good night. ♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." across this country, ordinary life is slowing and in some cases grinding to a halt. last night, the nba announcing it suspending the rest of the season. today, the nhl joined them and the ncaa announced the march madness basketball tournament was scheduled be played withoute fans being canceled entirely. disneyland is closing. colleges are canceling classes but schools are keeping children at home. the stock market dipped another 10% today.. high-profile shifts, ones in the headlines. but beneath them are many smaller but profound disruptions.10 parents struggling to care for kids and go to work. weddings planned for a year or more curtailed or counseled,

along with graduations, vacations, first communions, bar mitzvahs, even funerals. workers worried about lost wages or being laid off, as the stock market falling some fearing for the retirement. last night the president announced a travel ban for europe, a big deal for any family members working or studying in europe right now and that's an awful lot of people. american citizens will be allowed to return but today but the president said that citizens who test positive for the virus will be barred from flights, unclear how that will be enforced. so far, testing has been minimal for those not already sick. those americans who can return will have to do so through certain airports where enhanced screening is in place, which makes sense. also they will be a self quarantined at home for 14 days. the travel ban may slow the spread here but it certainly won't stop the virus. currently, america still has fewer than 2,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus but thanks to testing, nobody believes that the actual number. they are clearly many thousands of infected people in united states and the disease is

so contagious that that number will grow rapidly. this is not a this is something that you could get, people you know will get and not too long from now. what are the symptoms of coronavirus. in many cases it resembles the noflu. fever, coughing, body aches, severe fatigue, all frequent symptoms of it. other symptoms more common inn the coronavirus are shortness of breath and coughing up fluid in the lungs. here are some good news, people are not serious risk from dying from it, even if they don't get it. if you are under 50, the chances of dying it are low. the older you are, the more dangerous it is. in china, the coronavirus has been fatal for those 10% over the age of 80. the disease is also much deadlier to those with diabetes, heart conditions, lung disease. you need to take this seriously,

avoid social gatherings and groups, practice and use and hygiene. people may mock you for this, ignore it. it's the right thing. if you are not in those groups, you don't need to worry quite as much but you still ought to be careful. you may not die from the virus. if you are infected, you can spread it to someone who does die. it's a public service but stay home if you feel ill. if your symptoms keep getting worse or if you are in risk group for the virus, be ready to go to a physician or hospital right away. if you are unsure whether you have coronavirus, how should you go about getting tested for it to confirm? we wish we could tell you the answer that question. y honestly we do but we know people look for testing can't find them. that's common because right now america's testing for coronavirus is grossly inadequate. dr. anthony fauci has confirmed that. >> the system does not -- is not

really geared to what we need right now. what you are asking for. that ise a failing. >> a failing. >> idea of anybody getting it easily the way in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that. do i think we should be? yes. but we are not. >> tucker: so there's an awful lot of confusion over this question of testing, whether test are available, who can get one under what circumstances, aa lot of criteria for testing. we can't answer those questions. if you are concerned, you should call a physician. a doctor will know what to do. congress cannot pass a bill to make this virus go away, but you can do a lot to keep your family safe by being prepared, doing the things we mentioned not panicking. as always, when government fallg short, it falls on us. dr. marc siegel has been with us and covering coronavirus from day one. he joins us tonight.

doctor, thank you for coming on. where are we as of tonight in the spread of this? >> we don't know because what you said. we don't know how many cases we have. we suspect thousands, but technically we only have confirmed a little over 1100. in south korea, they are testing 20,000 people a day. they know exactly how many cases they have and they are busy giving them giving different antiviral they are trying these drugs and starting to slow the spread. that's what we should be doing. you know this, tucker. i'm going around to every lab that supposedly has b this. i have the medium to keep the k swabs in. guess what i do not have. nobody seems to have the reagents to run the test. if i have a patient,ms and thats the key thing because i get all these calls are they long but somebody says i have a cough, shortness of breath, fever. i have to have a certain i have to have a certain

