>> manu raju, thanks for that reporting. appreciate it. thank you all for being with us today. we'll see you back here tomorrow morning. i'm poppy harlow. >> i'm jim sciutto. newsroom with kate bolduan starts right now. hello, everyone. i'm kate bolduan. thank you so much for joining us this hour. at this point, everyone is wishing the pandemic was over and passed, of course, including the president, as he's making crystal clear in a new interview, but the facts on the ground are also crystal clear. it's not over. more than 71,000 americans have been killed. 1.2 million americans infected. and with that in mind, now look at it this way. if you eliminate the new york metro area from the total count of new cases, you can see right there, infections are still climbing in the rest of the nation. still climbing, despite the fact

that states across the country are starting to open up. and new hot spots are now popping up in states like minnesota, tennessee, alabama, nebraska. one county in rural tennessee now has the nation's highest per capita infection rate by far. and then there's dallas county in texas seeingilities highest rate of cases for a second day in a row. this is why public health experts are frustrated now, and now leaning on baseball metap r metapho metaphors. >> i think we're sort of at the top of the third inning of a nine-inning baseball game. we have a long way to go. and this is not when the coach walks out and says we're done. >> we're in the second inning of a nine-inning game. what we have seen so far is just the start. >> just the start. i know it's hard to imagine because it feels like it's completely disrupted your life for long time. joining me now, chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta. what do you see here beneath

these numbers? you were on with the doctor, and when you hear from michael osterholm like that. >> well, you know, the united states is sort of tough to paint it with one brush here. we saw new york, and we saw what's happened in new york. and possibly some glimmers of hope now with maybe some evidence of the backslide of that curve. but there's many other places around the country where they seem to be having different waves and different peaks. we have sort of known that from the beginning. the big question now, is this true migration, meaning are these people who have moved from other places where there's hot spots into places where, you know, they had relatively low levels of infection and now they're starting to grow infection in those areas, or are they -- we're just seeing these different sort of slow burns in other areas of the country? we don't know for sure. i'm not sure it matters going forward. what is key is to make sure that these places that are starting to sort of increase in numbers can be controlled in some way. and you know, as you know, it

goes without saying, reopening is not the way to sort of control that slow burn. >> i think michael osterholm also, who put it in an interesting way in an interview, he of course, is the director of infectious disease, research, and policy at the university of minnesota. he said it's not a leveling off. it's a painful handoff. is that what's going on here? >> yeah, it seems to be. i mean, i think that -- i heard him say that as well. i think, you know, michael osterholm is certainly a guy we all would do well to listen to on these things because he's been pretty prophetic on this. that's right. he makes the point that it's sort of you're seeing the peaks of this, this pandemic shift around in the united states. and part of it is because of actual human migration to these various places. and part of it is we're seeing these peaks at different times. he also talks about the fact, the last time the world really went through a pandemic like this one, you did see these

waves. you saw a first wave and then a second wave and a third wave. that was the spanish flu in 1918. i mean, sad as it is to think about, the second wave was the worst wave out of the spanish flu pandemic. so i think that's what he's alluding to as well. could this country be in that situation again? we hope not. that's what we're trying to avoid. >> yeah, and with that in mind, there's now confusion, sanjay, over what's happening with the white house coronavirus task force. you have the president saying this morning that the coronavirus task force is not being disbanded, rather it's changing its focus to, as he put it in a tweet, safety and opening the country up. do you think this is the moment the task force should be shifting focus? >> no. i mean, it's very simple. you know, when we started the pause in this country, kate, i was looking this up last night. there were some 4500 people who had been infected and around 70 people who had died. that was when we started the pause. and now we're thinking about

sort of ending the coronavirus task force briefings when we're over 70,000 people, more than 1,000 fold more have died, and obviously, you can see the number of infections which keeps changing on the side of the screen here. i think, you know, that's the objective part of it. i think subjectively, there's these signals going out to the public. and i hear this all the time, look, we're essentially done with this. right? the task force is being disbanded. the states are reopening. i think even if the task force is not being disbanded, i think it's important to keep reminding people that we need to stay vigilant on this right now. not think that this is over because we're trying to avoid, you know, these significant peaks in places all over the country. i'm not sure that message is getting out there right now. >> yeah. good to see you sanjay. sanjay and anderson cooper will be hoarsing a cnn town hall joined by former vice president al gore and spike lee. for coronavirus facts and fears tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m.

