruise Ship has been moored

off the coast of California.

I want to commend the efforts of our Coast Guard

that heroically flew coronavirus tests

to the ship.

21 tested positive for the coronavirus.

On his way to a weekend trip

to Mar-a-Lago, Trump made a stop at the CDC.

Watching the president go

to the Centers for Disease Control,

he discussed with a reporter

the fact that one of the cruise ships was still offshore.

I'd rather have them stay on

because I like the numbers being where they are.

I don't need to have the numbers double

because of one ship.

For the first time, it occurred to me

that the government of the United States

was intentionally slow walking testing.

In this big vast land of ours,

this great country of ours, we have 240 cases.

Most of those people are gonna be fine.

The vast majority are going to be fine.

We've had 11 deaths.

All of our state labs

now have the ability to test for this virus...

And they have had.

The testing has been amazing, actually,

what they've been able to produce

in such a short period of time.

Anybody that wants a test can get a test.

Anybody who wanted a test knew that was a lie.

Just finding a facility was hard.

People with the disease were denied tests

on account of supply backlogs,

which also caused delays in results.

The next day, while Trump golfed,

Pence and Redfield went to Cruise Lines of America.

We all recognize the recent challenges

on the "Diamond Princess,"

and the ongoing challenge with the "Grand Princess,"

and we want to ensure that the American people

can continue as we deal with the coronavirus

to enjoy the opportunities in the cruise line industry

and be confident.

I would not encourage anyone

to change their plans at this point

based on what the epidemiology is here in Florida.

They should enjoy Disneyland.

They should enjoy the rest of Florida.

There is this back and forth,

the medical folks saying we need to take this seriously,

we need to be aggressive,

the economic folks pushing back and saying, "Yeah, but..."

Fauci would march up and answer questions.

Do you believe that people,

even if they're healthy, should get onboard a cruise ship?

I would recommend strongly

that they do not go on a cruise ship.

And then Trump or Pence would come back

and sort of contradict him.

We're gonna work with the cruise line industry

to improve the safety,

improve the health environment on cruise lines.

Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth.

If you go to the right agency,

if you go to the right area, you get the test.

Will you admit that there is a serious problem

in this country

obtaining access to testing for coronavirus?

My colleague is looking at me to answer that.

- Here we go. - Okay.

The system is not really geared

to what we need right now.

- That is a failing. - A failing, yes.

It is a failing. Let's admit it.

Dr. Fauci said earlier this week

that the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing.

Do you take responsibility for that?

Yeah, no, I don't take responsibility at all.

We're doing a great job.

Yeah, we have 40 people right now... 40.

Compare that with other countries

that have many, many times that amount.

To keep new cases from entering our shores,

we will be suspending all travel from Europe

to the United States for the next 30 days.

There was a problem

with Trump's sudden travel ban...

it had no plan attached.

If we do get back to the U.S., then what happens?

Do we go into quarantine? Do we go home?

Returning Americans flooded U.S. airports,

where they were jammed in makeshift COVID checkpoints.

They were perfect conditions for more contagion,

as travelers from Europe spread the virus into the U.S.

The message to New Yorkers from the beginning has been,

"This is something we all can handle together.

Go about your lives. Go about your business."

The Governor confirming

that coronavirus has arrived here in Manhattan.

The coronavirus spreads tonight as Governor Cuomo

announces five more positive cases in New York.

The number of confirmed cases has reached 121.

Today, Governor Cuomo announcing a ban

on any gatherings of 500 people or more.

And 613 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York.

That is more than any other state.

I'm glad to see that you're practicing social distancing.

That looks very nice.

We're announcing new guidelines for every American to follow.

Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people,

and avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants.

And if everybody in America does what we ask for,

we will see a dramatic difference,

and we won't have to worry about the ventilators,

and we won't have to worry about the ICU beds.

Our volume is just exploding.

We have so many people in the hallways.

A day or so ago, we put 14 people on ventilators.

Mayor de Blasio says that there have been 100 new cases

in the city today alone.

So we're going to put out an executive order today.

New York State on pause.

19 million New Yorkers are being asked to stay at home

as much as possible.

Now topping 85,000 confirmed cases

and more than 1,400 deaths.

I hate to say this, but it's true...

we are now the epicenter of this crisis

right here in the nation's largest city.

And if this goes on for a month, or two, or three,

or five like it did in China, we don't have what we need.

This is not a country that was built to be shut down.

We're not gonna let the cure be worse than the problem.

Worried about the economy,

Trump tried to limit shutdowns,

but the virus was out of control.

