Peter Navarro, President Trump’s director of trade and manufacturing policy, twice warned that COVID-19 was a likely pandemic that would cost millions of American lives and severely harm the economy without immediate measures to contain it.
Writing in memos dated January 29 and February 23, Navarro told the president and White House personnel that the United States faced the loss of between 500,000 and two million lives and a nearly $6 trillion blow to American business, industry, and finance.
On Monday and this morning, Axios.com and the New York Times published the memos in which Navarro also suggested an immediate travel ban to and from China that might have to last as long as a year.
When Trump imposed the travel ban on January 31, two days after Navarro’s memo, top Democrats and hard-left activists quickly called the move racist.
The First Memo
Navarro’s warning suggested a grim year ahead and opened with the most important measure.
“The clear dominant strategy” to fight the Chinese Virus pandemic, he wrote, is an “immediate travel ban on China.”
The country, he continued, faced two choices: no containment or aggressive containment.
“As soon as the probability of the pandemic outcome rises above roughly 1%, the dominant strategy is aggressive containment,” he wrote.
This is because [the] costs of a No Containment/Pandemic Scenario are so staggering, including the possible loss of as many as a half a million American lives.
It is unlikely an introduction of the coronavirus into the U.S. population in significant numbers will mimic a “seasonal flu” event with relatively low contagion and mortality rates.
Navarro estimated the cost of the travel ban at $2.9 billion a month, about $35 billion annually.
Navarro also predicted the pandemic could mimic the Spanish, Asian, Hong Kong, and Swine Flu contagions, and suggested a total economic loss of between $3.8 trillion and $5.7 trillion, depending on how many people contract and die from the virus.
“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil,” he wrote. “This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
This first memo followed by just eight days the statement from Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump’s Chinese Virus task force, that the virus “is not a major threat for the people in the United States, and this is not something the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”
The Second Memo
Navarro’s second alarm on February 23 estimated just how many Americans might be affected.
“There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that can affect as many as 100 million Americans with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls,” he wrote.
Navarro suggested a supplemental appropriation of $3 billion to buy a billion face masks, 3.3 billion gloves, 11,000 ventilator circuits, and for vaccine development and manufacturing.
“This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse-trading on the Hill,” he wrote. “Uncertainties associated with developing a vaccine and viable treatment option should not slow down” the purchases.
In this Administration, we take appropriate risks to protect the public. We move in Trump Time to solve problems. We always skate to where the puck might be — in this case a full-blown pandemic.
We CAN develop a vaccine and treatment therapeutics in half the usual time. We MUST get appropriate protective gear and point of care diagnostics.
“Time is of the essence,” he wrote.
Trump Attacked
Yet after Trump announced travel restrictions on January 31, the hate-Trump Left tried to incite the usual moral panic.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat nominee who will face Trump on Election Day, tweeted his displeasure with Trump’s move on February 1
“We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus,” he said. “We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.”
Socialist presidential contender Bernie Sanders, who wanted to keep the borders open and possibly permit virus carriers into the country, denounced Trump as “xenophobic.”
H/T: Breitbart
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