criteria for even the new york state lab or any lab to want to test this. i need to meet a certain criteria but i do not want to meet the criteria. i want to test anybody who could come in contact with someone. why should i test their story out? with hiv, i can test anybody, right? i should have the ability to calm fears by telling somebody they are negative, but i cannot. if they go to the hospital and we tell people not to go to the hospital and they get put in a special area, respiratory unit with other people who might have coronavirus, well, that's a really good thing, you can spread it that way. they want to come to my office, i'm being told by the medical centers and every medical center in the country telling doctors not to see patients right now with coughs, that shortness of breath, the productive cough, the high fever. those of the classic symptoms. we are in trouble until we get random regular testing. >> tucker: i'm confused. i can get my dna sequence for 100 bucks in a week, it's not hard at all. it's very easy. why can't we get these tests?

i bet most physicians feel the same way you do. they do not want to jump through hoops, they just want tests. they want to know people have it. they suggest that they don't have the tests. >> i can get the tests but i have to fill out a questionnaire, call the department of health, wait 3-4 days for the results to come back. that's far from ideal. it's very cumbersome. we've been told the tests are on the way, the test are in the mail, the test are being delivered and i keep checking in a check with your producers on this and we are checking in we are not getting answers that they are there and available yet and i was very happy to see dr. fauci to confirm that today. it's time we step up to the plate and do what south korea is doing. how about 20,000 test per day? that'll make the people feel comfortable with the situation. look, if i'm going to close the school, all the things we are doing, it's nice to know how much coronavirus is really around.

>> tucker: that's exactly right and if you think you were exposed to it, i personally know quite a few people who feel they have been exposed to it so they self quarantine. they aren't sure they can't get tested. thanks so much. >> if they were tested i would have to quarantine them if they were negative. >> tucker: things to see you tonight. many americans have seen shortages of toilet paper and other paper goods at their local supermarkets. the question is, is this a fluke? is this thing that happens before a hurricane or something that we need to live with? could it get worse? should we prepare for shortages? we are happy to have him on tonight. point blank? this is a question i think people are wrestling with. i get texts about it all the time.

>> tucker, the thing about that is what is a supply chain? it's a network of companies working together to give us the things that we want to buy every day. and most of the time, supply chains are pretty adaptable and they can change, when there are sudden shocks, it can really disrupt them. that shocks can come on either side. they can be supply shocks, or they can be demand shocks. really, what we are seeing right now are demand shocks. people buying a lot more of some things and what they would normally consume and buying less of some other things, and what that does is creates what we call a bullwhip effect and that amplifies upstream in the supply chain and cause all kinds of chaos. >> tucker: what is in short supply now? thermometers, toilet paper, the masks, those are the goods i'm aware of. other things we should be

worried about? >> you know, i put it in a couple of different categories. i sat at the grocery store this afternoon and they are out of water and toilet paper and they've got quotas on it. the truth is when you think about some of those things, that's really a very temporary problem. people are panic buying. several people, why on earth are you buying toilet paper? because everybody else was. i was afraid if i didn't buy some, i would be able to get any. we aren't using anymore toilet paper than we normally would, so that's going to be a short-term surge, they are going to be out of stock. pretty soon the stores are going to be replenished, and you are going to have a bunch of toilet paper gathering dust on the shelf because people have a month's worth of supply at home. there are other things that we are actually using more of your disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizers, the hospital masks, we need more of those than what we would normally consume. for those things, we need to be

increasing capacity, may be creating some new supply chains, and in a lot of cases, we are dependent on foreign manufacturing and long-distance transportation to get those supplies. the other category of demand disruption is places we've got a complete drop in demand. you mentioned all the cancellations of sports teams. i heard that broadway is shutting down. you think about all the products and services that people would normally be buying as a part of travel or going to those events and now all of a sudden the demand has disappeared. now we are going to have an excess of a lot of those things. all of that creates disruption and creates this bullwhip effect in supply chains. >> tucker: let me ask you one final question. do you think -- of course, the core fear embedded in all of us is the collective fear of not having enough to eat. seems very unlikely this country would ever face food shortages. should people be worried about that?

