in many ways the president was asleep at the switch, he was downplaying this for weeks, and now there is a very catastrophic death toll in the making, anderson. >> thank you very much. up next, we remember those who died in this pandemic, including a five-month-old. we'll be right back. motor? nope. not motor? it's pronounced "motaur." for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. for those who were born to ride, [anthony] hey mama, what's up? [mama] i'm confused. confused about what, everything ok? yeah, i only see one price on my phone bill. that doesn't sound confusing mama. you're on t-mobile, taxes and fees are included. oh come on, there's always extra fees! not on t-mobile mama. why can't all my bills be like this? i don't know mama. bye mama, love you.

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tonight we remember more of those who died during this pandemic. troy sneed was a grammy-nominated singer, producer of gospel music. he grew up in florida. as a teen he dreamed of being a pro football player. he had to quit when he sustained injuries. that's when he turned to music.

joined a choir at florida a&m. he learned to sing and produce gospel radio hits. in 1996 he appeared in the choir with whitney houston. he and his wife emily ran their own record label, called intro, which is a combination of their names. they were married 27 years and had four children. he was 54 years old. jay-natalie la santa had a heart condition, so when she came down with the fever in march, her parents took her to the hospital. her father called her a warrior princess with a fighting spirit, and she did fight this virus for a month in the hospital. at one point, fluid in her little lungs started to clear and her parents were optimistic for her recovery. but she went into cardiac arrest and doctors couldn't resuscitate her. she was the only child and only grandchild in the family. her grandmom said she was the most precious thing they had. jay-natalie de santo was just

five months old. our thoughts go out to them and all families impacted by this virus. the news continues, we want to hand it over to chris for cuomo prime time. chris? >> so much bad news, anderson. i can't let go of it. how was the weekend with wyatt. let's see the smile. there it is. >> it was great. >> okay. i love it. >> it was awesome. i spent the whole weekend just looking at him and burping him and feeding him and it was great. yeah. i said during the break, it was like a little amphibious tree fog on my chest. just tiny little -- >> you will come up with better metaphors of what your son reminds you of than a tree frog. you're new to this. you got a new baby and a new you, too. i love watching you laugh and smile. nothing else like it in your life. i love you. congratulations, again. it's good news. i have to say that. i'm chris cuomo. welcome to prime time. we're back in new york city,

doing the show with the rest of the cnn lineup with dr. anthony fauci tonight. who better to ask what about these new projections, that are so dire about daily deaths. does he buy this? does he have a better picture of our future until june? reopening is going to cost us cases, it's going to cost us death. the real question for you is, are you okay with it? are you okay with paying the cost? this isn't about facts, it's about how you feel about what you know to be the facts. science isn't going to decide these moves, politics will. here's the proposition. will we choose to stay together and stay at home until the virus has beaten back to safer levels, or is this new reopening our emerging reality? will it really become everyone for themselves? what do you say? let's get after it.

be clear, it's not about the media causing madness and excitement and concerns about what will happen. the news is being driven by government research, a key model often cited by the white house now projects 134,000 deaths by early august, nearly double the previous prediction of more than 72,000. another model, reportedly from the trump administration itself, projects a steep rise in coronavirus deaths and cases in the weeks ahead, just as many places are reopening again even though not one of them has met the cdc guidelines for doing so. now, the numbers may confuse you, but this will bring it home. the model equates to us having the number of deaths we had on 9/11 every single day in this country. again, you can argue about the numbers and the assumptions behind them, but there is no

arguing, unless you're on state tv, that reopening will mean more cases and more death. you don't need a famous doctor to tell you that. but we do need dr. anthony fauci to kind of keep us straight about where our efforts should be right now. doctor, welcome back to "prime

when you pull back, and the virus is doing this, it is only going to do that. we're not going to turn around and come down. so there is a balance. and you've got to look at both of are sides of it. the united states is a big country, chris, and i think what sometimes confuses people is when you talk about pulling back under certain circumstances, there are regions, areas, counties, cities in which you can do that safely now. but there are others that if you do that, it's really dangerous, and that's the thing you've got to be careful of. >> you are losing this argument, doctor. not to me. >> sure. >> people are fatigued. some of it is need, that's legitimate.