so, arkansas and tennessee, they are two of the latest states to be lifting social distancing restrictions. moving to allow salons and barbershops to reopen today. another state that has been moving kind of ahead of the pack, faster than most in reopening is montana. restaurants, bars, casinos, breweries, they're now open there. places of worship, retail stores are also open with limits. starting tomorrow, even some schools will be allowed to bring students back to class. let's hone in on that. joining me is montana's governor, steve bullock. thank you for coming in. let's start with schools. seven schools as i was reading are planning to reopen in your state this week. so 46 states and d.c. announced they're keeping schools closed for the rest of the year. all of them still working on plans for what they're going to do in the fall. what has you confident it's safe for schools to open this week? governor, katd bait's kate bold.

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like we've done together, so many times before. discover all the ways we're helping members at usaa.com/coronavirus welcome back, everyone. i think we fixed the connection. joining me once again is montana's governor steve bullock. i want to start with schools. you have most of the country announcing that they're keeping school closed for the rest of the school year. schools -- some schools will be opening up in your state this week. what has you confident that you can open schools safely this week? >> great to be with you, kate. look, we took aggressive steps early on in montana. i mean, the stay-at-home order

long before half of the country. we closed our schools before places like new york, new jersey, washington state. as a result, we have the lowest per capita cases and hospitalizations in the nation. we had six positive tests and that's state-wide, all last week. i think at the end of the day, look, schools and everything else are going to look a lot different, but if we can actually employ social distancing, if we can make sure to protect both our kids and our teachers, we also have to recognize that there's been real challenges with this remote education, if you will, making sure that everyone can stay engaged. i think as we wrap up this school year, a few of our local districts are giving it a shot, and we're going to be there every step of the way with them. >> school is part of phase one of reopening with you along with other things i mentioned. what would it take, governor, for you to decide that you need to go backward, you need to shut

down the state once again? >> sure. to be clear, opening schools wasn't part of phase one. what it was was saying that local districts can make some decisions along the way. we have about four weeks of declines, and i mean, when you look at from a science-based perspective, montana is one of the few states in the country that can even have this conversation of opening up some things along the way. we're doing it very cautiously. i mean, as we look at restaurants, which just started this week, only at 50% capacity, still with social distancing. we'll be closely monitoring each step of the way from a science base, not a political base perspective to say if we do see some spikes in some areas, we may have to step back. >> is there one benchmark or one data point that you're watching as kind of your standard for if this is working or if this isn't? is it just seeing a spike in new cases? >> well, it is in making sure what we did early on along the

way, too, is not only did we take aggressive measures to flatten that curve, but we also had contact tracing and testing put in place long before i think what many other states did. and ask anyone that was symptomatic to test. so it will be looking at what's happening with the virus on the ground, do i expect to see some cases? absolutely. but it's the actions that we take both at the state level and local level that will keep this flattened. >> and look, different states look different. different states have been impacted in different ways by the virus. as we are very clearly learning. as you go from urban to more rural environments. but everyone is watching each other and how they're reacting and responding to the crisis. are you worried at all that you opening up your state puts pressure on other states to follow suit? states that might not be ready? >> no, and i don't think that those states that aren't ready