By April, over 3,000 New Yorkers had died,

surpassing the death toll of 9/11.

ICUs were over capacity with patients who couldn't breathe.

Ventilators were in short supply,

and many of those who got them did not survive.

We had seen the pandemic

was really taking off in New York City.

We were in a central area of Virginia

where there's not a huge population,

and it was like being on a coastal city

and you hear about an earthquake

that happens offshore.

You know that a tsunami is coming.

You just don't know when it's gonna happen

and how severe it's gonna be.

A U.S. Marine in Virginia

has tested positive for the coronavirus.

This is the first positive case in Virginia,

and here's what we know.

I remember one day, I was rounding in our COVID ICU,

and our unit is structured kind of like a V,

so there's one wing here, another wing over there.

And you know, these are some of the sickest patients

I've ever taken care of in my life.

They're on breathing machines, dialysis machines.

They are needing lots of medicines

to keep them sedated and calm.

And I'm trying to get through morning rounds,

and I see that on one wing,

it's almost all Hispanic last names.

And then, on the other wing,

it's almost all Black names.

I grew up an hour away from where I'm working.

These are the family names that I grew up with,

and I know these families.

And I just was trying to focus on the medical part

and just getting through it,

but I just felt this weight on my chest.

I'm a Black male in the United States

and my family members have chronic diseases

at high rates,

and I've been dealing with this my whole life.

And now I have family members who are contracting COVID.

Those are smiles and hugs and tears and barbeques.

They're not numbers on a paper.

Through the spring,

the death toll would rise to 100,000.

It was a terrifying marker

for the failure of the American response.

The U.S. was 4% of the world's population

and 20% of the deaths from the virus.

Despite the fatal consequences of inaction,

the government could not solve basic problems

like supplies for test kits.

In March, we started to see the global supply chain

really get jammed up.

So it was extraction kits, swabs.

The major producer of swabs

is in the Lombardy region of Italy.

And Italy had just gone on lockdown,

and the swabs company was in a no-fly zone,

so the U.S. supply is basically going...

grinding to a halt.

Every single step of the way, we've encountered an issue

or a problem with the supply chain.

Potential supply chain problems

had been identified in "Crimson Contagion."

The focus was on testing supplies and lifesaving PPE.

The most critical items needed were N95 masks,

whose firm fit and tight mesh offered healthcare workers

real protection from the disease.

We had estimated the number of N95 respirators

that would be needed.

That number was 3 1/2 billion.

And we had a fraction

of what we would need in the stockpile.

And all of those had a five-year shelf life,

and a lot of those,

they were purchased almost ten years ago.

Despite Ebola, despite Zika, despite H1N1,

filling up the national stockpile for some virus

that we don't even know is ever gonna come

has never been the top priority.

You can say the Obama Administration didn't do enough

to leave the next administration prepared.

You can also say, "Well, that's true,

but the Trump Administration had three and a half years."

The Strategic National Stockpile was not intended

to be everything that we would need for an entire crisis.

I think in mid-January, the U.S. government

should have been looking at the stockpile

to see what was in it

and how we were gonna pivot to manufacture more.

We should have been having the conversation

about the Defense Production Act in January.

There's talk of invoking war powers

to require U.S. companies to manufacture some goods.

That's right,

so that's called the Defense Production Act.

I believe it came into existence

during the Korean War.

Effectively, we can determine

that our production should get to the front of the line.

We'll use it if we need to, but we obviously...

if we can work cooperatively with any vendor,

we'd rather do that.

"Let the market work its magic."

That was the guiding philosophy for Azar and Trump,

but their anti-government strategy

ignored basic rules of supply and demand.

Without a large order from the United States government,

there really wasn't an incentive for these companies

to start maximizing their throughput.

I was getting reports from Mike Bowen, one of the few

remaining producers of face masks and respirators

in the United States

who had his finger on the pulse of the supply chain.

I'm a salesman telling a story that nobody believes.

The story is that the U.S. mask supply is gonna collapse

and people are gonna die.

It doesn't cost much to fix.

That's the story.

Around 2005, all of the major mask makers left the country.

It put the U.S. mask supply

in the hands of foreign control

and could be subject to diversion during a pandemic.

And that's what I've been warning about for years.

I wrote Barack Obama 20 letters.

"Tell America's hospitals that they are going to be

"in a position to not be able to protect their staff

and their patients."

I voted for Donald Trump.

I thought, "You know, if I contact enough people

"in the administration, somebody, one of these people

"are gonna look at this and go, 'Hey, this is a problem.

