Reports began emerging earlier this week that President Donald Trump has been getting restless about the severity of the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, worrying both that the crisis would continue to occupy his attention well into the remainder of the year and that the economic impact of the efforts to contain the virus could be ruinous for his reelection prospects. Those reports were seemingly confirmed after the president retweeted several supporters urging the administration to endorse a limited mitigation strategy, as well as in a tweet from Trump himself on Sunday, in which he argued that the country “cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” He elaborated on this at his Monday press briefing. “I think we’re very substantially under 1 percent now,” he said, referring to the coronavirus’s mortality rate. “It’s still terrible. It’s still the whole thing. The whole concept of death is terrible. But there’s a tremendous difference between something under 1 percent and 4 or 5 or even 3 percent,” he added.

It is true that there is a large difference between a number lower than 1 percent and more than 3 percent. It is also true that if half the country contracted the coronavirus, a mortality rate of 0.5 percent would imply over 800,000 dead. In a widely circulated epidemiological report from Imperial College London, it was estimated that approximately 1.2 million Americans would die if the country as a whole pursued the strategy Trump is evidently interested in—a limited mitigation approach with social distancing, quarantines of the infected and exposed, and a focus on isolating the elderly and those at high risk. Millions more, of course, would fall ill—many critically so—and the effort to absorb them into the nation’s hospitals would crush the American health care system.

Even granted a point Trump has been making—that the recession now underway will also kill many—the best mortality and infection estimates available make plain that an attempt to return to business as usual as the virus continues to spread would bring about an even worse economic debacle. Beyond the dead, tens of millions of sick and merely terrified Americans would be financially incapacitated, burdened either by the costs of care or the heaviness of a fear that would have them squirrel their money away. Countless businesses, unwilling or unable to bring in customers and their sick or defiant workers, would remain closed.

The choice the country now faces isn’t between public health and economic stability. We are choosing which public health and economic catastrophe we would like to see unfold. And one is plainly preferable.

Nevertheless, Trump said Tuesday that he’d like to see a return to normal activity by Easter. The following day, he intimated that efforts to keep businesses closed were part of a media conspiracy to deny him reelection. Importantly, he cannot actually end the shutdowns on his own. The authority to reopen business ultimately lies with the governors who have taken action, and it’s difficult to imagine blue state leaders like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Gavin Newsom simply acquiescing to Trump’s demands as cases in their regions continue to rapidly increase and public health experts continue to support aggressive containment. But as New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait pointed out Wednesday, there are tools Trump might use to pressure governors in the weeks ahead. “States are dependent on help from FEMA, the military, and other arms of the federal government,” he wrote. “New York’s Andrew Cuomo is pleading for Washington to send him ventilators, which he will need within days, or New Yorkers will begin dying for lack of treatment. As the coronavirus spreads, more and more governors will find themselves in this position.”