down enough quarantiney. they want you to know you shouldn't use their products with alcohol. whatever. have a great weekend, everybody. read your books. that's "the story" on friday the 13th, 2020. we will see you monday. ♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." back in january we first reported on this show about what we described then as a serious viral outbreak that appeared to be rising from a city called wuhan in eastern china. at the time the outbreak sounded ominous and potentially important but still very far away. today, less than two months later the coronavirus is officially a energy here in the united states. the president announced this afternoon in the rose garden. >> to unleash the full power of the federal government i'm officially declaring a national emergency. >> tucker: the president went on to design measures to check the spread of the virus and to help

the country recover and certainly weather the economic disruption it's causing. the president's state of emergency declaration free's up $50 billion to battle the epidemic. most visits to nursing homes will be suspended. the president also announced a total freeze on interest payments on the nation's 1.5 trillion in federal student loans. no more payments for a while. he said the government will purchase billions of barrels of oil for the strategic petroleum reserve. we're going to fill it to the top, he said. then, in response to inadequate testing across the country something that's gotten quite a bit of attention he announced a new initiative to open drive-thru testing facilities. >> the goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car. >> tucker: we will have more on the problems with testing for the virus in just a minute. the president's announcement today seemed to calm markets a bit after dropping 10 points yesterday, the dow jones

industrial average rose by more than 9% with most of the gains coming after the president spoke. still, across america, regular life is all but suspended right now as you know well. sporting events, concerts and plays are being cancelled so are religious ceremonies. the mormon church stopped all services worldwide. at this moment there are about 2200 confirmed coronavirus cases in the united states. there have been 48 death. those are not huge numbers in a country of 320 million. but there is reason tonight to believe this could be the beginning of something bigger. in illustratelitaly another 250. biggest day yet. people are starting to take dramatic measures. many remember the value of having borders. denmark, poland and the czech republic have all closed themselves off from outsiders and not likely to be the last country to do it. iran, which could be the country hurt hardest at all. the military has been called out

to clear the streets. joined by dr. brendan carr mount sinai medical hospital. his analysis was so clear and informative we are happy to have him back tonight. dr. card joins us now. thank you for coming on. >> hi there, tucker. thanks for having me back. >> tucker: we received quite a bit of email about your appearance last night and so we assembled just a list of pretty basic questions from our viewers. i wonder if you wouldn't mind going through and answering them. it might be helpful. i will start with a viewer called beverly holiday pryce. explain the exact symptoms and when someone ought to seek emergency medical care. >> so this is a hard one. the exact symptoms are fever, cough, shortness of breath and a lot of other things. the worrisome ones are fever, cough, shortness of breath but people have minor symptoms, too. as we said before 80-plus percent of folks have very minor symptoms. okay? and then the second part is when do you need to seek care in the best rule of thumb is it feels

an awful lot like the flu. you get a little bit sick. you wait and see which direction you go. take some medicine to see if you can feel better. if you are not getting better reach out to trusted source. talk to someone over telemedicine and talk to primary care doctor if you can talk to. they best not to go expose yourself to other folks. if you are not getting better, that's when you go to the hospital. >> tucker: so shortness of breath, one of the things that causes shortness of breath is anxiety and a lot of people are anxious and wondering if they are sick with this. is there some way tell if your shortness of breath is a medical problem? >> the answer is no and wouldn't it be nice if it were. one of the things we think about a lot is what we can do to keep ourselves safe. people worry a lot about their chronic medical problems because they are being told it's for older adults and people having the chronic medical problems have the biggest challenge with this. it is important right now more than ever to be thoughtful about your rest. about your immune system. about taking care of yourself.

