hello to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm john king in washington. this is cnn's continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. there are steps to reopen across the globe, some tentative, some more aggressive. this morning from the world health organization as governors debate these new safety measures. so-called immunity passports are a bad idea because immunity from the coronavirus more wish than scientific fact.

italy among the most dedicated lifting a ban on funerals, promising more restrictions will end in the weeks ahead. in britain, boris johnson is back on the job, and while the prime minister says there are, quote, real signs the u.k. is passing through the peak, he used his own personal bout with the virus and urging brits to, quote, contain your impatience. >> if this virus were a physical assaila assailant, an invisible mug gge which i can tell you from past experience, it is, then this is the moment where we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor. >> here in the united states, more than a dozen states reopening some businesses today. many other governors say they are nowhere close to jump-starting american life. the nationwide numbers will turn anyone ashen. take look there. the u.s. will soon eclipse 1 million cases and 55,000 americans dead.

in the last two weeks, the united states added nearly 500,000 new confirmed cases. it took 12 weeks to rack up the first 500,000. they are pitting fear of a second wave of a new great depression. the president says he could soon issue new guidelines on what businesses can open first and how to do it without endangering lives. the top economic adviser saying the new gdp will go negative 20% to 30% in the second quarter. that would be, by a mile, the worst number on record since 1937. the states easing restrictions are now test cases. oklahoma allowed salons, spas and barber shops to reopen on an appointment only basis. look at the data here. oklahoma is on a three-day decline but its 14-day track is full of peaks and valleys. listen to the governor, though, and he says it is time. >> people are still going to get it, but oklahomans are safe and we're ready for a measured

reopening. you can always play monday morning quarterback and say, hey, let's wait until we have 100 folks in the hospital in oklahoma, or 50 or zero, but i just don't think that's practical. >> here with me to share her expertise and her insights, dr. leana wen. dr. wen, like it or not, agree or not, the states are now ahead in this great experiment. it will be, what, ten days or two weeks whether we have an update to know if this is okay or this is whorrible. what are you looking for most? >> i hope we're drawing the correct lessons from these experiments, if you will, that are being done around the country. there is going to be a lag in time. even if we assume there will be an uptick in cases immediately, which there may not be, right, it may be that it takes several days or a week for exposure to happen. there is a lag in time between when somebody is exposed and when they get infected. then another lag in time between when there is an infection and when people end up in the

hospital and unfortunately succumbing to covid-19. so i hope that other states are not looking at these initial states and saying, oh, well, a week has passed or two weeks has passed, it doesn't look that bad, so i'm going to reopen, too. i really fear that we're going to be drawing the wrong lessons and there is going to be premature reopenings all across the country in a way that's not actually based on data. >> to your point, we're going to have to wait for that data. as you said, it could be ten days, it could be two weeks. it could be a little more as people get out circulating and the like. i always say it's the magic of our united states as a republic. you have 50 states, and sometimes it can be confusing and confounding in a place like this where you have 50 decisions being made and sometimes decisions within states. i want to look at some stalttes. if you look atlas las, hawaii, montana, for example. the trend is going down, and you can see why the governors say in our states we're going to give it a try. we think we're ready to reopen. some with aggressive plans, some with gradual plans.

then you look at staltes in the other direction, utah, nebraska, tennessee. some of these states neighbor each other, or once you do get the economy up even into second gear, you're talking about interstate commerce, people moving back and forth. how does a state that's in a go slow approach watch its neighbor that might be going more quickly? >> yeah, it would be really hard to do that. and it also depends on whether we trust the data that's coming out, which, frankly, i don't. we know that we don't have testing nearly at the level that we should. so even if it looks like a state is in decline in terms of the number of cases, do we actually know that that's the case? or are there outbreaks somewhere in a county where there just hasn't been testing and that's why we're not picking up on that uptick. i do hope we end up drawing the right lessons and that there is a willingness on the part of these governors who are leading the pack now and reopening. i hope that they recognize they may have to dial it back and reimpose these restrictions,

