fed meeting on wednesday, reclaimed dow 24k, and now the best month stat we've been watching on the s&p has to go back to december of '91 to see a better month than the one the s&p has put into place so far this month >> yeah. just to put it in perspective not only how far and fast the markets fell coming into the end much march but how quickly they've rallied which speaks to the fact you have two camps of investors right now. you have the folks that believe we could see a re-test of those march 23 lows, that's still on the table, especially as we get more data points including some of the ones we'll see this week, earnings, more guidance pulled, some of those numbers in freefall and what could that mean from a fundamental basis and the fact that you have the first read on gdp for the first quarter as well. jobless claims, some of the other key stats and thens the other camp of those really looking past to what's baked in as very painful and devastating numbers right now, both from an

earnings and e-con perspective and focused on what reopening looks like we have something like 16 states that have already put forward plans to begin reopening and lifting restrictions to parts of the economy plus seeing some of those efforts take place in europe as well key to all of this, though, jon is testing and treatment, something we're going to talk about in this hour. >> we are certainly. want to mention the major indices higher, all three, the dow, s&p and the nasdaq, by about 1% as we look at this very active week in earnings season, particularly in tech we're going to get microsoft and amazon earnings wednesday and thursday everybody likes to focus in on the cloud lines in those earnings because those are the two biggest players. i think the question on cloud for them is going to be which customers are using more services than in the past, which customers are using fewer and then as we start to look out

beyond the second quarter, what's the impact likely to be in the second half of the year are those companies even going to be willing to give any guidance in that direction for now, let's get to our meg tirrell bringing us a special guest, the president and chief scientific officer of regeneron. meg? >> thanks so much. the doctor joins us now. thanks for being with us this morning. you presented what were some of the real first controlled clinical trial data in a drug for covid-19 and it was kind of a mixed result help us understand how we should think about the prospects for kev zara for helping the sick patients >> before i answer your question, in a different world in a different time, we had some other huge news today. regeneron we're focused on trying to help people from all

diseases lu lung cancer is the number one killer in america. our cancer study in lung cancer was stopped early because of overwhelming efficacy in the field of immuno oncology this is a challenging cancer, only one fda agent in the class, mono therapy and first line lung cancer these are important results. we have to remember that worldwide almost 2 million people die a year of lung cancer, 200,000 in america alone so this is an important advance for physicians and patients. i understand the focus on coronavirus. we have that as well i want to get to that as well. we released some of the first results coming from large and well-controlled studies. i think that the results are very cautious at this point. what we showed in one population where small, uncontrolled studies and even controlled

studies but a small is size suggested great promise in the so-called severe patients, those who are hospitalized, and requiring oxygen but not on ventilators, there did not appear to be a benefit for those patients there was a potential benefit for the more critical patients, those that are hospitalized on ventilators. the independent data monitoring committee recommended that we stop exploring the severe population because apparently the lack of benefit but suggested we continue to explore the potential benefit in the critical population. i think it shows why we as a community even in these desperate times we can't just be using drugs or trying to repurpose drugs for new purposes and counting on small, even controlled studies we need to be doing the large, well-controlled phase three type settings that are really the standard in the industry and that the fda demands of us and if we don't do that,

unfortunately, i think there's going to be a lot of false hope and a lot of people being treated with medications that may not help them and may even hurt them. >> it's important to note also that this drug is completely separate from a new development program that regeneron is working on for a new drug for covid-19 tell us about the progress in that area and when you plan to start human clinical trials. that's a great question. as i said, the kevzara is a repurposed drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis that small studies from china and other places suggested might be useful for coronavirus. the history of repurposing existing drugs is not really a very fruitful one. what has historically worked better for us and for the industry is making specifically designed, targeted drugs against the disease agent of interest, in this case the coronavirus itself so using the same tried and true

approach that we applied for other programs, most notably ebola where we produced a very effective treatment for ebola in the middle of that epidemic and used the same technologies and approaches to make highly targeted anti-viral antibodies they're called it's the -- it's the agent that vaccines try to generate in the bo body, we can make them outside of the body and give them back to people so you don't need to be vaccinated. we reported the progress on that front has been astoundingly impressive we set the record for ebola in terms of going from starting the program to clinical trials in nine months. for the coronavirus program we're going to be in clinical programs by june, which will be five months, with this very specific targeted approach against the virus. i think there's a lot of reason to have hope for that and more confidence in the target approach than the repurposed drug approach.