and so, it's hard to tell if it's your wright is that's makin -- anxiety making you fee. it off comes with other things it comes with fevers and comes with a cough and comes with feeling pretty terrible like you feel when you have the flu. >> tucker: yeah. unmistakable. probably. marcia jones wrote in to ask this: my husband, she writes, has copd should he not go to work? >> we are all watching as many many mass gatherings. flattening the curve as health people say. we talk about the fact spike coming of folks that have this stkwaoez and one of the ways to decrease the amount of people that have the disease is not spend a whole lot of time near each other, sharing germs with each other. not going to work is a pretty rational decision for someone who has got an underlying medical problem but it's pretty rational for all of us to be really thoughtful how much time

we spend in places where we don't have to be where we could transmit germs to each other. i work in a hospital. we sit two seats apart from each other. we take all of our -- moved all of our education and all of our meetings to video. and just as a safe prudent thing to do. if you have an underlying medical problem all the better reason to do it. >> tucker: here's a question carol writes are there any home remedies available apart from washing your hands? >> roam remedies are hard, keeping your home safe is really important, however. so, making sure if someone who is there who is infected, keeping them isolated to a room is a really good idea. going in to that room only when they are wearing a mask so they're not coughing stuff into the air is a really good idea. wiping down areas that are common areas where the virus can sit on materials and you can touch it with your hand and touch your mouth or touch your eye is a really good idea.

the over-the-counter disinfectants work. it's a lot, again, it's a lot like flu. it's pretty easy to kill with the regular stuff. we just have to be thoughtful about making sure that we don't breathe in somebody else's air, spend a whole lot of time in the room with them or especially, if you are in my line of work we worry a lot. i put someone to sleep and put a breathing tube into them and i get mucous and all kinds of things that are coming up into the air. that's a high risk thing. it's a much less high risk thing to just be in a house with someone who is controlling their cough, coughing into their arm, washing their hands. >> tucker: interesting. thanks so much. dr. carr, i really appreciate your coming on tonight. i know our viewers do as well. >> thank you very much. >> tucker: thank you. >> of course. >> tucker: obviously we appreciate everything the doctor just told us and we believe it. you should though, always consult your own doctor if you are feeling sick. so contact a professional directly. do not rely purely on what you see on television.

we're asking -- so one reason america is scrambling to pandemic. in south korea the coronavirus appears to be under control tonight essentially and a major reach why is that true south korean government has been testing tens of thousands of people every day for weeks, many weeks. contrast that to this country. doctors and nurses here struggle to get tests even for patients who are showing coronavirus symptoms. patients who have traveled to infected areas or people who have been in direct contact with confirmed cases of coronavirus. that's not a guess. we know a couple of people personally who should get tests but cannot get them. as of now you may know some too. it's not imaginary problem. it's entirely real. one emergency doctor told the "new york times" we are basically rationing testing supplies. leading the coronavirus response at san francisco general hospital says testing capacity remains, quote, inadequate. even now it's not clear how many people have been tested nationwide. and, therefore, how many are infected. we really don't know. yesterday director anthony fauci

of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases bluntly summed up exactly where we are. >> the system does not -- is not really geared to what we need right now. what you are asking for. that is a failing. >> a failing, yes. it? >it is a failing.the idea of ant easily the way people 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 how exactly does d. this happen? why was the richest most advanced country on the planet not prepared? we'll give you three guesses but you got it the first time government incompetence played an awfully big role in all of this. the world health organization has actually had a working kron test for quite some time. instead of using it our cdc tried to create their own test and denied state public health labs the right to create tests of their own. then the cdc failed to deliver it test in time. the cdc delayed the release of testing kits fearful of sending

out flawed equipment. then after long delays the kits didn't work correctly anyway a lot of the time. it was a disaster. two weeks ago on february 28th, new york city still did not have any way to test for coronavirus. the kits they received from cdc turned out to be unreliable. because of all of this, and its incompetence as late as early this month march, most coronavirus test had to be sent to the cdc in atlanta for confirmation. that created a devastating bottleneck for results. bottleneck that may have killed people. in washington state the seattle flu study was barred by government regulators from doing their own coronavirus testing if you can believe it. finally decided to ignore the feds and do it anyway. we are glad they did because they promptly discovered the first community spread underway here in the united states shortly after they found that regulators ordered them to stop testing. that's insanity. thankfully the trump administration at least seems to have partly reversed these errors. at the today's press conference

