>> as always, thanks so much. we also thank our guests. also thanks to those who wrote in with your questions and to everyone who joined us. if you didn't get your question answered tonight the conversation continues at cnn.com/coronavirus answers. news continues right now with chris cuomo. hey everybody i'm chris cuomo. welcome to primetime. will today be the last day that we wait before fighting back against this pandemic? i say we. because after 138,000 dead this president has not really moved much from his original delusion. >> they timed the impeachment hoax. that was on a perfect conversation. and this is their new hoax. >> we now all know that the pandemic is all too real. and that the real hoax is the trump administration's alleged

response. he can't wear a mask at the resolute desk but he can go goya o'boya? he can't help states with schools but has plenty of energy to take on this catastrophe. >> so showerheads you take a shower the water doesn't come out. you want to wash your hands the water doesn't come out. so what do you do? just stand there longer or take a shower longer? because my hair i don't know about you but it has to be perfect. perfect. >> you could just turn the knob more or call a plumber. the bigger point is why make up a problem like he just did when you have a real pandemic? team trump's lack of effort to this point has left them with only this weak sauce to sell. >> we believe this president has great approval in this country. his historic covid response speaks for itself. >> reporter: yep.

historic. historic low numbers. historic hoax as a response. that's why we, you, i, your neighbors, your community, we can no longer wait. you want your kids in school? you want to get back to work for real? demand those in power do their damn jobs. how? you have to get angry about what's happening. you must be outraged by the obvious. i know you are. here's why. good conscience will not move these men and women to do the right thing for us. okay? you see it. it has not led our leaders to lessen our load. what will is tapping into their fear of consequence. many years have passed, but one of the great movies captured

where we are right now and we -- where change has to start. remember this from network. >> it's a depression. everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. the dollar buys a nickel's worth. banks are going bust. shop keepers keep a gun under the counter. punks are running wild in the street and nobody seems to know what to do and there is no end to it. i want you to get mad. i don't want you to protest. i don't want you to riot. i don't want you to write to your congressman because i don't know what to write. i don't know about the depression and inflation and russians and crime in the street all i know is first you've got to get mad. you've got to say i'm a human being god dammit my life has value. so i want you to get up now. i want all of you to get up out of your chairs. i want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it,

and stick your head out and yell, i am as mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore. >> it was true then. it's true now. if you are not mad as hell at what's happening in this country, you're not paying attention. you can go online. you don't have to go out the window anymore. you have to let the people in power, the people on the fringe, the people who comment on the people on the fringe, let them know how outraged you are. let them know you are going to vote everywhere and in every race you can. none of us is immune to this danger. only two states have declining cases. 39 are on the rise. the reason is the hoax of our response. there is no reason for america to be the worst. there is no reason for texas to have to at this point with all we had time to prepare for to be

bringing in refrigerated trailers to store the dead. florida is on fire. governor desantis mocked concerns. now he babbles through a mask, back peddling as cases crush that state and all those good people. more daily cases in florida than new york had at its peak. more than germany. the uk and japan combined. right now. more than 50 hospital icus have reached capacity. why? desantis called the explosion a blip. all those sick and dead, no plan, in denial, hiding hospitalization numbers. the question is will voters make him a blip? where is the outrage? f force him to face the facts. georgia, republican governor there, kemp, banning cities from mandating masks in public.

think about this. he is suing atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms, who is dealing with covid, her husband, her kids, he is forcing a block of her mask orlando. not the other way, forcing her to have masks because they work. fighting against one of your only tools. and why? this is the outrage. because they are all -- kemp, desantis, abbott in texas -- they're all on the trump train and they're all off the rails as a result. there should be outrage. because you don't have to be unreasonable to be on the right. gop led arkansas required masks in public today. there are reasonable republicans still. governors like maryland's larry hogan compelled to call out this bs. he just wrote an op-ed slamming trump's hopeless covid response. this republican, the head of the governors association by the way, okay, says the president has left his state to fight

