♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR:
America is reopening. >> Protests over the death of
George Floyd while in police... >> NARRATOR: People are taking
to the streets... >> ...the ongoing protests could
cause a spike in coronavirus cases... >> NARRATOR: Amid fears
of a second wave. Correspondent Martin Smith looks
at how we got here. >> Anybody that needs a test
gets a test... >> Did you say to him,
"Look, Mr. President, with all due respect, it's not
true what you're saying"? >> Yeah, I'm not going to
comment on the conversations I've had with the president. >> NARRATOR: The missteps and
the denials... >> This is their new hoax... >> We have leaders throughout
much of January and February saying that this is a hoax. >> Every lab is fighting for
itself; every state is fighting
for itself. >> NARRATOR: Now on "Frontline,"
"The Virus". >> There will be thousands
who will die needlessly, because of our lack of
preparedness. ♪ ♪ (crowd cheering) (fireworks exploding) >> MARTIN SMITH: December 31. ("Auld Lang Syne" playing) One million people crowded into
New York's Times Square to celebrate what they hoped
would be a bright new year. ("Auld Lang Syne" continues) What no one knew at the time was
that a highly infectious virus was rapidly moving toward them. >> ♪ New York ♪ ♪ New York ♪ (Theme from 'New York, New York'
ends) (crowd cheering) ♪ ♪ >> Scientists say a new virus
related to SARS may be responsible
for a mysterious pneumonia outbreak in China. >> SMITH: I had begun reporting
on the coronavirus several months ago. >> The new coronavirus was found
in 15 of 59 patients. >> SMITH: I had just returned
from the Middle East, where I was covering events
in Iraq and Iran. Out of caution, I decided to
quarantine in the Catskill Mountains, two
hours north of New York City. I would do my reporting from
here. >> As it stands right now, the
CDC believes that the risk to the American
population is low. But we just don't know how
contagious this virus is. >> SMITH: I wanted to understand
where we were headed. Were we prepared? Were warnings being heeded? (Skype tone playing) Among my first calls was to Dr.
David Ho... Dr. Ho. A renowned American medical
researcher who I met years back
when I was reporting on the AIDS epidemic. You don't look too worse for
wear. >> (chuckles): I'm just putting
up a good front here. (chuckles) >> SMITH: Dr. Ho had worked to
stem the spread of SARS in 2003. Now he was worried about the
spread of COVID-19. Do you think people are grasping
how, how serious this situation is? >> I, I think people hear the
news. They watch the coverage. But it's hard to fully
comprehend. Certainly, we did not realize
that our government would be so ill-prepared. We knew long ago what China was
experiencing. I think it, the, there was a
false assumption that that's somebody else's
problem. It would not happen to us. But that, that's the same kind
of attitude that people had about many other
epidemics in the past. We, we knew,
if this thing blew up, it would just continue
to spread. >> SMITH: Wuhan, a major
commercial hub in Central China. The first case was identified
here on November 17. (siren blaring) No one knew what it was. But just a few weeks later, it
was clear something was wrong. Amy Qin reported from China for
the "New York Times." >> In December, there were
starting to be these patients that were trickling into these
hospitals in Wuhan with this pneumonia that doctors
were really puzzled by. It was unclear how to treat
them. They were giving them medicine
and they weren't getting better, and they were still running
these very high temperatures. And the rumor was that this
is a virus that people need to be aware of. >> SMITH: Throughout December,
more and more people continued to come into Wuhan hospitals
with high fevers and coughs. Then, on December 30, a
34-year-old ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital,
Dr. Li Wenliang, logged on to a group chat with
some fellow medical school classmates. He was worried. Have you seen the record of what
was said, what he was saying? >> Yes. It really wasn't that outrageous
statement he made or anything, just simply said that, "I heard
in our hospital there are cases of SARS-like
symptoms." >> SMITH: Liu Baifang Schell and
her husband, Orville, are longtime China experts. And that was enough to bring the
authorities down on him. >> Yes. >> The Public Security Bureau
came and made him sign a confession, and made him agree to, to be
quiet. And that's a very threatening
thing, because the Public Security
Bureau is no joke. It's a secret police force,
and people are fearful of it. >> In China, there's an entire
system of online surveillance, in which they can monitor what's
happening, and I think, in this case, they would've been
able to use certain key words to track what people were
saying. And actually, local authorities,
the police, have broad powers to look into the personal
messages of its citizens. >> SMITH: Local Wuhan
authorities issued a formal directive ordering
other doctors not to discuss the mysterious
pneumonia. (reporters speaking Chinese): >> SMITH: Despite the silencing
of dissent, Chinese scientists were working
to map the genome of the virus. >> COVID-19 was very quickly
sequenced, and very quickly, people discerned that it was
about 80% related to the SARS coronavirus. But given the speed
of the subsequent spread, it should have been apparent to
all that there must have been human-to-human transmission. >> SMITH: It surprises me to see
that as of January 12, the World Health Organization
issued a statement saying, "There is no clear evidence of
human-to-human transmission." >> They certainly said that,
but, you know, they weren't on the ground. They were probably recounting
what was reported back to them by the China CDC. >> SMITH: Shouldn't they have
known? >> Well, they should have been
asking tough questions. This was obviously an epidemic
that was being spread by humans. >> SMITH: But with Lunar New
Year around the corner, no one wanted to spoil the
festivities. >> (speaking Chinese): (man speaking Chinese): >> (speaking Chinese): (people talking in background) >> Chinese New Year every year
is a really festive time. This is the time when everyone
gets together with their families and in their
neighborhoods, and in one neighborhood in
Wuhan, called Baibuting, they had
organized this large banquet, at which 40,000 families ended
up attending. >> If you have a big
celebration, you don't want to have bad news. And the same holds for the
Chinese New Year. If you bring up bad news during
that time period, it is said that you'll be cursed
with bad happenings for the rest of the year. >> SMITH: Making matters worse, millions of people left Wuhan in
this period to visit friends and family across the country
and beyond. >> (speaking Chinese): >> (speaking Chinese): >> SMITH: It was not until
January 20 that the Chinese Health Ministry
declared what was already obvious. The virus was spreading from
human to human. >> Some ominous developments out
of China. Officials there have just
confirmed the first human-to-human
transmission of coronavirus. It's a huge story... >> The W.H.O. did not announce the prospect of human-to-human
transmission almost two months after this
thing began. And it was two weeks after
Taiwan had warned them that there was human-to-human
transmission. >> Wuhan, China, ground zero for
the outbreak, now under lockdown. >> SMITH: By January 23,
Wuhan was placed on lockdown. >> All trains and planes out of
that city halted just tonight. >> Eerie for a city 11 million
people call home. >> SMITH: It was then that
people around the world began to take notice. >> I perfectly remember the
moment in which we start fearing this issue, and it was when we
have seen all those Caterpillar building a new hospital in just
less than ten days. >> SMITH: Dr. Stefano Fagiuoli
heads the department of medicine at a hospital in
Bergamo, Italy. >> It's in a place far away
from us. So it was all TV show. But then, I remember I was
having a meeting with some colleagues, and I
said, "Look, "but if they are building
a whole hospital, "there must be something beyond
our perception." And I said, "I think we need to
be prepared." >> Two new coronavirus cases
