In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.
"If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities," Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, told Savannah Guthrie of NBC News' "Today" show.
"We don't even want to see that," she added, before Guthrie cut her off.
"I know, but you kind of take my breath away with that," Guthrie said. "Because what I hear you saying is that's sort of the best-case scenario."
"The best-case scenario," Birx replied, "would be 100 percent of Americans doing precisely what is required."
On Saturday, Birx's prediction came true, as the number of lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 200,000.
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