alone, like all the others. the boldest move by trump in this mess has been what? objectively, it's been this power play he just made to hide data from you. it is an outrage. as of last night the cdc had to take down its covid patient data under orders from hhs. but what happened? you're outraged. the media is outraged. this is bs what he's doing. i don't have to curse for this to be vulgar. it's all profane. it's all vulgar. don't worry about the words. worry about what warrants those words. so because of the outrage, hhs directed that the data go back up. you see, they fear consequence. they fear the outrage. you have the power. but what's the but? now they say that data won't be

modified after july 14th. why not? give me a good reason for limiting your access, my access as a journalist to reality. there is none. it is an outrang. so be outraged. this is not about facts. it's about crushing the fiction. remember trump retweeting a conspiracy theory from this former game show host, on a show called "love connection." he accused everybody he could think of about lying about covid to hurt trump. what happened? he now says his own son has covid. he put up a follow up tweet that this is in fact real. it is here. before deactivating his twitter account. that one didn't get a retweet from president trump. i wonder why not? it is an outrage.

let's be clear. i'm saying be outraged. not inhumane. forgive woolary's ignorance. i wish he hadn't canceled his account. i wish he would now start talking about the reality instead of his political reality. i feel for his kid. this sucks. even if you don't have symptoms you don't know what will happen next. i hope his family recovers and his son recovers well and nobody else gets it. but you cannot forgive a president to fake a response to a pandemic let alone for political gain. i would bet you anything if you start voicing your outrage, if he and the others in power, the men and women know you are coming for them, big change. the whole dynamic there would change. we need that right now. if you want kids in school, our butts back where we can provide for them best where we work you have to do it now. so focus our energy on what the

reality is on what has to happen. i want to bring in the director of the harvard global health institute and i want, thank you very much for being with me as always, to start with this idea of i hope i'm wrong. what good reason is there to say, no, no, not to the cdc hospitals. give it to hhs. oh, okay. fine. cdc can still have them. all right. i want you all to have access to the data. he is a scientist. all right. but not after july 14th. we're not going to update it after that. what is the good reason? >> chris, thank you for having me on. there is no good reason. >> you sure? >> you sure there is not some efficiency thing? >> sure. fine. let's play this out. cdc is not doing a great job. the data is not -- they are not handling this efficiently. let's move this to hhs. okay? theoretically possible, cdc is

the clearing house for all of our public health data. we rely on them. why would you take one piece of data out if they are not doing a good job let's fix it. let's give them resources, technical expertise, whatever they are missing but this idea we're going to create a whole parallel structure doesn't make a lot of sense to me. >> what about the july 4th cut-off? >> we are early in the pandemic, chris. and so if starting now we are not going to have updates and regular information, on hospitalizations, how the heck do we know, like how things are going and how we actually manage these things. the july 4th cut-off is a huge problem. >> the argument that, hey listen. everything is true. okay? you have 39 states going up only two going down. this is what was always going to happen. this is not about a mess up of any kind of leadership. it is not about people being too lax. the virus was always going to go

through. is that true? was this inevitable? >> not even close. you can say, well was that just your opinion? no. i look at the rest of the world. look at europe. people are opening up. the economies are in better shape. kids are going back to school. why? because they controlled the virus. in our country we have chosen as our political leaders have chosen not to control the virus. that means that in not just 39 states but a dozen states things are out of control. another dozen states things are bad but still manageable. these are choices we've made, chris. these are not inevitable, not faded. >> we can still make better choices especially as we get more information. two headlines. one, cdc finds most patients seem to share at least 1 of 3 symptoms -- fever, cough, shortness of breath.