have been confirmed here in Singapore. >> (speaking Italian): >> SMITH: In fact, by early
February, cases began showing up in other
countries, including the U.S. >> ...about the deadly
coronavirus officially hitting the U.S.... >> A ninth person has tested
positive for coronavirus... >> This is now the third case
in Ontario, fourth case in Canada... (voices overlapping) >> SMITH: Meanwhile, Dr. Li
Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who had warned
of the deadly virus at the end of December, had been
hospitalized a little over a week after he was ordered to
stay quiet. (device beeping) By late January,
he was on a ventilator, struggling to breathe. By February 7, he was dead. >> His death was really a shock. And at that time, that was the
lowest point in China's battle with the epidemic. And his death really put a human
face on the cost of it. >> SMITH: When news of Dr. Li's
death surfaced, Chinese social media exploded
in outrage. >> He, he told people truth at
the end of December. >> SMITH: It got the attention
of Dr. Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old highly respected
pulmonologist, a top adviser to the government. >> And then he passed away. >> SMITH: He now dared to defy
the party. >> I think the majority
of the people think he is, he is the hero of China. >> SMITH: That seemed unusual
to me, to hear somebody that is an
authority like that to criticize the government. >> Well, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, I
mean, the reason why he has so much
credibility with the public is because he's willing to push
back against the government and criticize the government
when it's necessary. I think he was speaking, just saying what most people
in China feel. >> This is Chinese doctor. I suppose majority of Chinese
doctor actually like him. (blowing whistles) >> Everyone would go out onto
their balconies and turn the lights off and hold
their cell phones up. (whistles blowing) It was really incredible to see. >> SMITH: A month earlier, the
Trumps greeted the new year in Florida. ♪ ♪ They hosted a big party at their
Mar-a-Lago mansion. >> Tonight, a new year, and an
impeachment trial looming. >> Family members,
honored guests, and hundreds of members of
President Trump's private club. >> Our country has never done
better than it's doing right now. We have the best unemployment
numbers, we have the best employment
numbers. Almost 160 million people
are working. Our country is really the talk
of the world. Everybody's talking about it. Thank you very much. ("Hail to the Chief" playing) >> SMITH: But that weekend, the director of the Centers for
Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield,
received a phone call from the American CDC office
in China. >> I was actually on a vacation
with my children, their spouses, and my 11 grandchildren up in
Deep Creek, Maryland, and I did get notified from our
CDC China office on New Year's Eve that
there was a cluster of cases of a unspecified pneumonia in
Wuhan, China, that seemed to be linked
to a seafood market. >> SMITH: The call was one of
several that interrupted his vacation. >> And if you talk to my wife, she said I spent most of the
time on the phone talking to... >> SMITH: On January 3,
Redfield called his Chinese counterpart,
Dr. George Gao. >> It got to the point that
Redfield's counterpart even breaks down crying during
one of the conversations that he has with him. >> SMITH: Michael Shear is a
White House correspondent for the "New York Times." >> Uh, which underscores for,
for Redfield the seriousness of what the
Chinese believe at that point that they're dealing with. The memory of those previous
viral infections-- SARS and another one called
MERS-- they really ravaged
that part of the world. So I think what you can, what
you can probably draw from it is a, is a bit of the anxiety on
the part of the doctor sitting there in China, thinking to
himself, "Geez, what if this
is as bad as SARS? What if it's worse?" >> SMITH: Shear stands by his
reporting, but Redfield told me that Gao
was not very alarmed. >> He felt pretty confident that
there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and that really was the extent
of it. >> SMITH: So he wasn't very
concerned. If there was no human-to-human
transmission confirmed, then he wasn't very concerned
at that point? >> Back in January 3rd time
frame-- 3rd through 6th time frame-- um, there was not a sense of
urgency from him. >> SMITH: But Redfield was
concerned, and called his boss, Alex Azar, secretary of Health
and Human Services. He also notified the National
Security Council at the White House. The president had already begun
receiving daily briefings from the U.S. intelligence
community. Some contained warnings of a
serious contagion with dire economic
and social consequences. >> They call it the PDB, the
president's daily briefing. And the virus begins to pop up
in those, just a sort of, hey, you know, this could be
something, and we should keep an eye on it. >> SMITH: You say
it's in his brief, we know that he doesn't always
read his brief. >> Right. >> SMITH: So what do we know
about... When did the president know? >> That's a good question about
whether or not he might have actually read it. He's never been clear any of the
times that he's been asked, and I think our reporting
suggests that, um, as you say, it's, it's not clear at all that
he reads the briefing. >> SMITH: And the president now
says he was distracted. >> I mean, I got impeached. I think, you know, I certainly
devoted a little time to thinking about it, right? >> SMITH: And busy securing a
big trade deal with China. >> A rare moment of
collaboration after more than two years of
acrimonious talks. >> SMITH: During this period,
Azar was trying to alert the president,
but couldn't get a meeting. Instead, over two weeks passed
before he got a call back from Mar-a-Lago on a Saturday. And the president wanted to
discuss something else. >> The president was not reached by Secretary Azar
until January 18. And the president's first
concern at that time was to talk about e-cigarettes. >> SMITH: Stephen Morrison is a
health policy expert who has long warned that America
was unprepared for a pandemic like this one. >> And Secretary Azar
was having a hard time conveying the gravity of the
situation to the president. >> SMITH: This is 18 days after
the Chinese government has recognized that they are
seeing deaths from this, and it takes 18 days for Azar
to get to the president. >> Correct. >> SMITH: Was that the
president's first true briefing on this? >> As far as I know, it was the
first serious high-level discussion. >> SMITH: But it is unclear how
much Azar pressed the president. He declined to be interviewed. According to Michael Shear, Azar
actually reassured the president that he didn't need to worry. >> What Azar wanted to
communicate to the president was, "We got this. We're not, we're not taking this
lightly. CDC is on it, FDA is on it. We're monitoring it closely." But also not, like, "We all have
to panic and shut the country down." I mean, at this point, it's
really, everybody is in the mode of,
you know, this... "We gotta keep an eye on this." >> Are there worries about a
pandemic at this point? >> No, not at all. And we have it under control. It's, uh, gonna be just fine. >> SMITH: As late as January 26,
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious
disease official, downplayed the dangers. >> The American people should
not be worried or frightened by this. It's a very, very low risk to
the United States because we have ways
of preparing, of screening of people
coming in. But it's something that we,
as public health officials, need to take very seriously. >> SMITH: A prominent
biostatistician, Nicholas Jewell, had been
tracking the virus for over a month. >> There was still a remarkable
lack of urgency in the Western world. That this was actually almost
inevitably going to reach their shores, and that it was
going to be potentially catastrophic unless
we took major steps. So there's no question in my
mind that we lost the time that we had gained from the
early warning coming out of China. >> SMITH: On January 29, White House economic adviser
Peter Navarro sent the president a lengthy memo warning there was
