Way back in April the New York Times published an extensive e-mail thread written by a group of medical and security experts regarding the then new virus infection in China. The group called itself Red Dawn Rising and despite their expertise and connections, their dire warning were largely ignored in January and February. The group's members have avoided public comment regarding how their warnings were ignored by Trump and his cronies, but some are now speaking out.
A group of public health and national security experts who sent some of the earliest and most dire warnings to officials across the Trump administration about the gathering coronavirus crisis is now offering a searing assessment of how the federal government blundered through the critical first months of a lethal outbreak.
Members of the group, whose lengthy string of emails now read like a chilling foreshadowing of the unfolding deadly pandemic, came to be known by the chain’s dark-humored subject line, “Red Dawn Rising,” a reference to the campy 1984 cold war movie about a gritty band of Americans who fend off foreign invaders. Now several have broken their silence about the early warnings in interviews with ABC News to describe their lingering distress about the missed chances to spare lives.
“We did not step up and meet the challenge that we needed to meet,” said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, Seattle-King County Public Health Officer, and a contributor to the email chain. “We didn't act quickly enough to do the things that we needed to do early enough. And we still are not doing the things we need to do to get this outbreak under control.”
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