states and companies to help. walmart and target are lending their parking lots to create drive-thru testing facilities. will it work? it certainly couldn't be worse than what we have had. the bigger question is it too little because of the lack of reliable tests we still really don't know how many people in america have coronavirus. yesterday amy act on top health official in the state of ohio we will talk to her later along with governor mike dewine. others think the real number in ohio is lower than that let's say ohio has, pick a number a thousand cases but still far above the number that's currently being reported. the more cases there are, the less testing actually helps anyone. when 1,100,000 people have an illness you can't meaningfully track or quarantine them. the last colorado's testing of the time for past something moving past us. ed to the governor of maryland sounded a similar note. >> everybody is trying to work on it, but i don't believe they

can ramp up that stuff. that's the simple answer. we have moved on from testing quite frankly to other things right now. we have moved from containment to mitigation and quite frankly at some point soon we are probably not going to be into testing as much because the hospitals overwhelmed unable to do the test. >> tucker: so things seem to be getting better but is it too late, too late to test? joined now my dr. marc siegel. dr. siegel has been with us from the beginning on the coronavirus. we are happy to have him back. doctor, simple question, is it too late? it does seem like things are getting better. does it matter. >> it's not too late to test. everything we just heard is correct. which is that there is sustained spread in communities all right. our viewers can deltha because cases keep popping up and we can't tell where they came from. i don't know about 100,000. but there is many thousands of cases that have not been diagnosed possibly because they are mild. it's not too late to test because we don't have another system we can work with. let me explain that our hospitals are telling patients

don't come in here with a cough, severe shortness of breath and a fever that tends to be a pretty high fever, by the way. don't come in here. doctors are being told don't see these patients. well, we don't know what to do with them then and the only thing we have a test except you can't actually do the test because the lab, and i just found out this today in calling and calling and calling, once again all these labs, they are not going to do the test, tucker, even if they have the equipment they don't want to put their lab technicians, in my opinion, in the line of fire and be subjected to possible coronavirus. so there is a catch-22 here the only thing you actually do -- >> tucker: yes, i'm sorry to interrupt. what's the only thing you can do. >> exactly what south korea did. you have to have the drive-thrus. you have to have people dressed up in personal protective equipment like we showed in nebraska. >> tucker: right. >> they have to be doing it very carefully. it's got to be done on a high volume basis. it can't be contained anymore. i will tell you why i want it done. i want to be able to reassure

people who don't have it. it will help to decrease the panic. >> tucker: and there is also the question of spreading it to the people you love. i know people personally who are facing this right now tonight and they know they have been exposed to someone who is a confirmed case of coronavirus. they have kids. they are married. they have friends. and they don't know whether to self-quarantine or not. it would be nice to know. you mentioned south korea. you held them up as a model. we are looking at pictures how they are doing it. that's a country we save from the chinese in 1953 whose economy we rebuilt. one of the poorest countries in the world. of course it's not anymore. why were they able to do this and we weren't? >> because they have an organized system here and parts are moving better and because they are not busy telling the public we are doing it. we are doing it. it's in the mail. the kits are in the mail. all of that is so disturbing. and you just made a great point that i want to emphasize. another reason i want to do the test. the states and cities are still telling us we can only do the tests on people who have symptoms. i want to do it for the exact reason you said. on people who don't have

symptoms but maybe sneezed on someone that turned out to have it or shook someone's hand who turned out to have it and they have elderly parents or they have a pregnant wife or they have someone with a high risk chronic condition. we have to know who has this so we can protect the people most at risk. even if it's sustained throughout all communities, i think it is. i think it's a whopping amount of cases undiagnosed. we still need to know who has it. >> tucker: yeah. you are wondering what's the point of the system if you can't do that. >> it's shocking. >> tucker: dr. siegel, thank you for walking us through it. i appreciate. >> it thanks, tucker. >> tucker: as i said this country has fewer than 2500 confirmed coronavirus cases. officials in ohio believe their state might have 100,000 just within the confines of ohio. so how confident are they? where did they get that number? and can anything be done to stop the disease once it becomes that widespread? those officials will join us. the head health official and the governor of ohio after the break. >> we project we have about 100,000 people at least who are