maybe you're the wrong guest. maybe the government should be doing things to help american families, that's not your wheelhouse. but there is fatigue. they want out. you saw the pictures in new york city this weekend. when i went out to shop this weekend, everybody was out there. a lot of people had masks, and there was some non-mask shaming where i was, but not in the parks. the people have had it. the seasons are changing. it feels like summer. it's been long enough. how do you combat people's willingness to accept more cases, to accept even more death? >> well, you know, it's the balance of something that's a very difficult choice, like how many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be, some form of normality, sooner rather than later? it's something that people feel very differently about it. myself coming from the vantage point that i come from and seeing the danger in it, i have to.

i feel i have a moral obligation to give the kind of information that i'm giving. people are going to make their own choices. i cannot, nor anybody, force people under every circumstance to do what you think is best. the only thing i can do, chris, is to give the information based on evidence and based on experience, and that's what i've been doing right from the very beginning, and there are people that are going to be disagreeing with me, some of them rather violently in many respects, you know, telling me that i'm crazy, fire fauci, do this, do that. that's part of the game. i'm just going to keep giving you the information that i feel is necessary to make the decisions that i think are prudent decisions. >> people who think they're going to shake you up with their mouths don't know you very well. >> no. >> the idea that it happened this fast, are you surprised that after the country really did seem to get it, we have to stay home, i don't want to do it but it's working, that it snapped back this fast? >> no, i'm not surprised.

and the reason i'm not surprised, chris, is the one thing this virus has that's so different than any of the viruses we have experience with, it has a phenomenal capability and efficiency for spreading from person to person. this is not a trivial issue. this virus has enormous capabilities of spreading like wildfire. we know that. we've seen it in general, and we've seen it in confined situations. the teddy roosevelt aircraft carrier with the explosion of cases, many of them asymptomatic. the diamond princess when you have people together. this is a virus that spreads as easily as any virus that i've ever known, apart maybe from measles. measles is probably the only one that doesn't do it as well as this. >> and look, you know, you were at the vanguard of the efforts against aids. you know what it's like to have a viral spread and have a way to treat it and control it. so you're not new to this. the reserve you have here and the concern you have should be

heeded, but it's not, because people want to get back, and we'll just have to watch what the price is. and unfortunately, even though you're not pushing the reopening, you will have to deal with the consequences of it. what i will not spend time doing tonight, dr. fauci, is ask you about testifying or not testifying or questions about the messaging. i don't know why anyone who wants you in position spends their time coming after you with political questions. you're not a politician, in fact, in my experience, which i guess is about 35 years, you're a lousy politician, you don't make those decisions, you don't want to make those decisions. you testify where they tell you and you won't if they don't because that's your job. i want to talk about something else. why do i know what tony fauci thinks? i've known you all my life, but i've never known you as well as i do since this pandemic. we have spoken every single day, and you have been calling me out

of personal concern to make sure i was okay, my wife was okay, my son was okay. 11:00 later, waiting for my show to end, saturday, sunday morning, the rare time you have with your family. why? >> first of all, because you're a friend. we have a professional relationship, but you're a friend. i've known you, i hate to say it, since you were almost a kid. and the fact is you were going through some difficult times. i don't think that the people who were seeing you on the show were really experiencing or realizing how you were really sucking it up to look relatively normal. but when you finished the show and we would start chatting at 11:00, 11:30 at night, you were wiped out. you not only had the acute difficulty with a virus that was replicating in you, but you had some of the secondary effects, the fever, the aches, the feeling washed out. and even when you were viral

negative, i was concerned, because you're uncomfortable. people look at you, you look pretty good right now, but boy, you put on a great act in front of the tv because you were really wiped out badly. i was worried about you there for a while because we know, i didn't want to scare you, i gave you the truth, that there is a period of time in some individuals where you look like you're recovering and then all of a sudden things go really bad. the reason why that happens, as you and i have discussed over the phone at night, is we're not even sure. we don't even have a full grasp of the pathogenesis of why some people do what you did. you felt bad, you felt bad, then you started getting better and better. some people, they feel good, they feel bad, they feel bad, and then they start to feel better, and then boom, they go downhill. we need to figure out what that is, because when we do, it will help us to intervene to do something about it. i cared about you --