>> i'm not worried about food shortages. if you look at the risk of supply chains, how long is this supply chain, how complex is the supply chain. the truth is we produce a lot of our own food. stuff that's coming from internationally if we start having issues interfering with transportation and moving things across borders, if that's food then that could be an interruption. but truthfully, a lot of times we can use a substitute. you might not be able to get the type you want, the writing you variety want, but we are not going to be starving. >> tucker: that's fine. so two months from now, is there anything because of the disruption of manufacture from disruption of manufacture from china for example that we are going to be in short supply of? >> absolutely. that's the part i'm really scared about, right? we talked about the short-term demand disruptions but we've got supply disruption too. factories in china that have not

been making things or been able to ship things and that goes into all kinds of things we buy, electronics, automobiles, any type of engineered manufactured product. go ahead. >> tucker: no, that's my question. >> so i anticipate that there is going to be at some point in the next couple of weeks, that's the institute of supply management just released a study where they say 75% of companies right now are experiencing some kind of supply disruption. we are also to see that in the couple of weeks where companies cannot make the things that we want to buy. things like electronics and automobiles. >> tucker: thank you for that forecast. >> absolutely. >> tucker: reassuring on the whole. thank you so much for coming on tonight. >> absolutely, tucker. thank you. >> tucker: in this country, it's remarkable to watch the

media tell you that coronavirus has nothing to do with china. nothing at all. totally separate. meanwhile, the chinese government is blaming this country for creating coronavirus, an amazing story after the break. hey mama what's up?

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>> tucker: from the state of washington, california and new york, coronavirus has gradually spread throughout the united states. now in the country, we are joined by chief correspondent trace gallagher. >> focusing on the four states hit hardest by the coronavirus

29 people have died, 19 of those deaths are from one seattle area nursing home. in total, 11 washington nursing homes have cases. jay inslee has now banned gatherings of more than 250 people. new york has the second-highest number of cases and in just the past day, has seen a 40 plus percent increase jumping from 216 cases to 328 cases today. so far, nobody in new york has died from the virus but new york city mayor bill de blasio has declared a state of emergency and new york governor andrew cuomo has banned events with more than 500 people, which means that all broadway shows have now been suspended. in the new york suburb of new rochelle still has the nation only only containment zone. california in the meantime has 198 cases with four fatalities. governor gavin newsom has issued a directive allowing the state

to commandeer hotels and medical facilities to treat coronavirus patients. disney has shut down its california theme parks. massachusetts has the fourth highest number of cases with 95, so far no deaths. and alabama, alaska, idaho, and west virginia are the only states with zero cases. still, some colleges in those states are moving their classes off-campus and online. we should know two people have died of the virus in florida and new jersey, south dakota, and georgia each have one coronavirus death each. tucker? >> tucker: trace gallagher, thanks for that. the global death total of the chinese coronavirus it's at almost 5,000 people, that's the official number. in iran, the officials have not even confirmed total of 500 deaths, that's what they are claiming. satellite images suggest that authorities are making massive

trenches there to hold massive victims, but they are the only never forget how we got here for this pandemic came out of china and it came out of china for a reason, it's a country with poor health practices, it could have stopped before it spread out of control. the outbreak may have begun not in a public meat market but in a poorly run chinese laboratory. that is not our theory, anybody who raises the theory is a conspiracy monger! but this is now the theory coming from a now censored chinese paper. a draft paper, scientists at the south china university suggested it began at the wuhan centers for disease control where the animal may have infected a researcher who then spread the disease outside the facility. the paper is explicit about this. we are going to quote it. "the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in wuhan." we have no idea if that's

actually true. but again, those are chinese researchers making evidence-based arguments about the origin of this virus, that they've since been taken down, no explanation has been offered china, the same country that controls 96% of antibiotics we use in this nation, the same country that's wanting to cut off drug export to the u.s. to kill americans, is now trying to hide the reality of where coronavirus came from. in fact, they are doing worse than that. the communist party of china is trying to blame the virus on america. a week ago, attack anyone who dared to link the virus to china. >> certain media says this coronavirus is a china virus, this is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that. we are still tracing the origin of the virus and there is no conclusion yet. >> tucker: that was last week. has evolved since then.