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>> tucker: global globally there are fewer than 150,000 coronavirus. thanks to a lack of testing a single american i state thinks it could be closing in on that number by itself. yesterday the governor of ohio announced based on the global spread and extrap pwhraeugt frot

1%. the state has 11.7 million people that adds up to more than 100,000 positive cases. mike dewine is the governor of ohio. we are happy to have him tonight along with dr. amy acton. thanks for coming on. >> hello; thank you. >> tucker: governor, first to you, are you confident in this number? >> well, it's an estimate and dr. acton can explain better than i do. i'm not degreed in science. we rely on people like dr. acton who is my health director. we have also had a panel of 14 doctors who rerely on to make these decisions and dr. acton and i have reached out to other national experts. so what we do know is there is a lot of people in ohio who, you know, would test positive if that test was done. and dr. act it's on can do the science better i can do. i can guarantee you that. >> i would love.

>> yes. so. >> tucker: explain to us in a way that we can understand how you got to this. >> yes. so,, you know, tucker, we know we don't know the exact number of ohioans because we really haven't been able to test and we don't get have the exact models that will tell us. >> tucker: right. >> what we did know and i think there was some confusion in my remarks and partly because i'm tired. but what we did know is we assumed community spread already because we weren't able to test really until this monday we had our first case. so what we did is we looked around at the models that exist. the best people actually created the epidemic curve, the flattening of the curve that we are all talking about. those are people we have consulted with just to really understand the model and we looked at what was happening in italy where, you know, two weeks ago there were only 9 cases and now we have folks struggling to

even get a ventilator. it's a matter of life or death. we looked to my colleagues in washington who said to me on a phone call we wish we could have taken steps sooner. we took that to heart. you know, we have looked at the modeling and sure enough, the second we started testing we had cases instantly our first community acquired which is really the trigger. when you have those cases that aren't linked to another case or travel and now within the end of the week we had 13 this afternoon. we expect many more this evening. and, you know, persons under investigation is the couple hundred. so we are assuming community spread is here. >> tucker: you are taking it seriously and that's reassuring. are you ready for this, governor? if you wind up with tens of thousands is the state's infrastructure ready to treat that many people?

>> tucker, we have taken pretty dramatic action. we have closed the schools. we have banned every meeting over 100 people. we have closed casinos. we have done a lot of other things to really try to get that curve down. i mean, the whole issue here as the experts explain it to me is that it's here, it's going to continue to expand, a lot of people are going to get it. but what you want to do is spread this out because if it spikes like it did in italy, our healthcare system not just in ohio but across this country is not going to be able to handle it. you will have doctors and people making life and death decisions who to give a ventilator to. that we can't have. that's not what we want. we had to take action. the experts that we talked to said it may seem right to wait another two weeks. if you wait two weeks have you waited two weeks too long. you have got to move now. >> tucker: i wish there are more people with that attitude. clearly you did the right thing.

spreading it out makes a huge difference. governor, thanks for joining us, dr. acton thank you very much for explaining that to us. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> tucker: well, have you heard a lot about the struggles this country has had in getting testing up and running. have you heard that the number of cases in this country is likely much higher than currently reported. and that means the surge of hospital cases may be on the way. in italy, which is at this moment our best model for what could happen, it's happening north of italy the most developed part of the country, equipment shortages there have resulted in triage and death. there are some people doctors cannot treat. there are too many people. so the question is will this country have enough beds and critically enough ventilators for sick people when they show up for treatment? verma administrator for the centers for medicare and medicaid services. yesterday she went on martha mccallum's show and was asked that question. do we have enough? here's the exchange. >> >> martha: can you reassure everyone tonight that there is not a shortage of ventilators or

