U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Tuesday said he did not see a memo reportedly circulated within the White House as early as January warning that a looming coronavirus pandemic could lead to millions of deaths and could cripple the economy.
“I never saw that letter,” Dr. Adams said on NBC’s “Today” program. “We’ve been saying for decades that this is a possibility. … Many people at all levels just did not expect something like this to happen at this magnitude.”
He said preparations at the federal level were going on the entire time and that work had long been going on behind the scenes.
“Again, this virus has humbled many of us, and what I’m focused on now is helping the American people understand what they can do moving forward to protect themselves,” Dr. Adams said.
The New York Times reported Monday that White House trade adviser Peter Navarro had written a memo in late January saying that America could be left “defenseless” in a coronavirus outbreak and that millions of lives could be at risk.
Another memo dated Feb. 23 warned of an “increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1.2 million souls.”
“Any member of the Task Force who wants to be cautious about appropriating funds for a crisis that could inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage and take millions of lives has come to the wrong administration,” it said.
President Trump recently tapped Mr. Navarro to oversee defense policy production amid the outbreak.
Mr. Navarro was also at the center of a heated meeting in the White House Situation Room over the weekend in which he talked up the therapeutic benefits of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients.
Some health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, have cautioned that there’s little more than anecdotal evidence of the malaria drug’s benefits for coronavirus patients.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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