been proven to be effective and safe, but he completed that without incident in addition he had taking zinc, vitamin c and a daily aspirin. they've been very clear that the president and first lady seem to be on diverging courses in the early going here the first lady said to be doing well, a mild cough and a headache, but those are the only symptoms that have been reported to us for the first lady the remainder of the first family said to be doing well and negative ivanka, the president's daughter, tested negative. the president and the first lady's son baron trump tested negative the vice president and his wife, the former vice president and his wife all negative. then many of the members of the

cabinet have been tested as well all of the reporting on all of the members of the cabinet has been that, in fact, they have all tested negative. now back to "fast money. we'll watch for the president, melissa, and be back to you with any developments. we want to bring back in dr. scott gottlieb now that we know he is going to walter reed, granted to be monitored as a precautionary measure and to work in the presidential offices there, what should he expect what is the process going to be like there, as far as you know >> we don't know the president's condition, so it's hard to speculate. clearly they have more facilities available at walter reed than they would in the white house. the white house does have extraordinary medical facilities but you're going to have access to more testing, more imaging equipment at walter reed than

you would in the white house facility if you want to have good monitoring on hand, that's the place to be. it's not necessarily an indication the president's condition has worsened i think that prudence would want to put him in a place where you have access to facilities in case his condition does change so i wouldn't read too much into this at this point what we've seen with patients who are older with covid is that they can decompensate very quickly. it could be that they want to have him in a facility that if, god forbid, he does get worse quickly, they have resources available. >> the progression of this disease seems to be in the next seven days for president trump what sorts of monitoring will be key in these next seven days >> looking at his oxygenation, his pulse ox, how much oxygen is he getting into his blood. that's a very good indication of

a worsening condition. they'll probably do serial imaging on his lungs to see if he's got expanding pneumonia and how serious an infection in his lungs. they'll probably give him blood thinners to prevent blood clots. we know many patient who s who into trouble with covid seem to be in danger of blood clots. looking at his on generoxygenatg to be one of the key variables with this disease, it could progress very quickly in certain patients you want to be good resources available in the event that should happen. >> again, you do not equate this with a worsening progression of the disease for president trump, the fact that they're moving him to walter reed >> look, it's hard to know

the information that's coming out isn't very descriptive so it's not terribly helpful to people who are looking in on this i don't think it necessarily means there's a worsening condition. this could be just prudence, transferring him to a facility that should his condition worsen, they have access to the resources and facilities they need to properly care for him. again, patients who progress with covid who are at advanced age could progress very quickly. this isn't necessarily an indication his condition has worsened it could be, but it's not necessarily. >> meg tirrell we had been reporting that the president had taken that cocktail that is put together by regeneron. i'm wondering from your standpoint in terms of when we'll know if that has taken

effect and what sorts of treatments could be behind this should the president's condition be worse >> it's a really good question, melissa. i'm sure they are monitoring his viral levels that's what they monitored in the clinical trials to determine whether this drug was having the effect they intended they also, of course, looked at symptoms and the ability to prevent progression to more severe disease hopefully they'll be updating us regularly and we'll know soon what's going on with all of those measurements now, in terms of which drugs may come next and dr. gottlieb obviously can speak to this better than i can, but generally there are drugs that have been proven to work later in the course of the disease and they are very different than drugs that might be given earlier in the disease, thing s that would

only be given to somebody who's in a much more severe situation who is requiring oxygen. now, remdesivir has been a very interesting question as a potential drug because it does have emergency-use authorization. that's gilead's drug of course but that's only for patients who have been hospitalized that's because of the way trials were run and because of an initial limited supply of the drug there is a thought this is a drug that would work better early in the course of the disease because of the way it works. the problem is we just don't know what remdesivir looks like in combination with the antibody therapy. we haven't seen that in clinical trials folks i've spoken with today said, do we really want the president to be the experiment here >> that's a really interesting question i just thought of that as well, meg. we are expecting the president to leave for walter reed

military hospital at any moment. we are expecting him to walk out of the white house that's why we have that live picture on the right-hand side of your screen as soon as he walks out, we will bring you those images dr. gottlieb, meg brings up a good point he took the regeneron cocktail in terms of other treatments that are down the road, we don't really know what the interaction could be with that cocktail, do we are you concerned about that at all? >> i'm not that concerned about that we have a good basis to understand antibodies in the setting of viral illness there are other antibodies available for the treatment of viral symptoms there's an antibody that's been successful for ebola presumably if you did treat him at some point with an anti-viral, with remdesivir, it could be synergistic there's no reason to think there would be a drug-drug interaction. i think at this point early on