>> this is morgan brennan. i can't wait to see how all of that plays out it sounds fascinating. i want to take a step back, though, and ask you what is probably a rudimentary question, but when it comes to some of these trials, how do you decide who actually gets the treatment and who gets the placebo i get that it's so important to have a control group in these trials at a time like this it's tougher than usual to make those decisions. >> yeah. first of all, we worked in partnership with the fda, with barda, rapid response arm of the human services, with new york state, the governor's office and what we have to recognize if you don't do controlled studies and just count on these uncontrolled studies you get misleading information. that was i think maybe the case with this class of drugs people thought it would be a panacea. look how well these patients are doing. they didn't realize these classes of patients will do really well even without a drug.

that's why we need controlled studies. in our study we gave drug to four patients for every one placebo patient. the majority of the patients are getting the drug the other patient are getting the best known standard of care at this moment in time they were eligible and could have gotten any of the other repurposed drugs around now, but we don't have evidence that any work that's why we need these studies. without these we could be offering hope that's the equivalent of snake oil to the very desperate people. this is why everybody came together with us the fda worked nonstop, 24/7, barda, the new york health commissioner, all the great new york medical institutions and then throughout the country said, we need real answers we can't just rely on these anecdotal, small studies, whether they're small controlled studies or not, we need to have big, large data sets to convince

us that these drugs really can make a benefit and what is that benefit exactly. that's why we worked so hard to get this sort of data. >> george, good morning. it's jon fortt you're talking about the importance of doing these studies and doing them in an organized way to get results i wonder if you can tell us what we're learning about how government needs to communicate about these things in these crisis moments so that we don't get false hope, so that we don't get people clamoring for things or handing out things that are unsafe have we learned anything that state and particularly federal government should take to heart about that >> yeah. well, i think we've learned that there's an important standard in the medical community, like i said, today we announced our large phase three well-controlled study in lung cancer okay lung cancer is devastating

people who are dying of lung cancer are as desperate as those dieing from coronavirus. what the fda demands and the system demands is that we find real answers we can't be chasing mirages. we can't be giving false hopes to people. we can't be doing the equivalent of snake oil sales here. we got to be getting real answers. that's why we have to hold ourselves to that standard, whether it be in lung cancer where we announce the overwhelmingly positive studies today or in coronavirus where we announced our cautious, possibly hopeful studies for one set of the patients not so hopeful for another set of the patients. we need this sort of data because we can't have patients, physicians and the medical system not knowing whether drugs work in the history of most of these stories where you repurpose existing drugs and you try them in a new setting, the history is not that fruitful. things generally don't work. we don't want people just trying them because some of the time

they could actually be doing harm when they're doing that >> doctor, i don't want to stir up any -- too much trouble here, but it's hard to hear you talk about chasing mirages and snake oil and not think of the president's tweets of hydroxychloroquine are you trying to address him in a way indrirectlily? >> no. i'm addressing the system. the president was relying on reports from academics, from people reporting small studies, from people in hospitals reporting positive data, and yeah, we all want hope and we do, you know, want to consider those pieces of data but we have to recognize that before we broadly put something into medical practice and before we expose lots of patients, especially all of these drugs are active agents that could actually be causing a lot of side effects and could be causing more harm, so it's -- this is why it's so critical for the system that hypotheses get tested before they get widely

used this is why we have an fda, why we have the greatest health care system in the world right here in america because we are so rigorous about both inventing drugs and testing the drugs. this is where the innovation happens and this is where the testing really happens and we hold ourselves to that standard and we're going to continue to do so and that's you who we get real answers >> doctor, it's meg tirrell again. you mentioned that regeneron is working with barda, among other partners we saw that, the director of barda, rick bright, lefts the agency abruptly over some of the concerns with disagreements over the administration over what to fund are you concerned about any disruption in your partnership with barda as a result of his departure? >> we had enormous respect for rick bright. he was a real contributor and really helpful in our efforts. we're seeing the same things from the new leadership and hoping going forward they can really be helpful. i have to say, barda was on

