US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington,…Read More
WASHINGTON: Amid signs that social distancing measures are helping decelerate the death rate from coronavirus infection, the United States has extended its lockdown guidelines to April 30 after President Donald Trump on Sunday accepted expert projections that 100,000-200,000 people could die of coronavirus infection notwithstanding with such a shutdown.
Even holding the death count down to between 100,000, a “horrible number” as it is, would be better than the initial projection of 2.2 million deaths without such mitigation numbers, Trump said at his daily wrangle with the media, echoing experts who persuaded him to walk back on his desire to reopen America for business by Easter Sunday, April 12.
Trump was persuaded into extending the lockdown after the two lead experts on the mission to slow down the coronavirus transmission, Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Brix, made a compelling presentation to him of latest data showing mitigation efforts were showing results, and not extending them. Having successfully made the case for extending the lockdown, they called the Pr