Here& #39;s my thesis for what happened over the past month:

1) We were on track for a severe, Italy-style outbreak in a number of places around the country

2) Then, President Trump and state governors started taking it very seriously, and Americans changed their behavior

3) That wasn& #39;t soon enough to prevent a serious outbreak in New York City, but it was enough to prevent outbreaks elsewhere

4) The models were wrong due to some combination of overestimating contagiousness/lethality and underestimating the effectiveness of social distancing

5) Overall what we& #39;ve seen is a heroic effort by the American people that& #39;s likely saved at tens of thousands of lives, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives

6) Given the way things are going we should be in a position to ease social distancing recommendations around May 1

7) That said - in the last three weeks roughly 17,000 Americans have died of Coronavirus, despite the most aggressive peacetime lockdowns in our nation& #39;s history (and that number keeps climbing)

8) The alarmists were right and the flu crew was wrong