point on this issue in that yeah, they wanted to test, they were one of the first people saying to us, hey, let's get together and let's do a large, well-controlled study and let's find out does this really work and does this make a difference. barda, were also the same people that said we recognizes the odds are against us here because these repurposed drugs, most of the time they're not designed to fight this virus or this disease, they're more likely not going to work. we have to go into these studies with our eyes wide open, but they were much more excited and our partners on the specifically designed and targeted antiviral antibody therapies we're exploring because they recognize that, first of all, it's a tried and true approach, approach it worked for ebola and other programs, and thinking hey, if it's targeted against the virus, specifically designed against it, let's support that, let's get that moving and let's get into human beings as soon as possible and see whether we can do better with the specifically

designed and targeted therapy. that's what we're working 24/7 to do, pushing that forward so we can find out whether that therapy, that same exact approach that worked in other programs, most notably against ebola, whether that can make a difference in this epidemic. >> absolutely. thank you so much for being with us today and we'll eagerly await updates as you head toward the clinic with that program back over to you. >> thanks for your time. >> we sure will. thank you both, meg tirrell. quick programming note, the ceo of regeneron will join cnbc's healthy return summit, a virtual event that will happen may 12th. get more details and register at cnbcevents.com/healthyreturns. a quick commercial break with markets, again, higher to start the week the dow is up about 248 points or 1%. similar move higher for the s&p at 2865. stay with us

across america, business owners are figuring things out. finding new ways to serve customers... connect employees... and work with partners. comcast business is right there with you. with a network that helps give you speed, reliability and security. and enough bandwidth to handle all your connected devices. voice solutions like remote call forwarding and readable voicemail. and safe, convenient installation. when every connection counts, you can count on us. get the connectivity your business needs. call today. comcast business. welcomeback. as america begins to reopen some are looking at how the tech industry will shape our post-pandemic world. it's the subject of our latest column for the "new york times." kara swisher co-founder of recode and a cnbc contributor joins us now great to have you back. >> hi, how are you doing >> is doing pretty well. so how to make america 2.0 a

more equitable society this column, let's start with specifically what america 2.0 is referring to since we have heard a number of folks, including the likes of mark cuban refer to this in recent days. >> actually, i interviewed him and we talked about it and that's where i got the idea from he was talking about what is it. everyone's conception of what it is different and his whole point and many others, ray dalio on your program, called it the new future, all kinds of ways, pivot, whatever you want to do, what is america 2.0. we're beyond 2.0 for a long time now, but it's a good metaphor. what is it for mark it's focused on a.i., automation, robotics, less focus on college i think he talked about that a little bit me it's more focused on workers' rights, more focused on the idea of around privacy. it's focused around all kinds of things i wanted to get a discussion on what that means and what tech could do to facilitate that going forward. >> i think the worker piece is

key and it's something we're going to be talking about later in the show as well, which is this idea of the definition of an essential worker and the fact that you do have a lot of gig economy workers, for example, folks that are on the front lines in responding to this pandemic and helping others in society right now, who may be nef would have expected to be in that position and haven't necessarily been compensated at least until now for such a responsibility. >> they're still not compensated and aren't safe. look at the issues around amazon and the piece in the "wall street journal" today or yesterday. this concept of what is an essential worker before the pandemic, they weren't considered essential and actually nicole jones in another interview i did, she works for the "new york times" covering income inequality, she called them sacrificial workers they aren't getting enough health protections or paid enough for the dangerous work they're doing. what is an essential worker? maybe we should pay them more. that leads to education.

