Republicans voted to repeal this tax in 2018 but by then, sources were well established overseas.

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You haven't been paying attention:

1/6 CDC under Trump issues travel advisory for Wuhan.
1/11 CDC tweets about corona related “pneumonia outbreak in China”
1/14 WHO tweets that there is no evidence of human to human transmission.
1/17 CDC started doing health screenings at 3 airports of travelers from China.
1/21 first case in US for someone who traveled directly from Wuhan.
1/23 WHO again says no human to human transmission outside of China.
1/27 WHO raises alert level but is still saying China has it contained.
1/28 CDC states “ While CDC considers covid a serious situation and is taking preparedness measures, the immediate risk in the US is considered low.”
1/29 White House announces Coronavirus Task Force created. Note - this is despite the WHO downplaying the threat!

1/31 Trump bans travel from China.

Media and multiple Democrats slam his decision calling it racist/xenophobic.

2/5 Trump acquitted (impeachment).
2/5 Chuck Schumer in a tweet continues to call Trumps’ travel ban from China “premature.”
2/7 White House’s Coronavirus Task Force gives press briefing.
2/9 White House Coronavirus Task Force meets with all governors regarding virus.
2/10 Bill DeBlasio said "If you’re under 50 & you’re healthy, which is most NYers, there’s very little threat here. This disease, even if you were to get it, basically acts like a common cold or flu."
2/12 CDC waiting for approval from Chinese for CDC team to travel to China.
2/18 HHS announces partnership to develop vaccine.
2/21 Italy identifies its very first case in their country.
2/21 CDC tweets that it is working with States for preparedness.
2/24 Trump sent letter to Congress asking for $25B for virus effort.
2/24 Nancy Pelosi made a stop in Chinatown and encouraged people to “please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown.”
2/25 there is still no reported community spread in the US!!! (Per CDC tweet.)
2/27 first community transmission in US.
2/27 Trump appoints Pence to coordinate efforts.
2/29 FIRST reported Covid19 death in US.
3/3 deBlasio encourages people to "live their lives" and visit Chinatown, movie theaters, etc

banning china wasn't enough though, they needed to ban countries like Italy, which happened too late (that's how New York got its first cases)

Wrong. Fake News.

During the summer of 2018, Bolton reorganized the Trump NSC. In January 2017, there were directorates for nonproliferation and arms control, for weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and for global health security and biodefense. Bolton merged the three directorates into a “counterproliferation and biodefense” directorate. According to administration officials, this reorganization was designed in part to have better cooperation between those monitoring and preparing for intentional biological threats on one hand and for naturally occurring biological threats on the other. This directorate is now headed by Anthony Ruggiero.

It gets better. Trump's intelligence agencies told him about the coronavirus in November and he warned NATO and Israel but said nothing to the American people.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/

He most likely did it as to not create panic prematurely. It would make sense why he would do that.

But why keep downplaying it after the truth gets out though?

To try and stop panic from arising, which it did due to the liberal media. He also shut down travel from China, but that was made ineffective due to the Democratic states letting them in anyways.

Trump didn't totally shut down travel w/China. 40k people came in after that from China and that wasn't because of Democrats. Some were citizens, some were green card holders or had moved away apparently and wanted to come back, etc. I remember seeing a post by an American in Italy who said they were going to self-quarantine over there and not come back in case they were a carrier, which I think was a good idea.

But no, he didn't do any of it to keep people from panicking in the sense that he was trying to help us, the panicking he was worried about was people selling off their stocks like those 4 senators or changing their views about him as a president. Because he knows the state of the economy reflects on him, he'll lie, cheat, steal to keep the numbers up, even if they're inflated and fake. The "liberal media" wasn't trying to incite anything the way Trump is trying to incite civil unrest right now. It's ridiculous what he's doing with his base.