you probably want to try these things sequentially at this point because he's not that sick based on what we know. so they had a choice of using regeneron's drug or remdesivir at this point, which i think he would have been appropriately indicated for. presumably the fda and others were consulted on that the top line data looked very encouraging. but it wouldn't obviate the ability to use remdesivir down the road they could also dose him again with the regieneron drug. >> i want to bring jim cramer into the fold here jim, we're watching this as concerned citizens of the united states but also if you're an investor at home and you're seeing all of those developments unfold, what are you to think here? >> it's the president's health first, i would say that i had a

doctor on earlier this week and i told him that i get tested wednesday. i said i get tested at 2:00 that day and i said what happens if i show positive? he said, immediately i should get in the regeneron test. that he felt very confident it was the right thing to do to reduce the viral load. i said there's only 275 patients do i really want to be in there? he said the data is really compelling and it is worth it to get in i requested whether it isn't too early. what i felt like the president's doing is good thing he was watching our show. there's george ancopolis

he solved ebola. he was giving very, very good advice, i think, that if you catch it early, you want their drug there are some people who would say, wait a second, this is an unapproved drug, it must be much worse than we think. why would he possibly do that? there's a current protocol if you're listening to dr. ancopolis, he said you have to come right down. they also point out that if someone has tested negative, it means nothing. you can be tested negative on day two and come out positive on day four or five or six as we saw from the titans. let's not forget when someone's tested negative, it does not mean a great deal. you have to keep testing, testing, testing as far as the stock market, i think that we all woke up this morning and thought things were pretty bad and s&p futures were

down a great deal. came back mostly because i think there are a lot of people who want to buy a bargain no matter what and that talks between secretary mnuchin and speaker pelosi seemed to make progress i know the president is anxious to give some money to the states that has been a sticking point for pelosi i knowsecretary mnuchin wants to give money to small to medium-sized business. the two thoughts i have is, one, if you were really not that ill, would you want to go into a trial? on the other hand, dr. ancopolis says to me, jim, if you test positive, you should just go take our drug. i don't know let's go to dr. gottlieb on that. >> your thoughts

>> look, i think it's wholly appropriate that they gave the president therapy here i think the only question was choice of therapy. the two choices really were remdesivir, the anti-viral drug which looks to be active but is a weak anti-viral drug it's not a home run drug or one of these experimental antibodies either from lilly or regeneron. that was a clinical call, which drug to use. i think the antibody drugs look very promising i'm not surprised that he got one of these treatments. it doesn't really indicate to me that his condition is severe or has worsened the risk is very low given what we know. >> i totally agree the side effect profile for this has been incredible good

who does make that call, doctor? >> well, the doctors and physician clearly made that call i suspect they consulted the fda to get a really goodw window ino the clinical data around this product. ultimately it was the president's physician who made the call they have access to good information in order to turn around that compassionate-use authorization. >> are there things we can deduce about the president's condition based on the choice of drugs given to him >> i don't think so. i think that the reality is that the president has early covid disease and it was prudent and smart to give the president one of the available therapies that we know have made a difference in outcomes in this disease. now, it is the case that many of these drugs are being used in more advanced cases because they're still in development, they're still in clinical

trials but there's every reason to believe that a drug that is going to be effective in more advanced cases, given the mechanism of the drug, that early cases it's going to be even more effective. we have clinical data in other disease settings with ebola that confirms when you use these drugs earlier in the course of the illness, you get a better treatment effect it was wholly appropriate to use these. it was just a question of which drug i don't think it's an indication they were concerned that the president's condition was severe or advancing quickly >> george ancopolis said to me that he would want you to have access to this antibody cocktail if i was recently diagnosed. okay that's the case with the president. and had high viral hitters

should we then presume that he does have a high viral count already and this is not just everyday kind of situation >> no. the data does show that it's more effective in patients who are announcing a strong antibody response on their own. but that doesn't mean that it's not effective in the circumstance where patients are mounting a strong antibody response and don't have a very high viral load. it appears to be more effective in the setting of patients with high viral load. remdesivir would be potentially more effective in that circumstance as well making the choice of this drug versus remdesivir wouldn't be made on the versus of viral load alone. >> a lot has happened in even just the last 45 minutes or so president trump is being taken to walter reed military hospital