Maybe we ought to call this guy.'"

And no, I couldn't get any...

I didn't get any response there.

In January, Bowen's predictions came true.

As China struggled to contain the outbreak of COVID,

it limited the export of N95 masks to the United States.

At the end of January,

I'm hearing from all over the world.

People are freaking out about masks, and needing masks.

And that's when I got ahold of Rick and said,

"Hey, here's what I'm seeing out here.

This is gonna be bad."

He was sounding the alarm bells almost every day.

We can't protect America's population.

That's too late, but I said I can at least make

enough masks to protect America's healthcare workers.

I reminded him that we had these four respirator lines.

To activate them we would need more people, raw materials,

emergency NIOSH approval, and large non-cancellable orders.

I see that our country's gonna have a problem,

I get ahold of Rick.

I pushed every one of those emails

up to the Strategic National Stockpile

and Critical Infrastructure Team.

I reminded them of the H5N1 scare,

when people rushed to buy masks and hoard masks.

The response I got was,

"We will just change the CDC guideline.

And we'll just tell people, don't do that."

Basically in March, they realized

that the healthcare workers

are not going to have enough PPE,

so they basically issued a warning to the public,

"Do not use face masks."

Do you have any sense of how many more N95 masks

would be on the market had the federal government taken you up

on your offer to reactivate N95 manufacturing lines

in January?

About 7 million N95 respirators per month.

I sounded the alarm every day

about the shortage of N95 respirators,

and we were doing nothing.

The numbers continue to surge in hotspots

like California, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida,

and especially, of course, New York.

Medical resources are stretched to capacity

and beyond.

We had saved some outdated N95 masks

that were part of the Ebola response,

but quickly we ran out of those supplies,

so we had to make do.

Some of the N95 masks that we received

had been in storage for years and years,

and while the actual mask itself worked fine,

the rubber band was brittle.

So there were people in the room

taking care of a patient, and the mask just snaps off.

The CDC is now advising healthcare workers

to ration masks, to use expired masks,

even use bandanas or scarves as a last resort.

Our usage increased by several hundredfold.

We could see our equipment supply going down dramatically.

So you kind of clamp down a little bit and say, you know,

"We're gonna save it for these very specific encounters."

So now, from the perspective of a healthcare worker,

you're taking away my safety.

And what people really wanted was a big enough supply

so that anyone who felt that they were at a higher risk

could be safe.

One mask to be worn for 12 hours.

It's just ridiculous.

No protective equipment, the gowns.

We have to improvise with what we have.

We have people coming in sewing masks, sewing shields,

making things out of plastics.

This is what we're doing now?

I mean that would be like a soldier going to war

and making a plastic gun to bring with him.

This is what's happening.

- PPEs! - Every day!

PPEs!

Every day!

We're here in the community fighting every day,

and we need some help.

In February, the Trump Administration actually

created the China-COVID Procurement Service

to encourage American producers like 3M

to sell their entire inventories of N95 masks

to China.

When American hospitals desperately needed N95s,

they were forced to import them

and pay up to 10 times more

than the price charged by American producers.

PPE has been sporadic, but we do what we have to do.

We're nurses, and we learn to adapt

and to get the job done and get the care provided,

and that's what we're gonna continue to do.

Sporadic for you,

but not sporadic for a lot of other people.

Oh, no, I agree, Mr. President.

Because I've heard the opposite.

I've heard that they are loaded up with gowns now.

And you know, initially, we had nothing.

We had empty cupboards. We had empty shelves.

We had nothing because it wasn't put there

by the last administration.

In the midst of the crisis,

President Trump goes on TV and says, "Don't worry.

We've got plenty of PPE for healthcare workers."

What was your reaction when you saw that?

I know what my reaction was.

I turned to my wife and said, "That's complete bullshit.

He has no idea what he's talking about."

I'm getting 500 to 1,000 emails a day.

I'm getting emails from people, not businesses.

I'm getting emails from moms.

I'm getting emails from old people, "Please send me masks."

And I can't.

You make a product that can protect people.

I can't help all these people.

The PPE shortage continued on for months,

even after Trump put one of his most trusted

family members in charge

of procuring protective equipment.

Jared Kushner formed his own task force

to get supplies.

Was that confusing? Like did you...

It was extremely confusing.

The president wanted to make sure

that we had the best people doing the best jobs

and making sure that we had the right people focused

on all the things that needed to happen

to make sure that we can deliver in these unusual times

for the American people.

