The Senator Who Saw the Coronavirus Coming
By John McCormack

March 31, 2020 12:30 PM

Sen. Tom Cotton speaks with reporters in Washington, D.C. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)
Tom Cotton was both the first and the loudest voice in Congress to sound the alarm about the looming pandemic.

While others slept, Tom Cotton was warning anyone who would listen that the coronavirus was coming for America.

On January 22, one day before the Chinese government began a quarantine of Wuhan to contain the spread of the virus, the Arkansas senator sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar encouraging the Trump administration to consider banning travel between China and the United States and warning that the Communist regime could be covering up how dangerous the disease really was. That same day, he amplified his warnings on Twitter and in an appearance on the radio program of Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade.

At the time, the Senate impeachment trial was dominating the news cycle. The trial, which lasted from January 16 to February 5, had even blotted out coverage of the Democratic presidential primary in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. When the first classified briefing on the virus was held in the Senate on January 24, only 14 senators reportedly showed up.

Cotton’s public and private warnings became more urgent that last week of January. In a January 28 letter to the secretaries of state, health and human services, and homeland security, he noted that-- excerpt, rest at link above --

And, a companion piece, from Politico:

From distraction to disaster: How coronavirus crept up on Washington

Lawmakers have ripped the administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak. But some now wonder if there’s more they could have done when it might have made a difference.
Capitol

By NATASHA BERTRAND and MAGGIE SEVERNS

03/30/2020 04:30 AM EDT

It was just hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial when Sen. Tom Cotton started to worry.

The Arkansas Republican had spent Martin Luther King Day weekend poring over news reports from Asia describing a new, highly infectious disease traced to a provincial city of 11 million inside China, hardening his already deeply held disdain for the Chinese Communist Party.

Cotton was struck by the way the Chinese government was putting a positive spin on its handling of the new virus, while taking increasingly drastic steps to try to contain it. “That’s when it really kind of crystalized for me,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “Those two things obviously do not match.”

So he started badgering the White House to bar travel from China immediately. Cotton called the president, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other top officials, warning about the dangers of the virus and pressing them to ground flights.

Soon, he said, he had made his point so thoroughly that he would simply point down to the ground every time he saw White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland — a sign for “get the planes down.”

But Cotton, along with a handful of others, was the exception on Capitol Hill -- excerpt, rest at link above --

I think they took it out to the market for illicit payments....

Quote: EdJames wrote in post #7

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I think they took it out to the market for illicit payments....

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Whatever those may be....