Here's the biggest clue: By the time the agency’s warnings made it into the President’s Daily Brief in early January, they would have had to undergo “weeks of vetting and analysis.”
That's what I've been telling people for quite some time. Patient zero died in mid November and it would have taken time for the virus to spread enough among the population to cause alarm. Alarm that finally in mid December caught the attention of the doctor whose students told him there was a virus circulating killing people, he investigated and tried to warm the world before he succumbed to the virus. Even if during this time intelligence sources had gotten wind of it they'd still had to vet and analyze the information, you just can't go crying wolf. Besides they looked into those meetings of this information of early warnings and there was no such mention in the record of minutes....probably why the article attributes the information to unnamed sources within, it's a well known tactic often used to prop up propaganda against the president.
People seem to overlook the fact that prior to shutting down air travel the president had already set up and prepared several sites to house those who'd have to be brought back as US citizens and quarantined from China, so claims he wasn't taking this seriously are unfounded as those things don't happen overnight. He also took criticism for sending medical supplies to China in January. I think within the time frames of mid Dec into Jan is pretty good for vetting and analysis with beginning provisional actions being taken. Like I said in another comment a few weeks ago if your house is on fire if you run outside and watch it burn without doing anything chances are it will spread. Trying to put out the fire within China was the right course of action while simultaneously setting up preliminary courses of actions, which is exactly what he did. The senators who sold stocks didn't sell them in December, most sold them in January and February after he took the next steps and shared the intelligence he was getting with the appropriate committees and agencies that would need to be involved in the next steps of preparation. All this aligns with what we seen unfolding on the internet with people grabbing at the information flowing out of China and putting it out there. This is what prompted a lot of us to start watching how this thing was going to unfold and take our own early evasive actions. By February it was pretty clear this thing was going to come barreling at us and understand what we needed to do to avoid the panic that was going to unfold. As the same with us it was the same with the president, February would be a crucial tell all month, until there was a clearer picture of exactly what was going to transpire there wasn't a need to stand up there and scare the jeepers out of everybody. When the appropriate time came he told everyone heads up. During all this time he devised a plan to roll this out across the country in stages starting on the outer fringes with heavy density of populations where he knew it was most likely going to strike the hardest first. They got the products to the stores and everyone tucked in then moved the process inwards. They moved like an army only carrying food supplies instead of ammunition. It was truly amazing to watch, that took careful planning and cooperation with state leaders. Even planning out the most dire of situations he carefully crafted and wagged the dogs to keep everyone from all out panic and trying to keep the stock market from crashing. Yes it may not have been as honest as we'd like to have seen but that's an incredible amount of responsibility to fall upon one person's shoulders.
Furthermore you can't take what Whitmer did with banning the sale of plants and seeds as some sort of hidden master plan to keep people from growing their own food. I think I already told you how that came about. A guy here in Michigan with a large nursery got mad because he couldn't sell his products to people while the large big box retailers would be able to. He went to the news organizations and complained. People seen the story and started complaining that being able to buy plants and seeds would give them all something to do at home while they were quarantined despite the fact they wouldn't have been able to anyway because the weather is still to cold. I mean people became literally outraged over it then started to demand why this was being allowed to be sold and that was allowed to be sold but they couldn't go get plants from the nurseries. That's how they got us banned from being able to run into the big box stores and grab something that wasn't essential as she just plain got tired of it and banned everything that was non essential. BUT!!....you still had access to all that stuff if you went online to order it and had curbside pick up.....except plants at the big box stores because they didn't have any yet, wasn't ordering any yet as it isn't warm enough yet....it just one guy who started the whole ball running as he was mad, never mind it'd be another three weeks to a month before anyone could engage in those activities, maybe by then some restrictions would have been lifted but what he started just made things worse. When people showed up at the capitol to protest the quarantine there was no ten thousand people who showed up, there was an estimate of three to four thousand, most of them were landscapers mad they couldn't get an early jump on landscaping jobs. They tried to argue how being outside on a lawnmower could spread the virus. Well it's more than just being out on a lawnmower, you have to interview people for summer employment, those people have to go get gas to drive to work, if they aren't just mowing grass and doing other landscaping then they have to go get supplies....and the list of contacts with other people just keeps expanding. Here's what it looked like outside my house yesterday morning....
...now does that look like gardening weather?....does that look like you want to put out hanging flower baskets?, fill up your flower beds? That's just how off the wall people were being about the whole thing, it ran like a fever across FB post, here's a meme someone made...
.... because of this we now can't go into the big retail stores and grab a book to read, a movie to watch, a puzzle to put together or a new game to play...all things people really do need to keep themselves occupied right now all because some guy went and complained to the news about something he didn't need to worry about until next month.
As far as farmers throwing food out and dumping milk the administration is going to see if they can't get more of this food moved to food pantries. There's a lot of food sitting out there that would normally go to industries like restaurants, schools or foreign countries, if they allowed that food out onto the market it would depress prices which would only hurt the farmers in the long run.