this education -- no matter who you are on the spectrum i don't think anybody likes zoom classes for their kids what does an online education work to reach a lot of people and what about the kids that don't have computers, that don't have internet access, that are going to be losing a half a year of school essentially and they're already on the edge to start with and so what does this do we have to think harder about, you know, distance education and things like that >> good morning, it's jon. i've been thinking about this and i have concerns because it looks to me like state and local governments are probably going to get slammed coming out of this. >> yeah. >> public education budgets are going to get slammed during this we've already seen inequality opening up among, you know, kids who have multiple laptops at home and the ability to do online classes without waiting in line behind siblings and the ones who don't we know that artificial intelligence is probably going

to hollow out the middle income, those that we're terming essential workers now will still be essential but their wages will stay low and even less mobility i would argue that to get america 2.0, we have to first have democracy 2.0. >> yeah. >> where more people are voting and informed and this class of workers has a voice and is active, don't we >> absolutely. the question is what is america 2.0 to you what was interesting is everybody had a different thing like some thought better voter registration, better online voting, voting by mail what does it represent this might be a good re-set for everybody to think about the things should union be stronger in france they stopped the work of amazon because of worker safety and pay and they won in court there. the question is, what is america 2.0 to you i think worker protections, health care for all, i mean i'm not a health care for all proponent but some way everybody

gets good health care and they're not put in positions of jobs where they're really -- we can fix very easily and that's the issue. i think a lot of these corporations, including the tech companies, have to be on alert that they are responsible for worker safety at the same time so -- but other people may push back and say we don't need these protections, we need to grow america, and so it's a good debate to have what kind of society do we have emerging from this and does it give us an opportunity to think really hard about where we spend our money and where we don't spend our money. >> for years we've had you on and talked about concerns about big tech in general, the tech lash. >> yeah. >> the abuses of privacy and so forth. what happens to that concern when the government is going to come around and realize you need those player for election security, for contact tracing, for big data and biopharma how do you have both >> it's interesting because this week elizabeth warren was talking about because of the

testimony of amazon around certain things, so i think the question is we don't go away from our basic values, that these big tech companies are really big and i don't think we should back away from that question i mean they did the settlement, the ftc settlement was approved and the judge said this is not adequate he didn't do anything about it and could have doubled or tripled the fine, the privacy settlement they did with the ftc over the consent decree, the question is do we continue to have the basic values of we need to be private or just turn everything over and allow the companies to be big. david in the house has a bill to not let any big mergers go forward during the pandemic era, whatever that timeframe is maybe we should think about that in jen so i don't know. i think people will back off and the companies will get the pass that i talked about recently with you you know, maybe we shouldn't that's the whole question, is what does america 2.0 look like? should it be ruled by giant corporations that will get gianter as we go along, that's

not a word, but -- >> yeah. of course, we're going to -- >> carl -- >> on the latest round -- >> i'm wearing a suit, carl, just for you, so you know. >> you dressed up today. just for me. >> i'm not wearing pants so that's -- there we have it i'm wearing pants -- >> just to wrap this all up -- to wrap this all up, i guess to go back to one of the first things you said, you referenced ray dalio and the quote/unquote new future, are you excited about this new future? >> i think there's a horrible political expression never let a crisis go to waste, so cynical and awful, but yes, i think it's an opportunity to really rethink. around education alone, no matter where you are on the economic spectrum, nobody thinks this -- this is a lost couple months for kids, a lot of months for all kids of all levels, what do we need to do in that area for example? it gives us an opportunity to rethink and discard the things that aren't working. i think if we do it in the right

way, it could be very -- a lot of great stuff comes out of crisis, including in tech. google came out of a crisis. it's always an opportunity for things to go backwards and that would be a shame >> yeah. certainly it's been my experience as well, some of the greatest gifts in my life have come in the most poorly wrapped packages we're going to hang on to that little bit of hope right now kara swisher, thank you for joining us we are getting breaking news on the small business administration let's get to our kate rogers for that kate >> hi, jon here's that, the e-tran website is having technical difficulties reports this went down within the first few moments of launching at 10:30 a.m. for round two of the paycheck protection program it's unclear right now how widespread these issues are. we have reached out to the sba for comment and we will let you know if we hear back from them remember in round one there were reports that e-tran did go down,

something that the sba did deny at the time and something we'll continue to watch today. the sba administrator just tweeting out that more than $2 billion of the first round of paycheck protection program funding was either declined or returned and will be made available during the current application period that's something that a lot of people were wondering as we're seeing more and more large companies return some of the funding that they got in round one. back over to you guys. >> kate, thank you still to come, venture capital investor tim draper. meanwhile take a look at the markets inching higher above 1%. a quick commercial break stay with us - [narrator] at southern new hampshire university, we're committed to making college more accessible by making it more affordable, that's why we're keeping our tuition the same through the year 2021. - i knew snhu was the place for me when i saw how affordable it was. i ran to my husband with my computer and i said, "look, we can do this." - [narrator] take advantage of some of the lowest

