CORONAVIRUS/COVID-19/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “We’re at war with a deadly virus… this is going to be a very painful, very, very painful two weeks…
The question is what would have happened if we did nothing? Because there was a group that said let’s just ride it out… 2.2 million people would’ve died if we did nothing. We just carried on our life. Now I don’t think that would’ve been possible because you would have had people dying all over the place. This would not have been a normal life. How many people have even seen anybody die? You would have seen people dying on airplanes. You would’ve been seeing people dying in hotel lobbies. You would have seen death all over…
I think the one thing nobody really knew about this virus was how contagious it was. It’s so incredibly contagious. And nobody knew that.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing,” whitehouse.gov, Apr. 1, 2020