should, by any means. i think that every governor looks at this hopefully first as a public health challenge. certainly, also through the lens of an economic challenge. but that's why if you compare what montana did aggressively up front to actually flatten this curve, that's what gives me and my public health officials the confidence and i think that we're one of the few states in the country that ought to be having that conversation, to start a phased and limited reopening. >> new york governor cuomo, he talked about the decision to reopen in pretty stark terms yesterday, saying it comes down to a single question. how much is a human life worth? is the economic benefit of reopening worth the risk of people dying? is that how you see it? >> i think every state has to make their determinations based on the data that they have. and i certainly -- i know that montanans are hurting economically, but i also know that all montanans and americans

won't be engaging in the economy if they don't have confidence that we have our hands around this virus. and from that perspective, that's what we have been doing in a very aggressive fashion here, which actually has allowed us to start taking some steps forward. >> good luck, governor. we'll be watching. thank you so much. >> thanks, kate. this all -- transitioning our focus to the east coast of the united states right now, it could be a case of social distancing enforcement gone too far. new york police officers seen scuffling with a man on the ground and placing handcuffs on him. now, one officer is on modified duty as internal affairs is launching an investigation. cnn crime and justice correspondent shimon prokupecz is live in new york watching these details. shimon, what are you hearing about this case? >> yes, so that certainly, that one incident over the weekend started this conversation. there have been other videos that have been posted. and community leaders, certainly

in the black and brown communities in some of the minority communities, are raising issues with the way police officers in new york city are approaching people who are not properly social distancing. and there's concern that there's some racial disparity going on. and so they're asking the mayor to take a look at this. they're asking the police department to take a look at this. they want to see the numbers. summons have been issued for people who are not social distancing. and they want to see these numbers. and the mayor just a short time ago disgusted said he's going to be releasing some of that information. here's what he said. >> we definitely want to get theidathe data out so we'll make sure the nypd gets the data out. it's going to show you where there's been, for example, summons, but remember, there hasn't been a need to do a lot of summons in the last two months for social distancing. that's a good thing. but definitely, that transparency will be provided. >> and the thing here, kate, obviously for the police

department, and the mayor has said this and the police commissioner has been talking about this, this is all very new to them, how to approach people in these kinds of situations dealing with these kinds of issues in communities. so they're going to go back and look at some of the guidelines. they may tweak some of the guidelines. they may address some of the concerns that community leaders are having, and the mayor said we're going to hear more about this from him certainly, the police commissioner has been out here talking about this. they realize there may be some legit concerns here and they're going to be addressing them in the coming days. >> all right, shimon, thank you. >> also new numbers are showing just how heavy a toll the pandemic has taken on the u.s. economy. data showing more than 20 million private sector jobs disappeared in april. by far the worst month on record. and while no sector of the economy has been left unscathed by the pandemic, the travel industry has surely bib among the hardest hit with new evidence of that coming out today. joining me, business anchor julia chatterley to dive into

this just a bit more. julia, what are you see sng. >> there's just nowhere to hide. you have illustrated it perfectly here, whether it's airlines or cruise companies or hotels, they were the first to get hit and the fear is as we enter some form of recovery, they're going to be the last to do that. the result is job losses and cash crunches for businesses. norwegian cruise line, they came out yesterday and said we will not survive the next 12 months like this. they're actually a good news story. they came out today and said they have managed to raise money so they're okay for now. then look at some of the airlines. united in the past 24 hours saying we're recommending our workers take voluntary separation, 20 days unpaid leave. this is awful for the workers that we're talking about. just to give you a sense of how many we're talking about, it's 1 in 10 workers in the united states attached to the travel industry. we're talking 5.8 million different people. even as states open up, kate,

i'm not sure that people are going to have the confidence to travel. certainly not internationally. even if they have the money to do so. and i think that's the other critical question as well. >> that is a critical question. you're absolutely right. what are you hearing from the likes of uber and airbnb in this? >> trouble. this has gone from being something of a freedom for cheaper travel to people to being a fear of infection in a pandemic. do you want to get in a car with a stranger? do you want to travel and stay in a stranger's home? you probably don't. and we're seeing this with the numbers. we have had airbnb say today they're cutting 25% of their workforce. uber cutting 14%. that's small fries. thousands of people compared to the millions of drivers, the millions of people that are supplementing their income renting out rooms. we don't have a scale of the economic damage that's being done just in the travel industry yet, kate, and it will become clear as we get a sense of what the recovery looks like. >> yeah, the tip of the iceberg

