In Big Early Signs of COVID-19 I cited evidence - WHO’s public situation report, public actions by Chinese government, public news articles - that by January 23 anyone paying attention should have known COVID-19 was going to be a big deal.

The January 23 WHO Situation Report, citing several lines of evidence, made it clear there was person-to-person transmission of the virus:

The initial source of 2019-nCoV still remains unknown. However, it is clear the growing outbreak is no longer due to ongoing exposures at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan; as in the last one week, less than 15% of new cases reported having visited Huanan market. There is now more evidence that 2019-nCoV spreads from human-to-human and also across generations of cases. Moreover, family clusters involving persons with no reported travel to Wuhan have been reported from Guangdong Province.

The WHO report also stated this was serious for the whole world:

WHO assesses the risk of this event to be very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level.

For the White House to now blame WHO for the White House’s own inaction for nearly two more months is ridiculous.

A month later, on February 25, the directory of the United States National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, said in a public press briefing:

It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.

and

We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.

And yet again, for several more weeks the White House made no serious efforts to prepare the United States for the pandemic.

On March 13 Donald Trump stated:

I don’t take responsibility at all