（07）On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the
National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of "quarantine and isolation
measures," per the Times. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he
returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.

（08）On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of
the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive
social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives,
per the Times.

（09）On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time
addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus.

（10）On Feb. 25, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory
Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and said "we need to be
preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Trump reportedly called Azar fuming
that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet,
per the Times.

The other side: Trump has pointed to his decisions to restrict travel from China in early
February and establish the White House coronavirus task force on Jan. 29 as signs that
he was serious about the threat early on. White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in a statement:

"While the media and Democrats refused to seriously acknowledge this virus in January and
February, President Trump took bold action to protect Americans and unleash the full
power of the federal government to curb the spread of the virus, expand testing capacities
and expedite vaccine development even when we had no true idea the level of transmission
or asymptomatic spread."

The bottom line: Anthony Fauci said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that "no one is
going to deny" that more lives could have been saved if the Trump administration had
implemented social distancing guidelines earlier on.