With byron pitts. Good evening, thank you for joining us. Tonight the wide ranging abc news investigation into this countrys response to covid19. Now some of the nations top doctors and experts on why they say a series of missteps and ignored warnings created the crisis were facing we are always at threat for the next pandemic. A mysterious new virus appearing in china. Chinese Health Authorities are still working to identify the virus behind a pneumonia outbreak in the central city of wuhan. You have a brandnew virus that jumped species from animal to human. Concern rising. There were a number of people raising red flags. As covid19 rapidly spread around the world and arrived in the u. S. It is the perfect storm and my worst nightmare. Tonight we go in ic catastro puic health flure in our naon history. How did we get ever t covid pandemic hit were trying to determine if any one knew anything about a contagion sweeping through wuhan last year. Everybody at the state, local, theres a lot of blood to go around for the lack of response for this the end of 2019 into 2020, the Trump White House wasnt focussed on a Global Pandemic, but frankly, nobody was in washington. There were images emerging from china of people in hazmat suits, spraying down seafood market, kind of gave me a little eadi aut peopl bei ck into apartment buildings, reets begse citiesoned, that is ana how serious this pathogen was. Whats not publicly known is that behind the scenes in the president ial daily brief, theres information being put in, telling the president that theres something strange happening in the wuhan region of china. We felt that this had potential to be a very serious situation. It had National Security implications. Dr. Redfield at the cdc, hes on the phone with dr. Fauci. It was bing bing, back and forth. Both of us agree this looks smells and almost certainly is a new coronavirus. And the question is, what are we going to do about did . Bob was trying to get real information in real time, exactly what was going on over there. The frustration is that he wanted to get his team there, and to go to wuhan and find out what was going on, but the chinese were not allowing that. I had strongly suggested that we send some cdc folks in to help out, and the president actually made the request to president of china that wed be able to come and assist. Fact that they were not allowed to go there in real time and see what was going on was very disconcerting to us. It was just a matter of time before it arrived in the United States. To think otherwise would be completely on january 15th, a man landed at the seattle airport. He was in his 30s. No preexisting medical problems. He traveled to visit family in wuhan, china. After a few days of feeling poorly at home he came to one of our clinics. He said basically, i recently traveled to wuhan, i have a cough and fever and am concerned i might have coronavirus. We were not allowed to test at state Public Health and loca not able to test either. So if we wanted a patient tested we had to first receive approval or clearance from the cdc. We had to make a case that the patient met their very strict criteria. So patient zero, his sample had to be flown overnight to a cdc lab in atlanta, and he was told to quarantine. He was sent home. The test results would come back positive. Covid19 was officially on american soil. But the administration would continue to say that this was a problem overseas. We have it totally under control. Its one person coming in from china. And we have it under control. Its going to be just fine. January was really our opportunity as a country to contain this virus before it spread like issed. N reality, thr a pandemic going back to president george w. Bush. 2005 he read a book about the 1918 flu that killed as many as 100 million people. And he sees them talking about how these pandemics happen every hundred years or something. You have something massive like this. And hes looking at the calendar. President bush knows personal experience that things he did not anticipate can happen and can cause Severe Damage and kill a lot of people. 9 11, katrina, could the next big one be a Global Pandemic . By then wed already had the sars experience. And then socalled bird flu, which was pretty scary. Thats a pretty good reason to get your attention. He challenged us to come up with a governmentwide national, not just federal government, strate dlingith it pde of the United States. They get congress to appropriate money, real money, 7 million. If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare. One day many live kos be needlessly lost because we failed to act today. Tonight, outbreak, the new and deadly strain of flu. The Obama Administration has to deal with an outbreak almost immediately after obama becomes president. Every american should know that their entire government is take bei taking the juutmost precautions. Ebola. An outbreak of a disease so fierce, so deadly, even the word strikes terror. This scares the hell out of everybody. President obama, Vice President biden have authorized unprecedented whole of government response to the ebola crisis. When i was winding up my work on ebola, i met with the president and said to him, we need to build a permanent structure at the white house. The stunnifunding were aski is to deal with future outbreaks. And he set up a Pandemic Office in the National Security council to get us ready for that more deadly, more dangerous, more rapidly spreading epidemic that was going to come to this country someday. Donald trump takes office. He has some people in his National Security apparatus who served under president bush who see this also as a significant issue. More turnover in this white house than any other administration in recent history. The challenge is when you have had as many turnovers in this administration, a lot of that work that would have been done during the transition has been lost. But eventually, president trumps third National Security adviser, john bolton, decides to do away with the section of the National Security council that specifically deals with pandemics. Just eliminates it. Now the Trump Administration says they were just streamlining the National Security council and that some of those staffers were reassigned but continued to work on the issue of pandemic preparedness. In february, the president df the virus, banning travel to and from china. The u. S. Is closing the door to slow the spread of Novel Coronavirus. It was a good idea to do travel restriction from china, because it was clear that thats the source that was seeding us. Truth is, that travel ban was probably already too late when it was put into place. As february develops, the president proceeds to downplay the virus. You know, a lot of people think that goes away in april with the heat. But behind the scenes, a group of people, current and former senior federal government officials, top doctors, are engaged in a series of email chains called red dawn. The red dawn group ultimately becomes fixated on a cruise ship in the far east, the diamond princess, because of an outbreak of the