that we might be seeing right now is already just plenty. thank you, julia. really appreciate it. let's get a quick check of the markets right now. the dow down slightly at the moment. for the latest stock market news and strategy for your portfolio, check out markets now, streaming live at 12:45 p.m. eastern only at cnn business. >> still ahead, texas begins its reopening, but the mayor of austin says it is too soon. why he's worried of a second wave that could be coming and what he's trying to do about it. look, this isn't my first rodeo...

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more evidence today that remdesivir is the best hope at treating the coronavirus right now. the maker of the drug making a surprising announcement it may allow other companies to produce the drug internationally for the next couple years. the ceo of gilead also announcing the drug will be arriving to hospitals this week. after getting the emergency approval from the fda. stanford university conducted two clinical trials that led to that approval. the dean of stanford medical school joins us now.

dr. lloyd minor. thank you for being here. your team took part in the remdesivir trials that led to this important first step with fda authorization. do you consider this at the moment kind of the best hope for a treatment? or where do you turn the focus next? how do you build on it? >> well, thank you, kate. good morning. it's good to be with you. i think remdesivir offers sound evidence from the trials released last week that it is helpful in treating patients who have moderate to severe illness and are hospitalized with covid-19. i think the next focus, one of the areas of next focus is in the outpatient arena. how can we identify therapeutics that can be beneficial in treating patients who have the infection but who fortunately are not ill enough to require hospitalizations? the goal there, of course, is to treat the infection, keep them

recovering at home, and prevent them from needing to be hospitalized. we have a clinical trial here going on with a drug ca, and th will be others started at well. that i think will be an area of focus in the future in addition to having remdesivir available for patients who do require hospitalization because they're not able to maintain their blood oxygen level or they have other manifestations of illness that require hospitalization. >> how significant is it that gilead is considering letting other companies produce the drug for a period of time internationally, do you think? >> i think it is significant. remdesivir is not an easy drug to manufacture. it requires special processes and scaling up the manufacturing and production of the drug will be very important now that the fda has issued the emergency use

authorization. and we're still anticipating that there will be patients in hospitals in the united states and other countries that can potentially benefit from the drug. therefore, scaling up manufacturing is extraordinarily important. and having some central control over the release of the drug, as will be done here in the united states with the government overseeing the distribution of the drug, that's very important also. >> i want to also ask you about the quest for a vaccine. president trump has been optimistic that one will be available as soon as january. but let me play for you what he said about this last night. >> the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine, and i think we're doing very well on vaccines. but with or without a vaccine, it's going to pass. >> this is going to pass with or without a vaccine. is that how you see it, doctor? from a scientific perspective. >> well, there are many things that will need to happen in

order to bring this virus under control. as more and more people are infected and recover from the infection, we suspect we haven't yet proven, but we suspect that there will be immunity growing in the population from people who have been infected or perhaps who have had exposure to the virus but not had infection. now, we don't know how quickly that immunity will develop. and we're not even sure that people with antibodies today are immune to reinfection. that's an area of intense research interest right now. so really, there are several different ways to get rid of the virus. one is by developing large-scale immunity in the population, either through infection or developing immunity through a vaccine or some combination of the two. the other way, of course, to control the virus would be to have very effective antiviral medications. we know, for example, that when i began my medical career, you know, three decades ago, hiv was