My old boss called me and said he heard that

Jared Kushner's task force needed younger volunteers

who had general skills and were willing

to work seven days a week for no money,

and if you fit those criteria, that you should head to D.C.

and help with the pandemic response.

I definitely had some apprehension

about working for the administration,

but it felt like the country

and the world were under attack.

It seemed like if there was something to do to help,

that was the right thing to do.

They basically gave us a day

to show up in D.C. at the FEMA Headquarters.

We walked into Conference Room A,

which was this windowless, subterranean conference room.

There were televisions all around the walls

all playing FOX News.

One representative from FEMA

and one representative from the military

gave a quick pep talk.

They kept saying "the stuff," and by that they meant PPE.

And they kept saying, "There's stuff all around the world.

"There's stuff in the U.S., and we need

to get it to hospitals as fast as possible."

Everyone stood up and started filing into different offices,

and I remember the only people left were the volunteers.

We thought we would be auxiliary support

for an existing procurement team that just needed

to be expanded as quickly as possible

and we would, you know, do data entry for contracts.

And instead, we were the team.

I think when people imagined the federal government response

in the war room, they thought it would be this big,

you know, energized group of experts,

not ten 20-year-old volunteers all just with private laptops.

No industry relationships,

no experience working in supply chain.

So we started cold-emailing people we knew

who had business relationships in China,

looking for factories online,

and emailing them from our personal Gmail accounts.

Because we had never done this before,

you know, there were all these really basic questions

about how a federal procurement operation should work.

We would call factories and say,

"We think the federal government can send you a check

in 60 days," and they would say,

"There's someone with a briefcase of cash,

and they are offering to pay me right now."

And we would run around the FEMA building

looking for someone who could tell us what payment terms

the federal government was allowed to offer,

and no one ever told us.

One week into our work, several government employees

walked into the room and handed out NDAs

and told us we had to sign the NDAs

or leave the room immediately,

and we all had built our own relationships

with manufacturers, and it felt like if we walked away,

it would negatively affect our ability

to buy this critical, lifesaving equipment.

And so we all begrudgingly signed the NDA.

In the room, there were those TVs

all around the walls playing the news.

They always had a death counter.

And so every hour we were sitting there,

trying to buy PPE that we all knew could save lives,

and we were watching the number of deaths in the U.S.

tick higher and higher and higher.

And that weighed on all of us.

The president also instructed me to make sure

that I break down every barrier needed

to make sure that the teams can succeed.

The first time Jared Kushner came into the room,

he had this big entourage, and he said,

"I want to make this as effective as possible.

"Tell me the problems that you have,

and I will solve them today."

And we said, "We need to be able to pay upfront."

And he said, "Done,"

but there was no action taken that we saw whatsoever.

In the entire time that I was a volunteer,

our team did not directly purchase a single mask.

Kushner failed to protect doctors and nurses,

but he was willing to trade government help

for political benefits.

When the Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom,

desperately needed testing swabs,

Kushner said Trump would grant the request

on two conditions:

Newsom would have to get on the phone

and ask Trump personally

and then thank him publicly.

I want to thank the president,

not only for being available for a phone call

at a moment's notice, but being willing

to directly commit to all of us in the state of California.

Built around personal relationships,

Kushner's task force was run by his college roommate

and Ivanka Trump's former assistant.

Rather than rely on experienced public officials,

the task force prioritized private tips in a spreadsheet

called "VIP Update,"

which included two Republican dentists

and a FOX News personality.

The whole philosophy of the task force

was that the government can't get things done

and they thought the private market

could largely settle this issue,

but it was only once they had tried and failed

that they'd started to blame other people and say,

"Actually, this was your job the whole time."

You have instances where in cities, they're running out,

but the state still has a stockpile.

And the notion of the federal stockpile

was it's supposed to be our stockpile.

It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles

that they then use.

My understanding is the only reason

the federal stockpile exists is to distribute it to states.

The people in charge on the task force said,

you know, talking about the president...

love him or hate him, he's a marketing genius.

He came up with the strategy to blame the states,

because the federal government

hasn't been able to do this effectively.

Federal government has assets and abilities

that no state can possibly mobilize.

They have a global supply chain.

They have a logistic capability

through the Department of Defense

and Department of Homeland Security

to get stuff in and distribute it

to places all over the country.

President Trump flipped that on its head.

Then there became this mad rush for each and every state

to try and find equipment on their own.

Breaker one nine, this here's Rubber Duck.

Mercy sakes alive,

looks like we've got us a convoy.

We continued to source and ship as much PPE as we can

by whatever means necessary.

