voluntary travel limitations in these states. Buildings normally used for sports and entertainment were transformed into field hospitals. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, for instance, was postponed to October and the fairgrounds where it is normally held was turned into a medical center. To prepare housing for homeless persons, states such as California have procured private hotels and motels as emergency shelters and isolation spaces. Manpower from the military and volunteer armies were called up to help construct the emergency facilities. On March 31, Birx reiterated the projection of 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths if government officials did nothing to stop the virus, compared with 100,000 to 240,000 deaths if measures such as social distancing were taken. As April began, various state and local officials, including the mayors of New York and Los Angeles, and the governors or health departments of Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island encouraged residents to wear non-medical cloth face coverings while in public, as an additional measure to prevent unknowingly infecting others. The CDC issued a similar recommendation on April 3. Health officials have generally advised against the use of medical-grade PPE (such as surgical masks and respirators) by the general public, as they should be saved for healthcare personnel due to shortages. In early May, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted the American death toll would reach 137,000 by early August. An October 2020 report in The Washington Post cited poor infection controls in some nursing homes resulting from mismanagement and reduced enforcement efforts by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Trump Administration as significantly contributing to tens of thousands of deaths in those facilities. Communication In January 2020, President Trump disregarded warnings from his administration's officials about the threat the virus posed to the United States in favor of the country's economic considerations. He publicly downplayed the danger until mid-March, making numerous optimistic statements, including that the outbreak was "under control" and being overcome, or that the virus would somehow vanish. On February 26, speaking of the number of known infected in the country at the time, Trump predicted "the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero—that's a pretty good job we've done." By the end of March, The Washington Post described Trump's pronouncements as having "evolved from casual dismissal to reluctant acknowledgment