only 45% experienced all three. i'm one of those by the way. so what is the relevance here in terms of why is this good to know? >> it's just a reminder that while this virus has lots of different manifestations at the end of the day almost everybody really experiences it as a respiratory infection -- fever, cough, shortness of breath. those are the things that really drive this. so if we just focus on that, anybody who has any of those three things needs to get identified, get tested. >> smart testing. i got you. how about this other one? do you buy the blood type stuff? they say a may be more susceptible. i'm a meg. good grade bad blood type apparently. and that always low risk. my wife is "o" and she got it but a much more mild case than i had. and there are a bunch of "o"s in our midst who have these weird stories of not getting it,

despite the fact that dot dot dot and they have these individualized horror stories i took care of this one who was sick and i never got it. do you buy the blood type thing? >> there is some evidence clearly that people with "o" less likely to get it, "a" more likely to have a severe case. i don't know what it means. here is the biggest bottom line. there are plenty of people with "o" type blood who still end up very sick so it is not magically protective. second, none of us can change our blood type. i'm not sure it really helps at the end of the day. we have to understand what it teaches us about the biology of the virus. that's what is important and is going to take a lot of work, team work of people coming together to figure that out but from a functional point of view and a policy point of view it doesn't really change anything. >> thank you for bringing the information, the insight, and helping us understand things better. we're all in thank you.

>> all right. tonight georgia's governor is going on offense against one of his own mayors for defying his ban on masks. again, this is alice in wonderland crazy talk. okay? the only freedom that kemp is protecting is the virus's freedom to spread. let's bring in another georgia mayor who says he's deeply frustrated. what does that mean? what is he going to do? next. ♪ we see you. doing your part by looking out...for all of us. and though you may have lost sight of your own well-being, aetna never did. by setting up virtual monitoring for chronic patients, 24-hour telemedicine visits, and mental health resources for everyone. we're always here to help you focus on your health. because it's always, time for care. ♪

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when you look at the communities that have made progress against this pandemic, they all share wearing masks. taking hygiene seriously. taking distancing seriously. more masks, fewer shutdowns, period. so explain georgia to me, to yourself. it is going from bad to worse there. okay? hopefully, look. it goes up it comes down. what makes it come down? the governor there is suing the mayor of atlanta saying you can't insist that people wear masks. it includes the governor's hometown of athens, clark county, where my next guest is from, democrat there. welcome to primetime. >> chris, good to have this time

with you. i guess it was under other circumstances. >> me too, sir. is the family well? does anybody in your immediate care have it? >> my family is well. we have an 8-year-old son. we all got tested three weeks ago because i came into contact with a colleague who was positive and fortunately we didn't contract covid and i'm sorry about your own experience but really i want to prevent that for as many people in this community as i possibly can. it is difficult under these circumstances with the governor seemingly unwilling to go to the place where many, many republican governors have gone. texas, alabama, we're hearing about arkansas today. it is just clear there are some simple health care guidance and science that we all ought to be following across the legal spectrum. >> what is the legal basis for fighting masks? i can see the legal basis for insisting on masks and mayor gertz says no, no masks here

we're about freedom and then the governor sues and says too bad you are endangering public health but how do you legally justify the reverse? what is the liberty argument? >> i don't believe there is any legal justification. i think it is strictly political. i have some measure of sympathy for governor kemp and people across the political spectrum who are leaders in this day and time when everybody has to figure out how to respond to every tweet and every bizarre utterance out of the white house. it is like a strange game of political twister. it makes everybody's life difficult. i'd move my family into a cardboard box on the street for national and statewide leadership right now. in lieu of that mayors are acting as i have, as the mayor of atlanta has, and savannah, and augusta, and about 14 cities across the state of georgia and we find out yesterday the governor is going to try to countermanned our orders. we are not lefting our orders in athens though because we want to

be sure whether you are small business or national chain you are similarly safe. we are seeing chain after chain, walmart, cvs, kroger, declare we're going to require masks in all our stores. so business people have been asking me to create as level a playing field as possible. >> plus you've got the university. i was lucky enough to go visit there when i was playing in college. they have their own rule about masks. they're like what, 40,000 strong dloun. >> exactly right. how do societies even match up? the only thing i want to push back on, mayor, is why all this understanding and forgiveness? why aren't you outraged by what the governor is doing? there is no public health on it. if you guys don't start knuckling up against him you'll lose this fight. people don't want to do what's hard. they want to do what's easy. >> and we have to be in this together. certainly i get this fringe