>> go ahead. >> no, i was saying i cared about you, but i was worried about you. that's one of the reasons i kept calling. >> i appreciate you being gentle with me about it, but i just want you to know how much i appreciate it, not just from tony the guy, but as a member of the administration. i know the administration wanted to make sure i was okay. i appreciate it, i really do. i won't forget it. i always try to be fair, but that's something that just doesn't go away. you know people care about you personally, your wife and your kid, it resonates. thank you for taking care of me the way you do, and thank you for giving me all the information that you did. the only reason i'm sharing it on tv and saying it like i have many times in person, i want people to know what they're getting in tony fauci. it's not just tv, it's not just 30 years of excellence in the scientific field. the head and the heart that comes together in your body is the real deal, dr. fauci, and that's why people believe in you. it's not the science, the numbers are all over the place, nobody knows what the hell they're talking about with this virus or what's going to happen.

but they know where you're coming from is a point of concern and humanity. i know it firsthand and i want my audience to know that. it's never been more true about a public official, so thank you for caring about me and my family. whatever happens, we just have to try to keep ourselves together. >> thank you very much, chris. great being with you, my friend. >> dr. fauci, the pleasure and the privilege is mine. have a good night. i'll talk to you later. all right. i wanted you to know that. i'm kind of tired of the whole personal sharing thing, to be honest with you. but i've never had tony fauci do what he did with me. he has a lot on his plate, but he took time, and the administration knew, and i wanted you to know. thank you. this is one of the nights we have our leader watching. i appreciate what you did for me and my family. and caring for us. i'll never forget it.

one of the biggest shifts in one of the states where the governor has been facing protests and rebellion for all the closing now, we're seeing a shift. businesses are suddenly set to reopen legally this week in california. what does that mean for l.a.'s mayor? he's already warned crowds may not come back to concerts, sporting events, but what does he do now? how does he deal with what we were just talking to tony fauci about, needs and wants? the mayor, next. advil liqui-gels minis. breakthrough in pain relief. a mighty small pill with concentrated power that works at liquid speed. you'll ask... what pain? advil liqui-gels minis.

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everybody is feeling the pressure. we knew this was going to happen. as states reopen, pressure on governors are going to grow. california's governor took the step to reopen businesses although the state has not seen the two-week decline in

coronavirus cases. that's the cdc standard, and it's not that difficult if you look at other countries. some retail stores will begin to open on friday, clothing stores, book stores, florists, bookstores, they're all going to do curbside pickup. without that two-week decline, you know what the concern is, especially if you're the mayor of a place like los angeles. the city's stay-at-home order will not be entirely lifted in the days ahead, but there may be some easing of restrictions. how do you balance doing what's right when you know that so much of that will be wrong? mayor eric garcetti joins me now. thank you. i know this is a crazy day for you. i appreciate you carving out the time for us, mr. mayor. >> great to see you back in the studio. welcome home. >> it is great to have the city behind me. mr. mayor, how do you deal with this, because i know you're getting calls. hey, we're going to die here. the businesses aren't going to reopen, this is going to take us years.

money is tight. you're very responsive to those calls, ordinarily, let alone now. how do you balance what's right with what it feels like the people want? >> it's exciting. we're all really hungry to see those steps happen, but you have to make sure we're not just hungry but we're smart. here in los angeles, we were lucky. we adopted swift measures, we've expanded testing for everybody, including asymptomatic people. all of that could go away especially when 60% of us have not gotten coronavirus. our order goes until may 15th. the governor who i support did a great job today. he did not say the city will open, he said it can happen. so a rural mountain county, as big as l.a. county, with 90,000 people, may have a different circumstance than l.a. where some parts are as dense as new york and other places are suburban so we have to be careful. i have a lot of trust to take

those steps. i'll give you one example. we've had construction trades working throughout this, and we inspect them, we make sure they have ppe, and we haven't seen outbreaks among our construction crews. that's really important. so i believe that we can, but people have to remember, this isn't about mayors and governors, this is about their own discipline of knowing we're not moving beyond covid-19, we're just starting to learn how to live with it. >> i remember that. and i remember when the governor was contemplating what to do, and to be fair to the governor, unlike other governors, he's given enforcement latitude to mayors, especially in a big city like l.a., and that's helpful because he can't know the city like you know it. and that's a good thing going for california. but that was a ballsy move, letting the construction stay open. that was controversial. it's paid off. do you believe that building construction is unique in terms of people being outside and it's an industry that is very adherent to code as it is, or do