a risk of massive loss of life. He urged flights from China
to be halted. The next day, Secretary Azar
had a second call with the president. This time,
he was more concerned. He warned the president that
that the coronavirus might become a serious pandemic. >> The virus has been spread
rapidly over the last month. >> SMITH: The president
responded by restricting some flights from China,
but not all. And millions of people had
already left Wuhan, anyway. And many of those people were
flying out to the rest of the world. >> Yes, in fact, there are
direct flights from Wuhan to many cities in the U.S. And that was happening
throughout the month of January, until the lockdown. >> SMITH: So those are extremely
important weeks. >> Yes. >> SMITH: In fact, in the month
before President Trump's decision to restrict flights, an
estimated 380,000 people entered the U.S. from China. Even afterwards, if you were an
American, you were exempted. And flights from Europe
were not restricted for another six weeks. Furthermore, asymptomatic
carriers were not detected. >> One of the things that they
didn't know at the time was, even if a person isn't
symptomatic, doesn't have a fever, maybe that person is still
spreading the virus all over the place
because they have it, and they're just not showing
symptoms yet. >> SMITH: The virus could spread
undetected. Restricting flights proved to be
a half measure. >> Those of us who study viruses
knew that we're gonna be hit in waves here in the U.S. We had lost six weeks sitting on
the sideline watching China struggle, and watching other
countries struggle, thinking that if we shut our
borders, uh, we'll, we'll be fine. >> SMITH: Jeremy Konyndyk, a
specialist in global health issues, remembers meeting with some
Trump administration officials around this time. In, um, February, you sat down with some administration
officials, correct? >> So, it was an off-the-record
dinner, so I can't say too much
specifically about it, but it was very clear that most
of the bandwidth that the administration was
focused on-- enforcing the, the travel
restrictions on China, tracking people who had come
back from there, quarantining people-- that was the, the ball that they
had their eye on at that time. >> SMITH: What's wrong with
that? >> Well, what... I was, I was
quite gobsmacked by that, because, to my mind, the biggest
priority at that point was not preventing it from
coming here, because it was inevitable that
it would come here. You know, it's fine to try and
keep it out, but you have to do so with the
expectation that at best, you're buying time. >> SMITH: The problem was that
the administration was failing to understand the basic math
behind a pandemic. >> If I tell you there's 30
cases in the United States, that's not going to scare you. That's not going to cause you to
shut down your cities. If I tell you there're 60 cases
in the United States, you still feel very comfortable. 120, 240, and so on. You don't feel the power of
exponential growth until it's absolutely stunning. So when you say,
"Oh, if there are 10,000 cases in the United States, then we
ought to pay attention," the trouble is, in two or three
days now, it's 20,000. Within another two or three
days, it's 16 times. So it takes a long time to ramp
up exponential growth, but once it gets your attention,
it's stunning in its speed. >> SMITH: In New York City, an
infectious disease specialist with New York-Presbyterian
Hospital started to see cases he suspected of being COVID-19
by mid-February. >> We started to hear that there
were a lot of viral illnesses that we were not able to
identify. I started hearing conversations, suggestions from a lot of the
community doctors in our area, that maybe we were seeing early
spread here. >> SMITH: During this time, the
president is saying everything's under control. People that want to get a test
can get a test, that this is going to disappear
when the weather warms up. How did you take that in at the
time? >> You know, it was tough,
because, you know, as clinicians, when you get the
sense something is going on, you're waiting for the ability
to confirm that. But most of the response was,
"You know what? Until we see a large number of
cases, we don't want to overrespond. We don't want to be, you know,
the boy who cried wolf." >> SMITH: In fact, there were
people who thought you were a little bit out there. They said, "What's wrong with
Dr. Griffin?" >> Well, that was, uh, that was
actually when I reached out to one of the, um, other
infectious disease physicians in the area, and I said,
"Hey, we really should start communicating and
preparing." Um, and yeah, his response to
one of my partners was, "What's wrong
with Dr. Griffin?" "Why, why is he, like, getting
so worked up about this?" >> SMITH: Dr. Griffin was not
alone. Many doctors and scientists were
increasingly concerned that America was not prepared. Among the first countries
outside China to face the coronavirus was South Korea. Their response is
now a case study in how to handle an outbreak. Back in 2015, the Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, had scared them. I spoke to South Korea's foreign
minister, Kang Kyung-wha. >> The lessons from the MERS
experience, uh, was, was instrumental. I think that failure had the
seeds for the success this time. >> SMITH: Officials called an
emergency meeting. With just four known cases of
COVID-19 in the whole country, health
care officials summoned 20 private companies on January
27 to a conference room inside Seoul's central train
station. >> The train station in Seoul is
not just a train station. It's a multifunction complex. And so, if you want to bring in
experts from all across the country and
have a quick meeting, this would be the ideal place. >> SMITH: Dr. Yi Hyuk-min
was at the meeting and headed the initiative. >> SMITH: The meeting, the
meeting was tense. >> Yeah-- yeah, yeah. >> SMITH: It was tense because
no one knew how contagious the virus was and
how much time they had. >> SMITH: Based on their
experience with MERS, the number of infected people
could be doubling every few days. In a matter of weeks, South
Korea could be looking at over 100,000 cases. Moving fast, just days after
the train station meeting, four companies had developed
COVID tests. Just over a week later, one was
approved for use. By February 7, 46 labs across
the country began to test people. A process that ordinarily could
take a year had been completed in just over a week. There were only four cases when
they had their meeting and, and call to action. >> That's right. And, you know, they recognized
how dangerous this was, and even if all you have
are four cases, that is a dangerous moment. >> SMITH: They tested around
10,000 people daily. >> They then swung into action
very decisively, and set up this enormous
testing regime along with very robust tools for
monitoring cases and tracing contacts and
isolating and quarantining people based on
that. They began acting before it
seemed like they needed to do so. >> SMITH: Former head of
U.S.A.I.D. Dr. Rajiv Shah was astounded by what
South Korea was able to do. >> They have just deployed
an army of community health personnel
who are spraying Purell on, on people going in and out
of the subway, who are wiping down public
spaces and contact points, who are making drive-through
testing available very broadly by doing swab
collections and and mailing it in to a
public health laboratory construct, where, uh, and reference labs
that can validate the data quickly. >> SMITH: They thought
everything was under control. >> South Korea appears to be
flattening the curve. >> South Korea has done better
than most of the other countries around
the world. >> SMITH: They had found
only 30 cases. >> The lowest number of new
cases... >> A leader in the global fight
against the new coronavirus. >> Something they're doing is
working. >> SMITH: Then, on February 18,
they identified a 61-year-old woman in Daegu,
South Korea. At the time, they had discovered
no other cases in Daegu, but when they traced her
contacts, it led them here. The Shincheonji Church,
a Christian sect that claims over 200,000 members who believe
that their leader, this man, is the messiah. (audience cheering) Officials knew they had a big
problem. >> It became obvious that this
