Assignment task: On January 28. 2020. Robert C. O'Brien. The National Security Adviser to the president said to then President Trump about the COVID-19 virus risk:
"This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. This is going to be the roughest thing you face.
In the same meeting, the deputy national security adviser concurred saying that the virus was on a par with the flu epidemic of 1918 which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
In the summer of 2020, asked whether the Covid pandemic was "the leadership test of a lifetime," then President Trump answered emphatically, "No."
On April 1. 2021. the coordinator of the Trump administration's coronavirus response. Dr. Deborah Birx stated that the initial surge of the virus in Winter 2020 caused 100,000 deaths in the U.S. As of April 2021, the U.S. had suffered 550,000 deaths. Dr. Birx revealed in her statement that many of the lives lost to the virus could have been saved "with better leadership."
From news reports, and your own recollections. you know how the then president described the virus in public. From what I have provided. you now know what the president really knew and how he described the COVID-19 risk to political columnist and writer, Bob Woodward on February 7, 2020, and thereafter. in agreed-to taped interviews preparatory to Woodward's upcoming book-Rage. You also know from the Vox piece I distributed, what Woodward's explanation was for not immediately disclosing to the nation via all his media contacts the president's recorded statements to him about the virus. You have read and we have discussed generally, in class. what possible motivations Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, might have had for remaining silent until September 2020, just before the publication of Rage, when disclosures were made. This was also less than two months before the presidential election.
What is the ethical issue? And who is the stakeholders?