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Law360 (March 30, 2020, 10:26 PM EDT) -- The White House told Americans on Monday to brace for a massive U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic, marking a grim contrast with President Donald Trump's early predictions of little impact domestically.
The bleak forecast came on a day when U.S. deaths climbed above 3,000 — about the same number of Americans killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and total infections since the start of the outbreak surpassed 163,000.
In perhaps the most jarring statement, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx suggested that a best-case scenario would be a body count in the low six figures.
"If we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities," Birx said in a television interview, referring to strict adherence to social distancing guidelines that Trump on Sunday extended through April.
But in the "Today" show interview on NBC, Birx indicated that Americans in many places have fallen far short on social distancing, which entails avoiding large gatherings and unnecessary travel or shopping.
"We're not sure ... that all of America is responding in a uniform way to protect one another, so we also have to factor that in," Birx said.
The comments seemingly went even further than remarks by Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House's coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In a CNN interview Sunday, Fauci forecast "between 100,000 and 200,000" deaths and "millions of cases" of coronavirus infections.
In a briefing Monday night at the White House, Trump said that cases might peak in about two weeks, echoing comments earlier Monday from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state was approaching 70,000 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon. There have also been about 17,000 cases in New Jersey and more than 5,000 cases apiece in California, Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois and Michigan, according to data collected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle.
The dire expectations contrast dramatically with the rosy picture that Trump painted earlier in the outbreak. As one example, the president said Feb. 26 that the number of cases "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
In response to the rising fatalities, the president has begun citing a study released two weeks ago by the Imperial College in London that said 2.2 million Americans could die if no steps were taken to alleviate the virus' spread.
"I can't tell you what the unfortunate final toll is going to be, but it's going to be a very small fraction of that," Trump said Monday, adding that the final outcome will be "a great victory."
Critics have swiftly accused the president of moving the goalposts to spin a catastrophic loss of life as a public health triumph. And Democratic lawmakers in Congress have increasingly argued that the administration failed to heed early warnings about the coronavirus threat and bears significant responsibility for the deaths.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called attention Monday to a tweet he sent Feb. 5 accusing the administration of making "a big mistake" by not seeking emergency funding to deal with the virus, which has killed at least 37,000 people globally.
"What a fatal screw up," Murphy, a member of the Senate health committee, wrote Monday on Twitter.
Administration officials and outside experts have cautioned that the ultimate impact of a viral outbreak is extremely hard to predict with precision. As one example, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation as of Monday projects 82,000 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. by early August, while allowing for a range of roughly 40,000 to 140,000 fatalities.
A 2009-10 outbreak in the U.S. of the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, is estimated to have claimed more than 12,000 lives. But like the seasonal flu, it infected tens of millions of Americans, making it far less lethal than the novel coronavirus.
--Editing by Breda Lund.
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