Siding with public health experts' dire projections, President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to extend restrictive social distancing guidelines through the end of April, while bracing the nation for a coronavirus death toll that could exceed 100,000 people.
"The worst that could happen is you do it too early and all of a sudden it comes back," Trump said during a nearly hour-long call-in interview with "Fox & Friends" as members of his coronavirus task force fanned out across other media outlets to warn the virus' spread was only just beginning.
The comments came a day after Trump made a dramatic course reversal and announced that he would not be moving to ease the guidelines and get the economy back up and running by Easter, as he said last week he hoped to do.
In the face of stark projections from his team and searing images of overwhelmed hospitals in his native New York City, Trump instead extended to April 30 the social distancing guidelines, which had been set to expire Monday.
Many states and local governments already have stiffer controls in place on mobility and gatherings.
Trump's impulse to reopen the country, driven by pleas from business leaders, met a sober reality check from health experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, who on Sunday said the US could experience between 100,000-200,000 deaths and millions of infections from the pandemic.
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That warning hardened a recognition in Washington that the struggle against the coronavirus will not be resolved quickly even as Trump expressed a longing for normalcy.
"It would not have been a good idea to pull back at a time when you really need to be pressing your foot on the pedal as opposed to on the brakes," Fauci said on CNN on Monday, describing how he and Dr Deborah Birx, the coronavirus task force coordinator, had convinced Trump to reconsider.
"We showed him the data. He looked at the data. He got it right away," Fauci said.
"It was a pretty clear picture. Dr Debbie Birx and I went in to the Oval Office and leaned over the desk and said, 'Here are the data. Take a look.' He just shook his head and said, 'I guess we got to do it.'"
Trump told "Fox & Friends" that "nobody" was "more worried" about the economic impact on the country than he was. But he said, We want to do something where we have the least death."
And he said the country would be doing well if it "can hold" the number of deaths "down to 100,000."
He described the images he'd seen on television with "body bags all over, in hallways. I've been watching them bring in trailer trucks freezer trucks... because they can't handle the bodies, there are so many of them.... I've seen things that I've never seen before."
"It looks like it's low level, it starts to accelerate, then it goes way up."