too. and the question is, what's their tolerance for doing that and communicating it also with the residents? >> it's a great point as we go forward. one of the here and now debates. you hear a lot of conflicting information about testing. there is a need for diagnostic testing, also a need, you hear more and more about the antibody testing. i want you to listen to dr. deborah birx, the coordinator of the white house coronavirus task force, talking about the antibody testing challenge and her long-term perspective. >> reporter: w.h.o. is being very cautious. i think what w.h.o. was saying, we don't know how long that effective antibody lasts. i think that is a question we have to explore over the next few months and over the next few years. >> the issue there, correct me if i'm wrong, is if you get the coronavirus, the antibody, how long are you then resistant or immune to the coronavirus? she says we don't know and we're going to have to study this over months and years. that is a fact as these governors take this calculated

risk of reopening that we still don't know a lot, right? >> that's right. and that causes concern. because our hope is that if you get covid-19 that somehow you're immune fior a long time and you're not going to be able to get this disease again. but if it turns out you are actually not immune and could get the disease in less of a form or could get it again in six months, that would really change the calculation. we also don't know if you need a certain level of exposure. maybe you have to be really sick to be immune. we just don't know that. so the last thing we would really want is to give people a false hope that as long as they test positive for the antibody they're safe to go back to society and back to work. actually, they could still end up getting sick and we could see a second wave emerging if everybody believes they're immune and they're not. >> a lot of questions as we begin this experiment. dr. wen, appreciate your insights. president trump cleaning up his angry twitter feed today,

deleted some bizarre pomerantz whi -- rants where he suggests there is a nobel prize for reporting, only he called it the noticeab noble prize, nob-o-b-l-n-o-b-l-. the president explains why he will do fewer briefings. here's the real reason why. his advisers are worried about his erratic suggestions, things like injecting yourself with disinfectants are putting people at risk. joining me now, cnn's kim. if you look at his twitter feed this weekend, he is angry, he is lashing out at the media. the issue, if you talk to people around him and other senior republicans around town, is the guy in the mirror, right? they are worried that his

performances at these briefings are doing serious political harm. >> reporter: i think that's exactly correct. what we've seen for the last several weeks is that these press briefings, while it is a wonderful opportunity for us to ask the president of the united states and other top members of the administration questions about the ongoing pandemic, it's also been an outlet for president trump to talk and talk, air a lot of grievances, particularly about the media and the press coverage and the tough press coverage he's gotten about his administration's handling of the pandemic. so for now the president's appearances seem to be on a brief high haatuhiatus, and he's twitter feed like he always has to air those grievances. last friday he was there for about 20 minutes and did not take any questions, did not have briefings over the weekend. the one that was scheduled for today at 5:00 was canceled by the white house, but he has used his twitter feed as an outlet to complain about media coverage,

particularly coverage about the dismissal of his secretary alex azar as fake news. we'll see how long this drought goes for the president. i talked to advisers and they say they're working on their stories. he said it would be good for the president to defer to the medical experts on his team to answer a lot of those questions, because they know that once he starts engaging with the media, the focus becomes on that fight with reporters and not the critical, essential information that the administration needs to hand out to the public in a time of crisis. >> and part of the issue is, whether he's talking or tweeting, a lot of what he says or tweets is just not true. i'll give you one from the weekend. part of his rants was, informed the fake news from the friday night press conference had me asking questions of dr. deborah birx. wrong. i was speaking to our lab

experts. his tweet says, wrong. i was talking to dr. birx. >> deborah, have you ever heard of that, the heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus? >> not as a treatment. certainly fever is a good thing when you have a fever, it helps your body respond. but not -- i've not seen heat or light -- >> i think it's a great thing to look at. >> not wrong. as the president says in his tweet. this is part of the thing that makes your head spin. does he not know we have the tape? >> n >> reporter: not only the tape but the official white house transcript that he was addressing dr. birx. in another falsehood, when he was criticized in that coverage about the circumstances surrounding his secretary alex azar, he said the press never