♪ Arizona, noon, on the seventh of June ♪

♪ When they highballed over the pass ♪

We had the governor of Massachusetts using a plane

from the New England Patriots to bring equipment from China.

♪ 'Cause we got a little ol' convoy ♪

The equipment is now in the hands of the National Guard,

who will deliver it to an undisclosed location.

♪ Convoy ♪

Whoo-hoo!

We had the governor of Maryland

using contacts of his wife's

to bring equipment in from South Korea.

He felt it important enough to guard that equipment

when it landed in Maryland, because he didn't want it

confiscated by the federal government.

We're competing against every other state,

every other country.

Now we're even competing against the federal government.

It's like being on eBay with 50 other states,

bidding on a ventilator.

You see the bid go up 'cause California bid.

Illinois bid, Florida bid, New York bids,

California rebids.

And then FEMA starts bidding.

So FEMA is driving up the price.

What?

I stand here as someone who has had confirmed orders

for millions of pieces of gear evaporate in front of us,

and I can't tell you how frustrating it is.

I get a feeling if there's somebody had the chance to

sell to you or had the chance to sell to me,

I'm gonna lose every one of those.

All right, Charlie. Thank you very much.

Well, we do like you going out seeing what you can get,

if you can get it faster,

and the price is always a component to that also,

and maybe that's why you lost to the feds.

I'll tell you, that's probably why, but...

If the goal was to get PPE to the states,

why would the federal government

be driving up the price to outbid them?

Or was driving up the price the whole point?

This morning, our first project

that we called Airbridge...

that's Airbridge, that's the name.

And it was a flight that landed in JFK

and contained nearly 2 million masks.

This is the first of 50 flights,

and that will probably increase substantially.

Project Airbridge was a plan to subsidize

the efforts of private companies to buy and sell PPE.

Max Kennedy's team would find the PPE

and negotiate the lowest possible price.

Private companies would then pay the bill.

Then the federal government would pay

to fly the PPE stateside from overseas.

And we had partnered

with the five largest medical distributors.

Once we shipped it to the United States,

they would take over and sell directly

to whoever they would like, at whatever price they wanted.

Just to clarify, that explains why states say

they're bidding like they're on eBay,

because the supplies are going to the private sector,

and then they have to go there to get the supplies.

That's normally how things work, right?

So I'm not here to disrupt,

uh, a supply chain.

The U.S. government was handing a huge amount

of business to these five companies

that were chosen fairly arbitrarily.

There were increasing concerns, I think, from competitors,

that these five companies were getting

a hugely unfair advantage,

and so I was asked on several different occasions explicitly

to find a justification to have selected these companies way...

you know, months after they had been selected.

At least one of these companies, Cardinal,

saw its PPE orders surge to 12 times the normal volume.

Profit-making was also part of

the pandemic pricing plan at Gilead,

which manufactured the one drug, Remdesivir,

that was effective at treating COVID.

The federal government owned patents on the drug,

and it paid for essential research.

But the Trump administration permitted Gilead

to charge more than $3,000 a patient

for a treatment that cost less than $10 to manufacture.

I left in mid-April, and my takeaway

was really that I still feel like

I haven't worked for the government.

We were so far outside of it. I mean, we were...

every single person we reported to

up the chain of command was a political appointee.

The number of FEMA employees I met, you know,

I could count on one hand,

and they were fleeting interactions.

It taught me about how this administration works,

and I think it largely works, or it seemed to work,

in this case, outside of the government.

In the course of three years,

there was a systematic dismantling

of what expertise had been built

and what framework had been built

to respond to the very kind of global pandemic

that we're dealing with.

It's preventing the people who were there

from doing the jobs that they'd been hired to do.

Tell me a little bit about how chloroquine

and hydroxychloroquine first came into your point of view.

You know...

How did this come up?

I wish I'd never heard of chloroquine

or hydroxychloroquine, honestly.

Elon Musk started the ball rolling with a tweet.

Momentum for the drugs picked up steam

over the next few days on FOX News,

where their names were dropped 176 times.

Early evidence suggests that chloroquine...

- Chloroquine. - Hydroxychloroquine.

Those look very promising.

Then Trump started reading from the FOX script.

It is known as a malaria drug,

and it's been around for a long time.

And it's shown very encouraging...

very, very encouraging... early results.

I believe it was March 23rd.

I got a call from Secretary Azar's chief counsel.

The White House wanted us to move quickly

on making this drug available.

At my direction, the federal government is working to help

obtain large quantities of chloroquine.

I called my scientific team in BARDA,

and they said, "No way."