today on twitter, he accused america of creating the virus. "when did patient zero beginning in the u.s.? how many people were infected, >> our media continue to take their side. watch this. "foreign virus" it's going to smack and come across to a lot of americans as the smacking of xenophobia. >> tucker: that was cnn's

jim acosta, a poisonous. amazingly, though, it was just a few months ago, that acosta was sending tweets himself about the "wuhan coronavirus." he received his orders from jeff zucker he receives his orders from china, so that's okay. but the word is out. must protect china at all costs, even presidential candidates are playing along. >> downplaying it, overly dismissive, it's only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease.e. but neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia, labeling covid-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for judgments that have been taken so far by its administration. >> tucker: so it's our fault. just to be clear, describing a virus from wuhan as the wuhan virus is not xenophobia, it's o accuracy and anybody who says otherwise is lying and probably for a reason.

the government's chief obligation is to the live of our citizens. it's not to other countries, it's not to the gep, as not to the commonest party of china. the highest party of all is nows wokeness. gordon chang is the author of "the coming collapse of china." as someone who knows a lot about china and how it operates, does it surprise you to see leaders in our country repeating their propaganda? >> no, it doesn't. that's really the problem c her. you have the president of the united states, the vice president, the secretary of state have talked about the wuhan virus and this is not xenophobia. what we are doing is countering china's propaganda narrative that it started in the united states for the foreign ministry in the beginning of february and the global times, the communist party newspaper, has been trying to tar the united states andd recently they've been become

explicit.. they say it comes from our country. what the vice president and the secondary estate are doing is saying no, this comes from china, this is defending the united states and we are under attack by china and both sides of the aisle need to unite because we have a common enemy right now and that is beijing. >> tucker: so why are our media playing along? reporters have one job, which is to tell the truth about what's happening. and yet, they are intentionally distorting the truth and attacking anyone who dares tell. it. why is that? >> this is really beyond me. i just... i get so angry when i hear this because they should know better. they obviously know what's going on here. the foreign ministry comments, the comments from global times and the commonest party have been out there. this is no secret. people are just playing partisan politics as far as i can tell. p

whatever it is, it's dangerous for us because we do need toti unite. >> tucker: it's horrifying that the position of one of our major political parties is to cover for china for our greatest and imminent enemies.s this is not vladimir putin on facebook, a country that controls all of our pharmaceuticals. gordon chang, thank you for your bravery on this topic. >> thank you, tucker.ph >> tucker: coronavirus will ultimately pass but it will be the last crisis to hit our country. what can we learn from it to prepare us for next time?av also, mark steyn joins us after the break.k. ♪ - do you have a box of video tapes, film reels, or photos,

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>> tucker: anyone who thinks this is the last global pandemic america will face lacked sufficient imagination. no question this will happende again in a world connected byce jet travel, that is guaranteed. as we suffer to this virus, maybe we should learn something useful for the next time. going forward, our leaders ought to be certain we have enough medicine and tests and hospitalo beds at the least in case something awful happens unexpectedly because it will. there should be a plan to respond quickly to ensure the public that people in charge know what they are doing. the obvious lessons from the aidemic now in progress. there is more to learn. here are a few other things to think about. first, borders matter. turns out that immigration is iw some boutique political issue that only activists need to care about.

the question of who lives in your country is the most basic issue that any nation faces every. immediately after coronavirus spread globally, sane country started to secure their borders, they wanted to know who's coming in and out and wanted to control it. in israel, where leaders care deeply about their country,l border controls were swift and highly aggressive. israelis did not want a single person was potentially infected to cross into israel and good for them. unfortunately, nothing like that could ever happen here in the us.nd democrats will denounce it instantly as racist and xenophobic. nancy pelosi will give us a stern lecture of how immoral israel is. we'll be waiting for that speech. probably forever. gun control takes on newil significance when things fall apart. it does not take much for a lot in order to collapse, civilization itself can evaporate quickly and over theap centuries, and often has. on some level, all of us know this. we are animals with the collective memory of prior chaos embedded in our genes. times like this, we are reminded