was a cluster that was at risk, and then we decided to trace
the group as a whole, and this is about 9,000,
10,000 people. >> SMITH: So, you tested 9,000
members of the church? >> Not all of them, but we
contacted them to the extent that they were traceable, asked
if they had any symptoms. The percentage of positives
among them were much higher than any other groups. >> SMITH: Health officials
found that thousands of church members were positive,
and they were quarantined. Dozens would die. Today, South Korea, along with
Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam, has managed to control the
spread of the virus better than most countries. In Seoul, a crowded city
of ten million people, there have been just four known
deaths. In the country of South Korea,
how many deaths, approximately? >> It would be 260... 264. >> SMITH: The number has now
crept up to around 300. By mid-January,
the CDC was busy developing
its own diagnostic test. >> Good morning, everyone. >> SMITH: On January 28,
Secretary Azar announced they were ready to go. >> This is really a historic
accomplishment. Within one week,
within one week, the CDC had invented a rapid
diagnostic test. Within weeks... >> Right out of the gate, I was
feeling really good about the process. >> SMITH: Scott Becker is
the C.E.O. of the Association of Public
Health Labs. >> We were gonna be able to
cover the country to a good extent for the
surveillance and early detection that was
really job one. >> SMITH: But that optimism
evaporated by the end of the first week in
February. >> It was Sunday morning, February 8. I woke up a little bit late. I read my texts and my emails, and I start seeing these
messages. (email alerts ringing) "We're having a problem." "Is anyone else seeing this?" I call that an "OSM," it was my
"oh, (bleep)" moment. And I remember thinking, "Oh, my
God, wait till governors and others find out about this. We're all counting on getting
testing up and running, and what a nightmare this is
gonna be." (telephone ringing) So, it was pretty devastating to
everyone-- the CDC staff to public health
labs to epidemiologists, the public health community. You know, we were left without
the biggest tool in our toolbox. >> Government officials
discovered contamination in a CDC lab in Atlanta... >> SMITH: By then, a diagnostic
test developed by German scientists was
available from the W.H.O. But U.S. officials would insist
it was better to find an American solution. >> Any of these groups can
submit their testing kits through our regulatory
processes, but without that
and without a plan, we are not going to accept tests that have not been studied
by us. >> Good answer,
that's a good answer. >> SMITH: Is that excusable, that they failed to have a test
ready to go? >> That's inexcusable,
in my book. I mean, how can you distribute
something that is so critical to monitor the epidemic, and
then have it be faulty? We cannot distribute drugs
like that. We cannot distribute other
FDA-approved tests in that fashion. So that's certainly inexcusable,
and it, it set us back, uh, for a good month,
I would say. >> SMITH: Is it unusual to have
a glitch in the initial tests? >> I have not seen another
mistake like this at CDC. The tests have rolled out very
effectively, without a glitch in the past. >> SMITH: Tom Frieden was head
of the CDC during the Obama administration. Is there any bigger misstep or
stumble here than the failure to test? >> I think, when we look back
at what went right and what went wrong, we're going
to focus on February. What should have gotten done in
February that didn't happen. >> So my first question to you is, uh, does the CDC's test for
coronavirus work? >> Yeah, uh, the problem was in,
when the test was sent to the states,
one of the components had a contaminant in it. >> SMITH: I asked Dr. Redfield
why South Korea succeeded where the U.S. failed. >> Korea had already developed
private-public partnerships through the MERS thing, and
really had invested enormously appropriately, and that's what
our nation had not done over the last 30 years. So, you won't get an argument
from me that the public health workforce
has been really underinvested in for decades. >> The CDC now says it's now
going to send improved tests to the labs facing problems. >> SMITH: Weeks were lost while
the CDC remanufactured the tests. If the failure at the CDC and
the outbreaks in China and South Korea did not instill
more urgency, the February outbreak in Iran
should have. This is Qom, a place of
pilgrimage for Shiite Muslims from all over the world,
including China. It was here that the world's
next major outbreak of the virus erupted. From the beginning, Iran's
leaders, like America's, played down the dangers. A mixture of religion and
national pride had delayed Iran's response. Iran would soon be reporting the
world's highest mortality rate. >> We never thought Iran would
be one of the first countries hit, uh, by the pandemic. But for whatever reason,
because of our contacts or because of other reasons, we were one of the first
countries hit. >> SMITH: I was able to reach
Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, in Tehran. It was 6:00 in the morning
my time. Why do you think you were so
hard-hit? What, what are the theories now? >> Well, nobody knows. I mean, uh, it was at a time
when, uh, more than anything, the population was unprepared. >> SMITH: In fact, it was
natural that Iran would be hit with a virus from China. It is not only that Chinese
pilgrims come here. Iran faces tough U.S. economic
sanctions, and as a result, China has become Iran's lifeline
to the outside world. >> (laughing) (cameras clicking) >> SMITH: Kamiar Alaei is an
Iranian health care expert living in exile in the U.S. >> SMITH: The flights were on
Iran's largest carrier, Mahan Air. But Zarif told me that Iran
canceled its flights from China at the same time as America did. >> I think we were one of the
first, uh, to limit flights and to screen passengers. >> SMITH: The Americans cut
flights to, from China at the end of January. >> My information is that our
decision was made basically in the same time zone
as the others. >> SMITH: Yet one analysis of
flight records shows that Mahan Air flew over 55
round-trip flights to and from China between
February 5 and February 23. They flew on to Iraq,
Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and other countries. All the while, Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, would continue to downplay
the virus. At one point, he said it was
possibly a biological attack. >> (speaking Farsi): >> SMITH: Do you agree
with the supreme leader that the coronavirus was perhaps
a biological attack by the United States upon Iran? >> Well, there are a lot of
speculations on all sides about this, I said it's not
unreasonable to believe that. (siren wailing) (people talking in background) >> SMITH: Talk of a biological
attack was a distraction. (machinery beeping) Tehran's hospitals were
overwhelmed. On social media, people were
seen collapsing in the streets. >> (man speaking Farsi): >> (speaking Farsi) >> SMITH: The government also
delayed the closing of parliament. At least 23 senior government
figures caught the coronavirus. Reportedly, around a dozen
senior officials died. Iraj Harirchi,
the deputy health minister, appeared at this press
conference clearly ill, while denying he had the
coronavirus. >> He said, "No, this is just,
you know, common cold. It's not a serious thing." >> SMITH: The next day, however,
he tested positive and was hospitalized. Many of Iran's faithful
continued to deny the seriousness
of the situation. >> (speaking Farsi): >> SMITH: It wasn't until March
16 that the government closed Qom's shrines. (crowd shouting, clamoring) >> (speaking Farsi): (men shouting) >> It took some time for us to
close the shrines. We have a very traditional
society, with people who still do not
agree with us. >> SMITH: By then, government
officials had began enforcing social distancing and
stay-at-home orders. But it was too late. Today, Iran has reported over
180,000 cases and 9,000 deaths. ♪ ♪ (horn honks) (people talking in background) >> SMITH: Coronavirus should
have been no surprise. The world has seen an increasing
