Trump projects up to 240,000 coronavirus deaths in U.S., even with mitigation efforts

President Trump and the physicians advising the federal pandemic response on Tuesday delivered a bleak outlook for the novel coronavirus’s spread across the country, predicting a best-case scenario of 100,000 to 240,000 fatalities in the United States and summoning all Americans to make additional sacrifices to slow the spread.

Trump adopted a newly somber and sedate tone — and contradicted many of his own previous assessments of the virus — as he instructed Americans to continue social distancing, school closures and other mitigation efforts for an additional 30 days and to think of the choices they make as matters of life and death.

Trump and his coronavirus task force members said that community mitigation practices in place for the past 15 days have worked and that extending them is essential. The mathematical modeling the White House presented suggests doing so could save hundreds of thousands of lives. Without community mitigation, the models predict, 1.5 million to 2.2 million Americans could die of covid-19, the disease the virus causes, though no time frames or other details were provided for the figures.

“Our country is in the midst of a great national trial unlike any it has ever faced before,” Trump said at an early evening news conference. He went on to call on every citizen to “make sacrifices” and every business to fulfill its “patriotic duty” to brace for even tougher days ahead.

“This is going to be a very painful — very, very painful two weeks,” Trump said. Sometime after April, he added, the country could transition back to normal with businesses reopening and people returning to work.

“It’s going to be like a burst of light, I really think, and I hope,” Trump said. “Our strength will be tested, our endurance will be tried, but America will answer with love and courage and ironclad resolve.”