you think it gives you a lot of hope for other businesses in general? >> it gives us hope. we have seen retail in the form of grocery stores stay open. a lot of protections, and maybe we need to add more. retail, i think, has shown it can work. manufacturing out here, we have a huge apparel industry. we have companies making nonsurgical masks. they've spaced things out, so i think manufacturing can, too. absolutely, some of the outdoor things whether it's recreational spaces or things like construction, you just have to be thoughtful. you can't give in to political pressure where people are saying, do this because i'm getting antsy. listen to the doctors. don't make it as a politician but do it as a professional, and i do think there will be good steps forward. one last thing, acknowledge you're going to make missteps, but learn from them and correct them quickly. if you have the right measures out there, you can tell people,

we have a yellow zone where we can move forward, but we might have to go to orange and hold or red and step backwards, because we know this virus will do things regardless of how we act. we'll see some spikes probably in the fall, for sure in the winter, and we have to be ready. >> i've said this before. i don't envy being in public service right now in a leadership position like you are. i know you guys are getting some shine, and frankly, you deserve it, mr. mayor. i know people have been responding optimistically, but here's the reality of politics. it's almost -- i don't want to say anything that jinxes anybody's health, but it is almost impossible not to have more cases and more bad outcomes as a reflection of reopening with where we are right now. tony fauci could tell you that, but you know it as well. they're going to blame you when bad things happen. and that's going to be a tough time because if you have what is being anticipated, more cases, more hospitalizations, more

stress on the system, and then you have a bump in the fall, are you having nightmares about what it could look like for your city? >> no question. i mean, people like black and white, right? look at our politics. people don't like nuance, people don't like difficult answers, they just want things to be clear one way or the other. but our black and white lap which has shut down the economy until we all strangle ourselves to death, our livelihoods. is unacceptable. white, throw down everything and watch people die? that's uncomfortable, too. so we all have to feel comfortable living in that gray space. absolutely, i take responsibility for everything that happens in this city. i didn't bring the virus to los angeles. it's not just about a mayor, it's about 10 million in this county, 19 million in our metro area. if we have the discipline, leaders are all around us. they're next door, they're in the room with you, they're down the street, they're in your workplace, and we all have to help each other lead or else we

all bear some of the blame of what happened. but if we do it right, how often do you get to save thousands or even millions of lives. we'll look back at this chapter and say it wasn't perfect, every disaster is messy, but america finally found its soul. we rose to the moment and we did what's right, we did it for each other. we didn't expect government to do it on its own, we expect a lot from government, but we also saved the day. >> this is never going to be just about government but acutely so. you've had to figure out how to do it for yourselves, and the american people had to figure out how to do it themselves. no savior was going to come in and swoop you up. what is your best working understanding of how much more flow your capacity system can take? >> we're good right now. we're holding strong. we have, you know, over a thousand ventilators right now, a thousand-plus hospital beds, over 230 icu beds. and we have the capacity of surge even more. but that's the number that every citizen should be asking their mayor and their governor.

what's the hospital capacity? not just the number of cases. what are the hospital admissions and what's the capacity? because we should be shutting things down quickly when it's reaching capacity or getting towards it, and we should open it up when capacity opens it up. to me it's the most important measure we have. >> you know pandora's box -- i have one more question but then i have to let you go because time is tight. pandora's box is a reality. people don't want to go back and that's true as well. you have a significant homeless population, people migrate from all over the country, to california, because of the weather, and other places on the west coast. how much strain are you under in servicing that population right now, and what will this move mean for you? >> there's certainly always strain, but as i said, we had the public health emergency before covid-19 arrived in a lot of american cities, and it's called homelessness. i called two years ago for a fema-level response, and finally fema, to their credit, is allowing us to put the homeless

in hotels and shelters before they're even hit with the disaster. this is before they have covid-19. i'm pretty jazzed about this moment. it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, not only to house those off our streets already, and hopefully thousands more, but shame on us all collectively, federal, state and local if we let them hit the streets after this. we're spending a lot of time figuring out -- let's make sure that they're not on the streets. you're twice as likely to die if you're on the streets rather than if you're housed. we've reduced 90% the homeless veterans here in l.a. we can do it for homeless, too, and for nonvets, too. and that just shows the soul of what we are. >> i know a lot of people listening to you are going, veterans homeless? yeah, a large part of the population are veterans who haven't gotten the help that they need.