online tuition rates in the nation. find your degree at snhu.edu. woi felt completely helpless.hed online. my entire career and business were in jeopardy. i called reputation defender. vo: take control of your online reputation. get your free reputation report card at reputationdefender.com. find out your online reputation today and let the experts help you repair it. woman: they were able to restore my good name. vo: visit reputationdefender.com or call 1-877-866-8555. since 1926, nationwide we've been there in person, during trying times. today, being on your side means staying home... "nationwide office of customer advocacy." ...but we can still support you and the heroes who are with you. we're giving refunds on auto insurance premiums, assisting customers with financial hardships, and our foundation is contributing

millions of dollars to charities helping with covid-19 relief. keeping our promise to be on your side. - [female vo] restaurants are our family. the cornerstone of our communities. and our family needs help. right now they're facing a crisis. and they're counting on your takeout and delivery orders to help them through. because if we don't treat restaurants like family today.. they might not be around to treat us like family tomorrow. grubhub. together, we can help save the restaurants we love. featuring the emmy award-winning voice remote. all the apps you love, including netflix, prime video, youtube and hulu.

and the most 4k content. the best entertainment experience all in one place. . european markets are set to close in just a couple moments seema moody has that breakdown. >> jon, the stimulus measures from the bank of japan providing a lift to european stocks, higher around 2% across the board, trading near the highs for april. one standout, deutsch bank up 12% today after reporting preliminary first-quarter results that included a surprise profit though of it a big drop from its year ago results. the bank said it may miss its capital requirement targets due to extending more credit during the coronavirus crisis it is worth noting even with today's pop the bank is down about 70% over the past one year as covid-19 cases continue to decline in italy, small shops are starting to reopen pizzerias for takeout and the prime minister says the lockdown

in the country would begin to lift on may 4th, one week from now as we await more details the european central bank meeting will get under way on thursday where it's expected to maintain its ultra loose policy and underscoring whatever the takes approach the question whether the central bank will explore buying up riskier bonds as part of its 750 billion euro pandemic emergency purchase program you're looking at the euro higher against the dollar. carl, back to you. >> seema, thank you very much. a coronavirus update once again we'll turn back to sue herera. >> hello, good morning once again. new york city mayor bill de blasio said that the city plans to higher 1,000 health workers in may to track coronavirus cases and anyone who had contact with individual who tested positive for the virus the contact tracers will also provide support to new yorkers who need to be isolated. the cdc has added six new

symptom for covid-19 to its existing list. they are chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and lost of taste or smell ups announced today it is partnering with cvs to launch commercial drone delivery. they will be used to deliver medicines in the villages, a retirement community home to 135,000 residents. restoration work resuming at the notre dame cathedral today after halted for a month and a half due to france's coronavirus outbreak the 850-year-old building suffered extensive damage in a fire one year ago. but it's good to see some rebuilding going on. as always get more on the coronavirus coverage at cnbc by going to cnbc.com. morgan, back to you. >> it sure is. my goodness, what a year it's been thank you. we're going to take a quick commercial break the dow is up 274 points stay with us

welcome back new york state out with its latest numbers on coronavirus infection and treatment. here's governor cuomo moments ago. >> this is the total hospitalization rate, what you see is basically flat. flat is not great, but flat may be a reaction to the weekend, sunday, sunday discharge may be down, but we have the same question, how fast and now steady is the decline. we don't want to see flat. we want to see an increasing decline. and we want to see how fast that decline goes and how low does the decline go, right. when does that hospitalization rate get down to a truly

manageable number. when does the incoming case number get down to a manageable number you see again overall hospitalization rate is on the decline. again, yesterday, little less than we would like to see. hopefully it was a sunday anomaly because of the intubations is down. number of new cases still, 1,000 new covid cases every day puts it in perspective. down a tad from where of it but the weekend numbers sometimes are a little strange number of lives lost 337 still tragically high. but on the declineif you look at it over the past few days not that that gives solace to 337 families who are suffering today. >> all right that's new york state governor

