"This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on 7 February in one of a series of interviews he conducted with the president for his upcoming book Rage.

The Washington Post and CNN were given advance copies of the book and published details Wednesday."You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed," Trump said. "And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu."

That was a vastly different story than what Trump was telling the public."I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on 19 March, "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."In public, Trump claimed early on that the virus would disappear, predicting in February that by April "when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away."

Maggie Haberman c.2020 The New York Times Company