They simply didn’t have the information they needed to conclude the risks were low. By the end of February, in the US, there were plenty of reasons for Americans to be concerned. Some White House officials also started to grow more skeptical of the reassuring reports from HHS. Among them were Grogan and Pottinger. Both didn’t understand how the CDC could be so sure that coronavirus wasn’t already circulating in America given the events unfolding around the world, where the pathogen had spread furtively only to explode after cities had become saturated with it.
