by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better." trump used this to argue that there would be an under-reporting of cases and an over-estimation of the death rate. on march 6, cdc director robert redfield again said that the risk to the american public was "low", asserting that there were not "hundreds and hundreds of clusters" of covid-19 cases in the country, and declaring that "we're not blind where this virus is right now in the united states". on march 7, redfield encouraged americans to continue their travel, even take a trip to disneyland (within one week, disneyland parks were closed in the country). on march 9, redfield repeated that the risk to the american public was still "low". from march 6 to march 12, trump stated on four occasions that the coronavirus would "go away". on march 10, surgeon general jerome adams stated that "this is likely going to get worse before it gets better." trump expressed a focus on the number of u.s. cases in the initial stages of the outbreak, citing the relatively low number of confirmed cases as proof that his january 31 decision to restrict entry into the country from china by foreign nationals was successful. commenting about cruise ship grand princess, he stated his preference that infected passengers not disembark as he did not want "to have the numbers double because of one ship". trump explained in his march 25 briefing that "if i didn't do it, you'd have thousands and thousands of people died—who would've died—that are now living and happy". march 16 to april 24 on march 16, president trump admitted for the first time that covid-19 was not "under control", and the situation was "bad" with months of impending disruption to daily lives, and a recession possible. on march 17, trump argued that he "felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." a fact-check by the associated press of this statement of trump's concluded that trump was "revising history"; the claim "doesn't match his rhetoric over the last two months", where trump never described the outbreak as a pandemic before the world health organization did so on march 11. on march 19, trump told journalist bob woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risk when communicating with the public. "i wanted to always play it down," trump said. "i still like playing it down, because i don't want to create a panic." the interview was not made public at the time. the quote was made public on september 9, a few days in advance of the scheduled release of woodward's book, rage. trump has repeatedly compared covid-19 to influenza, despite fauci estimating covid-19 to have a mortality rate around ten times higher. on march 9, trump compared the 546 known u.s. cases of covid-19 at the time and the 22 known deaths at the time to the tens of thousands of u.s. deaths from flu each year. on march 24, trump argued that: "we lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu ... but we've never closed down the country for the flu." on march 27, he stated: "you can call it a flu. you can call it a virus. you know you can call it many different names. i'm not sure anybody even knows what it is." on march 24, trump declared that "we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel"; a day later the u.s. surpassed 1,000 covid-19 deaths. on april 5, trump continued to use the same phrase; by that day, the u.s. had close to 10,000 covid-19 deaths and over 330,000 known covid-19 cases. meanwhile, on april 5, surgeon general jerome adams warned that the next week is "going to be the hardest moment for many americans in their entire lives", comparing it to the attack on pearl harbour or the 9/11 attack. from march 30 to april 7, trump stated on four occasions that covid-19 would "go away". on march 31, contradicting his many previous comparisons of covid-19 to the flu, trump said: "it's not the flu ... it's vicious". when reporters asked him if his initial dismissive comments on the virus had misled americans, he replied: "i want to give people a feeling of hope. i could be very negative ... you know, i'm a cheerleader for the country." asked further if he had known—despite his claims that the outbreak was under control—that the situation would turn out so severe, trump replied: "i thought it could be. i knew everything. i knew it could be horrible, and i knew it could be maybe good." on april 1, mike pence told the media: "i don't believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus ... i think he's expressed confidence that america will meet this moment". pence proceeded to describe trump as "an optimistic person". at the april 1 white house briefing, pence was asked why the administration had not reopened the enrollment period under the affordable care act so that more americans could sign up for health insurance. pence responded indirectly. trump praised him publicly in the moment: "i think that's one of the greatest answers i've ever heard because mike was able to speak for five minutes and not even touch your question. i said that's what you call a great professional." at the april 10 briefing with the white house coronavirus task force, trump implied that the illness was caused by a bacterial pathogen rather than a virus: "antibiotics used to solve every problem. now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can't keep up with it." michael caputo, a former trump campaign official who had also helped presidents yeltsin and putin while living in russia and who politico described as having "no medical or scientific background," became the health and human services spokesperson on april 16. during caputo's term, hhs began attempting to alter or shut down the cdc's morbidity and mortality weekly reports, which are written by scientists; hhs claimed these reports were unfavorable for trump. on april 18, jared kushner told bob woodward that trump was "getting the country back from the doctors." while