There was no data to support that they had any benefit

against the coronavirus.

They pushed back, but Dr. Kadlec reiterated

that directive to us and said, "Get on it, get it done."

We came up with option of an emergency use authorization.

We could put boundaries in it,

restrict the drug to only be used

in people who are hospitalized.

And I was proud of our team

for coming up with that compromise

that we thought would protect the Americans.

Have you ever heard of a Dr. Zelenko?

Yes.

He is a very mysterious presence that seemed to be

involved in the context of this chloroquine story.

- Hi. - Hi.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko became a right-wing folk hero

and the Trump team promoted him as an essential expert

on the use of hydroxychloroquine

as a magical remedy for COVID.

For the last almost 16 years,

I've been a primary care doctor for a community

of around 35,000 people.

It's a village in the town of Monroe.

It's similar to an urban environment

in terms of how close people live with each other.

So it's not surprising that

the virus came and started spreading.

And I realized that, my God, I have an inferno.

I have a real outbreak.

I know all these people, they're like family to me.

So it was personal.

The whole world was focusing on

building more respirators, more hospitals,

and there was nothing being offered

to primary care doctors.

You know, we're front-line soldiers

with no bullets, no weapons.

So then you have to improvise.

Dr. Zelenko improvised

what he thought was a magic bullet

that contained his own unproven mash-up

of zinc, azithromycin, and hydroxychloroquine.

But there was no reputable clinical trial

that confirmed Zelenko's claims

that early use of his cocktail could cure COVID.

I wasn't doing research. I was just treating patients.

But I'm not stupid.

I saw exactly what was happening.

Patients stopped dying.

I just found potentially

one of the most important pieces of information

in the history of information.

I'm not a politician. I don't have any connections.

So how else does a person who's unconnected

reach the highest levels of government?

It's called social media.

Um, hello, President Trump.

My name is Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.

So I made a YouTube video

addressed to the president of the United States,

and the next day, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, calls me.

We had a conversation, and that started a process

that eventually led me to

the FDA commissioner, Stephen Hahn.

It's not every day you get

the commissioner of the FDA calling you on your cell phone.

According to the FDA...

There was not a scientific reason

to push either one of those drugs.

The reason they were pushing them so hard was because

the president was claiming that they were a miracle drug.

Someone had given him this advice.

I happen to be taking it. I happen to be taking it.

I'm taking it. Hydroxychloroquine.

Right now, yeah.

Did you hear what he said afterwards?

"Yeah, I received a letter..."

From a doctor the other day,

from Westchester, New York, around the area.

He didn't want anything. He just said,

"Sir, I have hundreds of patients,

and I give them hydroxychloroquine."

So that was a letter

I sent to the president.

But I thought it was a very well-crafted letter

by a man who's a respected doctor.

He said it was a well-crafted letter.

I was proud of that.

It was really frustrating,

because here we are on the front lines,

we're trying to do everything we can,

and if, you know, there's a chance that this could work,

let's go ahead and try it.

But then, consistently,

the trials that had been high quality looking at this

have shown that there's no benefit to it.

And we have moved on to other therapies.

But unfortunately, you know, it can come back and be revived

by a tweet from a leader who still believes in it.

The next day, if you admit

a patient with COVID-19, some of them are gonna ask,

"Are you gonna give me the Trump drug?"

And if you go through a long explanation of, you know,

"Actually, there's no benefit,"

it's really hard to explain this.

And it would be so much more helpful

if the leader of the country, who sets the example, said,

"We should follow the science on this."

I've seen things that I sort of like,

so what do I know? I'm not a doctor.

It was about six days after that EUA.

I woke up to an email string

that had our Assistant Secretary for Health,

our Director of FEMA, our ASPR, Dr. Kadlec,

and the FDA all saying we need to flood the streets

of New York and New Jersey

with that drug as quickly as possible.

And in that email discussion, someone was brave enough...

they said, "But wait a minute.

The EUA says 'for hospitalized patients only.'"

They said, "No, it needs to go into the pharmacies.

"It needs to go out everywhere.

"The EUA doesn't matter.

Push the drug out now."

The same FDA that dragged its feet for weeks

at approving vital COVID tests

suddenly worked at lightning speed to greenlight use

of a drug with no proven effect on the disease,

just because the White House wanted it done.

If this drug works,

it will be wonderful, it'll be so beautiful.

It'll be a gift from heaven.

I lost it.

I lost all respect for that chain of command,

for that security

that we as Americans have put in those people.

And that is the moment that I decided to break protocol

and alert Americans in a different way.