number of viral outbreaks in recent years. >> ...official tells us that
there may already be hundreds more fatalities than have been
reported. >> SMITH: In 2014, the deadly
Ebola epidemic was a big wake-up call. >> This is an epidemic of
dysfunctional health systems. >> SMITH: Jeremy Konyndyk led
the U.S. government's effort to fight it. >> It was a monumental effort
to bring that outbreak under control. I think all of us who were
involved in that effort looked back at that and said, "Wow, a truly airborne or
droplet-style respiratory pandemic is going
to be so much worse and so much more difficult." And so there was a real urgency
in the final years of the Obama administration to
begin laying more groundwork for that kind of a scenario. >> SMITH: To address potential
threats like this, the Obama White House organized a
pandemic response team inside the National Security
Council, the NSC. >> We have to put in place
an infrastructure so that if and when a new strain
of flu like the Spanish flu crops up, five years from now
or a decade from now, we've made the investment. >> SMITH: But in 2018, after
Trump tapped John Bolton to head the NSC, the pandemic
response team was reorganized. Its members were reassigned. Its leader,
Admiral Timothy Ziemer, left. Bolton has maintained that he
was simply streamlining bloated NSC operations, and that it did not hurt
America's pandemic response. But last year, Stephen Morrison
headed a bipartisan effort to address America's pandemic
response capacity. His report,
released in November 2019, recommended the pandemic
response team be moved back to the White House. >> We live in an era in which
we're seeing increasing rapidity and increasing velocity and
increasing impacts of these new pathogens
coming at us. This is the condition of our
microbial universe today. >> A SARS-like virus has now
spread into Japan. >> More than 10,000 people died
from H1N1. >> The idea that you would
disband your capacity willfully at the White House,
aware of the developments of the last two decades, which
were convincingly that we needed to be prepared,
and far better prepared, on a consistent and sustained
and coherent basis. >> SMITH: What's the explanation
that would be given? >> Well, I can't speak
for John Bolton. I presume that they wanted to
see that responsibility moved over, out of the White
House, to the secretary of HHS and to those who worked
underneath him. >> SMITH: So what's wrong with
that decision to move this capacity over to
the HHS? >> The mistake there is to
assume that the secretary of HHS is able to see the full picture
and be able to command the different elements of our
government to respond in a coordinated and coherent
and integrated way. Um, that can only happen, uh,
through an empowered entity at the White House. So, by definition, we set
ourselves up for a slow and sluggish
response. A slow, sluggish,
and halting response. ♪ ♪ >> SMITH: The virus was about to
slam into Europe. >> (chanting, singing) >> SMITH: On February 19, a
championship soccer match was set to kick off in Italy's
largest stadium... Capacity: 75,000. (crowd singing, cheering) >> (yelling) >> SMITH: The Atalanta team from
Bergamo, in Lombardy, won the game. >> Atalanta had made it
four-nil. (crowd cheering) >> SMITH: Afterwards, Bergamo
became the epicenter of Italy's outbreak. (crowd cheering, clamoring) >> SMITH: Dr. Stefano Fagiuoli
of Bergamo remembers. >> I had ten colleagues
from our hospital which went to see the game,
and ten of them, they all got infected. >> SMITH: Oh, my God. When I spoke to Dr. Fagiuoli, he was quarantined at home after
catching the virus himself. >> It's interesting that the two
main outbreak in Spain are close to Madrid and
Valencia, which was the other,
the opponent team. >> SMITH: In the beginning,
Italy, like China and Iran, was slow to react. Dr. Marco Vergano is an
anesthesiologist in Turin. >> We, we were conducting
really, the usual, a normal life, a social life in
the last week of February. And it is really difficult to
implement the social distancing measures when you don't have
your hospitals already overwhelmed by patients. (siren wailing) >> SMITH: But they were losing
valuable time. Flights were cut from China,
but, as in the U.S., Italy hesitated to do more. The job was left up to town
mayors. >> (speaking Italian): >> (speaking Italian): >> (speaking Italian): >> They became viral
on social media. People, I think, uh, realized
quite soon that, uh, this was a way
to protect them and protect others. (man speaking Italian): >> Probably this happened maybe
a couple of weeks later than, uh, than was necessary. Because what, what we know is
that if you implement some real stringent social
distancing measures at the beginning of the surge, and since this is an exponential
surge, just maybe 24 or 48 hours
earlier is enough to avoid more than 30% or 40%
of the number of infected people
three weeks later. (piano playing) >> SMITH: The closing of flights
from China had done little to stem
the spread. In January, the government of
Italy was celebrating a new initiative to increase
Chinese tourism. Two Chinese tourists from Wuhan
arrived in Milan on January 23. They tested positive
a week later. The virus was already here. >> Italy's surge in cases now
marks the biggest coronavirus outbreak outside
of Asia. >> With the death toll leaping
by more than 50% in one day... >> Italy is the hardest-hit
country in Europe, with more than 7,300
reported infections. >> SMITH: Was there a moment in
time when this really seized your attention? >> In, in my case, personally, it was that Skype call from the
task force in Lombardia from this friend of mine. He told me, "I have seen scenes
in hospitals that I will never forget
in my whole life." He described the hospitals with,
uh, people in hallways and people dying outside of
hospitals, because even there were not
enough ambulances, or ambulances were in a queue
outside of the hospitals. >> SMITH: Hospitals in Italy's
north were overwhelmed. There were not enough beds,
let alone ventilators. >> In, in a condition with a
severe shortage of resources, and maybe you have ten people in
need of a ventilator, and, and only one or two
ventilators available. >> SMITH: And they need to be
used by younger people that have a greater chance of
survival, right? >> Yeah. >> SMITH: The government did not
order a nationwide lockdown until March 9. (people talking in background) >> SMITH: To date, over 34,000
Italians have died of COVID-19. Seeing what was happening
around the world, top American public health
officials were increasingly convinced that
halting flights from China was not enough. >> I think most health officials
agree that at best, it delays, and as the secretary says,
kind of pauses things. >> SMITH: Dr. Fauci and two
other officials planned to confront the president on
February 26. >> A broad pandemic throughout
the world, travel restrictions are not
gonna help. You can't just travel-restrict
everyone. >> The public health officials,
Redfield, Anthony Fauci at the N.I.H.,
Stephen Hahn at FDA, they had all decided that was
gonna be the day they were gonna tell the
president, "Hey, look, we need to, we need to be more
aggressive here." >> SMITH: But before they could
do that, Dr. Nancy Messonnier,
a top CDC official, spoke out publicly. >> Tonight, the CDC is calling
the coronavirus a "tremendous health threat." >> We are working to ready our
public health workforce to respond to local cases,
and the the possibility this outbreak could become
a pandemic. >> SMITH: It was a dire warning. >> The virus has killed more
than 2,200 people and infected infected nearly
77,000 worldwide. >> SMITH: The president was on
his way to India. >> Thank you, Mr. President. >> SMITH: There, he was
reassuring. >> You may ask about the, uh,
coronavirus, which is, uh, very well under
control in our country. We, uh, have very few people
with it. >> SMITH: But as he prepared to
return home, Messonnier spoke
to reporters again. >> Ultimately, we expect we will
see community spread in this country. It's not so much a question of
if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of
exactly when this will happen and how many people
in this country will have severe illness. >> Federal health officials said
