Day 1,198: April is gone, coronavirus is still raging, and the government has ordered over 100,000 body bags

It wasn’t that long ago that Donald Trump promised that the coronavirus would “miraculously” go away by April.

Well, April has come and April has gone. And the coronavirus is still very much in the U.S.

Trump actually makes that type of promise very often.

The reality is that the U.S. is a very dicey spot. A delayed response led by the Trump administration allowed the virus to spread until it infected all corners of the U.S. And as economic anxieties rise, there is a push by many to get back to business as usual, even if that means the death toll rises more.

To date, there have been more than 1.1 million cases in the U.S. and nearly 66,000 deaths.

While Trump has continued to move the goalposts and minimize the death toll — Friday he said “hopefully” there would be less than 100,000 deaths, up from the 60,000 to 70,000 he announced just days earlier — the federal government has been making grim preparations for the disaster continuing.

The federal government placed orders for well over 100,000 new body bags to hold victims of COVID-19 in April, according to internal administration documents obtained by NBC News, as well as public records. The biggest set was earmarked for purchase the day after President Donald Trump projected that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus might not exceed 50,000 or 60,000 people.

Around the same time it wrote the contract for the body bags, FEMA opened up bidding to provide about 200 rented refrigerated trailers for locations around the country. The request for proposals specifies a preference for 53-foot trailers, which, at 3,600 cubic feet, are the largest in their class.

The coronavirus was not gone by April 2020 as Trump promised. On its current trajectory, and based on the opinions of some experts, the virus is not likely to be gone by April 2021 either.

1,198 days in, 264 to go

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