“America will again, and soon, be open for business,” President Donald Trump said on Monday. “Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”

The cure, in this case, is social distancing, and the mass economic stoppage it forces. The problem is Covid-19, and the millions of deaths it could cause. On Tuesday, Trump accelerated his timeline. He said he’d like to see normalcy return by Easter Sunday, which is April 12. “Wouldn’t it be great to have all the churches full?” he asked. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country.”

But many — myself included — question whether that’s realistic. As Bill Gates put it, “it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts.’”

Imagine if we did. On April 12, the Trump administration, as well as every state and locality, lifts the social distancing guidelines. Restaurants reopen. Church pews are packed. Bars throw “F the coronavirus” parties. The virus accelerates. Hospitals are quickly overwhelmed — which means the virus becomes more lethal, as people who need ventilators can’t get them. But it’s not just the virus that becomes more lethal. All medical emergencies become more lethal, because the ICUs are packed and there are critical shortages of doctors and nurses.

We have this now in the Bay Area!

In a scenario like that, it’s entirely possible that the coronavirus would infect 60 percent of the country, with a case fatality rate of 1.5 percent, in a matter of months. That would mean almost 3 million deaths directly from coronavirus — roughly three times as many Americans as have died in every war we’ve ever fought combined. And that doesn’t count the deaths indirectly caused by coronavirus. With hospitals in lockdown, people would cease seeking care for chest pain, they’d put off needed surgeries, they’d try to treat at home what they would once have asked a doctor to diagnose. Many of them would die.