A disease projected to kill fewer than 90,000 Americans was a “Category 1” and called for nothing more than home confinement of the obviously ill. A Cat 5 (more than 1.8 million Americans) or a Cat 4 (900,000 or more dead Americans) required the CDC to call for all available measures: isolate the ill, cancel all public gatherings, encourage telework, enforce social distancing, and close schools for up to twelve weeks. After his back-of-the-envelope calculation, Carter concluded that, if the society failed to intervene, the virus would kill between 900,000 and 1.8 million Americans. “The
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