1/ The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned constituents three weeks ago to prepare for dire economic and societal effects from the coronavirus. “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,� Sen. Richard Burr said on Feb. 27, according to a secret recording of the remarks. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.� On that same day, Trump suggested that the virus is “going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear,� before adding, “it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens.� On Feb 13., Burr sold off between $582,029 and $1.56 million of his holdings despite reassuring the public at the time that the government had the coronavirus outbreak under control. A week later, the stock market began a sharp decline and has lost about 30% since. (NPR / Politico / ProPublica)

🚨 The Trump administration simulated a series of pandemic outbreaks from China in 2019 and found the U.S. government response was “underfunded, underprepared, and uncoordinated.� The series of exercises resulted in some 110 million sick Americans, leading to 7.7 million hospitalizations, and 586,000 deaths. The draft report, marked “not to be disclosed,� detailed repeated cases of “confusion� during the exercises. (New York Times)

🚨 Trump claimed that “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion� at the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefing today. “Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.� (Washington Post)

Trump agreed with a reporter from a right-wing outlet who accused “major left wing news media� of “siding with state propaganda� from China for criticizing his use of the term “Chinese virus.� Trump went on to call the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal of being “very dishonest� and siding with Chinese propaganda days after calling news media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic “very fair.� Trump added that he wanted to remove 75% to 80% of the journalists in the briefing room in the name of social distancing. (Politico)

2/ Trump promised that a therapeutic drug would be available “almost immediately� only to be contradicted minutes later by the commissioner of the FDA. The drug, chloroquine, hasn’t yet been approved for treatment of COVID-19, but Trump – for some reason – asserted that it was, and that he wanted to “remove every barrier� to test more drugs and “allow many more Americans to access drugs that have shown really good promise.� FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, however, cautioned that use of the drug – used to combat malaria – would first need to be part of a controlled trial to find out whether or not it works, and if so, what dose would be safe and effective. Trump, meanwhile, claimed that “it’s not going to kill anybody.� (Bloomberg /