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At a news conference on Thursday, President Trump addressed the question of the hour: How long will it take for things to go back to normal?

“People are talking about July, August,” he said.

But that inquiry, many doctors and scientists say, is the wrong question.

“We need to change the conversation from: ‘How inconvenient it is to me?’ to ‘Who are the people who are suffering most, and how can we help them?’” said Sarah Fortune, a professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Think of it as a community service.”

Although life on lockdown is disruptive, experts say that it might be the only way to prevent mass death and infection.