still essentially a 100% fatal disease. now, fortunately, we can successfully medically manage people with hiv infection, and we even have effective prophylactic treatments to prevent the infection. we still don't have an hiv vaccine today, but we have controlled, we have managed hiv, and the search for a vaccine goes on. that's the other strategy that could be applicable for this virus, for the virus. but i think however, i'm more optimistic about the development of a vaccine for the sars covid-2 virus than has been the case with hiv, although we certainly haven't given up the focus on an hiv vaccine. the other thing to mention is that -- >> i was going to say, and we know that you are a medical school, we know stanford has been an integral part in all of

that. doctor, thank you so much for coming in. i really appreciate your time. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> coming up for us, texas begins restarting parts of its economy. of course, this is despite a recent rise in cases. could reopening cause a second wave, just as i was talking about previously? ith moderately to severely active crohn's disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection or flu-like symptoms or sores, have had cancer, or develop new skin growths, or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options.

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thoughts and beliefs. but let's start with facts. and that's what i have been doing for the people of the state of new york. let me give you facts. our total hospitalization rate is down again. you see this curve. we talked about it on the way up, which was a painful journey. we talked about it at the quote/unquote apex, which turned into more of a plateau, a flattening, and now we're seeing it gradually decline. we would have liked to see a steeper, faster decline, but this is where we are, and it's a painfully slow decline. but it's better than the numbers going the other way. you see it on total hospitalizations. you see it on intubations. and you see it also in the number of new cases per day. this is important because while we're seeing the hospitalization rate go down, and you see the number of new cases going down,

those number of new cases are still problematic, right? so it means 600 new cases yesterday. with everything we have done, we still have 600 new cases yesterday. either walking in the door to hospitals or people who are in hospitals who are then diagnosed with covid. but that number is also going down. one of the most stubborn situations and the most distressing are the numbers of deaths. and that is down from where we were, but it's still 232 yesterday, which is an unimaginable and painful reality that we have to deal with. and when people talk about how good things are going and the decline and the progress, that's all true. it's also true that 232 people were lost yesterday, and that's 232 families that are suffering

today. also, a caution in the number of deaths. i know the reporters and everyone likes to trace these numbers and document these numbers. i think we're going to find when all is said and done that the numbers are much different than we actually thought they were. the amount of information that is now coming out that changes what we believed or what we were told happens almost on a daily basis. this was a virus that started in china. now, last week, the cdc says, oh, it didn't come from china. it actually came from europe to the east coast. that's how it got to new york and that's how it got to chicago, et cetera. that by the time we turned off travel from china, the china travel ban, the virus was already gone, and it was in europe, and then it came here from europe. and we didn't know at the time,

so february, march, flights were landing. people coming from italy, from the uk, et cetera. they were bringing the virus. we didn't know. they're now saying that the virus may not have come just in february and march. the virus may have come late last year. they're doing testing in chicago now on people who passed last november and december to see if they passed from the covid virus. so i think this is all going to change over time. so a note of caution. and i think it's going to be worse when the final numbers are tallied. we're also not fully documenting all of the at-home deaths that may be attributable to covid. so i think that the reality is going to be actually worse. but there's no doubt it's a time of unprecedented anxiety, stress. people want answers. people want answers now. having had a paycheck. they don't know where their job is, they don't know if they're

going back to work, where they're going back to work, when they're going back to work, and they want answers now. i understand that fully. but before we look for answers, let's make sure we're all understanding the same question, right? and the question here is not do we open or reopen the society, when do we reopen. we have to reopen the society. it's like asking when do you start breathing? you have to breathe. the economy must function. people need incomes. the economy has to work. the state needs revenues. people have to be able to live their lives. you have to be able to get out of the house. you have to be able to see friends, you have to be able to see family. it's not a question of do we reopen. it's a question of how we reopen. that's really the question that we have to grapple with and that we're dealing with in new york. our position in new york is the