cuomo with some hospitalization metrics and as he does every weekday, every day actually, talking about the balance between public health and economic activity as states around the country try to decide what the right pace of reopening truly is on that front let's bring in tech venture capitalist and founder of draper associates, tim draper always good to talk to you good morning. >> thanks for having me on the show >> it's always good to have you. you've been outspoken about what that balance is between opening and watching your hospital capacity you've had comments on twitter you walked some back i wonder where your thinking is right now? >> i mean, looking at the number, it looks like this for the world, this is sort of a moderate flu season. for the u.s. it's a slightly higher than average flu season for new york it's a much higher than average flu season.

i'm looking at it and thinking, it is possible that this was a major policy mistake and i think it's an interesting sociological experiment, i think tech stocks, all the virtual stocks have done very well and all of the economy is being pummeled because of this policy, and i think -- basically economic activity brings pro perty and increases and extends lives. we have just put a clamp down on the economy and we're not only losing economic value, but i think we're losing our herd immunity because flus, they mutate and each year they examine back wicome back with something a little different. if we don't build our herd

immunity, i don't think that's healthy long term for a society. i think the flus will win if we don't have our herd immunity i am very concerned that we've made a huge, huge policy mistake. >> yeah. you mentioned herd immunity, which is a huge topic around the world, tim bill gates was interviewed by vox earlier today and asked gates what's the thing you wish we do that we simply do not know his answer, we don't know enough about the human immune response that's important because if it's a weak response, then you're not protected from a second infection. how much of that are you taking into account >> yeah. i think that's true. we don't know, but we are -- and i do believe that at risk population might benefit from being isolated but the rest of the world is not benefiting from

being isolated i think there is a -- there is -- it is true, we don't know -- different diseases come at us in different ways. we build our immunity to them and then new ones come at us if we don't build immunity to this one, as a society, the next one could come with much more force, so that's why i'm concerned that it is very possible that this kind of closing down of economic activity and of human interaction is long term i mean it's possible short term that it did flatten the curve and i've thought about that and thought yes, if our hospitals can't handle it, absolutely you got to do something. you have to get people back together so that they can build their herd immunity again. particularly young healthy

people -- >> tim -- >> i think it's -- it's time, at least by now, it's time to open back up and start hugging and kissing again. >> tim, it's morgan. to dig too that a little bit more, and i think you touched on this, on march 14th you talked about the fact that the fear is far worse than the virus on twitter, the governments have it wrong, stay open for business, two days later apparently my previous post timing was not good, my apologies, i believe the two-week lockdown is good for flattening the curve the fact that you feel like it's time to open back up, what are the specific data points that you're looking at to help predict the outlook that you're coming to? why specifically, looking across all the different factors and variables involved right now, do you believe now is the right time and it makes more sense >> yeah. i think well the curves have clearly flattened out, the hospitals have capacity in most

places -- i know new york has been really overwhelmed, but in most places the hospitals have plenty of capacity in fact, people are dying from other things because our hospital are so locked down about this virus and the numbers are coming out to be roughly the same amount of deaths as we head -- actually a little fewer deaths than we had from the flu in 2017/2018. i'm thinking that, you know, we may have overreacted here, and yes, if my instinct at the very beginning was yes, you lock down people, you close down economic activity and that is bad for people that is -- that shortens our life spans, that makes our lives less interesting, less valuable,

and i think that that is happening right now. i mean we are losing -- i think we are losing long term and i mean the flu is -- it's -- the curve ha flattened out and even in new york, it's started to flatten out. >> tim -- >> it's going down in a lot of places so i'm thinking well wait, you know, a lot of politicians will say yeah, we locked you down so that's why you don't have the disease and you're much better off. i'm not so sure that's true. you might have been better off -- >> it's important, this is jon fortt, it's important to point out that previous statistics on the flu and deaths associated with the flu, weren't necessarily calculate in a precise way. flu and pneumonia were grouped together it's not clear that deaths