today that coronavirus will certainly begin
spreading... >> It is not a question of "if,"
but "when." >> As Nancy Messonnier is giving
this briefing to reporters, the president is just getting on
Air Force One in India to fly home. So, as he's flying home,
the stock market crashes a thousand points. >> Wall Street continues to sell
on those coronavirus fears, the Dow falling close to 900
points today... >> TV is broadcasting nonstop
about how this is gonna change the way Americans live,
and of course, the president hadn't been
briefed on any of this. So, by the time Air Force One
lands, Wednesday morning on the 26th,
he's fuming. He's angry. The big economic success that he's constantly touting is
under assault, from his viewpoint. He picks up the phone and calls
Azar, yells at Azar, says, "You're scaring people to death
here. What's going on?" But the, but the big consequence of, of that is that the briefing that the public health officials
had intended to do for Trump, that evening after he had
returned, that briefing never happens. >> SMITH: Angry with his public
health advisers, Trump refused to meet with them. Talk of more aggressive
measures, such as stay-at-home orders and
strict social distancing, was put off. Messonnier's warnings were
heresy. >> They then, the next day, dedicated an entire presidential
press conference to walking back the, the warning
and the assessment that she had given. >> Thank you very much,
everybody. Thank you very much. >> And with the benefit of a
month's hindsight, she was 100% right. She accurately anticipated what
was about to happen. She tried to warn the country of
that. And, uh, the White House tried
to furiously walk it back. >> Mr. President,
the CDC said yesterday that they believe it's
inevitable that the virus will spread
in the United States, and it's not a question of "if"
but "when." Do you agree with that
assessment? >> Well, I don't think it's
inevitable. It probably will,
it possibly will, it could be at a very
small level or it could be at a,
at a larger level. Whatever happens,
we're totally prepared. We have the best people in the
world. >> As someone who served in
government, I can tell you, that kind of behavior sends a
very, very clear signal to government workers
about what is and is not permissible to say. >> SMITH: It's interesting that
it's very much like what happened in China in late
December and early January. >> The parallels are very,
are very striking. I think it's immensely
irresponsible of people in this administration to be
blaming China for that kind of behavior, even as they have engaged in it
themselves. >> SMITH: Dr. Nancy Messonnier
would be sidelined. Alex Azar was removed as head of
the task force. He was replaced
by Vice President Pence. >> Mike is gonna be in charge,
and Mike will report back to me, but he's got a certain talent
for this, and, uh, I'm gonna ask Mike Pence to say a few words,
please, thank you-- Mike? >> SMITH: What talent Vice
President Pence was bringing was not clear. >> Thank you, Mr. President. >> SMITH: When he was governor
of Indiana, he had slashed the state's
public health budget. As a staunch evangelical
Christian, he had questioned
scientific advice. >> So you don't feel like you're
being replaced? >> Not in the least, I'm, I...
>> He's not. >> When the, when this was
mentioned to me, I said I was delighted that I
get to have the vice president helping in this way--
delighted, absolutely. >> SMITH: The daily press
briefings became a platform for the president's positive
messaging. >> You are hearing the line that
the risk for Americans is low, which comes from
everybody's mouth, from the president on down. >> How should Americans prepare
for this virus? Should they go on with their
daily lives, change their routine? What should,
what should they do? >> Well, I hope they don't
change their routine, but maybe, Anthony, I'll let you, uh, I'll
let you answer that, or Bob? If you want to answer... >> Sure, Mr. President.
Thank you. I think it's really important
that, as I said, the risk at this time is low. The American public needs to go
on with their normal lives. >> SMITH: You said, February 29,
"The risk at this time is low. The American public needs to go
on with their normal lives." >> It was true at that time,
Martin. I think the risk was low. >> SMITH: But by this time,
China had had an outbreak. Iran was in the midst of a major
outbreak, as was Italy. And you're saying, "At this
time, the risk is low." >> Yeah, well, the risk was low to the general American public
at the time. >> SMITH: But the fact is that
we had stumbled in February to test adequately, to test
enough people to know where things were going. How can you say that when we had
such inadequate testing? >> Well, the purpose, I'm sure,
of your documentary is to help identify lessons and
correct them so we don't repeat this. Many of us are in the arena, where, as Teddy Roosevelt would
say, we're marred and bloody. Uh, we're trying to dare
greatly. Hopefully, at best, we'll know
the triumph of high achievement, and, you know, at worst,
we'll fail by daring greatly. (crowd cheering) >> SMITH: Throughout February,
the president had continued to hold his rallies. >> Hello, Phoenix. Hello, Las Vegas. Great to be with you. Where else would you like to be
but a Trump rally, right? (crowd cheering) >> SMITH: He blamed others for
exaggerating the threat. >> Now the Democrats are
politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right?
Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. And this is their new hoax. >> SMITH: The president would
not call for social distancing for another two-and-a-half
weeks. >> We have leaders throughout
much of January and February saying that this is a hoax. >> 35,000 people on average die
each year from the flu. Did anyone know that?
35,000. And so far, we have lost nobody
to coronavirus in the United States. >> It's a complete denial
of science, and leading to all sorts of
decisions that are harmful to our country,
to our planet. >> SMITH: You're quoting the
president. He made these comments. Is it your view that he knew
better than that, or was he simply misinformed? >> I cannot psychoanalyze the
president, but we know that he, he has a
tendency to, to believe he's the best at everything. And he probably thinks he's
better than the scientists. >> And you wonder, the press is
in hysteria mode, fake news, and their camera just went off. (crowd jeering) The camera. >> I think if he were practicing
medicine, he would be negligent, and he
would be prosecuted. >> The president's behavior, the president's resort to
repeated falsehoods, is a function of the way he is
approaching this crisis. He's approaching this crisis
about how it affects his own political survivability
and re-electability. >> Uh, this is a list of, uh,
the different countries. United States is rated number
one, most prepared. >> I would equate it to
something like seeing a hurricane offshore that has
just taken out a couple of Caribbean islands and is
strengthening to Category 5 as it heads for Florida, and not
bothering to tell people to get off the beach and board
their windows. And only starting to do that
when you see the storm surge coming ashore, by which point,
it's, of course, far too late. >> SMITH: The first COVID-19
death to be recognized in America was on February 29,
near Seattle. It was followed by a cluster of
cases in a nursing home. But the big bomb would land
on New York City. From the suburb of New Rochelle,
20 miles north of the city, an estate lawyer commuted daily
by train in to his office in midtown
Manhattan. ♪ ♪ In late February, he started
feeling sick. On February 27,
he checked himself into a New York Presbyterian hospital
in Bronxville, New York. Lawrence Garbuz tested positive
on March 2. >> The man in his 50s lives in
Westchester, but works in Manhattan. >> New York City Health
Department says he is in severe condition. Now, the entire family in
quarantine. >> SMITH: For Dr. Griffin, who
had been seeing patients with COVID-like symptoms
since mid-February, the Garbuz case confirmed what
he had suspected all along. >> This gentleman had not
traveled, so he had obviously acquired it
in the New York area. >> SMITH:
Dr. Griffin had been pressing for more testing for weeks.