phone calls that argue the liberty questions about masks. i worked in retail in the 1980s when we transitioned from having ashtrays at the end of every aisle in the record store i worked at to understanding hey that is not to the benefit of other customers who don't smoke or the employees who are in there. it is a very similar circumstance right now when we're talking about covid and the ability to keep aerosol spray and droplets from infecting other people. >> just in public. not like you always to have a mask on. if you don't want to wear a mask stay home or find places to socially distance, 6 feet apart. how much of your day do you have to spend in close quarters in your community? you know, i just feel this is pastime for political debate and it's got to be, you know, because they have the outrage angle. kemp has outrage on his side which makes no sense. people who don't want to wear a mask are outraged.

they call mayor girtz. i'm mad at you. you should be mad at them. people who want to be safe should be mad at them. >> today people are. i'm hearing from constituent after constituent who is saying, please, hang on to the mask order. we want to be safe. we want a community that is safe. we want a 40,000 strong university student population that is safe and as you well know because you've had conversations about this even young people who are getting sick or having after effects, lung damage, and the like. >> they can communicate it even if they don't have the symptoms. mayor, i feel for you. i feel for leaders right now. but look. this is what you wanted. everybody wanted to be in a position of power to make a difference. you're there right now. that is exactly the task at hand. i don't think this lawsuit can do anything but it can buy time. so hopefully the messaging to people that even if it's not a law, even if the law is in dispute it can still be the mandate among people. you know, social pressure. nothing dirty. nothing vulgar. this is about making people more

healthy not less healthy. but hopefully the community gets it right. we will keep our eyes on georgia. you are welcome here to tell us this state of play whenever it suits you. mayor kelly girtz, thank you. >> we'll stay strong. thank you, chris. >> stay strong. stay safe. god bless your family. >> thank you. all right. another big story. can't let it skip by. a global cyber attack on the people trying to save the united states with a covid vaccine. have you heard about this? the nsa blames the russians. and they're not alone. okay? do you hear that? where's mr. law and order? where is it? where is the president? where are his guys? right now on russia, next. my gums are irritated.

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okay. here's the headline. russians are messing with the coronavirus vaccine. this is the latest warning coming from national security officials in the united states and from experts in england and canada. now, with that kind of consensus you would think the president would be furious, right? after all in the middle of a pandemic that is literally killing us, his only move seems to be to tell us how quickly a vaccine is coming. >> i pleasing think we are goin a vaccine very soon. >> we are very close to a vaccine. we think we'll have a vaccine in the pretty near future. we think we'll have a vaccine by the end of this year. >> so wouldn't you care if the russians were trying to mess with that effort? the hacking group caught going after researchers goes by a few different names. one of them is cozy bear. remember that? one of the same groups that we know was messing around with the

2016 election in a, quote, sweeping and systematic fashion. by the way, that hasn't stopped either. but there is just no urgency to do anything about it apparently. surely, after this president spent most of his time in office under investigation, was even impeached because of russian hacking, you'd think he would tell them to knock it off or worse, right? he loves to talk tough. then again i was there two years ago today when he stood on the world stage and embarrassed this country in a way i have never experienced before. do you remember this? >> my people came to me, dan coates came to me and some others. they said they think it's russia. i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be. >> wow. i'll never forget that. on the world stage he took the word of putin over his own

intel. at this point it is not even worth waiting for the crickets right? they know he won't say anything to vladimir putin just like he won't say anything about the possibility that russians were putting bounties on the heads of our troops. in the face of such repeated provocation it is the silence that is more telling than any words that can come out of his mouth. think about this as well. trump wanted you to focus today on these shiny pickup trucks outside the white house. i drive a ford but those are nice. his regulatory reform photo op, right? that's what he cares about. we know what they show. not the trucks hauling in refrigerated trailers for states like texas to store the dead, because the hospital morgues are full. that he doesn't want you to pay

attention to. but too bad. we will stay focused on what matters. we'll have a former fda commissioner who is now advising texas and the governor there on the crisis. what does he see? what happens next? okay, so let's talk home and auto bundle.

