Six years ago this month, the COVID-19 lockdowns began. Serious public health mandates were in place. Workers were sidelined, schools shut and the economy slowed sharply. But President Donald Trump said in a virtual town hall from the Rose Garden, "I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter," which was two weeks away.

People wanted to believe in that milestone. Trump said he was giving the social distancing restrictions two weeks, then would reassess. "We have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought," he said on March 24, 2020. The first-term president noted that thousands of Americans die from the seasonal flu or in automobile accidents and "we don't turn the country off."

He'd already been giving various "back-to-normal" assurances. "It's going to disappear," Trump said the previous month. "One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear."

Tragically, the World Health........

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