coronavirus on board. Reading from the red dawn email chain, which dr. Carter mecher noted, the number is now up to 136. When there is a pathogen like this, the cdc sets out to develop a test. Which they did, and they did it in record time, seven to ten days. And initially, we flooded with relief. We can test. They immediately came across a problem. The initial samples that came from the cdc didnt work. So they had to call them back. So the cdc had to sent out a second batch of test kits which also had a problem. As the weeks ticked by, we running out of time to contain the spread of this virus, and we knew it. We could have brought in the gigantic manufacturers of diagnostic tests, and other failure to take that approach with a homegrown test out of cdc has cost us lives. I dont think cdc will manufacture tests in the future. I think what well do is contract a manufacturer to manufacture the test. Without a doubt, february was a lost month for this nations response. This is pretty much the most critical time in the outbreak for us to be flying blind. In an outbreak scenario, every day matters. Our chances to contain this virus were gone. Coming up, why Officials Say that travel ban from europe may have done almost as much harm as good. He said he was banning everyone. That led to a panic. Oh. Oh, darn wha let me help. 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A state of emergency issued in washington state. This disease is running rampant. March is the month we will never forget. Thats when the pandemic really hit our shores. The World Health Organization declaring it a pandemic. The nba suspending its season until final notice. The Financial Market in free fall, the worse day since 1987. My fellow americans, to keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from europe to the United States for the next 30 days. He misstated the nature of the travel. He said he was banning everyone. That led to a panic. It led to thousands of thousands of people coming back from europe who didnt need to come back. People ended up in those crowded hallways for a long period of time. Many were exposed and have passed because of their exposure, waiting to clear customs. By the time we realized the threat in europe we shut down travel to europe. There was already two or three weeks of 60,000 people every day of people coming back from europe. Hotspots flared up in parts of the country, and testing efforts continued to falter. The u. S. Badly trailed the world in march on the testing situation. New york city quickly became the new epicenter for the virus. We always knew that there were a lot more cases out there than we were diagnosing. 23 of people in new york city have antibodies, so a quarter of new york city was infected with this virus. It was inevitable that this Novel Coronavirus would show up in new york city. What they didnt expect was that it would be transmitted silently in the population and they have no tests. It had been decided at some point in time, not in this administration, that test supplies were not going to be part of the stockpile. So when i looked to see what was there, there was nothing there. Theres no game plan. There was nothing. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. To unleash the full power of the federal government today, i am officially declaring a national emergency. Across america, almost 22,000 stoo schoolers shuttered. Major areas of American Life shutting down to stop the spreading coronavirus. One of the things that people dont realize is that the manufacturer of personal Protection Equipment or ppe, the majority of that production is offshore, not in the United States. President s position was the states were in charge. States. The governors, the governors, the governors. Im calling china to buy ppe. Every governor is calling china to buy masks. It made no sense. It should have not been left to each state to figure out what to do. Were all connected. I mean, honestly, this is oneti. Inapril, the white house pushes a p you go into phase one. Pla if you get no rebound you go to phase two. If you have no rebound you go into phase three. The next day, the president s tweeting people to ignore his own experts plan. The reopening from a health perspective, it was reckless. So, with the masks, im choosing not to do did. Im not doing it. I woke up in a free country. President trumps announcement that he wasnt going to wear one i think was just something from that. Its all about freedom. What you see by the end of april is complete chaos. As coronavirus cases in the u. S. Approach 1 million, more states rolling out plans to open up. When you mix science and politics you get politics. You going to get deaths that could have been avoided. You have to open safely, right . And we never, ever got this right. We now have the greatest Public Health failure in our nations history. President trump wearing a mask in public for the First Time Since the pandemic began. It came 99 days after the cdc made its mask recommendation. Florida now has more new cases of coronavirus daily than most countries in the world. By mid july, the virus becomes so out of control, some states that had reopened forced to shut down again. There is a very heated debate across this country about schools. Deaths from the virus now climbing in 27 states, as nearly half the country either pauses or reverses reopening. The story this summer is february and march in the northeast has become july and august in the sunbelt, in particular in florida and georgia, in arizona. Even if we cant seem to get it right in washington, i would love to see the american citizens come together and say were going to fight this. Were going to be united in how we approach this disease, and trying to do the right thing so we can protect one another. The current state of affairs is not our destiny. We can get this disease under control using strategies that have been used all over the world successfully. So message number one, mask on. Okay . Anytime youre out in public, wear this thing. It may take sacrifice. 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But i am your guest host, billy eichner, not to be confused with music star billie eilish. Some people confuse us. But we do have similar careers. Shes an 18yearold music sensation who won multiple grammys. Im a 41yearold gay man telling jokes to no one in abandoned house. All of you Harvard Students angry that youll have to take online classes this fall, how do you think i feel . When i was a kid i dreamed of hosting a late night show. I never once thought it would be on a set that i just had to swiffer. But i do think this looks better than some of the other shows. I think we can agree that the worst part of the pandemic is that every late night talk show looks like a single dads first youtube video. But im excited to be back hosting tonight. Apparently i was number one in the ratings last night. So from now on you can call me ncis los angeles. Lets take a look at the news. Hollywood is under a lot of pressure to get back to work. But as governor gavin newsom said today, even with covid rates spiking all over