There's this moment that I keep thinking about.

It was on March 31st at the White House.

The coronavirus task force was holding their briefing.

Thank you, Mr. President.

If I can have the first slide, please.

Dr. Deborah Birx was standing at the podium, and behind her there were these charts,

charts that showed two curves.

One was a steep bell curve in dark blue, and she called that a mountain.

I think you know from that large blue mountain that you can see behind me,

and I just want to thank the five or six international and domestic modelers from Harvard,

from Columbia, from Northeastern, from Imperial, who helped us tremendously.

This was the first time the White House had showed the public models.

Statistical projections of what COVID-19 could do if left unchecked.

That was the mountain, some one to two million deaths in the U.S.

Versus what might potentially happen if Americans took some measures to slow the viruses spread.

That was the smaller curve, a more gradual hill.

It was their models that created the ability to see what these mitigations could do,

how steeply they could depress the curve.

March 31st, I was like four or five years ago, right?

So I think I still basically remember it.

This is Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician and professor at the University of

Wisconsin. That was probably the first moment when you heard the government of the United States

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