icu units? >> that's why the president has taken such bold and decisive action, right? we are not waiting for this to get worse. we are not waiting for this to be a verifies in our healthcare systems. that's why the mitigation strategies that he announced last night limiting travel from europe, not allowing that, you know, we have given travel advisories on cruise ships, that's why we are taking all of this action because we don't want to put stress on the healthcare system. >> martha: okay. that's not a direct answer to the question. >> tucker: verma joins us tonight. thanks so much for coming on. i appreciate that i watched that exchange last night i must be honest with you i was really troubled by it you were asked enough question by martha mccallum do we have enough ventilators in icu units and you appeared to intentionally not answer it. i'm going to stkhau question again and hope that we will be reassured by the answer. do we have enough ventilators to treat a surge in coronavirus right now, do you believe? >> so we have stockpile of

ventilators. so right now today we are able to address people that need ventilators. our strategy though is to not make the situation worse there is a stockpile of ventilators. the president talked about ventilators today and said we are going to purchase more to make sure that we have that backup supply. the idea here is we don't want to get into a situation where there are shortages which is why we are taking that aggressive mitigation action. but, you know, there is a strategic stockpile that has medical splice, which include ventilators. and we talk -- the president talked about that today about getting more. >> tucker: right. and that seems wise. of course, you would never want to be in a position where you run out of anything in a hospital. can you put some meat on those bones and give us a sense of how many ventilators are in place. how many are in the stockpile? how many do you think we will need? >> that's a good question. in terms of numbers, we're still assessing. we are still working with hospitals to understand what their needs are. right now though, i will tell you that we haven't had

hospitals at this point in large numbers saying we need more ventilators. but that situation could change rapidly. >> tucker: right. >> we are trying to make sure that we stay in communication with hospitals, with the healthcare facilities so we can understand what their needs are. the declaration -- the emergency declaration was actually really important today what this said is we want every hospital to basically launch their disaster preparedness plan and get ready for this. >> tucker: yes. >> gets the entire healthcare system ready we are trying to avoid shortages. but, you know, we do have supplies available but the idea here is to avoid that type of situation. >> tucker: and pardon my ignorance if this is widely known. i didn't know we had a stockpile of emergency medical equipment? where is it kept and are there a lot of ventilators sitting in storage somewhere? >> most of that is handled by the department of health and human services. asper emergency response folks. they have a system in place.

this is not unusual if you think about our response in the hurricane. so, in florida and texas, you know, that whole system, fema that was involved in responding, that's the same system that's going to help us respond to this as well. some of the things that they can do, they can set up temporary hospitals. you can have overflow. you can have situations where people need to discharge folks from the hospital but there is no place to put them so they could have temporary facilities. those are the things that we have in place. but right now, at this moment, our focus is on ensuring that we have an adequate supply and really hitting hard on the mitigation strategy. i mean, what you just talked, about what we heard from the governor in ohio is, you know, these projections could be potentially have a major impact on the healthcare system. the other thing that we did today that i think was -- i'm sorry? >> tucker: no, no. i was just thinking, major impact, and, of course, we all pray this wouldn't happen. something like what is happening

in italy right now were to happen here on an american scale, that would be an absolute disaster. so i'm just going to end on this one question and i hate to fixate on the ventilator thing. i couldn't get that exchange out of my mind last night. you're confident that if we had a huge uptick in the need for that specific piece of equipment that we could get new ventilators into icu units quickly? >> you know, tucker, i don't want to make drastic predictions here, right? because this situation is changing every single day. and based on the information we have, we know that we have to be aggressive. and that's what today's declaration was all about. the president allowed give a lot more flexibility to the healthcare system so they can have providers come across state lines so they don't have bed limits. so they can move people around within the hospital so they can provide care for them. to allow more telemedicine. so some of the things it's not just about having supplies. it's also making sure that they have the flexibility on the front lines and those are some

of the things, those are some of the actions that we are taking to make sure that the healthcare system is prepared. >> tucker: well, amen. we're definitely counting on you. so thanks for doing that i appreciate it. thanks for coming on tonight. >> thank you, my pleasure. >> tucker: so the stock market seemed a little calmer after the president's remarks in the rose garden today. but one doctor continues to warn that we may not be ready for what may be coming. he will give us his estimate of what we could see in coming days just ahead. plus, america's massive homeless population has always been a threat to public health. a grave threat in some places. but how much greater is that risk in the age of a pandemic? that's just ahead. when you own horses, you don't just own horses. you own a pasture. a fence. a barn. an arena. more fence. and hay. lots of hay. so you need a tractor built to do it all. and do it right. you need the power to handle anything.