how precarious any society is. given that, you've got to wonder about our leaders' demands that we disarm. anybody who increases the threat to you and your family and at the same time tries to prevent you from defending yourself is your enemy by definition. y it's scary when you think about that in the context of what's happening now and a lot of people a lot of people have thought about it. ammunition sales jumped by hundreds of percents this week. speaking of our leaders, who is really in charge of this country? we think we know the answer. the people on the ballot at election time. if you want to know who's actually in control of anything, ask yourself, who can make you beg for mercy? if one of your kids had a bad infection, you would do anything for antibiotics. but our leaders do not control those drugs. china does. the chinese manufacturer or entire supply of antibiotics, not including other goods your

family could not live without. here is the worst news, the chinese hate us and have vowed to withhold life-saving medicine from us, our most powerful enemy in the world has the power of life and death over our country. we should not let a single day pass without fixing this. the next few months, american hospitals will likely overflow with the differently ill. it's possible many people who need immediate care will be turned away to suffer and die. that's a horrifying prospect.mm does this seem like the right time to open up our entire health care system to the rest of the world for free? what would happen to sick people in america if we did that? it sounds like a form ofes sabotage. yet that's exactly what every democrat who ran for president proposed in public. even now, as we face an unprecedented strain on our health care system thanks to coronavirus, they have not change their view on that. what are they thinking? they are not thinking. they are believing. believing fervently in the cult

of identity politics. joe biden released his plan for coronavirus we should remember that. it's not even in the top 500 problems. if you're not going to see angry people mobbing and you'll never see that, it won't happen here. it's not that kind of country. america is a welcoming place filled with unusually kind and open hearted people. of the merchants of wildness could not see that in the refutes to see it. as a matter of fact, they believe that all things bed emanates in america and it's their creed. they demand we change the trump

administration so-called public charge role. it changing it will allow more ingrates to move into the country at their expense and already dangerously overburden health care system. in the middle of a terrible epidemic, how does that help? it does not help, it hurts. if that's the point of it. people like this are dangerous. they're the reason things are falling apart. suddenly, it ruins everything but they're not the majority of the country and remember that. most americans are not cult members. if they're sensible, they understand what the leaders have to do, we need to treat how we would treat our own children. if there is a threat to your kids, you don't posit think of an excuse or pretend it's not happening, you act. you do whatever is necessary to protect them period. if you die trying, it's a life well spent. if you are forced to choose between your own children and the kids next door, you understand that's not really a choice. you have only one duty to the lives in your care. your people. the ones who depend on you. in the end, that's what it means to lead a family. means no less to lead a country.

instead of protecting the people for this country, making certain they can't be called racist on twitter, just so you're very clear about their priorities, author and columnist mark steyn joins us tonight. thank you for coming up. do you think that they could save your life in exchange they had to be called racist for weea on twitter, they would save you? >> no. i think genuinely, politics are the priority. when something unexpected happens, all this after 9/11, people naturally retreat to their tropes. i think it's interesting that for jim acosta and forop joe biden, the left in general retreats to the you can't say that trope. that's what they say when they say referring to a foreign virus and xenophobic. they are saying, oh, you are racist. we said you are racist for

everything else, your racist for your policy on climate change, you're racist because he separate families at the border, by the way, you are racist for this virus too. that's not a serious position, that's just insert a name of news story here and apply the same old insult. months ago, last month the mayor of florence in italy was saying that the best way to demonstrate your antiracist bona fides in this terrible world we live in is to go and hug a chinese person on the streets of florence. he is not saying that now because in the months, 1,000 dead italians, corpses and piled up all around him. they've got the equivalent of relative that's the death toll from the last couple of weeks in italy. proportionately in terms of relative populations.'sol that buffoon, narcissist,

nincompoop virtue singling mayor isn't telling you to hug a chinese person now, everything is shut down and they are saying to stay a full meter, 3 feet away from anybody else. at a certain point, as you said, the survival instinct, evenn among these woke trucks kick in and jim acosta is no different from that florence mayor if he actually had to live with the costs of his irresponsible signaling. >> tucker: the rest of us are captive to the weird guilt trip and suicide fantasies of a tiny group of affluent loathsome moron. that's how the world is organized in the west. >> that's why they understand w full well that this virus, this spread has implications for the supply chain. what's more important than having more planes and tanks in