answer to the question how do we reopen is by following facts and data, as opposed to emotion and politics. right? everyone has emotion. i want to go back to work today. i want to gesee my family today. i want to be able to go to a bar and have a couple drinks and socialize with my friends today. i do, by the way. but it's not about emotion. it's not about political position on reopening. there's no democratic position, republican position. this virus kills democrats and republicans. there's no politics to this. deal with facts and deal with data. and use that to instruct you, even more important at a time of high emotion. understand the emotion. appreciate the emotion, but deal on the facts and the data. and you have it. you can calibrate by the number of hospitalizations the infection rate, the number of

deaths, the percentage of hospital capacity, the percentage you're finding on antibody tests, the percentage you're finding on diagnostic tests, positive/negative. you're collecting tracing data. make your decisions based on the information and the data. that's what we're saying in new york. that actually works. and by the way, we know it works. when you look, there's a chart today that was published by "the new york times." you look at what's happening in new york, yes, our line is going down. our number of cases is going down. we have turned the corner, and we're on the decline. you take new york out of the national numbers, the numbers for the rest of the nation are going up. they are going up. to me, that vindicates what we're doing here in new york, which says follow the science.

follow the data. put the politics aside and the emotion aside. what we're doing here shows results. the hospitalization rate is down, the number of deaths is down, and the number of new cases is down. for me, i have been focusing on this number of new cases. that's where our health professionals are focused. why? because with everything we have done, closed schools, closed businesses, everybody shelter at home, all of the precautions about wear a mask, wear gloves, et cetera, you still have 600 new cases that walked in the door yesterday. week before that, we still saw 1,000 new cases every day. where are those new cases still coming from, because we have done everything we have to close down. how are you still generating 600 new cases every day? where are they coming from? again, let's look at the facts. let's look at the data.

let's understand. and see what we can do. so what we have done over the past few days is we asked hospitals, look at just those new cases who are coming in. yesterday, 600 new cases. where are those people coming from and what can we learn from those people to further target and refine our strategy? when you look at where they're coming from, they are primarily coming from downstate new york, which is not surprising. basically, equally distributed. long island is 18%. so that's a number that jumps out at you. rockland, westchester, which is where we did have a problem, that's down to 11%. when you look at the racial breakdown of who's getting hospitalized, you see it's disproportionately minorities. disproportionately african-american and latino. again, in downstate new york.

higher percentage male. 52/48. we don't know exactly why. but the virus doesn't discriminate generally. and a very high percentage comorbidities, which is what we have been talking about and which we understand, which is not a surprise. this is a surprise. overwhelmingly, the people were at home. where there's been a lot of speculation about this, a lot of people, again, had opinions. a lot of people have been arguing where they come from and where we should be focusing, but if you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes. less than 1% came from jail or prison. 2% came from the homeless population. 2% from other congregant facilities. but 66% of the people were at home. which is shocking to us. disproportionately older, but by the way, older starts at 51 years old.

i'm a little sensitive on this point. but if older starts at 51 years old, then that's a large number of us old folk in this state and in this country. so that whole vulnerable population being old, well, old is now 51 and up. so think about that. 60 to 70, 20%. 70 to 80, 19%. but 51 years old is old. okay. then i am very old. transportation method, we thought maybe they were taking public transportation. and we have taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually, no. because these people were literally at home. 2% of car services, 9% were driving their own vehicle. only 4% were taking public

transportation. 2% were walking. 84% were at home. literally. were they working? no. they were retired or they were unemployed. only 17% working. so that says they're not working, they're not traveling. they're predominantly downstate. predominantly minority, predominantly older, predominantly nonessential employees, and that's important. we were thinking maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work. that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. that's not the case. and they were predominantly at home. so now that's only three days, that's just about 100 hospitals. 1,000 people. but it re-enforces what we have been saying, which is much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself.

