A Month Ago

This was what Trump was saying, a month ago:

Of the 15 people — the “original 15,” as I call them — 8 of them have returned to their homes, to stay in their homes until fully recovered. One is in the hospital and five have fully recovered. And one is, we think, in pretty good shape and it’s in between hospital and going home.

So we have a total of — but we have a total of 15 people, and they’re in a process of recovering, with some already having fully recovered.
...
And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

From fifteen cases to no cases in a couple of days. Heckuvajob there, Trumpie.

He's singing a different tune now:

Trump, who has largely avoided talk of potential death and infection rates, cited projection models that said potentially 2.2 million people or more could have died had social distancing measures not been put in place. And he said the country would be doing well if it “can hold” the number of deaths “down to 100,000.”

Given that Trump has a very long record of lying, or more charitably, stretching the truth to a place that he wants it to be, you should not be astonished if the death toll is multiples of that.

200,000 dead in the epidemic is, roughly, the American death toll in World War I, the Vietnam War and the Korean War combined.

Maybe, someday, there will be few cases. But even that's not certain. What is certain is that you will be seeing Trump's early statements on the Coronavirus epidemic (AKA COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2) a lot in the coming months.

And if Trump uses the pandemic response to settle political scores or take revenge for his long list of butthurts, he will be cooking his own defeat. For if he was able to act like a true leader and put the national interest first and foremost, he could cruise to reelection. But there is no way that he can do that, it's never in his nature and it isn't now.