He knew as early as 2014 that Isolation and other Universal Precautions were necessary to prevent an outbreak. A 2019 exercise by the Trump Administration to test our capacity to respond to a disease outbreak in America, which he ignored, predicted the spread of infection due to lack of preparedness. Later, he told Bob Woodward and others that he feared panic would send the stock market down.
"Regarding the COVID‐19 pandemic, the early warning system worked, and, starting in January 2020, Trump repeatedly received prescient warnings from the intelligence community and officials, such as national security adviser Robert O'Brien, deputy national‐security adviser Matthew Pottinger, economic adviser Peter Navarro, and the head of HHS, Alex Azar, among others (Blake, 2020; Harris et al., 2020; Lipton et al., 2020; Woodward, 2021). The alarm had been loudly sounded, and the case for a robust policy response had been made (Woodward, 2021; Wright, 2021)--Public Adm. 2022 Mar 29 : The Trump Administration and the COVID‐19 crisis: Exploring the warning‐response problems and missed opportunities of a public health emergency."--
Charles F. Parker et al.