reached out, never called to check on these reports. you look at every one of those stories documenting the controversy over secretary azar, there is a comment from the white house how the. there are falses that are very easily disproven if you look at the reporting or the tape or the transcripts out there. credibility matters. we talked so often about how the president had a record number of falsehoods as tracked by our fact checkers and other outlets out there and kind of misleading and falsifying basic things like this clearly continues to not help his case. >> as my mom used to say, the first rule of holes. stop digging. sun ming kim, appreciate your insights there. hospitals are giving a common heartburn drug as a treatment for coronavirus. nearly 200 patients taking part in this clinical trial. preliminary results could come out in the next few weeks.

ie lizbe-- elizabeth cohen is w us. elizabeth, what could come out of this? >> the reason they came up with this is an astute doctor in china, an american doctor who was helping out there, found that heartburn patients seemed to be doing better than others, and actually it was the poor heartburn patients, not the rich ones, and they thought, hmm, maybe they're all using the same drug. it turned out many of them were. then they did some computer modeling and found that actually this drug might work against covid. so let's take a look at some of the specifics. eventually they plan to have 1200 patients. this is being done at north illinois health half wi. half will get the drug, half won't. they hope to have preliminary results in the next few weeks. but john, they have emphasized over and over again, do not go

out and start hoarding this medicine. they are getting it by i.v. in megadoses. we don't want to hoard a drug that legitimate heartburn patients need. >> we'll heed the advice of medical experts and we'll come back as soon as they have the findings. to elizabeth's point, do not run out, based on what you see on television. talk to your doctor. the head of tyson says the food supply chain is breaking.

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many major plants are closed right now in several states. some indefinitely, some temporarily. one of the latest, jbs beef production plant in wisconsin. the company says the green bay plant feeds nearly 3.2 million americans every day. three of the largest pork processing plants in the country also off line indefinitely. together they account for approximately 15% of pork production. the jbs pork processing plant in worthington, minnesota is one of them. joining me now is minnesota's agriculture commissioner, tom peterson. commissioner, thank you so much for being with us. if you look at the stats, beef processing down 27% from last year. pork processing down almost 20% from last year. should americans around the country be worried in addition to dealing with the coronavirus pandemic they may have food supply issues? >> you know, john, it's a great question, and right now we're in decent shape around the country on our food supply. but as this coronavirus, as it

continues and we're figuring out how to safely operate these plants, you know, down the road we're going to see disruptions. we're already seeing that as americans are changing the way they eat, eating home 80% of the time also has had a big impact on that. a really big concern, but right now we're in good shape. as it continues, we'll be concerned for sure. >> take us through what you're learning from a safety standpoint, because these are front line workers, these are people who are not told to stay at home because they're helping feed america and feed the world in many cases, so they have safety issues, and they're also in some ways instructive as a governor or mayor decides to loosen restrictions to try to let more people go back to work. we are seeing these front line workers continue to get sick. how do you go through these safety steps to figure out, okay, here's what's happening. what do we need to do better? >> again, we've been aggressive in minnesota. we have a guidance for all of

our plants that call for social distancing in the plants, for taking their temperature when they're coming into the plants. all of these things that are important. we need those workers to feel safe, first of all, being in there. we need them to be safe, to be healthy. it's so important to keep this food supply moving. as we work, our governor tim walls, we've been offering testing for those plants, trying to work and do everything we can to either keep the ones running in minnesota or get the ones that are closed back up and running as soon as possible. >> and you know how these work. i've been in some of them around the country when i'm blessed to travel. cdc but out some new guidelines. normally it's pretty packed. you're right across from each other on a belt, you're side by side, and you see some of them here. the cdc is recommending if you can, space people out, if you can, put in partitions next to each other or across from one another.

