It was early in the virus fight when only a few in the United States had died of COVID-19 that White House coronavirus task force leader Vice President Mike Pence and Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx went into the Oval Office with bad news.

Armed with a chart titled “Goals of Community Mitigation,” they showed President Trump that without the type of social distancing they wanted him to put in place, the virus death toll could reach 1.5 million to 2.2 million. With it, the range would drop to 100,000 to 240,000.