acknowledging "that doesn't mean there's not still a lot of pain and there won't be pain for a while," he said, "trump's now back in charge. it's not the doctors." he made the comments during a taped interview with bob woodward which was made public on october 28. in an interview by the washington post published on april 21, redfield warned that "there's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," as it could coincide with seasonal flu. during that day's briefing, trump criticized the story's headline, "cdc director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating", as being "fake news", and accused media outlets of having "totally misquoted" redfield. redfield clarified that "i didn't say that this was going to be worse. i said it was going to be more complic—" he then concluded, "—or more difficult and potentially complicated." trump followed up, by saying that "we may not even have corona coming back, just so you understand." later in the briefing, fauci said that he was "convinced" that the united states "will have coronavirus in the fall", but the country would be "much, much better prepared". april 25 to june 15 in late april, white house officials delivered upbeat messages about the future of the country. vice president mike pence predicted that "by memorial day weekend we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us." white house adviser jared kushner predicted that "a lot of the country should be back to normal" by june and "really rocking again" by july. treasury secretary steven mnuchin predicted that the american economy would "really bounce back" in the months of july, august and september. meanwhile, trump was repeating his assertion that the coronavirus "is going to go away". by contrast, the white house covid-19 response coordinator, deborah birx, said on television on april 26 that social distancing would be necessary through the summer. on april 27, with over 55,000 deaths from covid-19 in the u.s., trump stated that the u.s. was "probably heading to 60,000, 70,000" deaths. less than one week later, on may 1, with over 63,000 total deaths, trump said: "hopefully we're going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost". on may 8, trump predicted that covid-19 is "going to go away without a vaccine", "eventually". just five days earlier, he had instead said: "this country needs the vaccine". asked to explain his may 8 prediction, trump claimed: "i just rely on what doctors say". however, weeks earlier, senior health official anthony fauci had stated that the outbreak was "not going to be over to the point of our being able to not do any mitigation until we have a scientifically sound, safe and effective vaccine." later on may 12, fauci explained that covid-19 would not simply vanish from the u.s. because it was too "highly transmissible". on may 12, fauci testified to the senate that the actual death toll for covid-19 in the u.s. was "almost certainly higher" than the official death toll. he argued that there would be unrecorded deaths in areas where hospitals were very strained, with people dying in their homes, who would not be counted as covid-19 deaths. fauci also warned that "we don't know everything about this virus, and we really had better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children", pointing to examples of children developing an inflammatory syndrome which is similar to kawasaki syndrome. on june 9, an interview of fauci aired where he said that covid-19 was his "worst nightmare" realized, given that it was "highly transmissible", he further warned that "it isn't over yet". additionally, if president trump's endorsement of the covid vaccine had been more publicized, perhaps more republicans would have received a dose of the vaccine. june 16–30 as u.s. cases reached 4,800,000 and deaths reached 157,690, trump repeated his assertion that he believes covid-19 will "go away" despite his top public health expert warning that it could take most of 2021 or longer to get the pandemic under control. trump "made numerous versions of this assertion over...more than six months". on "totally harmless" cases now we have tested over 40 million people. but by so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless. south lawn "salute to america" speechjuly 4, 2020 on per capita death rates journalist: "i'm talking about death as a proportion of population. that's where the us is really bad. ..." trump: "you can't do that! you have to go by—look, here's the united states—you have to go by (death as a proportion of) the cases." august 2020 interview with jonathan swan on june 16, the wall street journal published an interview with fauci, where he commented that the united states is "still in a first wave" of infections for the covid-19 pandemic. fauci also stated that the increasing percentages of positive tests in many states "cannot be explained by increased testing". also that day, vice president pence, in an opinion piece for the wall street journal, criticized the media for warning against a "second wave" of infections, stating that "such panic is overblown". pence declared that "we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy". on june 17, trump declared that the outbreak was "dying out" and that covid-19 is "fading away". on june 23, fauci stated that the united states is "now seeing a disturbing surge of infections", reiterating that covid-19 would not "disappear". july on july 3, nbc reported that trump administration officials were planning a communications strategy that would portray the virus as having a low mortality rate and that would highlight possible therapeutic drugs. the officials were reportedly aware of the reality that, with only four months until the election, covid-19 would present an ongoing public health concern for voters. during his independence day address the next day, trump commented that 99% of u.s. covid-19 cases were "totally harmless"; the