And good evening, the White House Coronavirus Task Force completed a stark and stunning presentation

in the last hour, warning of what the president called a very, very painful two weeks ahead.

According to the latest projection, presented by scientists on that task force today, 100

to 240,000 people in this country will die in the weeks and months ahead.

100,000 to 240,000.

And that is with current stay-at-home orders and social distancing efforts.

And it's certainly not good news, but when you compare it to the alternative, it just

might be.

On a chart called Goals of Community Mitigation, also presented by the Task Force, we saw

estimates of what would happen without isolation mitigation efforts.

One million people in this country could die, possibly many more than that.

So let me make it clear, according to best estimates embraced by the nation's top scientists,

if we were not following stay-at-home orders or social distancing orders, a million or

more of us would die in this country, as it is right now 100,000 to 240,000 of us will

likely die.

This is where we are tonight in this pandemic.

And as Dr. Anthony Fauci said, during that presentation, models are only as good as the

assumptions they're based on.

The question is, can we do more to bring the death toll down?

And we're going to look at that tonight because the answer is yes.

The question is, can we actually do it?

Do we have the staying power?

...