how can these plants refit and reimagine this workplace? >> it's amazing the technology we can do in our plants. we had another plant in minnesota go down last week. they were able to do some of this, test their employees, and that plant went back up this past friday and is back up and running. we have another plant down right now. they're doing a lot of that. our plants really are implementing. they're learning from each other and doing what they can to protect the workers. again, it's in all of our best interests for those plants to be running, but they have to provide safety for the workers. >> it certainly is. you strike the right balance right there. agriculture commissioner from minnesota, tom peterson, thank you. best of luck. >> thank you. wisconsin is in a slow state of reopening. it's safer at home now goes through may 26.

they have 272 deaths. it find workers worried about health coverage and about business survival. >> i pay almost $300 a month and it only covers me for $15,000 in a year. >> reporter: total? >> total. >> reporter: so if you get coronavirus -- >> i'll either be in huge debt or i won't be treated. i don't think they can turn people away, but i don't see relief for people like me who have insurance. the government will cover people who don't have insurance, but i do. >> reporter: our coverage is down about 90%. we'd be good to survive during the current. what they're saying, by the end of may. if it goes any further than that, then we'll have to do a lot of adjustments. >> with me now is the lieutenant governor of wisconsin, mand mandelbarnmande mandel barnes. your state, your governor, your team has decided we're going to

take a slow go approach here. how do you strike the balance of saying, okay, telling those businesses you need to wait, you need to be patient? >> i think it's the go smart approach. as you see the rates outbreaks have been increasing in wisconsin, we've had our single day high jumps over the last couple days, so we want to take the most appropriate approach to reopening the state of wisconsin. on top of the health care over the last two election cycles, we debated medicare for all. i think the case is making itself right now as people are losing their jobs. people had health insurance plans they liked and they thought they could keep it. unfortunately, many people haven't been able to keep their jobs in the middle of this crisis. so health care in america is something we need to be working on as a whole so all 50 states, people across america, can have better access to health care and won't face such an uncertainty situation such as this. >> as some americans start to see oklahoma, georgia, montana, places start to reopen, i think

some people naturally think, oh, we're done, or we're getting better, right? you made the point about your cases. the 14-day trend, you're still going up. the latest day down a little bit, but you see it right there. what are you seeing in terms of pressure on your hospital system, pressure on your testing system? >> yeah, and that's the thing. we still don't have enough testing capacity to fully reopen our state, and that's part of our badger bounceback plan. part of the criteria is making sure we have adequate testing so we can get about 80,000 tests per week so we can make sure we know where the concentrations of outbreaks are, who is contracting the virus and how -- excuse me, also making sure there is contact tracing so we can trace the rate of spread and we can trace the transmission back to where it started so that hopefully we can get this under control. but that hasn't been the case. we don't have that yet. like i said, wisconsin isn't the

only one. all across america we're having the shortage of testing kits being available and the contact tracing which is also one of the most important and critical parts of keeping this thing under control. >> your state is one of the states where there have been organized, limited, but vocal protests. how do you counter those who say, hey, look, we're america, we're tough, we're wisconsin, we're tough. we can't be shut down, we need to get back to work. >> yeah, that whole tough approach is what gets you in trouble. people think they're too tough for this disease, but that's not the case. it doesn't matter how tough you think you are, you can attract coronavirus. there is a good chance that you are going to be down for some time. and also impacting others. it's the selfish approach. little the i v. mind. i think i'm doing okay, the people around me are doing okay, so everything is fine, totally ignoring that people are losing their lives across the state and across the country. again, i want to caution the

people who want to come out to protest to think about somebody other than yourselves. this is not just about you. this is a society that we have to maintain and protect. this is about the health and safety of someone other than yourself. what are you going to do for other people? and if we go forward with folks just living with this individualistic mentality, we're all going to be doomed. >> mandela barnes is the lieutenant governor in the state of wisconsin. thank you for your time today. appreciate it. best luck in the days ahead. up next, growing pressure on governors to reopen even as coronavirus numbers climb. >> i'm a businessperson and i have a lot of employees that are hurting at the moment, a lot. you can see the economy just absolutely crashed. when i say that our employees are in bad shape, i still respect that it was my duty to get us open.