>> Mm-hmm. >> SMITH: But because of a lack
of testing capacity, he says the CDC told him he
could only test Garbuz's immediate contacts. >> Bye. So, our impression at this
point, in the end of February, beginning of March,
is that we already had community transmission of
COVID-19 in the New York area. But you're only letting us test
people that have had contact with this man. We don't think he got it
in New Rochelle. We suspect he got it commuting
to and from the city. We would like to start testing
all these people with respiratory symptoms that
we don't have a diagnosis for. >> SMITH: What's their response? >> We still have our rigid
criteria. Um, unless someone is really
severely ill, they need to have a direct
contact or a travel history. >> SMITH: And what's your
response to them? >> Our response is we think this
gentleman got it in the community. We think there's community
spread, and we would like to do
broader testing. >> SMITH: But you're not allowed
to. >> We're not allowed to. ♪ ♪ >> SMITH: Jessica Caro is a
nurse who works at a New York Presbyterian
clinic. >> We first heard the news of
the lawyer from New Rochelle getting sick, and that scared
me, because I live, like, maybe a ten-minute drive
away from there. >> SMITH: Her 16-year-old
daughter Jianna was the first one in her family
to get sick. >> She was complaining to me
that she had a fever. And, you know, nurse mom was
just, like, throwing her some Motrin and saying,
you know, "You'll be fine.
You'll be fine." And I finally got a thermometer
on her. I almost dropped it 'cause it
was 105. Not 100.5, it was 105. >> SMITH: Wanting to get her
daughter tested, Jessica called New York's
COVID hotline. >> Thank you for calling the New
York state COVID-19 hotline. >> SMITH: Eventually, she got a
live person on the line, but it didn't help. >> This man was like, "Has your
daughter traveled to China?" I'm like, "No." He's like, "Well, has she had
contact with somebody that's positive?" I'm like, "Well, we don't know." And the last question was,
"Is she short of breath?" And I'm like,
"Well, not currently, but she's very sick." And the man tells me, "Well, if
she's not short of breath, she doesn't qualify." I remember hanging up the phone,
and just, like, I could feel the heat coming off
of me, just how angry I was. >> SMITH: There was a shortage
of tests across America. Dr. Susan Butler-Wu runs a
clinical microbiology lab in Los Angeles. >> Testing was very restricted. You have to get approval from your local public health
authority in order to be able to do that testing. And they then have to coordinate
with the CDC to get approval to do the
testing. So it was a very arduous
process. >> SMITH: Because of shortages, the CDC limited who qualified
for a test. >> At one point, the testing was
limited to people coming in from mainland China. But viruses don't respect
borders. They don't respect anything like
that, and so I think we were always
way behind because of that. It wasn't probably until later
in January, February, that I really started
to feel like even if the public health labs were
able to offer this testing, it's just not sufficient. We're not gonna be able to
respond to something of this magnitude. (birds chirping) >> SMITH: I've talked to a
number of doctors, and they say, "Look, if I
couldn't tell them that my patient had been to
China, they couldn't get a test." >> Yeah, that's a decision
that's made individually by each health department,
how they wanted to do that. I will say that early on,
in January and February, the cases that were recognized
in the United States were largely linked
to Wuhan, China, and so those were the case
criteria as this new epidemic happened. >> SMITH: By early March, the
CDC allowed for more people to get tests. But shortages persisted,
though not for celebrities. >> Reports that Kevin Durant has
been tested positive for the coronavirus. >> On social media, criticism
for celebrities who've been tested, like Celine
Dion, Heidi Klum, and reportedly Kris Jenner. >> Whatever it may be,
I'm gonna quarantine myself. >> How are non-symptomatic
professional athletes getting tests while others are
waiting in line? >> SMITH: We see stars being
able to be tested, where people without means or
without celebrity status are unable to get tested. >> Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of
issues with regard to inequity in our society
have really come out. But I think that people get a
little bit intolerant when it's actually affecting
the health of them, their loved ones, their children
when they realize that, you know, you're concerned about
your mother. She can't get tested,
but a VIP can get tested. And I think that during a
pandemic, there's something quite wrong
with-with that occurring. >> Our response is among the
very worst in the world. Certainly among
all the major countries. >> SMITH: By the end of the
first week in March, there were 337 cases of COVID-19
in the U.S., and 17 deaths. But cases were doubling every
several days, and only around 4,000 people
had been tested. When the president visited
the CDC on March 6, he flatly denied
there was a shortage. >> Anybody right now and
yesterday... anybody that needs a test
gets a test. They're there;
they have the tests, and the tests are beautiful. >> SMITH: You know, March 6 is
the date that you won't forget, where the president came
to the CDC. He's wearing the hat,
"Make America Great Again," and he states that everyone who
wants a test can get a test. Did he believe that do you
think? >> Again, I don't--
I'm not gonna comment on what I think the president
believed or didn't believe. >> SMITH: Did you talk to him? Did you say to him, "Look Mr.
President, with all due respect, it's not true what you're
saying"? >> Yeah, I'm not gonna comment
on the conversations I've had with the president. >> If there's a doctor that
wants to test, if there's somebody coming off
a ship, they're all set, they have... >> I remember watching that and
thinking I'd like the ability to test patients in my hospital
on a much larger scale than what I'm doing. And I know I can't to that
either. So at the time, it didn't
reflect the reality of what I was experiencing as
the clinical laboratory director in a hospital. Not at all. >> And the tests are all
perfect. Like the letter was perfect,
the transcription was perfect. >> It was a made-for-TV event,
um, and it was sound bites. But the reality of the situation
was quite different, and I think most Americans knew
that at the time. >> SMITH: The president had to
have known. >> I would expect that he did. >> SMITH: But even had there
been enough tests, the U.S. was facing a shortage
of nasal swabs, masks, and other equipment needed to
carry out the tests. And the president placed
responsibility on state and local authorities
to acquire their own supplies. >> Respirators, ventilators,
all of the equipment, try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try
getting it yourselves. >> When he says things like the
governors in the states should be trying to look after
their own needs and get these things themselves, what that means is
there is no single picture of what the country needs. >> SMITH: You're on your own,
boys and girls. >> You're on your own, but we're
also going to be buying up all the supplies that we told
you you need. Every state is basically going
on eBay and bidding against
all the others and against the federal
government to try and get the basic supplies
that they need. >> SMITH: By March 11, there
were 1,300 cases in the U.S., and 36 deaths. It was then that President Trump
decided to expand his travel ban to European
countries. >> My fellow Americans, to keep new cases from entering
our shores, we will be suspending all travel
from Europe to the United States
for the next 30 days. >> SMITH: The next day, Dr.
Fauci testified before Congress and admitted they were still
failing to test adequately. >> The system is not really
geared to what we need right now,
what you are asking for. That is a failing. >> A failing? Yes. >> Yeah, it is a failing. Let's admit it. >> He was spot on,
and I'm glad he said it. Somebody had to say it. >> The way people in other
countries are doing it, we're not set up for that. >> I concur with Dr. Fauci. We've completely failed. This is a,
this is a massive failure. At the end of the day,
the whole way that health care is set up in this country is the
failure, too, right? That every lab is fighting
for itself, every state is fighting
for itself, every city is fighting for
itself. I mean, that's not what you need
in something like this. >> Is it possible that your
impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving
Americans a false sense of hope? >> No. I don't think so. >> Misrepresenting preparedness
right now? >> I don't think so.
