Rage

by Bob Woodward

“Is this going to be as bad as ’03?” he had asked one of his contacts in China. “Don’t think SARS 2003,” the expert replied. “Think influenza pandemic 1918.” Pottinger said he had been floored. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide with about 675,000 deaths in the United States. “Why do you think it will be worse than 2003?” asked the president. Pottinger’s contacts told him three factors were dramatically accelerating the transmission of the new disease. Contrary to official hedged reports from the Chinese government, people were getting the disease easily from other people, not just animals; this is called human-to-human spread. He had just learned that morning it was being spread by people who didn’t show any symptoms; this is called asymptomatic spread. His best, most authoritative source said 50 percent were infected but showed no symptoms. This meant a once-in-a-lifetime health emergency, a virus out of control with a vast amount of the spread not immediately detectable. And it had already traveled far from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak apparently began. To Pottinger, these were the three alarms of a three-alarm fire.

“All I can say is he is the real deal!” Trump said to the press. Mattis stood coolly silent. Trump later tweeted: “General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday.” Mattis had a general operating philosophy which he articulated many times over the years: “You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can control your response.” He called his mother, Lucille, who was 94 years old. She had served in Army intelligence in World War II. He knew she hated Trump. “How can you work for that man?” she asked. “Ma, last time I checked, I work for the Constitution. I’ll go back and read it again.” “All right,” she said. “All right.”

Pottinger, who had begun making his own calls to sources from his days as a Wall Street Journal reporter on SARS, told Redfield he was gathering evidence not only of human-to-human spread but also asymptomatic spread, meaning a person without symptoms could be a carrier and infect others. Was it possible that a former journalist would get to the bottom of the new virus faster than the doctors? Redfield wondered. They would have to wait and see. On January 17, Redfield activated the entire CDC and assigned thousands of his staff to work on the new virus. Screening of travelers from Wuhan began at airports in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He feared the greatest health crisis since 1918 might be upon them.

“But it’s all at risk now,” he told Trump candidly. Part of the question was whether Trump could respond to the political and emotional stress. After the George Floyd murder, Graham believed there was no going back politically. He did not believe Trump needed to show a conversion on the road to Damascus on race, but he did need to define the problem more honestly. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reenergize America,” Graham told Trump. “If you do these three things right”—DACA, police reform and infrastructure—“you will have a more consequential presidency and you are more likely to get reelected. If you try to be the law-and-order president alone, you’re going to lose.”