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i like the boyfriend. boyfriend is part of the premises. monday. 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 discharges may be down. but we have the same question, how fast and how steady is the decline? we don't want to see flat. we want to see an increase in 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 a little less than we would like to see, but hopefully it was a sunday anomaly because of the weekend. intubations is down. number of new cases, still 1,000 new covid cases every day. puts it in perspective. down a tad from where it was, but again, these weekend numbers sometimes are a little strange. number of lives lost, 337. still tragically high. but on the decline if you look at it over the past few days, not that that gives any solace to 337 families who are suffering today. on testing, this has been a big topic. increasing testing. it's been a scramble for all the states. we're doing well on it. the testing tells you where we

are, right? and whether the infection rate is going up or going down. we've now tested 7,500 people statewide, so that's a very significant number, and it gives us a snapshot of where we are. it's just a snapshot, but snapshot, snapshot, snapshot, you look at the different pictures and you have a movie at one point and you can track what is happening. so at 7,500 people, the number state wide that's positive is 14.9. when we tested five days ago it was 13.9. 13.9 to 14.9. one point, statistically it's in the margin of error. i would like to see the margin go the other way. male/female, they both went up a point. men are still more likely to have the virus than women by a couple of points.

whatever that bespeaks. i care not to speculate. these are the regional numbers in broad strokes. long island 14, new york city is up a couple of points, rochester/rockland is up a couple of points. basically the rest of the state is flat. this is infection rate by region. people hear new york, they think new york city. yes, we have new york city. we also have upstate new york, north country, which is predominantly rural or suburban. and you see different situations across this state. this is not a homogeneous state, so the mohawk valley, 2.6%,

north country, 1.2%, hudson valley 10.4%, but that has westchester and rockland in it. hudson valley, we had a significant problem in westchester, less so in rockland, so i think that would explain that number. but when you see 1.2% in the north country, 2.6 mohawk valley, capital district. you see a much different situation than you're looking at in new york city where you're in the 20s, right? so different situations, different strategy going forward. we're coordinating as a state, we're coordinating with our neighboring states, but you still have to take into consideration the variations across the state, and that's what we're trying to navigate. by race, you see the percent for

asians is ticked up. african-americans actually down. latinos went up 10%. nobody can explain what caused that jump in this survey, and it's something we're going to watch, and we're doing more testing in african-american and latino communities, as we discussed. the age breakdown is fairly consistent with where it was. so that's where we are today in new york. new york city, obviously, high point number of cases in the country. higher than some countries globally. and upstate new york a very different reality. big question is reopening, especially for those places with less of an issue to begin with

or places that have reduced their problems. i get a lot of local officials calling me. we want to talk about reopening, reopening, reopening. know about what you're doing before you do it. those are words to live by. i don't know who said it, but it is a true axiom. so we want to unpause. may 15th is when the pause regulations expire statewide. i will extend them in many parts of the state. but in some parts of the state, some regions, you could make the case that we should unpause on may 15th. but you have to be smart about it. we all have to be smart about it. as we said, there is no lightswitch where you flick a switch and everybody goes back to what they were doing. we have to take these circumstances into consideration, we have to learn the lessons, we have to move

forward and we have to be smart. because if you are not smart, you will see that infection rate go right back to where it was, we'll be right back to where we were 58 days ago and nobody wants to do that. so what i want to say to my regional colleagues is be smart. well, we want to reopen. well, have you thought through reopening? we have a couple of weeks, but start thinking through what it means to reopen. first question is, do we need the cdc guidelines that is you reopen when you see a decline in numbers for 14 days. second, we talked about, on the reopening, bringing back construction and manufacturing as the first two industries. but how do you bring them back and what precautions are going to be in place? what precautions do you want those businesses to institute when they start, and part of