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>> tucker: if you have been watching you know we spoke with seema verma assuring us that we are prepared to handle what may be coming in this epidemic. doctor has a different view director of centers of infectious disease policy he joins us tonight. doctor, thank you for coming on. >> thank you for having me. >> tucker: the question of ventilators is obviously a small part of a much larger question about whether we are prepared for this. but to put some specifics into the conversation we just looked it up. we have about 160,000, i think, ventilators for patient care in this country and there are about 9,000 in the stockpile. put together, do you think that's enough for what we are

likely to see in coming weeks? >> >> well, you know, first of all, tucker, let me just make a comment that i have never made in a public interview before. i have served in the last five presidential administrations. this most recently as a science envoy for the state department in the trump administration. i served two republican governors, two democratic governors and one independent governor in the state of minnesota. i'm not a partisan guy. i have to say having heard that conversation you just had scares me terribly. that was one of the most incompetent incoherent responses to what's going on now. i take no assurance from what i just heard that somebody is in charge in hhs right now in this level with this issue. we are terribly, terribly under prepared for the number of ventilators that we will need, the circuits, the pieces that connects you to the ventilators. we don't have nearly enough

respirators in terms of the air protecting masks. not at all. to continue to maintain that we are i think is really really very disturbing. >> tucker: well, that's unequivocal what you just said. >> i meant it. i meant it to be that. you know. >> tucker: can i tell that you did. >> we are in a fight against this virus. we don't have time for double-talk. we need straight talk. and i think it's time that we say what it is. because, you know what? if we start to see situations like seattle and what might be happening in ohio and elsewhere as they start to emerge around the country, that is not a time for us to try to figure out that all we were talking about was happy talk. we need to understand what we have because we are going to have to plan for it. this is like triage in the military on the battlefield. when you don't have what exactly you need, then you have got to deal with what you have got. we have got to understand that and to try to sit here and paint the fact that somehow we are going to mitigate cases in such

a way as to not run into this, we are going to run into it. you why are we now just dusting off these plans when, in fact, we have known for at least six to seven weeks that this was coming. i have to tell you i'm really disturbed by this conversation tonight. and i hope that everyone else in the united states of america is disturbed in terms of asking who is in charge and what are they saying and what will they do to say that they are going to be there to help us when we really need the help? >> tucker: dr. osterholm, if i knew this conversation was going to take this turn i would have taken more time for you. i hope you will come back. i'm interested. >> i hope so, too. i ask you to keep it up, too. you have been asking really important questions. and i applaud you for that. this is not a time for, you know, as i said. >> tucker: thank you, doctor. >> we need straight talk. >> thank you. >> tucker: i hate that great to see you tonight. thank you. new york, california, and washington have some of america's largest homeless populations, they also have the

three worst coronavirus outbreaks. suddenly having a population that leaves needles and garbage everywhere and defecates on the sidewalk doesn't seem simply disgusting though it is it seems dangerous and insane. jason rance son seattle area radio host joins us tonight. jason, thanks so much for coming on. look, we can't -- we are not epidemiologists we don't know if there is a direct connection between the filth we mentioned and outbreaks they are seeing now. there is no proof of that but, clearly, this is a wake-up call for cities that you can't have calcutta like conditions downtown, no? >> it should be, i am growing increasingly concerned the more we hear about what we need to do to make sure that the coronavirus doesn't spread seems to make sense to me because i live in a home and i have access to hand sanitizer, soap and water. homeless people do not. we had a case today -- you and i last weekend talked about the potential homelessness crisis

and where it intersects with coronavirus. someone last night was put into a motel in a city nearby seattle that is supposed to be an isolation site. they suspect this individual who was homeless has coronavirus. they are waiting for the test. well, this morning he left the self-quarantine site, went across the street to a 7-eleven which he allegedly robbed and then he jumped on to a bus and he left. that is a problem. when we have people who are in desperate need of support services, because they are living with potentially a mental illness, an addiction, they are not necessarily going to be put in a position where they can just self-quarantine. they need the help. and we have yet to have a significant enough plan presented to the public that is addressing this particular concern. >> tucker: so in other words if you allow your city to fall apart when a crisis comes it might clas collapse completely. >> this is a long time concern.

