Donald Trump, Melania test positive: 'COVID will go away without a vaccine'; from denying severity to hailing US response, what president said

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus and have gone into quarantine, hours after one of his closes aides Hope Hicks was found to have COVID-19. Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic since early this year has ranged seen him downplaying its severity, with the president ditching the mask often at public appearances and events, even as the cases inched towards 75 lakh. Trump, in fact, has been found to be the world’s biggest driver of COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic, a Cornell University study concluded after analysing 38 million articles between 1 January and 26 May. His statements on the pandemic have ranged from calling the virus a ‘hoax’ and ‘lab made’ to directing attacks at on top immunologist and White House coronavirus advisor Dr Anthony Fauci. 22 January: During CNBC interview on sidelines of economic forum in Switzerland. A day earlier, federal officials reported the first case of COVID-19 in the United States. “It’s one person, coming in from China,” Trump said. “It’s going to be just fine.” 30 January: “Hopefully it won’t be as bad as some people think it could be. But we’re working very closely with them and with a lot of other people and a lot of other countries. And we think we have it very well under control,” Trump said during trade event in Michigan. 7 February: “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” Trump told reporter Bob Woodward in a phone interview. 10 February: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine,” he said during a New Hampshire rally. On the same day, Trump also said, “Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” 26 February: Trump told a White House coronavirus task force, “The 15 (case count in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. This is a flu. This is like a flu.” 6 March: “You have to be calm. It’ll go away,” he said during visit to Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trump also said, “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” 13 March: While declaring a national emergency, Trump said, “We’ve done a great job because we acted quickly. We acted early. And there’s nothing we could have done that was better than closing our borders to highly infected areas.” 19 March: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” he told Woodward. 24 March: “I’m hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter - that beautiful Easter day,” Trump said. “We’ve never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, what is this all about?” he further asked. 30 March: “I want to keep the country calm. I don’t want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you,” he told reporters. 1 April: “If we did nothing, if we just carried on with our life,” he said, “you would have seen people dying on airplanes, you would have seen people dying in hotel lobbies. You would have seen death all over.” 3 April: Trump spoke on not wearing a mask: “I’m feeling good. I just don’t want to be doing – somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t. Maybe I’ll change my mind.” 23 April: “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that,” he said. He went on to say, “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn’t been checked but you’re gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way.” 3 May: Trump said the US is going to lose “anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people.” 8 May: “This is going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to go away. We are not going to see it again,” he said. 20 June: “Testing is a double-edged sword. When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, so I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’” 5 August: “If you look at children, children are almost - and I would almost say definitely - but almost immune from this disease.” 9 September: He said during a press conference, “I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say. Certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength.” 14 September: On being asked if he is afraid of contracting coronavirus at rallies, Trump said, “I’m on a stage, it’s very far away, so I’m not at all concerned.” 28 September: “It’s important to remember that as younger and healthier people return to work, and as we massively increase testing capacity, we will identify more cases and asymptomatic individuals in low-risk populations. This should not cause undue alarm. The total number of cases is not the full metric of success,” Trump said during a White House briefing. He went on to add, “Lockdowns can be very harmful, and we have too many states that are locked down right now. The governors are — nobody knows what the governors are doing, actually.” With inputs from agencies