this is on business. you know your business. i don't know your business. i don't know how you do business. how do you incorporate into how you do your business and where you do your business the precautions that we want to take going forward? how do you do social distancing? how do you do monitoring? are you going to take the temperature of people who walk in the door, et cetera. and that's for government, but it's also a question for businesses. health care capacity. you want to reopen a region, what is the health care capacity in that region? how many beds will you have available if that number goes up? how many icu beds will you have available? and are you contemplating what's going to happen when the flu season kicks in in september where we could potentially now be dealing with covid cases on top of flu cases? you have to test for both, and

possibly have hospital capacity for both. do we have testing in place? and is testing ready to go, because testing is one of the main monitors, right? do we have a tracing system in place? we all talk about testing, tracing, isolating. that has to be in place. test people, you then trace the contacts, you find the positive people and you isolate them. but you need a tracing system. and this is something we've never done before, right? so that system has to be in place. when we isolate people, where do they go? isolation, once you find the person who is positive, basically you can say to the person, you can go home, but then you run the risk of infecting those people in your house, or we could put you in an isolation facility. we have a hotel, et cetera, that we can put you in for two weeks,

but you have to locate those facilities first. we have to coordinate as a region. there is no one county in a region, it's a region. and these are the economic development council regions that have worked together, but we have to coordinate that region. so everybody in that region has to have the same policy when it comes to schools, when it comes to transportation, when it comes to testing, when it comes to tracing, and that region's plan has to fit into our overall multi-state plan. no attractive nuisances. it's a concept where you have a potentially dangerous situation that actually attracts people, normally children, to it. we can't open an attraction that might bring many people from outside the region and then overwhelm people in that region. you have a lot of pent-up

demand. and we have seen this before, where when we're not coordinated, we have new york people going to connecticut because connecticut has parks or wat waterslide access that's open. we don't want to create a situation where people flood an area because they're looking for something to do. and then we need a regional control room, i call it. we have to be monitoring what happens when we start to reopen, and that entire region has to have a control room function where we're watching what's happening. for those friends who are more graphic, we're going to turn the valve on reopening, turn it a little bit, start to reopen and then you watch the dials. what are the dials' hospitalization rate? which we know now.

we've been wautching that. what is the antibody testing telling you? antibody testing is important because it tells you the people who were infected, the infection rate and now resolved because they have antibodies. what is the diagnostic testing, which is a different type of testing, tell you? positive and negative, but what's happening on the diagnostic testing? those dials will give you the fourth dial which is the infection rate, what's called the r.t. rate, the rate of transmission. so turn that valve a little bit for a region. watch those four gauges very carefully every day, see what's happening on those gauges. you can either close the valve, open the valve a little bit more or leave the valve where it is. but when i talk about the regional control room, that's what i'm talking about. getting that data in to one

central place where everybody agrees on the numbers and everybody agrees on what we do the next step. we have medical centers that were built. i spoke to president trump about this this morning. when we were worried about the lack of capacity in the hospital system, the federal government was good enough to send in the army corps of engineers. they did a phenomenal job in building beds quickly. we built a number of facilities. we're now talking about the possibility of a second wave of the covid virus or covid combining with the regular flu season in september, which could be problematic again for the hospital capacity. so the facilities that were built, i spoke to the president about leaving them in place until we get through the flu season. god forbid we need extra

