Dr. Anthony Fauci explained how he was able to convince Donald Trump to push social distancing guidelines for another 30 days through the end of April. In a Rose Garden briefing on Sunday, Trump called the earlier deadline of Easter “aspirational.”
Said Fauci: “We felt that if we prematurely pulled back, we would only form an acceleration or a rebound of something, which would have put you behind where you were before. And that's the reason why we argued strongly with the president that he not withdraw those guidelines after 15 days but that he extend them—and he did listen.”
Fauci had showed Trump models that the death toll could be between 100,000 and 200,000.
Added Fauci: “We made it very clear to him that if we pulled back on what we were doing and didn't extend them there would be more avoidable suffering and avoidable death. We showed him the data. He looked a the data and he got it right away. … It was a pretty clear picture. He looked at them and he understood them and shook his head and said, ‘I guess we gotta do it.'”