people have been calling this out and saying you cannot allow the homelessness crisis to get this out of control. you have to actually have some semblance of a plan. and simply saying well, we are not going to sweep people from these encampments and put them in the system because we want to pursue politically ideologically driven policy prescriptions, remember, we have a homelessness situation that the city council and this mayor pretends is a direct result solely almost solely on affordable housing. they blame amazon. amazon is driving up the rent. >> tucker: that's a lie. >> i'm sorry, that's not the reason. and waiting to address the actual underlying causes so you can pass affordable housing policies, that's a problem. >> tucker: totally. say this as someone who despises amazon and i mean that i try not to use amazon as much. i dislike them. they are not the cause of this, you are exactly right. >> they are not. >> tucker: jason, thank you. >> thank you. >> tucker: store shelves are being stripped, bear in some

places. in -- bare in some places. airlines are suffering a demand worse than 9/11. economic effect of what we are watching. we'll be right back.

>> tucker: we're really only a few days into a national awareness of coronavirus and already it's causing more sad to say elm measurable harm to our economy. all cruise lines out of american selled as of tonight. airlines are slashing the cost of flights but the number of flights in the air. in some cases by 40%. across the country basic supplies are suddenly hard to find. melissa francisco host of outnumbered here on fox shoe hosts after the bell on fox business. she joins us tonight. so you do this for a living. you watch all the indicators.

first, give us your read of you who you are feeling, your confidence level about the american economy right now. >> melissa: it's going through a shock. people are trying to figure out what to do and it's so lumpy. it's hammering some industries and then other places, you know, you can't even get in the doors. you see this when you go around. you take the airlines, for example, they were totally empty. people weren't getting on planes. they have cut back on flights. so now planes are, you know, i talked to a couple people that were flying they said it was about half full. delta among others. they showed the fogging they were doing to their seats which by the way would be nice if they did that all the time maybe we could keep that in place going forward there would be less flu. the airlines, they are definitely going to get hammered. the government is aware of that and they know that we need an airline industry. so they are going to do something about that. i'm more worried about the little guy. that's the one that breaks my heart because, for example, so i was out today, there are these amazing food trucks that are on the street. a lot of them have been on tv

shows. but this is small business. this is one guy or gal who has had a dream. and today there is a picture up there i tweet that. around the corner from us. usually there is 30, 40 people deep at these food trucks. and nothing. and it was 70 degrees outside. it was sunny. it was gorgeous. i decided to go out and look and see if my favorite one that's there food truck u.s.a. that's awesome. they have the best chicken in the world. i wanted to go look for him and see if he was out there. there was nobody there it was empty. nintendo had a line around the block. they had some new game out. they are fighting over toilet paper at costco. there are some places that are jammed. this is the line. hundreds of people around the block. this was just down the street from where the food trucks were. these people were waiting to get into the nintendo store to buy -- i don't think if they think they will be locked up for a long time so they want the new game or don't care about being in a small space. but, you know, between that and grocery stores for the aisles

are packed, some people are doing great and some people are going to go out of business. it's crazy. it's tough to tell. it's heart-breaking for the little guy. >> tucker: not that worried about the credit card companies or. melissa francis, thank you for that. >> melissa: all right. >> tucker: from the early days of this crisis, the left was distracted by its need to cry racism whenever someone called the chinese coronavirus what it is a vice from china. that's not the only politicized part of the response to this disease. currently the hyde amendment bars federal funds from paying for abortion. it's been in place a long time the law of the land. coronavirus package being worked out in congress democrats fought to include a possible loophole in that law. in other words, as the nation is fighting a pandemic they are worried about abortion. this virus does not kill children. they wanted to fix that tonight a deal has been worked out apparently did the process need to take this long. chris bedford has been falling g it since day one.