capacity again. i don't want to have built -- asked the federal government to build capacity, then take it down, and then wind up in another problem area. javits center we have to think about, because the javits center is in the javits convention center. it has 2,500 beds so it is a great facility, but it's also in the convention center. you can't reopen the convention center, obviously, with the hospital beds in it. westchester county center the same issue. it's also the westchester convention center, so question mark on those facilities, when we take them down or how we take them down. i'm going to speak to the county executive in westchester county, george latimer, about that. but javits will be on hold for both those facilities now until we decide. but again, anticipate an issue in the future and make sure we're ready. but i want to thank, again, the

army corps of engineers did a fantastic job. and president trump got it done, and he got it done very quickly. so those facilities -- javits, over 1,000 people went through javits. we didn't need the whole facility, but a thousand people is a large number of people. on saturday, as you know, we expanded our diagnostic testing criteria for front line workers, essential workers, et cetera. we'll be opening additional drive-through testing sites for those people this week. people can't just show up at a drive-through center. you have to call first, make an appointment, so we can handle the flow. we're also very concerned about making sure we get testing to our essential workers and our front line workers. we're going to be doing a survey of the new york city fire

department and new york city police department this week. 1,000 and 1,000 respectively, just to find out again with the antibody testing what is the infeki infection rate. nypd was out there every day, and they paid a terrible toll. the attendance rate is now good again. many were out sick, but we want to know exactly where those front line workers are. if they have been infected, we want to make sure people are getting help and we want to know exactly what happened. we'll also be doing 3,000 health care workers. these are hospital staff, nursing staff, doctors who are in the emergency rooms to find out their situation. and we'll be doing 1,000 transit workers. these are the bus drivers, the train operators who keep the

public transit system working, and we want to do testing to find out how they're doing. we're seeing a tremendous demand in food banks, which is predictable in some ways, but the numbers are very, very high, and we need to address it. 200% increase in westchester, 100% increase in new york city, 100% in long island, new york. i'm also asking if i la philant to help. they said they want to help. this is something they can do to help. step up the funding with

philanthropies' funding. because the markets are so royaled upstate, some farm cooperatives are actually dumping milk because the market can't consume it. this is just total waste need food and farmers that can't sell their product. we have to put those two things together, that's common sense, but we have to make the marriage between product upstate and need downstate and we'll launch a special initiative to do that. we are also immediately to stop this dumping of milk, going to work with industries in our state who can use the milk and get it to people who need it. so i want to thank these companies who will be working with us to buy the excess milk, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, and give it to the food banks that are downstate.

when it comes to reopening, and i talked about what i'm going to speak with the regions about, but i don't want to just do reopening. we have to use this moment to reimagine and be smart and grow. this is one of those moments. if you look back in history, sometimes it takes a crisis to wake people up. and it takes a crisis to change the body politic to actually accept change. because change is hard to make. and if you look at the instances in the past where we've had significant problems, you'll see we were normally smart enough to learn and to grow from them. so reimagine new york means don't replace what was, build it back better. and we've done that in the past. chicago fire 1871 killed 300

people, but we learned, stricter fire safety laws. san francisco earthquake, 1906, the same thing, it was devastating but that lead to better construction and earthquake standards. triangle factory fire here in new york 1911 started a whole workers rights movement and safety in the workplace. mi mississippi flood, that's when we woke up and started building dams. great depression, we pivoted from that pry cyst to entire economic structure. we went through 9/11 and we are better and safer as a society for it. the department of homeland security was formed on the federal side, which has been the single largest innovation in the federal government. even super storm sandy that we

went through 2012. i was part of that. it was devastating, but new york is better for it. we have a power grid that's now better. we raised all our electric stations. we changed our infrastructure along the waterfront. we built houses back to different codes. so it's that process that we have to go through here. what did we learn? how do we change? how do we improve? we talked about teleeducation. yeah, we went through it, we had to go through it. but it didn't go as well as it could have gone. we didn't have any notice. but let's learn the lessons. let's do better. telemedicine showed great potential. you don't have to go to the doctor's office. you can do a lot by telemedicine. how do we learn that? public transportation, we are still learning. how do we clean and dis infect a