the world if your greatest geostrategic opponent controls a number of asthma inhalers, who controls the amount of insulin? this prices causes us to have a serious conversation instead of just the usual shrieking twerps pointing at everyone and crying racist. anytime you try to open up the discussion, the left's response is to close it down to the same shriveled parameters they want everything discussed in. >> tucker: i'm totally sick of it and i think we've reached the point where it's dangerous. mark steyn, so great to see you tonight. >> amen. >> tucker: amen. speaking of dangerous, hospitals and clinics in this country could soon be overflowing. americans are encouraged to practice more telemedicine. what does that mean exactly and does it work? we have an update on that next. >> for getting contact,

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♪ >> forget any physical contact, greetings. eastern style. thank you all very much. >> tucker: bow like thes chinese bow. additional ideas, things to add to that. increase the use of telemedicine. what does that look like exactly and can they be used to buy the coronavirus? doctor, thank you so much for coming on. for those not familiar with what this means, what is telemedicine? >> sure. it's leading technology allow doctors talk to patience much in the same way you and i are

talking now. puts me in the same room as he whether we are in the same citys or same state or not, talk to you about what's on your mind, put a plan together for what needs to happen next. >> tucker: that's such an obvious idea since everyone, facetime your kids. why hasn't it been used on a widespread basis before? maybe it is. >> it's used for a number of things. it's used to put some specialty consultants in a room of an emergency department. in this case for coronavirus, it's very helpful to allow a specialist to talk to you about what your symptoms mean, whether you need to be tested, how you should treat yourself, and i say if you need to be tested, everybody knows it's difficult right now to get tested. this allows us to start to bring some order to that chaos. we can set up an appointment for you, tell you to come into a testing visit. you can come in, come out, decrease the interaction you have with staff, the outside world, decrease the spread of the virus. >> tucker: there got to be an

untold amount of americans were convinced or semiconvinced they may have this disease whether they do or not. can they take advantage of this to either confirm or belay their fears? >> i've done a lot of telemedicine business, and i ger ask one question over and over and the question phrase a lot of different ways, should i be worried? i'm not just talking about coronavirus, i'm talking about all the time. a lot of this is the doctor educating the patient and putting together a plan. the specific answer to your question is 80% of people have mild systems. people with mild symptoms at home, what they need to have is their fear addressed and the portion think it's sicker, the portion that need a test, need that coordinated for them. >> tucker: i know a couple of people personally that have been exposed to coronavirus and can't get tested for it despite trying. does that concern you and if so, why? >> it concerns all of us.

we think we need to have a better handle on how widespread the disease is. but the truth is whether you have coronavirus or not, what you present to me in emergency department, they take care of you the same way. does that make sense? i'm going to resuscitate you. we do not have a cure for this. we treat your symptoms. whether or not you have the diagnoses are not based on the test doesn't change anything i do. frankly if you have mild symptoms it wouldn't change what you do at home could you isolate yourself, you be very careful about hand hygiene, coughing, exposing yourself to other folks, especially people at the highest risk. older adults, people with underlying conditions. >> tucker: you are a very good explainer and i really appreciate that. >> thank you very much. >> tucker: good to see you, doctor. americans may have hundreds of thousands of coronavirus at some point. are hospitals ready for that?

we sent a correspondent matt finn out into the land to investigate. we will talk to the former head of the cdc who says the death toll could be high. we'll be right back. ♪ ] mama? it works at the aquarium. in the parking garage. at the beach. it works in the movie theater too... [shhh] ...oh shoosh yourself, i'm talking to my baby, [phone ringing] mama? 5g it works in the club. who you in the club with? ♪ tell mama....all about it...tell mama... ♪

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♪ >> tucker: the coronavirus cases around the world will it have enough hospital for space to with it? c matt finn has that question with us and joins us tonight.