mayor eric garcetti, you see the homeless as people who need help. veterans as well, human beings who need help. you always have a platform to talk about the need, especially for the most vulnerable where they're involved. good luck to you. >> thank you. mayor eric garcetti. good job out there. the eyes of the country will be on them. why? the future is in doubt. but we're learning more all the time. right? and one the big lessons that we've been aware of on this show is this virus has been outside china and around this world a lot longer than they were telling us. remember, january, end of january, first case. now they got one in december outside china. and guess what? this person says they never went to china. so where did they get it? what we're learning about how long this has been happening. chief dr. sanjay gupta, next.

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all right. have you heard this yet? a hospital in paris has a story to tell. this is what they've been doing, and you're going to see a lot of this, in this country. they started to backtrack. they went back to old samples of patients, who came in before the pandemic with flu-like symptoms they couldn't figure out, and it wasn't the flu. in december. and remember what i said weeks ago, because of anecdotes like this, we're going to keep going back. doctors there say they found evidence that one man, who hadn't even been to china, tested positive. in december. that's a month before france even reported its first cases. dr. sanjay gupta has been ahead on this cause for concern, for many weeks.

we don't know but the suspicions have been there, and they are growing. first, in france, sanjay, where did the guy get it if he never went to china? what's their best guess at this point? >> yeah. he most likely got it from the community, which raises a whole 'nother level of concern. if you remember, chris, a month later, they have evidence of community transmission. that this is now spreading within the community, not just from people who had known exposure to somebody. so if -- if he got this in december, with no known specific contact, he's a fishmonger. maybe he got it from an animal market. maybe someone else had flown in from china and he got it from that person. we don't know. like you said, chris, it's quite a stunning finding but not that surprising, at the same time. i mean, i don't think we ever sort of thought, the scientific community never thought that we definitely found the first

patient. zero, so to speak. but i think the fact that in china, we were saying the first patients were diagnosed in december. this guy was diagnosed in december, possibly getting it from the community does mean, just as you've said, chris, in the past as well, that if it was community transmission in december, that means it must have arrived, at least, at some point earlier than that. so how far back are we going? we don't know. but you go back and start examining, you know, the tissue, the blood, whatever, from people who came in the hospital at that point. at some point, you're going to start to say maybe this started a lot earlier than we realized. >> so, now, the question becomes, well, why? and what does that mean? does it mean that china this it and wasn't telling us? does it mean maybe it was somewhere else? but then that's disruptive of the whole theory of the case about it originating in wuhan. so what is the most likely scenario? that they had it longer? >> i think that the most likely scenario is, still, that it was

circulating in china earlier than they realized. i mean, global travel is robust. i mean, we travel twice as much, internationally, now, as compared to ten years ago. you can circumnavigate the globe before you even realize what's happening with a particular virus. but i think -- chris, you said this a while ago, as you mentioned, that it probably had been circulating a lot earlier than we realized. they identified these clusters of unusual pneumonias, i think, late november, early december, in china. and then, it was some time after that they said, okay, this is definitely a novel coronavirus. something we haven't seen in human beings before but were there clusters that got missed? even places around the world said it's flu. this is acting like flu and most patients did recover so they didn't really dig too deep into it. now, that they have this obvious novel coronavirus, some places and not just in france. we heard about this in

california, as well, where they found a patient died of this on february 6th. much earlier than we first thought. and many places around the world, they are going to start doing this. my guess is, chris, places that have large international airports, the hospitals that service those areas, are now going to start going back and looking at their patients, from december, maybe even earlier, and saying, hey, was coronavirus already here? >> and, look, you know, just to be clear, the reason i have this curiosity, one, because i believe it's going to turn out to be accurate from anecdote. second, it's not about spreading fear, it's the opposite. the longer this thing has been here, the better chance we're going to have resistant people who have antibodies and didn't even know it. if anything is fueling my curiosity, it's, you know, hope that we're going to get a little bit of good luck here. that this has been around before it became so assaultive. and, then, you get to the projections. sanjay, i was a little slow on this story about the projections. one, i think there is too much wiggle room for the white house and the government to get away

