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Five weeks ago, when there were 60 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States, President Trump expressed little alarm. “This is a flu,” he said. “This is like a flu.” He was still likening it to an ordinary flu as late as Friday. By Tuesday, however, with more than 187,000 recorded cases in the United States and more Americans having been killed by the virus than by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the president’s assessment had rather drastically changed. “It’s not the flu,” he said. “It’s vicious.” The grim-faced president who appeared in the White House briefing room for more than two hours on Tuesday evening beside charts showing death projections of hellacious proportions was coming to grips with a reality he had long refused to accept. (Baker, 4/1)

President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for a “hell of a bad two weeks” ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained. Public health officials stressed Tuesday that the number could be less if people across the country bear down on keeping their distance from one another. (Madhani, Freking and Alonso-Zaldivar, 4/1)

“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” said Mr. Trump, who answered questions for more than two hours and predicted that there would be “light at the end of the tunnel,” but warned that “we’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.” Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx showed charts indicating that coronavirus cases in New York and New Jersey had risen far higher than in other parts of the country, a fact that they said gave them hope that the overall number of deaths might be lower if people in the rest of the states followed the guidelines for at least the next month. (Shear, Crowley and Glanz, 3/31)

“Each of us has the power — through our own choices and actions — to save American lives and rescue the most vulnerable among us,” Trump said. “Every citizen is being called on to make sacrifices. Every business is being asked to fulfill its patriotic duty. Every community is making fundamental changes to how we live, work and interact each and every single day.” (Megerian and Wire, 3/31)

“We’ve got to brace ourselves,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. But Dr. Fauci said that continued protective social-distancing measures could help prevent the worst-case scenario. “In the next several days to a week or so, we’re going to continue to see things go up,” Dr. Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that. Because the mitigation is actually working, and will work.” (Leary, Calfas and Ping, 4/1)

Fauci warned that Americans needed to brace themselves for grim numbers, explaining that deaths and hospitalizations lagged behind diagnoses and arguing they were all the more reason to keep up the push to “flatten the curve” through social distancing. “Now is the time, whenever you‘re having an effect, not to take your foot off the accelerator and on the brake, but to just press it down on the accelerator,” Fauci said. (Oprysko, 3/31)

“It’s absolutely critical for the American people to follow the guidelines for the next 30 days. It’s a matter of life and death,” Trump said.White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx displayed charts demonstrating data and modeling that showed an enormous jump in deaths to a range of 100,000 to 240,000 people from the virus in the coming months. That figure was predicated on Americans following mitigation efforts. One of Birx’s charts showed as many as 2.2 million people were projected to die without such measures, a statistic that prompted Trump to ditch a plan he articulated last week to get the U.S. economy moving again by Easter on April 12. (Holland and Mason, 3/31)

Birx noted the Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans areas, as well as the state of Massachusetts, as places with a troubling rise in cases. She said spikes there and in other cities can be prevented only with mitigation in every community coast to coast. “There’s no magic bullet,” Birx said. “There’s no magic vaccine or therapy. It’s just behaviors — each of our behaviors translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days.” (Rucker and Wan, 3/31)

Designed by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the model relies on information from state and national governments, hospital groups and the World Health Organization. Birx, the White House health official, also mentioned the model to Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" this weekend. "No state, no metro area will be spared," she said during the interview. State and local officials should quickly react to the coronavirus threat and enact social distancing measures, she said, so that "we'll be able to move forward together and protect the most Americans." (Azad, 3/31)

Epidemiologists, who study the spread of infectious diseases, rely on data collected about diseases combined with statistical analysis to create predictive models of different outcomes to figure out how best to deal with outbreaks. A model developed by researchers at Imperial College London and published March 17 suggested that without any mitigation measures in place, the coronavirus could kill 2.2 million people in the U.S. That's an entirely hypothetical scenario, because it assumes that all government agencies would ignore the virus and would take no steps, such as social isolation, to reduce its spread. Nonetheless, the stark findings were reported to have been among the first to prompt U.S. authorities to take drastic action. (Chow, 3/31)

The U.S. recorded a big daily jump of 26,000 new cases, bringing the total to more than 189,000. The death toll leaped to over 4,000, including more than 1,000 in New York City. ... Some people have chosen to ignore social distancing guidelines. In Louisiana, buses and cars filled a church parking lot on Tuesday evening as worshippers flocked to hear a pastor who is facing misdemeanor charges for holding services despite a ban on gatherings. (Perry and Matthews, 4/1)

The United States passed a grim milestone on Tuesday as it surpassed China in the official death count from the coronavirus. The United States now has 3,415 deaths from the virus, surpassing China’s figure of 3,309, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. It's important to note that there are significant doubts about the accuracy of China’s figures. (Sullivan, 3/31)

Facing a grim reality of surging coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump is making premature assertions about relatively low death rates in the U.S. and revising history about how seriously he viewed the threat, including the need for ventilators. A look at his claims. (Yen, Neergaard and Woodward, 4/1)

As TV cameras tracked him, President Trump walked from the Rose Garden podium to a nearby table for the dramatic unveiling of a new and improved product, one supposedly able to deliver faster, better results. As the head of the Food and Drug Administration extolled the coronavirus testing kit, Trump opened a box, carefully pulled out the device and held it up for viewers to see on Monday, like a scene from a Home Shopping Network show. (Megerian, 3/31)

A new survey finds widespread public support for aggressive measures like government cellphone tracking and mandatory health screenings in public places to curb the spread of coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 Americans. The new results from Harris Poll show that support for such policies—even when they might affect privacy and civil liberties—crosses a spectrum of demographic and ideological lines, suggesting that policy makers have significant latitude from the public in crafting emergency responses to combat the virus. (Tau, 3/31)

President Trump’s aspirational plan to restart the U.S. economy by mid-April ran into a major obstacle: Anthony Fauci. After Mr. Trump envisioned packed churches on Easter, Dr. Fauci went to the Oval Office. He and Deborah Birx, members of the White House coronavirus task force, outlined data projecting a surge in cases without continued social distancing. The president agreed. Aides say Mr. Trump’s decision Sunday to extend social distancing through April reflects the influence of some political advisers, public health experts, and Dr. Fauci, a 79-year-old scientist who has so far retained his leverage with Mr. Trump in an administration where critics of the president rarely last long. (Armour and Leary, 3/31)

Global stocks fell Wednesday after President Trump issued a stark new warning on the spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S., reviving concerns about the potential damage to the world’s largest economy. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 3%, suggesting that blue-chip stocks will decline a day after U.S. equities closed out their worst quarter since the financial crisis. European stocks also declined, with the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 index retreating 3%. (Yoon and Chilkoti, 4/1)

White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.It went unheeded inside the administration. In late February and early March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread from China to the rest of the world, President Trump’s top economic advisers played down the threat the virus posed to the U.S. economy and public health. (Tankersley, 3/31)