BEFORE THE CRISIS

Peter Navarro Memo Warned Trump of Coronavirus Catastrophe in Late January

The Trump trade adviser said the virus could kill up to half a million Americans even as the president downplayed the risks.

President Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, wrote a memo in late January warning of the potential for “a full-blown pandemic” caused by the new coronavirus, “imperiling the lives of millions of Americans,” The New York Times reports. The memo, dated Jan. 29, went around the West Wing at a time when the president was downplaying the risks of the virus publicly, though a day after it was sent Trump approved limits on travelers entering the United States from China. A second memo in February, published by Axios, predicted a possible “loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls” in the U.S. from COVID-19. Navarro also detailed expected needs for personal protective equipment in the second memo, writing: “We can expect to need at least a billion face masks, 200,000 Tyvek suits, and 11,000 ventilator circuits, and 25,000 PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirators.)”