He also told Woodward he didn't want to start a panic. This was in March. At the time I think he was trying, rightfully, to keep the country open or shut it down for weeks not months.
As accounts accumulate of inflated deaths, of tests which yield false positives, of attributions of death to COVID which likely should have been attributed to the underlying condition(s) which may have been fatal, it looks like downplaying the disease, was indeed the correct course--especially considering the early projections of
two million dead.
Only a small fraction of ICU beds here are taken up with COVID-19 patients, and there is a significant surplus of beds (about 50%), yet we have more active cases than ever. More beds were provided elsewhere, but the shortages defined by the projections of two million dead didn't happen, and the facilities went largely unused.
We have had plenty of insanity, from toilet paper shortages to not being able to get laundry products, all over the disease, as the panic mongers of the MSM have flogged this horse to ribbons.
Of course, without that mass panic and widespread civil unrest, the Democrats had to muster their own little army of Bolsheviks to get out and do the looting and destruction patriotic and decent Americans would not.