everything is closed down. government has done everything it could. society has done everything it could. now it's up to you. are you wearing a mask? are you doing the hand sanitizer? if you have younger people who are visiting you and may be out there and may be less diligent with the social distancing, are you staying away from older people, older starting at 51, by the way? and but it comes down to personal behavior. this is not a group that we can target with this information. it's really about personal behavior. another issue that we're looking at and we're trying to understand, what is happening in these hot spot clusters that you see popping up? you see it happening across the country in meat plants where you have a significant number of people getting infected, and there's now a meat shortage in the nation. well, we have a hot spot in new

york state. we have a hot spot in upstate new york, madison and onita counties, and it's around an agricultural business, but it's not a meat processing plant. it's actually a greenhouse farm. and we have dozens of cases coming from the employees in this situation. so what does that tell you? well, it's not really about meat or vegetables. right? there's nothing about the fact that it was a meat processing plant because we have a vegetable processing plant. it is about worker density and large gatherings. that's the caution flag here. that's the message. it's not about poultry, not about meat. it's not about vegetables. it's when you run a facility with a large number of workers in a dense environment. and we learned that already in new york when we had the new rochelle hot spot, which was the first hot spot in the nation,

new rochelle westchester. and the lesson was, one or two people infected who go to a large gathering or a dense that virus just takes off on you. and we learned that in new rochelle. they're learning it again in meat processing plants and poultry processing plants across the nation. and we just went through it again in, and we're going through it now in madison and oneida counties. so that's something that we have to watch and keep in mind. also at the same time that we're going through this reopening exercise, i want to make sure we don't miss the opportunity in the moment. and the opportunity in the moment is that we went all through this. let's learn the lessons and let's take this moment in history to actually improve from where we are and to build it back better. i want to set the bar high and

set the goal of not just replacing what we did. okay, everybody go back to where we were. i don't want to say that we spent all this time, all this pain, all this suffering, lost all these deaths, only to go back to where we were. go back to a better place! how do you take, how do you find the silver lining in this viral storm and actually improve your situation? we're on long island. we went through superstorm sandy. it was horrendous! thousands of people displaced. but we learned and we built back better. long island is better for having gone through hurricane sandy. well, how can you say that? because it's a fact. we learned, we improved from a horrendous situation. well, how do we do that here? and that's part of what we want to do. you know, people talk about making changes in society. change is very hard to make.

change is hard in your own personal life, right? how many new year's resolutions did we make as a society that are still in effect here in may, right? i was supposed to lose five pounds. i was supposed to be running every day. i was supposed to never lose my temper. forget it. one week. maybe ten days for the temper. but history does show that people are ready for change at certain moments. and i believe this is one of those moments, like a superstorm sandy, like a 9/11, like we've seen after natural disasters around the country, where people say, i get it, and i'm ready to make changes. and that's what we want to do. and that's what we talk about when we say, look, this is not just about reopening, it's about rebuilding, it's literally about reimagining and moving the state forward at this moment. and we want to do that. how do we come up with a better transportation system? how do we have more social equity in society, a better

safety system, better housing, better economy, better education, better health care system? and we need the best minds available to take this moment to put together with the best thinking that we can find to make the best improvement. one of the lessons is in public health and our hospital system, we worked in an impossible situation when this all started. we were told that we may need 130,000 hospital beds for covid. that was the initial projections. we only have 50,000 hospital beds in this state. how do you get 50,000 hospital beds to a 130,000 capacity? it was impossible. and by the way, we don't really have a public health system. we have separate hospitals all across the state. but they don't really function

as one system. they never really work together on a day-to-day basis. they don't share patient load. they don't share ppe. how do you do that? and we scrambled and we made it work. but now how do we institutionalize that? and how are we ready for the next covid or the next whatever it is? how do we use telemedicine better? how do we better allocate our health resources? how do we harden the health care system? but let's take the lessons we just learned and institutionalize it. and we've asked michael dowling to do that. he was a big part of the scramble that we went through to make it work and northwell was a leader. it's the largest, in my opinion the most innovative, but how do we take that and institutionalize it so we don't have to go through this again? so next time something like this happens, we can just open a book and it says, here's what we do, step "a," step "b," step "c."