In the doctrine of politics,

Rick Bright committed a mortal sin.

He went to the press.

It was two weeks exactly after that

that I learned that I had been removed from my position.

It's not easy to come forward in this administration, okay?

I'm not trying to be soft in here, but it is not easy.

It was a very hard process

to lay our careers on the line to push back.

Time is running out because

the virus is still spreading everywhere.

The window is closing to address this pandemic.

So, you know, Dr. Bright is up there testifying today.

And on hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Bright literally signed

in the application for FDA authorization of it.

We will either be remembered for what we did

or for what we failed to do to address this crisis.

I watched this guy for a little while this morning,

and he looks like an angry, disgruntled employee

who, frankly, according to some people,

didn't do a very good job.

Would you describe the government's response

as a success or a failure?

I believe we could have done better.

Watching the administration's response

to Bright was frightening.

We all wanted to help, but we didn't wanna be

on the front page of a newspaper.

I spoke to a couple of attorneys

who said it's so unusual for the government

to require an NDA at all, let alone for volunteers

who don't have any access to government systems.

We had no access to any confidential information.

The only thing we were basically being prevented

from talking about was the fact that the response was...

seemed to be largely bungled.

To date, we've facilitated the supply

of more than 38 million N95 masks nationwide.

And I would watch the news, and I'd hear

the Trump administration talk about the work

that was happening, and what was happening did not

match what the administration was speaking about.

So I did send in

a whistleblower report to Congress,

as well as calling several journalists

who I basically just found online.

It was nerve-racking.

I was worried about the NDA,

I was worried about potential retribution.

But I just wanted people to know what was happening,

and know not enough was being done.

Beyond attacking whistleblowers,

Trump dismissed five inspectors general

in the space of six weeks.

One had raised concerns about PPE shortages.

Another was supposed to investigate

how the Trump administration would spend

$2.3 trillion in coronavirus relief.

While money did flow to unemployed Americans,

a small group of hedge fund investors

and real estate tycoons,

like Jared Kushner and Donald Trump,

got millions of dollars in tax breaks.

Trump protected the richest Americans,

even as he continued to ignore the most basic recommendations

of scientists trying to protect everyday people.

The CDC is recommending that

Americans wear a basic cloth or fabric mask.

They can be either purchased online or simply made at home,

probably material that you'd have at home.

Really a voluntary thing. You can do it.

You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it.

But some people may wanna do it, and that's okay.

I made a lot of predictions that came true

about this pandemic, but masks being politicized...

it's just amazing to me.

♪ Live and let die ♪

♪ ♪

The deadly implications

of the president's disdain for science

weren't lost on whoever picked the soundtrack

for Trump's tour of a mask factory in Arizona.

♪ Live and let die ♪

♪ ♪

It was confusing campaign photo op:

federal officials refusing to wear safety masks

in a sanitized factory that manufactured them.

The mask seems to represent

which side of the political aisle that you're on,

and somehow, showing up without a mask on

in close proximity with others

says that I support the president.

You're fucking democratic pigs!

I'll take that fucking mask off your face!

No more masks!

No more masks!

That is dangerous.

People have died because of the misinformation.

I have absolutely no doubt about that.

In April, after weeks of economic shutdown

and with contagion and death

still running high in much of America,

Trump announced the plan for reopening the country.

Our team of experts now agrees

that we can begin the next front in our war,

which we're calling Opening Up America Again,

and that's what we're doing.

We're opening up our country.

The next day, he began to tweet

in encouragement of protests against lockdowns

meant to contain spread of the virus.

Frustration's understandable.

People wanted to get out of their homes

to get back to work.

USA!

But without a national program

to safeguard public health,

how is the economy going to get back on its feet?

So I said to my people,

"Slow the testing down, please."

Texas, hitting a record number of hospitalizations.

Florida recording an astonishing 11,400 cases,

smashing its single day high.

Opening up the country without

a national program for masks, testing, and tracing

did have consequences.

Throughout the summer,

the death toll hovered around 1,000 a day,

or two 9/11s every week.

In South Korea, a nation of 51 million,

there was no national shutdown,

and less than 500 people died from the disease.

For a lot of people around me in South Korea,

perceptions of the U.S. have really been shaken.

South Koreans, like a lot of other people around the world,

had a certain perception of the U.S.

as a barometer and a benchmark for how a country works,

how a country should run.

There is a real sense of disbelief.

Thousands descended on beaches

in Greece over the weekend, while in Italy,

more shops and restaurants are again welcoming customers.