from these numbers. obviously, the death tolls had to pop. but, no matter what the number is, sanjay, there's no reason to debate the reality. you reopen. you're going to have more cases and more deaths, period. there is no other potential outcome. >> absolutely. i mean, no matter when this happens, there are going to be people that get infected that, otherwise, wouldn't. get hospitalized who, otherwise, wouldn't. and sadly, may die who, otherwise, wouldn't. and dr. fauci as well said what are we willing to tolerate? i mean, this has become almost an existential sort of question. i think there is a couple things, though. one is that if you look at the models that have been put forth, i think, in many ways, they were the lower end of -- of the projections. i mean, i was surprised. i think you were, as well. when the ihme model became sort of the predominant model. not that they're not good modelers but columbia had a model. the cdc had a model.

there are a lot of models out there. so, now, the model's doubled almost overnight in terms of projects deaths. look at that screen. that's a huge variation still. but, up until dwreyesterday, th weren't even factoring in, chris, the impact of reopening these states. now, you are starting to see some of that impact. and the numbers jumped, just like you said. that's to be expected. >> we took away the only thing keeping the numbers down. you don't have a cure. you don't have herd immunity. so the only thing you had was keeping the spread down, by keeping contact down. and if you take that away, what do you think the model's going to do? they are going to pop. you know, i feel for tony fauci on this because this is going to wind up redounding to a failure of the administration. you have a pop in cases, it's going to expose the weaknesses in the system. right? we don't have the ppe we need. we don't have the testing and tracing that we need. that's the biggest part of the mass delusion, to me, sanjay.

is not things will be okay. okay is subjective. if you want it to be okay, it's okay. you're not going to know the truth because, while these states are growing their testing and tracing, none is anywhere near of being able to monitor half their population, let alone all of it. >> that -- that's absolutely right. and the thing that's really struck me is that, you know, the physical distancing measures have had an impact. i mean, you know, and we've done something, in this country, and really in many places around the world, which i think a lot of people would have been shocked if you told them, six months ago, this was what the world was going to look like. it's had an impact. but i think what it's brauought things down to, chris, is sort of a slower burn. a lot of people who are dying, sadly, every day. and we haven't really seen the back end of this curve yet. so i think this is what the data is telling us. that physical distancing will plateau us. it's not going to be a way out. so we have to maintain this for a period of time, until there is an actual way out. which is either going to be a

vaccine, which everyone talks about. a really effective therapeutic. or a way to test, so row boubus that you can immediately find these patients who have infection and isolate them. and we're not in a position to do those things yet. so, for the time being, and i think this is what dr. fauci is saying in a very dr. fauci way, is we have to continue the distancing. i have given the guidelines. made it easy to read. i really spelled it out for people, governors, and states all across the america. if you're not doing it, at this point, you must realize what's going to happen. we have seen it around the world. we have a seen it, here, in the united states. and it doesn't just grow linearly once it starts to grow. it grows, like this, slowly. and, then, exponential. that's what exponential growth is and nobody wants that. nobody wants that. no matter how much you want the economy to be open, nobody wants that. and, finally, chris, you showed those images. you know, central park today. you know, people take risks all the time. right? but the difference here is you're not the one taking the risk.

you're taking the risk, for you, but you are possibly going to spread this to other people. that's what's different about this. this isn't just about i'm going to eat cheeseburgers and take my risk, maybe i'll have heart disease, maybe i won't. you could harbor this virus and then spread it to other people. this isn't a normal kind of risk. we have to evaluate risk differently here because it's not just about any individual. and i think people realize that. and most people have done a really good job. but, you know, we've got to stay the course right now and we will gate throu get through this. >> they have to realize it right now. when they want to make the decision to go do something, they have to remember what they're doing to everybody else. and let me just say, quickly, sanjay, my gratitude tour. i wouldn't be here as soon as i have, if i didn't have your guidance and i hadn't had your love and support. i'll never forget it. i have seen you do amaze things. i've never seen you control coverage the way you have in this story, and you have done amazing things for a long time. but what you did for me, personally, i'll never forget.

you will stand out, in my mind, for two reasons. three. one, how you cared for me. two, i've never seen someone your size carry me on their back with the legs that you have. and, three, you use the word fishmonger, which i have never heard anybody use outside of shakespeare. but the first one is what matters most. thank you for taking care of me and my family. >> hey, i love you. seriously, it's a nice moment between you and dr. fauci today as well. you got a lot of love around you, chris, i'm glad you are feeling better. >> they get to see the real deal. sanjay gupta, brother, appreciate it. closing argument tonight. tough one. why? because, look, we all know that rushing to reopen is risky. this really hard question -- maybe the hardest one i have ever seen us take on -- is the risk worth it? the answer seems to be yes, but i don't think we're really seeing it for what it is and what it may cost us, and why we're doing it. this is tough. and we're not treating it that way but we should. so let's give it a try.

next.