number associated with flu is at the appropriate level on the cdc website now. there are a number of entries kind of walking back the high number of flu associated deaths saying, well, really maybe in the past there weren't this many flu deaths, we were grouping pneumonia along with that and the other causes when you factor that in plus the fact that we've had the lockdowns, it's difficult to draw an apples to apples comparison with the number of covid 19 deaths we have had this year and the number of flu deaths we may or may not have had in previous years. don't we need to make that distinction? >> i think we're getting -- clearly we're getting better with data over time but even the covid-19 deaths claimed covid-19 could be dying from heart attack, diabetes, a number of other things, pneumonia, and they're being put together in the covid-19 data and i think

that data -- i mean i'm looking at this data and it's typically 300 to 600,000 people die globally from the flu. we now -- >> it's not from -- we don't know that it's from the flu. that's the point, though, tim, that flu associated deaths not all those people were tested for. flu pneumonia is grouped in there that might not be flu associated >> right i'm saying -- >> it's difficult -- >> they may be over promoting the number of deaths due to covid-19 too i'm -- but i'm looking and saying, there are fewer global dea deaths from the flu than there are typically and we're sitting here shutting down the economy and keeping ourselves separate for possibly no reason and long term it may be very dangerous. it may be -- we may be starting to lose herd immunity. you know, bubble boy is always,

you know -- the people who are the most protected are often the ones who have the most -- are the most vulnerable to various diseases the people who are out there the most, like, for instance, india, the people who are just on top of each other all the time, they haves the best immunity in the world. we should learn from that, too i'm just saying, look, it is very possible we got it wrong and we got it wrong big all the way around the world, and that -- i think we have to open back up right now. now if you -- >> tim, i assume -- >> if you are part of the at-risk population stay in place. if you are not a part of the at-risk population it is time to get out and start building our economy back because that will

save lives >> and that means, tim, you yourself would have no qualms about going to a concert, a restaurant, getting on a plane, anything like that, starting today? >> no problem. no problem i wouldn't be surprised if i've already been through the -- i wouldn't be surprised if i've ii travel all over the world and meet with thousands of people. i would have no problem. >> yeah. >> i would love to see -- >> see what some of the serology studies are suggesting more of us are in that boat than we think. we'll see you soon thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> and now let's get back to kate rogers with an update on the sba. kate >> hi, jon we're hearing back from the administration in response to reports that sba's e-tran system suffered out annuals aages and l

systems. that's what banks submit to get approval number for the loans. a senior emergency official sba notifieded lenders that pacing of applications into the system would occur, all lenders would be able to submit at the same rate per hour. the pacing mechanism prevents any one lender from submitting thousands of loans an hour into the system if a lender goes above the pacing limit they will get timed out. they're not saying what pacing limit is also not saying whether or not the outages and reports of them are true saying this is a pacing mechanism that's going on. we'll continue to bring you any updates as we get them back over to you. >> thank you and meanwhile, 42 billion in two-year notes up for auction moments ago. rick santelli what's the demand like >> you know, deet mand was shockingly strong. i gave it an a-minus, $42 billion, the yields 0.229, a

whisker under 0.3. the bid to cover it shot over 3, 3.10 to be he caexact, 55.8 on indirects since september of 19. it was a solid auction we're going to do it again at 1:00 eastern, we're going to have five-year notes morgan, back to you. >> rick santelli, we know you bring us those results as well thank you. coming up, the reopening of the economy. we're going to continue discussing that and speak with a former mgm ceo jim m uurren heading the nevada covid task force. we'll be right back. stay with us

we are joined with a special guest. contessa >> john, thank you for that.