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if you take asthma medicines, don't change or stop them without talking to your doctor. so help heal your skin from within and talk to your eczema specialist about dupixent. if your financial situation has changed, we may be able to help. every state matters but the big states present unique challenges and they create more of an opportunity to assess what this pandemic does and what works in response. that's why we're watching california so carefully. florida. and of course texas. all right? they have a rising case problem. they have more importantly rising hospitalizations and rising death. now, here is why it's interesting. they have a mask mandate. they have a republican governor

there. i can't believe i have to qualify that. like if you're a republican you may not want a mask. that is how crazy this mode is right now. governor abbott is a republican and he said no we got to wear masks now. yes he fought them early on. he was on the trump train but that train crashes so you have to get off and make your own way. but he is sending this odd message about why a lockdown just can't happen. listen. >> people are panicking thinking i am about to shut down texas associated press gen. no. that is not the goal. i have been clear. i have been saying exactly what the head of cdc said today and that is if everyone can adopt the practice of wearing a facemask for the next four weeks we will be able to get covid-19 under control. >> yeah. the key is, if everyone. okay? and everyone socially distances. and everyone practices the right hygiene. but what happens if they don't? notice he said the word goal in

there. no, no. that's not the goal. right. but don't play. if it is not everyone, then what happens next? former fda commissioner mark mcclellan is advising the governor on the pandemic. good to see you my friend. welcome back on "primetime." >> good to be with you, chris. >> so i don't get it. why wouldn't you be open to whatever you need to do to get the cases down so you can rebuild and reopen with the assuredness we have to have these days? >> well, chris, the governor is right. if everybody did wear a mask, if everybody did keep out of large groups, if everybody did socially distance and stay home if they have symptoms, we could reopen the economy successfully. you're right that's not happening in texas, it is not happening in many other states to the extent that it needs to. it may not really need to be everybody but 90 percent plus is what it is going to take for these measures to work. and i think the governor also wanted to emphasize that people need to make these choices. local governments need to help enforce the mask mandate.

it's just like following the fire code in a restaurant or firing the no smoking and side rules. these are health measures that are really important right now. and i think he is trying to emphasize just how important it is for people to follow those steps. >> and also isn't texas a cautionary tale? they reopened too soon and the wrong way. it looks strong early on, right? you know, we don't care. we'll do it. texas tough. isn't that why they're in the situation they're in right now? >> it would have been much better if the opening had been slower and if it had come along with people taking that mask, wearing, and these other steps much more widely. if people were doing those things much more widely. at this point, though, it's -- it absolutely would help if people did follow the mask wearing more consistently. chris, i think there are some signs that that's happening. the local governments are helping now a bit. we've still got a ways to go to

get the mask wearing up. i think there are some signs texans are paying more attention. this isn't just an individual of individual choice but of being a good neighbor and caring about people around you which is also a big part of the texas tradition. >> also, safety is not weakness. right? we know what refrigerator trucks look like for bodies here in new york. we remember here. that is not a sign of any kind of balanced response to the threat. that is about a very extreme out of control situation. at what point, what has to happen for texas to think about, hey, i got to take another big step backwards so we can all move forward together? >> texas has been able to stay open to this point even without everybody or enough people following the guidance about masks and social distancing because of the response of the health care system. compared to new york in april, chris, they had more time to prepare and hats off to the health care providers in texas.