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hindsight will, surely, be 20/20 after this. about covid-19. about communities across the country and the world. now, personally, the lesson for me is obvious. my lesson is gratitude. it's my first day back in the office in more than a month. so many of you were so good to me. both, in my family and to my family. i'll just say thank you. i will spend my time, in this capacity, trying to justify the faith that so many of you have put in me. but, while my own covid battle is mostly over, i'm worried that so many seem to think it's mostly over for all of us. and that is just dead wrong. facts. case numbers, climbing, pretty much everywhere.

68,000-plus deaths, now. two weeks ago, the president said we would have 60,000 deaths, period. now, his administration is reportedly, privately, projecting there are going to be 9/11-like death tolls on a daily basis, by early june. and, yet, they want to push reopening? now, look, no one has accused this president of being fact focused or even read in on any of this but you don't need him to mislead you. in fact, don't put this on trump. we are deceiving ourselves. you know the virus is still spreading in too many places. this shows it exposes the reality. you know testing and tracing capabilities are nowhere near what we need to just get the truth of the risks that we all seem too ready to take. so why are we doing it? this is the hard part of the argument. because the agony of this is legitimate angst. we can't just say it's too soon.

why? because it's almost too late, for too many suffering real economic pain. 30 million unemployed. who knows if they'll be able to find jobs again. it took us a decade to rebuild fewer jobs than that. literally, like 10 million fewer after 2008. yes, different circumstances. but the desperation here is different, too. we're talking food lines, not 401(k)s. dreams dying, not just deferred. even if you don't have covid, this situation is making us sick. mental health is going to open eyes, as never before, and that will be a good thing but it's coming at a bad price. those are the facts. but there's, also, feel. fatigue. i've had it. seasons changing. it's getting warm. want to get back to it. look at these fools. fools. i know they want to be out there. fools, it's not about you. what about the other people? and, look, i'm not going to castigate you, that's not my job, i'm not your daddy. but we have to think about this. we are rushing to get back, out

of want, not just out of need. all right? beautiful weather does not make for a beautiful reality. yes, we're tired of bad news. yes, the government is not doing things it should be. a and, there's no question that, this is all real. but so are the numbers. the relaxing of stay-at-home orders doesn't mean covid isn't a problem anymore. in fact, the opposite is the truth. i know i said that already. i'm going to repeat a lot of things because it's not getting through. things will get worse. i don't care how you reopen. so if you are going to go against the science, well, what is better? what is better than this reality? this is something i've been asking myself, and i hope you do, as we. what are we rushing back to? politicians are making this decision, not scientists. fauci's not in charge. don't ask him political questions. it's not his job. the politicians are doing this because of you. politicians act out of fear of consequence, much more often than they do out of good

conscience. okay? so that's what's going to happen now. we know we can't do nothing forever. but think about what you are so anxious to get back to in terms of normal, and what you are going to lose, that we've gained in this pandemic. okay? think about it. be careful what you wish for. the time with family. the time together. the time living more simply. the time thinking about where to go and where not. those pictures of what we see in venice of clear water and clear skies they're showing us all over the world. i know we can't do nothing forever. but we can think about how to be together, better. i'm just asking you to do this. i know what you wish for. i wish for the same. but, remember, we may be headed back to a time that we think we

remember as better but we may live to regret. that is my argument. i hope you give it a listen. when i come back, i want to talk to you about what is at stake here. all right. the worst-case scenario is dying. but what about short of that? i want to show you what we can do. you and me. not to make risks but, to make rewards for people. we can pay forward, to heroes, on the front lines. got great ways. you want to know them? stick around. ever since darrell's family started using gain flings, their laundry smells more amazing than ever. ah, honey! isn't that the dog's towel? hey, me towel su towel.