federalist. he joins us tonight. >> good evening. >> tucker: just in the interest of fairness. you always want to be fair. both sides use crises to push their pre-existing political agendas. do you think it's fair to say that the democratic party attempted to use this bill to promote abortion? >> they are certainly much better than using crises to their advantage than the republicans are in politics here. and, yes, this has held it up. the reporter who broke this, christian day talked to the daily caller gave nancy pelosi's office hours to respond to the accusation from the white house that the hyde amendment in trying to fit abortions in here was holding this up and was a source of -- was a source of holding up the deal with mnuchin with the republicans and with the white house. when time is absolutely of the essence. i can't imagine exactly how getting the public and getting people and getting a nation that he is supposed to be uniting to pay for other people's abortions would possibly save anybody from this disease or save anyone in

this country and not only that but she is always crowing about being a catholic. to draw people into this abortion thing, it's just greatly troubling, especially when we are supposed to be coming together as a country to try to solve this. >> tucker: is absolutely shocking. i appreciate you confirming that chris bedford from the federalist tonight. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> tucker: we have a fox news alert for you. the president has just tweeted his support for the coronavirus deal currently making its way through the house and we are quoting now. you fully support hr 6201 family first response act voted on in the house this evening. it will follow my direction for free coronavirus tests, paid sick leave for impacted american workers. i have directed the secretary of the treasury and secretary of labor to issue regulations that will provide flexibility so in no way will small business be hurt. i encourage all republicans and democrats to come together and vote yes. i will always put the health and well-being of american families

first. i look forward to signing the final bill as soon as possible. end quote. of course we will continue to follow that story. this has been of course one of the fastest moving news weeks anyone covering news or anyone in america has ever seen. a remarkable week. we will try to summarize what we have learned from it after the break. ♪ ♪ pods puts you in control with our moving and storage solutions. pack what you want, we store it for as long as you want. then, we deliver it where you want, so whether you need to move or store your things, pods is here to help you with flexible moving and storage solutions. with a relaxing commute. a nice long lunch. and how about those skyscrapers? yep it doesn't get much better than this.

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>> sean: it has been a remarkable week in the history of this country.

things have moved so fast, coronavirus as a story has been building for months. it is not new. most people in the media were not paying attention, they were worrying about impeachment and russia. but we noticed. in january, this show investigated the media for its single-minded focus on the impeachment of the president. the final outcome was not even in doubt. the world is changing incredibly fast out there, and it is fascinating and ominous and recovering. by and large, the media are ignoring it. why are they doing that? consider the stories they are downplaying in favor of protracted government searing whose ending we already know. for starters, at this very moment, a serious viral outbreak is spreading across china in the world's biggest country. in just a matter of weeks, this new strain of coronavirus has generated almost as many new cases as it's ours did. remember sars? by any objective standard, that is the biggest story of the day, may be of the moment.

a potential pandemic rising from asia. and then, the primary set. the world was focused on the iowa caucuses. on that night, when they were caucusing voting in iowa. it was still clear a much bigger story was looming in asia. >> we have a much more from iowa in this hour tonight, that is not the only thing going on in the world this evening. china's coronavirus keeps running, and they are alarming signs, genuinely alarming signs, that that country's government is hiding just how bad things are in that country. you should be concerned. there is no troubling undercoat or footage out of china, we have that for you next. >> sean: it was very clear that coronavirus was going to disrupt your life in a big way this week. march madness was canceled, travel might be sharply entailed, you might be told to work from home. some accused of of sucking up to the liberal media.

but it wasn't an exaggeration, in the end it took just four days to prove that all of this was totally real. in fact, they were conservative estimates. it isn't going away, we will cover it honestly. we promise. see you monday. >> sean: we began this night with a fox news alert, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention. a bolting precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from america's leadership. the federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together. under the president's leadership to stem the tide of the coronavirus. the announcement came earlier today in the rose garden, the president declared a national emergency bringing up, up to $50 billion in new funding. that will