they've ramped up capacity in hospitals. they've gotten more ventilators. they're able to take care of more people in the icus. they are getting stretched right now. they're having to bring in extra health professionals. and that can't continue forever. so the governor is right. if everybody does change now and start following the guidance, then texas could stay open. but there is not much time left for those changes to happen. >> is it a coincidence that you have california, texas, arizona, florida, getting hit hard? the fact that these are governors who are echoing trump early on not a factor in the noncompliance and the problems? >> it could be a factor but, chris, we're starting to see these trends happening in other states. so you're right. texas, georgia, arizona, florida, we're early. florida has a democratic governor. they're having some of the same problems. now we're starting to see these trends in other states -- kentucky, missouri, other parts of the midwest. so the same thing will happen

elsewhere. we're still in the first wave of the pandemic. it's just the second phase was texas and the other big states. now the third phase is going to be the rest of the united states if we don't all take these steps together. >> right. that's why i'm talking at the top of the show tonight about outrage. people have to demand that people do what is good for them not just what looks strong in some bizarro universe. that takes me to senator rand paul. he's a doctor but he said something today that is tough to square with medicine. listen to this. >> kind of pro vaccine but i'm also pro freedom. look, there are millions of us like me now that are immune. are they going to hold me down and stick a needle in my arm? they probably will because these people believe in the idea that they are so right and their cause is so righteous that they can inflict it on others. >> how is he not playing politics there, scott? because who's immune by the way?

i had it. he had it. i have antibodies. he has antibodies. i don't think i'm immune. nobody will tell me i'm immune. so what does he know that i don't know and what is this freedom in balance with the vaccine? what is that all about to you? >> chris, chances are you are protected from the virus for a while but you're right. we don't know. this is a new virus. we don't know how long or how strong immunity is. so the vaccine is really going to be the way out of this. and if most people don't take it, if we don't get to that 60%, 70% level of immunity in a population the virus will keep spreading. it won't burn itself out because it has no place or not enough places to go. so if everybody has the attitude of i'm not going to take it i'll depend on other people we're not going to get there. sort of like with the mask we all have to be in this together, at least almost all of us. >> i hope you're right about the immunity thing. i don't know. so many people are losing antibodies because they didn't

have that strong a case. they're going away. we are not used to seeing that with antibodies. i am so unsure of things. i know one thing though. i got covid brain. if nene y i've known you 15 years and i called you scott? mark mcclellan, you've always been a benefit to me and my audience. thank you. stay well. we're going to stay focused on texas because there is another important perspective i need you to hear. this isn't about the politicians. okay? they are not the ones in trouble, not the ones to feel for unless they get sick. it is the people who do get sick and the people who are fighting to keep us well. a doctor and a health director who is on the front lines on all fronts. he's in an area that's swamped with cases, running out of equipment, and trying to manage it all after being infected himself. and it is not fair to the people that we say are our heroes to put them in the positions we are, so nonchalantly. i want you to hear what he's had

to deal with, next.

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as the situation in texas gets more dire, by the day, i want to give you a closer look at what's happening in south attack. hidalgo county. hospitals there have hit capacity. ambulances forced to hold patients for hours before a place can be found. icus the only way someone can get a bed is when another patient dies. in america. dr. ivan melendez is seeing all of this firsthand as the hi dahl hidalgo county health authority. he battled the virus himself. a tumor on his heart. makes you a little more high-risk as a doctor obviously knows. this is his first week back. let's move to outside and then move inside. doctor, thank you for the work

you do. thank you for being what we call on this show an ameri-can, someone we look up to for your service to others. what is the situation like in texas, from your perspective? >> thank you for having me on the show and allowing me to voice what is going on in our county of 1.2 million people. we at this point since july 1st especially have felt a dramatic increase. the statistics that you've mentioned, chris, around the hot spots in the nation is emblematic of what's going on here. we started before opening up the community and before having social distancing, before governor abbott, for whom i have the deepest respect for, before we opened up, we had eight people in the hospital. not we have 800. we had four icu patients. now we have 211. we had three people on ventilators. now we have 135. we -- it took us two months for 12 people to die in a population of 1.2 million people.

