Four months into the US outbreak, with over 70,000 reported deaths, Trump once again claims coronavirus will just 'disappear'

• President Trump once again claimed Wednesday that the coronavirus will "disappear" even after facing harsh criticism for making a similar claim at the beginning of the outbreak.
• On Feb. 27, when he was still downplaying the threat of the virus, Trump promised, "It's going to disappear. One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear."
• On Wednesday, after the US death toll passed 70,000, Trump once again said, "You know, this virus is going to disappear. It's a question of when. Will it come back in a small way? Will it come back in a fairly large way? But we know how to deal with it now much better."
• Current models point to the US enduring a drawn-out battle with the coronavirus. One new report suggested that it could take as long as two years.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci has said it is "inevitable" that the U.S. will face a resurgence of coronavirus in the fall and must prepare.
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On February 27, after the novel coronavirus had already claimed its first US victims, President Donald Trump assured Americans that "it's going to disappear. One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear."

Now, more than four months, 70,000 deaths, and dozens of state-wide lockdowns later, Trump made the claim again on Wednesday from the Oval Office.

Asked by a journalist how close the US was to a permanent reopening or whether easing lockdown orders would be delayed, Trump said, "I don't think our people will stand for it" not to reopen.

"You know, this virus is going to disappear. It's a question of when," Trump said, in defiance of scientific evidence, during an event honoring nurses. "Will it come back in a small way? Will it come back in a fairly large way? But we know how to deal with it now much better."

"Nobody knew anything about it initially," Trump said. "Now we know, we can put out fires, we can put out, I call them, embers, if its small or if its a fire, a hotspot, we can put it out."

As of writing, more than 72,000 Americans have died because of the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Health experts do not believe that the virus will disappear anytime soon, with some estimates that the coronavirus could remain a threat for as long as two years.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota (CIDRAP) published a report on April 30 that lays out three possible scenarios for how the coronavirus outbreak could progress.

"This thing's not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70% of people," Michael Osterholm, CIDRAP director and the author of the report, told CNN. The report suggested this could take between 18 and 24 months.

"The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology," Osterholm said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has warned that it's "inevitable" the U.S. would experience a resurgance of the virus in the fall and that the country must prepare.

"If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well," Fauci said. "If we don't do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter."

The White House's internal estimates show that as many as 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, the New York Times reported, with 3,000 deaths per day by June 1.