there's been a lot of agitation coming out of nevada especially from las vegas mayor about reopening the las vegas economy and doing it now jim, you have been the head of mgm for a long time. how do you see this push toward reopening las vegas casino, getting travel and tourism back up and running >> thank you for having me we believe at the task force that we need to address the covid crisis as both a public health crisis as well as an economic crisis. what we're doing at the task force is bringing in the public sector, health care professionals and private sector we believe it's a bigger job than any one sector can tackle alone. we viewed this as how do we help the most immediate need for nevada which is desperately needed ppe and testing while laying the infrastructure for a

sustainable economic recovery through the lens of public health we're taking a very much business approach to this in making invest ms in ments in neo safely reopen the economy. >> the governor has said you're at phase zero of phased reopening. he says you need 14 consecutive days of declines and cases in hospitalizations three you need to protect the vulnerable populations and he says get used to social distancing because that will have to continue the nevada economy depends on crowds you look at day clubs and nightclub, packed restaurants, casino floors. the big shows out there. not to mention you have the raiders stadium that's supposed to open this fall. how do you reopen the economy if you can't have crowds? >> that's a good question. as you know, las vegas really

depends upon travel and tourism. that's the basis of human interaction. how do we consume entertainment in a safe perspective from a public health standpoint that requires investment we're not unused to change 9/11 did not change travel it changed the way we traveled we've had to adapt to emerging technology and crisis. >> what is that emerging technology, jim? >> what we'll do -- >> what's the emerging technology that you're weighing now? >> we're going to broad base test and standing up labs in nevada to a point where at university medical center we'll be able to test 10 to 20,000 people a day just in las vegas about 30,000 people a day in

nevada the business partners, the people coming to town will need to know that should a surge occur, we have the ambient testing capacity secondly, we need to work with companies around the world to take best practices. we're looking for that company and other companies to make the entertainment experience more seamless arena, stadiums, nightclubs, day clubs. we reached out to international companies such as g-42 which has worked with oxford in the uk they worked with argon in illinois and worked with bgi in china to develop a network to create pathways to come into our venues in a safe and responsible way. we don't have the answers yet,

all of them but we're doing this very thoughtfully because we recognize las vegas is an entertainment destination and leader we need to lead the way forward to reopening the tourist economy. >> jim, this is morgan when i see stats like 350,000 people in nevada have filed for unemployment it's the highest number in state history. economists coming out saying you could have a 25% jobless rate, are you having conversations not just with companies and potential partners but with workers as well. if so, what do residents in places like las vegas want to see happen >> that is a critical priority now. it's the economic devastation that is occurring in las vegas i ran a company, mgm, that had 50,000 people alone in that community. we're working with the unions, the culinary union and with the

non-union employees to figure out how to safely reopen parts of the economy it starts with broad based tests. we're making the investment to be able to test not just the grossly symptommatic cases but do more thoughtful testing one is testing secondly is to develop the ways to reopen the casino industry. as you know we're highly regulated. gaming employees and customers are quite versed with opting in to security surveillance to opt in to identification. the opt in to id verification. public health will be part of those security measures that the gaming companies are starting to put together >> jim, along those lines, i want to ask you in the near

immediate y immedia medium term, are casinos going to change the way they operate entirely restaurants are doing well if they are packed. in the next couple of years can casinos oerpts that way? >> initially they will not operate the way they did last year >> think of the resistance for the protection being tied to where we are in the virus. initially, it will be significant social distancing. initially many of the high concentration of people in nightclubs and day clubs will not open.

use technology that is available where ever it is temperature technologies, at doors which many companies are looking at whether it's social distancing mechanisms, whether it's taking a page which is longer than we have. sgr jim -- >> with not per spect information but it will happen with the best information that we have. >> jim, a lot will depend on flight fasty into vegas.

it doesn't mean nothing if you can't bring people sboom the city what if the airlines don't play along? >> the airlines have been right at the table with the destination. almost 50 of the top 250 conventions. we're working with our convention part ners whether they are in the technology field, or the trade associations asking them what type of infrastructure do you want to see in place when you host your convention again, it all boils down to making an investment this is how i think las vegas is viewed differently than a lot of parts. we don't view testing as a public health response we view testing as an economic imperative we're investing tens of millions of dollars to create high lab in

state. >> jim, that's the way that you've been able to do this massive ramp up from processing 100 tests a day to now 2,000 and by the end of the month you're hoping to you get to 10,000. thank you for telling us about how the state gets back to normal carl >> thanks for bringing that to us let's get to the judge with the half thanks appreciate it very much. our breaking news coverage of the markets continue right now welcome to the halftime report scotts higher as the major averages still remain on pace for their best month in naurm of years as we embark on a huge week for your american big earnings from apple and amazon, facebook and microsoft