No, I don't think so. I think that, uh,
I think it's got... >> The not-yet approved drugs. >> Such a lovely question. >> What do you say to Americans
who are scared, though, I guess? Nearly 200 dead,
14,000 who are sick, millions, as you witnessed,
who are scared right now? What do you say to Americans who
are watching you right now who are scared? >> I-I say that you're a
terrible reporter. That's what I say. Go ahead. I think it's a very nasty
question, and I think it's a very bad
signal that you're putting out
to the American people. The American people are looking
for answers, and they're looking for hope, and you're doing
sensationalism... >> SMITH: By the end of March, there were more than
5,500 deaths. ♪ ♪ Jessica Caro, the clinic nurse, was never able to get her
daughter Jianna tested. Fortunately, Jianna recovered. But two weeks later, Jessica's
aunt Amelia spiked a high fever and cough. >> I get a phone call from my
mom that my aunt is ill. And that's when I started to get
really scared, because you kept hearing the
hospitals filling up, and now I'm like,
"Wait, this is, this not good." >> SMITH: Amelia was
hospitalized, but in the meantime,
Jessica got another call. It was her mother. >> She said,
"I have to tell you something, I have a fever ." And I said, "No, Mami, please,
don't tell me that." And she goes,
"Yeah, I have a fever, and I started coughing
and I'm scared." >> SMITH: Jessica's mother was
hospitalized on April 7. The next day, just down the
hospital hallway, her sister Amelia,
Jessica's aunt, died. By now, there were over
18,000 deaths from coronavirus in America. >> The one time that I spoke
to her on the phone, she was very out of breath. Every word was labored, um, and
so we, at that point, were just conversing by text. But then, I-I had texted her at
some point in the evening, and she hadn't answered me back. And I, like, now started getting
worried and next thing you know, I get a text from her. It was, like, garbled gibberish,
and then it was, "Call me, call me now." And, um, the doctor was there
and the doctor is telling me, um, you know, "Unfortunately,
at this point, we need to intubate." >> Okay, thank you.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much. >> SMITH: Since visiting was
prohibited, Jessica could only reach her
mother through FaceTime. >> Hi, Mami.
Hi, Mama, do you hear me? In my heart, I know she was able
to hear me, but it was hard to see her
like that. I even promised her that when
she got better, I'd take her to her favorite
place, which was the casino. And, um, not being able to, um,
be there and hold her hand and let her hear my voice has just been the worst of all
of this. Mama, I love you. I love you so much. You're so strong and you're
fighting I know you are. I need you to get better Mami,
okay? >> SMITH: After 16 days
on a ventilator, Jessica's mother Anne Martinez,
passed away. It happened on April 23. It was her 80th birthday. ♪ ♪ By then, over 50,000 Americans
had died, around 15,000 of them
in New York state. The bodies were stored in
refrigerated trucks next to the hospitals. When we interviewed Dr. Ho
on March 31, he described New York this way. >> New York is the new Wuhan
right now. There is tremendous carnage seen
in all the hospitals in this area. They're scared. They're overwhelmed. It's like being hit by a tsunami
of-of patients. And they're not well-equipped
to fight this. >> SMITH: Who do you blame for
this? >> I blame the government. I, honestly,
I blame the government for, um, not alerting us sooner
that this was gonna be an issue, not, um, consolidating
a nationwide stockpile and not putting people in charge
of, uh, giving it to who needs it
in an orderly fashion. Just being a citizen, not even
being a health care professional and watching the news,
I can see how just incompetent everything
is. >> SMITH: Jessica Caro's mother
and aunt immigrated here from the Dominican Republic. Black and Latino communities
have been the hardest hit. >> Blacks and Latinos are
grossly, disproportionately killed by this virus. >> SMITH: Cleavon Gilman is an
emergency room doctor at New York-Presbyterian. >> That's just due to that a
large majority of us live in housing projects as
well. Uh, a lot of us are also
essential workers, um, MTA, officers, grocery clerks, um,
and that's just taking a toll on our whole community. Across the city, the virus has
been twice as deadly for blacks and Latinos as
whites, and poverty is also a dangerous
risk factor. >> I think this crisis has
unmasked a tremendous vulnerability in
America, where 40, 50, 60% of American
households barely get by day-to-day,
have lost faith in the American dream for their
children, that their kids can do better
than they can, and-and now our society will
have to grapple with and deal with the reality that
we can't just hide and pretend that that's not the
case anymore. ♪ ♪ >> SMITH: Today, the total
number of Americans who have died is more than
115,000. A Columbia University study has
calculated that had a stay-at-home order
been imposed at the end of February, it would have prevented 83%
of all U.S. deaths. It's remarkable to me
that in the Vietnam War, I think 55,000 American soldiers
died, and we're now saying
we might see four times that many people die.
>> Yep. It's-it's astounding. You know, 9/11, we lost 3,000
people, and in response to that, the
country built an infrastructure for protecting against
terrorist attacks that costs an average of $150
to $250 billion a year. We need to take this threat as
seriously as we take the threat of
terrorism. Um, it has the potential to kill
at least as many, if not considerably more,
Americans, and I hope, coming out of this, whenever we do eventually come
out of this, we'll finally take seriously
the importance of health security and public
health investments. (sirens wailing) >> SMITH: Finally, there was the
toll on health care workers. In New York, scores of health
care workers died of the virus. ♪ ♪ New Yorkers tried
to show their support. Every day, thousands went
to the streets and to their windows
to say thank you. (cheering, applause) (air horn blowing) (cheering, applause continue) All the while, the number of
bodies overwhelmed the city. Trucks made their daily runs to
a potter's field where the poorest among us
are laid to rest. Worldwide, the virus has killed
more than 430,000 people. In the U.S., a nationwide
lockdown has led to the steepest drop in
employment since the Great Depression. Now countries around the world
are beginning to reopen. Health care officials warn
of a second wave. >> Go to pbs.org/frontline for more of our coverage
of the pandemic. >> (chanting): I can't breathe! >> And listen to our podcast
"Race, Police, and the Pandemic" with historian Jelani Cobb. >> From our educational system,
our healthcare system, like all these things that
ultimately culminate in the explosions that we've
seen in the past week. >> Connect with "Frontline"
on Facebook and Twitter, and watch anytime on the PBS
Video app or pbs.org/frontline. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> For more on this and other
"Frontline" programs, visit our website
at pbs.org/frontline. ♪ ♪ "Frontline:
The Virus: What Went Wrong?" is available
on Amazon Prime Video. ♪ ♪
Can't recommend this highly enough. PBS also did a Frontline piece in two parts called "America's Great Divide". You can find it on Youtube.
China lied. The WHO backed them up without any confirmation. World leaders listened to their propaganda.
Canuck mirror?
That nurse talking to her mom. I can't imagine.
Mirror?