The crowds are returning

to the stadiums here in New Zealand.

As many countries opened up,

others faced new outbreaks.

Some, like Brazil and India, saw cases continue to soar.

But even in countries like South Korea,

where the virus was initially contained,

cases spiked when people ignored scientific guidance.

Nowhere was that problem more severe

than in the United States.

♪ America, America ♪

Ignoring expert advice became an act

of patriotism in the Trump administration,

Where even the push for a safe vaccine

was pursued with reckless disregard for science.

We're moving aggressively

to accelerate developing a vaccine.

To actually get a vaccine that you know works

is gonna be a year to a year and a half.

Do me a favor. Speed it up.

Speed it up.

Stakes are so high around vaccines.

Because we need a vaccine

if we want to begin to end this pandemic.

But the question is, who distributes it?

Who prioritizes it?

A lot of people say this should be the CDC.

"They should be front and center in this."

But the CDC has been largely silenced.

After a few CDC scientists

voiced concerns about the federal response,

Trump installed an official to censor or rewrite

any CDC findings that contradicted

the rosy predictions of the White House.

Can we trust scientists who allow data to be compromised

by demands for political loyalty?

My last question to you is,

what is your personal takeaway from this pandemic?

Um...

53,000 deaths from coronavirus.

Sometimes late at night when I'm driving home

and I'm tired of listening to talk radio on NPR,

I'll turn on the other NPR station and listen to jazz.

I've never listened to jazz in my life.

I've always been very thankful for the people around me,

and I think that's come with age, partly.

And now that we're all wearing masks all the time,

there is an astounding amount of information

that you can get out of looking at people's eyes.

Which, when the rest of your face is completely obscured,

become extremely telling of what's going on,

whether your eyes are happy or sad or smiling.

This is going to be the 1918 influenza epidemic story,

and it will be written about for the next 100 years.

And I think that realization should really drive

a lot of our behavior and our choices.

There's so much that the virus has exposed,

the lessons are just gonna be ongoing over time.

And the degree of suffering is just so immense

that it's hard to really conceptualize it.

And it's gonna take a long time for us

to really figure out the consequences of this,

because there are consequences

for the people who survive this.

We spend billions of dollars every year

on missiles that, hopefully, will never fly,

on weapons that, hopefully, we will never use.

We have to take health security

as seriously as we do defense security.

I think the career staff and scientists were in place.

They were battle-tested.

They knew their role, they knew the plan,

and they were prepared to act.

They put on their uniform to respond to this pandemic,

and then there was nowhere to go.

There is a misconception that public health failed.

The truth is that political leaders

failed to follow public health guidance,

and that's what caused avoidable disease, death,

and economic destruction.

Politicians are the problem.

We've gotta believe in the scientists.

And we've got politicians who don't believe in science.

America is lagging behind

every other country, almost, in their response, and I...

hey, you gotta blame the manager.

If we're to blame the manager,

we must be able to answer

an essential political question:

What did the president know, and when did he know it?

Eight months after the pandemic began,

we got the answer.

On February 7th, two weeks before

anyone in America had died from the disease,

journalist Bob Woodward asked Donald Trump

if he knew how contagious and dangerous COVID might be.

It goes through air, Bob.

That's always tougher than the touch, you know?

The touch, you don't have to touch things, right?

But the air, you just breathe the air,

and that's how it's passed.

It's also more deadly than your...

even your strenuous flus, you know?

So this is deadly stuff.

Our manager failed us.

But the disease also revealed

more fundamental problems with our government.

We will see more pandemics and other existential threats.

All on account of manmade problems,

we must prepare to solve together.

Our ability to reckon with the future

will depend on how much we learn from our recent past.

When the day comes when we can finally take off our masks,

will we be ready to fix what's really broken?

♪ Time has come today ♪

♪ Young hearts can go their way ♪

♪ Can't put it off another day ♪

♪ I don't care what others say ♪

♪ They think we don't listen anyway ♪

♪ Time has come today ♪

Hey!

Oh!

♪ The rules have changed today ♪

♪ I have no place to stay ♪

♪ I'm thinking about the subway ♪

♪ My love has flown away ♪

♪ My tears have come and gone ♪

♪ Oh my Lord, I have to roam ♪

♪ I have no home ♪

♪ I have no home ♪

♪ Now the time has come ♪

♪ There's no place to run ♪

♪ I might get burned up by the sun ♪

♪ But I had my fun ♪

♪ I've been loved and put aside ♪

♪ I've been crushed by the tumbling tide ♪

♪ And my soul ♪