At the start of the pandemic, in late March 2020, President Donald Trump held a White House briefing at which his top advisers presented their official COVID-19 death projections. In somber tones, they forecasted that between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans would die from the disease if we followed reasonable social-distancing and other mitigation guidelines.
Two hundred and forty thousand! That was an inconceivable amount of death. Four times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam. Eighty times the number who died in the 9/11 attacks.
"As sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert. Trump added that there was "light at the end of the tunnel" if we behaved as we should, but that "we're going to go through a very tough two weeks."