as a precautionary measure just about a half hour ago, the president was experiencing a low grade fever according to the white house. he's being given regeneron's antibody cocktail and is taking several nutritional supplements as well. we are awaiting the president to walk out of the white house on route to walter reed as soon as we have those images we'll bring them to you. meg, your thoughts here on regeneron and the efficacyof this cocktail? >> there is limited data on this antibody cocktail, but of course it was used earlier in ebola dr. gottlieb, i'm curious your thoughts not just about the data we've seen about this approach, but also about the relationship, if you have any insights into it, between the president and regener regeneron's ceo. we've heard the president call

him lenny at the white house in meetings at the beginning of this pandemic with all of the ceos working on solutions. they clearly have a familiarity there. obviously regeneron is an incredibly well-respected company and they generated strong data both here and in ebola. i'm curious to know your thoughts on whether that could have played a role in this >> i don't know that it necessarily played a role. i suspect they looked hard at the clinical data and made a clinical call. he has spoken on the phone with the ceo. remember, regeneron jumped into this very early. they got into the game very early in terms of trying to develop a therapeutic against covid. that's why they have an advanced product at this point in time. they've had a lot of discussions with the white house they've been working closely with operation warp speed to try to get more manufacturing capability for that drug

i doubt that played a role in making a decision on the clinical circumstance of what was the most appropriate drug for the president. regeneron does seem to have very promising data if you wanted to go down the route of using an antibody up front, that was a natural choice it might not be a bad choice because it reserves the ability to still use the anti-viral drug even pretty soon if you want to. i mean, the president could potentially be dosed with remdesivir if they want to provide an anti-viral in conjunction with an antibody drug there shouldn't be any reason why one therapy should obviate the other. these should be synergistic. >> going back to your conversation with dr. ancopolis, it sounds like you think the risk surrounding president trump

getting worse has done down because he's on this regeneron cocktail. >> that is my expectation, melissa. i have tremendous faith in dr. shwiper and dr. ancopolis. not everybody can get into a trial. the president can get in immediately. regeneron's stock went down $13.50 the day they announced it they made no sense to me whatsoever i think this is a major breakthrough dr. gottlieb, you mentioned lilly for a second i think that eli lilly -- it seems that mr. ricks, there are two different populations of people that need to be separated in order to understand the antibody benefit there are those who are already

making their effective immune response and those who are losing the race. can we just presume that the president is not in that latter camp >> i don't think that they would have given the drug to the president on the basis of testing him and looking at his viral load and looking at his antibody response at this point. quite frankly, it would have taken longer to run those tests. i don't know that they have those results back, a quantitative pcr and a quantitative antibody assay. quite frankly, it really wouldn't have necessarily steered you the regeneron product versus the remdesivir product versus the lilly product. the bottom line is they wanted to give him active therapy which is a wholly appropriate decision it's, quite frankly, what i would want in this circumstance. i thought the lilly data looked

very strong. it looks like lilly has an effective antibody. >> i think the lilly is looking great. it's terrific. i know that the way that regeneron's approaching the two different populations, i think mr. ricks made it sound like there is a real breakthrough and we'll all probably want to be on one of these when you look at what regeneron has done here, would you want to be number 276? or do you want to wait and try something else i think people at home are thinking it must really be bad, dr. gottlieb, or else he wouldn't be trying something that just got invented and is unproven and the fda isn't in on it or not. i think a lot of people say, wow, this is not even phase one and the guy is already taking

it somebody must be very wrong. >> yeah. i disagree with that the theoretical basis for these antibody drugs in the setting of covid disease and the theoretical basis for why they would be more effective used earlier in the course of the illness is well-established outside of covid there's every expectation you're going to get a clinical benefit here that's why we've all been so bullish on these antibody drugs for a long time. the separate question is, should the president have gotten active therapy? should they have treated him or continued to follow him? many patients on the outside probably would have been just followed to see how they progress i think for a president of the united states, if you have available therapy, i think you deliver it, especially if you understand the safety profiles of these products and realize they are going to be safe and work in his condition.