public transportation system on a daily basis? just think of the scale of that undertaking, how do you do it, and we are still trying to figure it out. and how do you have a better public health system? because we were not ready for this. our health system was not ready for any public health crisis that would demand more capacity or more coordination. so let's learn from that. and let's have a society that is more social equity. you look at the people who paid the highest price for this crisis. they were the people who were in the least good position to pay. the poorest among us always pay the highest price. why is that? why do the lower income communities see this disease in higher proportions? why were the essential workers

who had to show up disproportionately african-american, latino. so is life going to be different? yes, life is going to be different. but different in this case can mean better if we are smart about it. and when we are finished going through this, we should be tougher and smarter and more resilient and more unified and better than before. last point, aj parkinson, great park, i respect elected officials who aren't typical politicians. elected official does not have to be a politician. politician has bad connotations to politicians. the word "politician." you could be an elected politician who is not a typical politician, not a go along kind of guy, not a wake no waves kind of guy. kentucky governor stood up said

to his senior senator in the state mitch mcconnell that mitch mcconnell was wrong on saying he wouldn't provide funding to state and local governments and wrong in saying states should go ban bankrupt. it is hard for a governor, especially andy, who is a relatively new governor, to stand up to a senior official and speak truth to power. that is hard. it takes guts. it takes courage. and you don't get that from a typical politician. so it warms my heart to see an electriced official who electriced -- elected politician who is not a regular politician. thank you, governor. questions? >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i don't know exactly what the president has said about using the defense production act. i know he's used it in some situations. i don't know if he said he would use it for swabs or reagents.

>> reporter: what do you think of the models hospitalizations saidly more accurate for lives lost particularly when it comes to new york? >> look, we have said all along, every projection model showed many more people being infected. cdc model, coronavirus white house task force model, cornell model, columbia model, mckenzie model, they all showed a higher projection rate. they were not wrong. we changed reality. we changed reality. they said the curve was going to go like this. we changed reality. we shut down, we closed schools, we closed everything, and the reality was the number was much, much lower, which is a beautiful thing, and a good thing. and a testament to the intelligence of the people of

this state and this country. so were they wrong? no. you changed reality. and the reality was much more beneficial, and hundreds of thousands of people who they projected would get infected if we did nothing was basically their projection weren't infected. >> reporter: specifically about the 16,000, the estimates lives new york would lose. that seems to be accurate? >> i haven't stud teed thyed th don't know. >> reporter: what your reaction is? >> i had said early on that, you know, you have to be realistic about the situation of people. new york you have people in dense environment. and stay at home, stay at home, but you geneva convention out, get some air, go for a walk, et

cetera. go out for a walk in new york city, but social distance, this is almost an oxymoron, right. it's very hard to walk down a sidewalk in new york city and maintain social distancing. so i had said new york city should open streets. because, remember, new york city the traffic is way down, way, way down. i don't know the percentage, but it's like night and day. you look at pictures of new york city, you see one or two cars going. so open streets. i know -- and i spoke to the city council speaker about it, and the mayor, and they were -- we did open streets, and it there was a program that was operational. apparently, they have a disagreement about how it works. i said figure it out. if they can't figure it out, i'll get involved. but you need to have streets that are open.

you have less traffic. you need streets open so people can walk and socially distance. you can't do that on the sidewalk. and there has to be a way to close streets because you have no cars. you have no cars, you don't need as many streets. this is a direct proportionality. >> reporter: governor you said you suffolk to donald trump the president this morning, correct? >> yes, sir. >> reporter: about what time was it, ballpark? >> i don't know. >> reporter: i ask because at about an hour ago he posited about poorly run states in all cases democrat run and managed looking for bail out help. did you discuss, first of all, federal moans coming down to state of new york? and second of all how do you feel about that as a bailout? >> no, i don't discuss that with the president. look, first, i believe, and i said at the time, i was consistent