This morning, the New York Times has published a series of emails that were called “The Red Dawn Emails” after the movie “Red Dawn” from 1984, one about an attack on the United States. The email chain involves inner discussions by scientists inside and out of the government. On CNN right now, they are saying that the news coming out from what these scientists knew of this epidemic and how the government reacted (or didn’t) is a bigger news story than 9-11.

You need to read the entire story, to give you a taste of the emails, here is a portion:

Obviously that last paragraph is just haunting, “we are making every misstep leaders initially made …” I also love the analogy to pilots making decisions based on intuition, not the instruments – which is exactly how the government “flew this plane.”

They also knew that the United States was already tragically late in its reaction, and it would lead to devastation:

These people were communicating with the CDC, which was in communication with the White House and Trump. Just like the months leading up to 9-11, the system was “blinking red” and no one at the top could be bothered to pay attention. It was one of those “inconvenient truths” which was too expensive to address – and there is a lesson in there somewhere.

One of the saddest paragraphs of the story sets out the incredible loss we experienced while Trump dithered:

Dr. Kadlec and other administration officials decided the next day to recommend to Mr. Trump that he publicly support the start of these mitigation efforts, such as school closings. But before they could discuss it with the president, who was returning from India, another official went public with a warning, sending the stock market down sharply and angering Mr. Trump. The meeting to brief him on the recommendation was canceled and it was three weeks before Mr. Trump would reluctantly come around to the need for mitigation.

The emails started in late January. They continued with growing alarm through February – and these are not even the intelligence reports that we have heard Trump received during the same time – and all this information got to the White House. They all knew what was about to happen if nothing was done, or done too late.

And that is how we got where we are today. I highly recommend you read the article, and through all the emails (there are 80 not even printed in the article), and see how history will view this massive failure of leadership. Future textbooks on epidemiology, and government, as well as history books, will include many of these emails, as the explanati

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom