“If it were up to the doctors, they’d say let’s shut down the entire world,” Mr. Trump said. “This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you started out with.”

He later added, “I’m not looking at months, I can tell you right now.”

Mr. Trump sent mixed signals from the White House lectern, agreeing at one point with his surgeon general and saying, “It’s going to be bad,” then suggesting that the response to the virus may have been overblown.

“This is going away. We’re going to win the battle,” Mr. Trump said, citing jobs, “anxiety and depression” and suicide as arguments for restoring the U.S. economy.

He compared deaths from the novel coronavirus to deaths from other causes — influenza and car crashes — suggesting that the scale of those preventable deaths means economic restrictions may not be appropriate to prevent the spread of the virus.

“We have a very active flu season, more active than most,” he said “It’s looking like it’s heading to 50,000 or more deaths — not cases, 50,000 deaths. Which is — that’s a lot. And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody, ‘No more driving of cars.’ So we have to do things to get our country open.”