we felt that we were doing a strong strong job, and once we opened, the natural cycle of this virus, as you also know, also being an ex-patient, my god, now we're losing 30, 35 people a day. it took us 2 1/2, 3 months to get to 12. that would be considered a good day today. today we had 22, but we usually have 30 to 35. i cannot impress upon your audience and yourself, listening to your guests who are world experts and global system experts. but as an expert of the rio grande valley, i can tell you when you need to die to practically get a bed to covid. when you're up to ten hours on a stretcher waiting to be seen. when codes are being done in ambulances in the bays. when you have two or three people in emergency departments going on. the numbers go on. we have to bring in refrigerated

trucks to hold the bodies. when people do not want to go to the hospital because they're so afraid. every person i've talked to. one saw 73 patients ventilated. another doctor saw 82 patients ventilated. 30% of the people who are on ventilators do not make it. we're in dire need and we're exhausted. i'm not the only one to tell you that we -- we go home and we cry. we're exhausted emotionally. we get called at 3:00 in the morning thinking about covid. so, indeed, in the rio grande valley we have had an average of 17 deaths per 100,000 population since july 1st. the state had had two. houston's had two to three. so out of 100,000 people of our population, we had 17 die. >> you're getting hit hard. and, look, i understand that you respect the governor and totally, you know, that's your right. but you can't respect the fast reopening. because it had to precipitate

the cycle that you're in right now. and the cost isn't just in the numbers. you know, people get lost in the numbers. they're very helpful to a clinician like you because they allow you to understand and scale your resources and figure out what you have to do. i totally get that. but on the human level, you had to go through something that just breaks my heart. and i was just shocked to hear that you had gone back to work so fast with what you had to deal with. and i want people to understand this from your perspective. consuela de la cruz is a woman you had care of. she was not just a patient, though, she was a neighbor and a family friend through your mom. and you wound up against this reality of where people are forced to die alone in the hospital. and what is that like for you? what is the hardest part emotionally, doc, in dealing with someone that you know who is forced to be alone. you had somebody -- you had her son make a video for her, right?

>> that is correct. as you say, you can have the deepest respect for a person. that doesn't necessarily mean respect for the policy. that being said, you're right, i've lived in this community since 1965. the pictures that you are showing is of consuela de la cruz. this is an 82-year-old female that was my patient. she was my neighbor. this is one of my mother's best friends. it's very common our patients, even though we're a very large population, 1.2 million, we all grew up together. this woman was a pillar of our neighborhood. every night she would do her three laps around our block with her cane and the hat she's wearing in that photograph. ins spiration to us all while the rest of our parents were humbling around in canes, this woman was as fit as you can possibly be. you see the family pictures there. they went to the beach the week after the fourth of july, they went to the beach, and they were

in their their own place. they were away from most of the crowds as you can see in the photograph, there is ample distancing. people were not symptomatic. they have a child. which is relatively unusual. the small child hat the virus. >> oh no. >> unbeknownst to anyone. and the majority of family members, of course, have tested positive. within nine days, ms. de la cruz, unfortunately, passed away. >> oh, doc. >> and as you say -- yeah, as you say, the dramatic part of this. if you can imagine you're taking care of someone that you love, you've known forever. her son calls you and says, they've called me from the hospital and we believe she'll die. then he sends a video that is a good-bye video telling her how he respects her, he loves her, she's an inspiration. and by the time i get to see her that day, she's died. show gone away. and so as an honor to him and his wishes, what can you do except open up the body bag and show -- show this poor woman her

son's video saying good-bye to her? and so these are the experiences that we're living. the doctors that we work in the emergency department, three are hospitalized. the nurses that brought us in -- i've been a doctor for 30-plus years. the nurses that brought us in, we're going to their funerals. it's not just strangers we're treating. these are members of our community. they're our friends. >> i hear you. doc, this is just heartbreaking. and thank you for the work you're doing. thank you for your teams. thank you for feeling for your community to come back at the risk you're at. you're always a call away from us to tell us what's going on. you will have this platform. we will not forget. dr. ivan melendez, ivan, stay healthy. best to you and your family. god bless. >> thank you to the compassion to our community and thank you for the opportunity to get our story out. thank you, sir. >> thank you. all right. we'll be right back. p called ran that gives me cash back on everything. that's ebates. i get cash back on electronics, travel, clothes. you're talking about ebates. i can't stop talking about rakuten. pretty good deal - peter sfx [blender]

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