>> report published by johns hopkins indicates that coronavirus will have a severe impact on hospitals including in the best-case scenario. our hospitals are working at full capacity, they don't have the resources to rapidly increase services and are facing worker shortages as is. what happens if our hospitals suddenly see a spike of coronavirus patients? this report said there is currently about 46,500 icu beds in the u.s. the same amount could be converted totaling about 93,000 and icu beds nationwide, but more than doubled that, nearly 200,000 icu beds may be needed, even if the covid-19 pandemic reaches what's considered a moderate scenario. in a very severe case, the country might end up needingac millions of icu beds. we are nowhere near these numbers tonight.he here at chicago, tents are now signed up at the ambulance base to screen patients with

potential coronavirus symptoms before they even enter the general population. weighting chairs are spread 6 feet apart, that's the critical space that medical experts have been warning, keep away from anyone showing symptoms. it also has a special e.r. pod with negative air pressure with up to 40 beds that could basically serve as an emergency quarantine if needed.s tonight, the hospital tells fox news that about 70 patients walked into this e.r. today and instructed to turn left towards those special tents because they were potentially showing signs ofof t coronavirus. tucker?os >> tucker: matt finn for us on the road. thanks a lot, matt. how bad could it get? estimates are all over the place essentially unknowable. if we are lucky, god willing, cases will soon peter out, with the coming spring, and deaths in the hundreds are low thousands. some are warning, some could wi the human cost could be a lot more than that. dr. tom frieden has been head of

the cdc for eight years, now he says the death toll over a million is not an impossiblele figure. doctor, thank you so much for coming on.ea that's a horrifying number, hate to say that even out loud, but you ran the cdc. why do you think that's possible? >> as you state, tucker, we don't know exactly what will happen. if someone tells you what will happen, they don't know about the virus. what we do know, what we are seeing and what we are seeing elsewhere suggests that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. we will be better off if we prepare. it's individuals in health care and in government, and especially for people with underlying health conditions you might be particularly susceptible. but there is something all of us can do. individuals can wash their hands, cover your cough, do not go out if you are sick, and we may want to stop shaking hands for a while. you can labor some other greeting. for people with underlying

conditions, it's important to stay away from other people until this is clear. exactly what they need to be doing, so they not have health care workers or or patience get infected, on the prepare in case we need a lot of ventilator beds and for society, we need to think a lot of things like not having spectators at sporting events are not having large gatherings, because that can spread this very widely. we have within us working together as a community the ability to temper down the peak. if we do that, the peak is lower, will have a less chance of outstripping the health care facilities, beds, respirators that we need. >> tucker: let me ask you onri the potential upside here. all of us has noticed that the flu is less common in the summer. it is the fact that it's inl mid-march an advantage in that warm weather is coming? >> we can hope for the best. we have to work for the best but plan for the worst.

there are some strands of the similar virus that has a summer peak as well as a winter peak. this is news and no one can s predict the certainty of what's will going to happen. >> tucker: interesting. so different viruses behave differently to the whether? >> absolutely. in some warmer climates, the flu virus doesn't have a flu season. it continues all year long. >> tucker: interesting. >> there are things all we can do that make a big difference and the reason for bringing this give range is to really emphasize is we aren't sure what's going to happen but we are sure that the more we do now, the more we can protect people.. >> tucker: dr. freeman, m thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> tucker: before we go this evening, we have a flash of brightness and enjoy admit a sad, dull landscape. our tech manager on this show who is loved universally, this is clara jane carrey, who

arrived 29 minutes ago. she is 20 inches long, all the excellent prayers, we know they'll make remarkable parents. sean hannity right now. >> sean: it's great you stalled time because the person who works for you, that is the dad, and the mother works for me. that is alyssa and we are very proud and happy for both of them.s rk they are wonderful people. that we can agree on. great show as always, tucker. a fox news alert, breakingng moments ago, u.s. forces just launched multiple targeted air strikes against iranian backed militias. this in a direct response to the rocket attack that killed two american troops at a base in iraq. much more coming up tonight, but first at this hour, the impact of coronavirus is being felt across the united states. we have cancellations, school closures, tournaments canceled from a professional athletic events canceled.