and we thank michael for his service with that. he'll be working with dr. zucker from the department of health. another area is education. we went to remote learning overnight. that's what happens when you close the schools. okay, all the students go home. we're going to go to remote learning. well, what is remote learning? and we weren't really ready for it. we had all talked about it, thought about it. there was some. but we were not really prepared to do it. we then had to do it. we implemented it, and god bless the teachers in this state. they did a phenomenal job, and god bless parents who had to figure out quickly how to use computers and technology and zoom this and zoom that. but how do we really learn those lessons? and we went to bill gates, and he's going to work with us on reimagining the education system. and i want to thank him very much. how do you create a testing and tracing system? by the way, what is a testing and tracing system? right? we never did this before. well, we have to take thousands

of covid tests, antibody tests, diagnostic tests, and then we have to trace, have an army of tracers to do this. we're doing it for the first time ever, but how do we learn and institutionalize it? yes, we have to do this with covid, but we're not going to go through all of this trouble and then just forget it. this will happen again. some people say this virus comes back in the fall or the winter, or there will be another health emergency. but michael bloomberg has generously said that he would work with us and use his philanthropy to develop that testing and tracing. and then on a larger scale, how do we really use new technology in the economy of tomorrow? and that's the lesson that we're all learning, right? work from home. telemedicine. tele-education. it's all about technology and a better use of technology. and really incorporating the

lessons into that. and probably the best mind in this country, if not in this, on the globe, to do this is, i believe, a true visionary, especially in the field of technology, and that's eric schmidt, former ceo of google, obviously, and just saw a future that everyone else envisioned and then developed the way to get there. and we've asked him to come work with us to bring that kind of visionary aspect to government and society. let's look at what we just went through. let's anticipate a future through that lens and tell us how we can incorporate these lessons. and mr. schmidt, who has tremendous demands on his talent an his time, has agreed to help us and head an effort to do this. eric, thank you so much for doing this and thank you so much for being with us. >> well, thank you, governor.

you have been doing an incredible job for our state, and frankly, for the nation, and i'm really pleased to help. the first priorities of what we're trying to do is focus on telehealth, remote learning and broadband. we can take this terrible disaster and accelerate all of those in ways that will make things much, much better. the solutions that we have to come up with have to help the people most in need. people are in different siuations throughout the state, and we need to consider all of them and not pick one or the other. so, the intent is to be very inclusive and make this thing better. we need to look for solutions that can be presented now and accelerated and use technology to make things better. my own view is that these moments are a chance to revisit things that are not getting enough attention, and we have systems that need to be updating and need to be reviewed. my commitment is to make this period, this sort of awful period, to be a period, as you describe in long island, where new york state, new york city, everyone comes out stronger.

the public-private partnerships that are possible with the intelligence of the new yorkers is extraordinary. it needs to be unleashed. >> great. you are the person to help us do that. we all ready. we're all in. we are new yorkers, so we're aggressive about it and we're ambitious about it, and i think we get it, eric. you know, we went through this period, and we realize that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend, if done the right way. and i hope that when we look back on this time, we talk about all the pain, all the suffering, but we also say it was a moment in time where we came together and we brought a creative aspect and an innovative aspect and we worked together in ways we never did before. and we made this place a better place. and i can't thank you enough for doing it. eric, thank you very much. i look forward to continuing the conversation and working together. mr. schmidt, thank you. >> okay. thank you, governor. >> thank you.

that is exciting. last point today is national nurses' day, because you know, nobody knows better than new yorkers how our nurses really step up with our health care professionals. you know, when the pressure is on in our lives, you wind up seeing the best and the worst in people and heroes rise to the occasion. and that's what we saw here in the state of new york. our frontline health care workers were just extraordinary. showing up every day, working impossible hours. a virus that nobody understood, fear of infection. but they just kept rising to the occasion, and that's why new york and the nation just loves all our health care workers, but our nurses especially have done a phenomenal job, and we thank them from the bottom