it west pa i wouldn't infer anything from the fact that they chose the regeneron product over another product other than it seemed to be the most effective of the products given what they knew. i don't have access to this level of data so i have to believe they consulted experts probably at the dad in tfda. >> why are people in the news saying so-and-so was tested and it came out negative when we know that the tennessee titans were tested extensively, came out negative on monday and tuesday, came out positive on wednesday? why are we being so glib when we hear representatives of both parties saying, don't worry, we just tested negative, when we have the nfl and they couldn't say someone is negative and is going to stay negative >> look, testing is just one part of preventing covid you need to be doing all the

other things, distancing, wearing masks. arguably the white house wasn't taking those other steps on a routine basis. also the white house is using sort of a mix of tests they're using the abbott id now. they're using the bionex i've been told they are starting to get trained on others as well they're using a mix of tests, some of which are probably not the best testing if you want a reliable screening test for a asymptomatic population to try to keep covid out of the compound [ indiscernible >> they're using a mix of tests,

from what i have been told they're not using probably the most sensitive test fit for the purpose in which they're trying to use tests to keep covid out of the compound is not being widely employed. i think that needs to be rethought. we've had this discussion on the show many times. >> thanks for your thoughts. as we close out this week in the red, quite a week it has been. what a day it has been with the disappointing jobs number and the stimulus and all the developments regarding president trump and his diagnosis with covid-19 the nasdaq finishing the day low by 2.25%, the s&p 500 down by 1% let's turn it over to shepherd smith. i want to note right off the top here that the descriptions of the president's condition have been changing throughout the day. i'll give you what we have

confirmed. last night we got word in the 8:00 eastern time hour that the president's close advisor hope hicks had tested positive for covid-19 he went on hannity on fox news last night in the 9:00 eastern hour and said, she's young, she's going to do fine, we're not really worried about her, we're all being tested it seemed calm it seemed like there was not a great deal of concern. the president did not give off any signals that he had been concerned. we then later learned that through the reporting of nbc news that multiple sources had told him that yesterday the president had actually been quite fatigued and that he had a raspy hoarse voice just live it eave it at that. between midnight and 1:00 this morning we got word that the president and first lady had tested positive. then there were a series of descriptions of his condition by

a series of officials within the white house. the first description that we got was that he was lethargic and had mild symptoms. that was in the morning hours here on cnbc then in the afternoon during the 3:00 hour eastern time, larry kudlow, his economic advisor, went on fox news channel and told bill hemmer that the president had a moderate case. so it went from mild larry kudlow classifying this as a moderate case. then in the afternoon we learned through nbc news reporting that he had a low-grade temperature and then learning that that temperature had been with him through much of the day. then we learned that he had been given an experimental treatment, that cocktail from remdesivir.

remdesivir would be one option you'll remember, though, that the president said months ago that he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive when hydroxychloroquine had not been proven safe by anyone and seemed to give greater risk of heart conditions so there has been an escalation in the descriptions of the president's condition. now we wait for the president to be taken to walter reed hospital for a few days it's not for observation he's going to be working there for a few days frankly, i can tell you now that we had early indication that is the president might be making this move sometime in the 4:00 hour now we're reaching the 6:00 hour and the move has not been made what to make of that, if anything, i don't know eamon javers is with us zblrgets r. >> reporter: this is the new

home of walter reed which is the military medical center here in washington, d.c. in bethesda, maryland we're awaiting the arrival of the president of the united states no word on when he will arrive we presume we will be able to see marine one as it approaches the facility behind me any moment now remember, shep, this is now the second time in as many year that is the president will have been here there was that episode in 2019 when the president left the white house very suddenly and went down to walter reed for what the white house billed as the beginnings of parts of his annual physical. we never got a full detailed explanation of what happened during that episode. now, though, we are being told that the president is going to be here. he'll be able to work from this facility, is what they're telling us no word of what the president's status is right now or why they decided to make this move. we don't even know when we're

going to see the president at this point there's a large crowd of media here there are some passersby who have stopped to watch the activity we're seeing cars honking for the television cameras there is sort of a crowd gathering here in anticipation of a major news will be able to see or when we'll hear any information from the president's doctors. the president's doctors have not been in front of the media to take questions we had statements on paper but no questions from the media to the doctors or medical team. back over to you. it's 6:00 on the east coast. 3:00 p.m. on the west coast. i'm sheppard smith at cnbc global headquarters. this is breaking news now on cnbc we're waiting for president trump to walk out of the white house we're told on his own to be taken to the marine one helicopter that you see on your screen for transport to walter reed medical center after he tested positive forcovid-19.