their >> this reality makes it clear to me that congress wants to address this unprecedented crisis in an unprecedented way that protects the health and economic well-being of the working families of our country, not just powerful special interests. as a member of the democratic leadership, and the united states senate, and as a senator from the state of vermont, this is something i intend to intensely be involved in over the next number of months. and that will require an enormous amount of work. which takes me to the state of our presidential campaign. i wish i could give you better news, but i think you know the truth, and that is that we are now 300 delegates behind vice president biden, and the

path toward victory is virtually impossible. so, while we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, i have concluded that this battle for the democratic nomination will not be successful. so, today, i am announcing the suspension of my campaign. please know that i do not make this decision lightly. in fact, it has been a very difficult and painful decision. over the past few weeks, jane and i, in consultation with top staff and many of our prominent supporters, have made an honest assessment of the prospect of victory. if i believed we had a feasible path to the nomination, i would certainly continue this campaign. but it's just not there. i know that there may be some in our movement to disagree with this decision, who would like us to fight on to the democratic convention.

i understand that position. as i see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership, and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour, i cannot, in good conscience, continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour. but let me say this very emphatically -- as you all know, we have never been just a campaign. we are a grassroots, multiracial, multigenerational movement which has always believed that real change never comes from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up. we have taken on wall street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the

prison industrial complex, and the greed of the entire corporate elite. that struggle continues. while this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not. dr. martin luther king jr. reminded us that, "the ark of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." the fight for justice is what our campaign has been about. the fight for justice is what our movement remains about. today i congratulate joe biden, very decent man, who i will work with to move our progressive ideas forward. on a practical note, let me also say this -- i will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. while vice president biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the

democratic convention where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions. then, together, standing united, we will go forward to defeat donald trump, the most dangerous president in modern american history. and we will fight to elect strong progressives at every level of government from congress to the school board. as i hope all of you know, this race has never been about me. i ran for the president because i believe that, as a president, i could accelerate and institutionalize the progressive changes that we are all building together. and if we keep organizing and fighting, i have no doubt that that is exactly what will happen. while the path maybe slower now, we will change this nation, and with like-minded friends around the globe, change the entire world. on a very personal note,

speaking for jane, myself, and iron entire family , we will always carry in our hearts the memory of the extraordinary people we have mes country. we often hear about the beauty of america, and this country is incredibly beautiful. to me, the beauty i will remember most is in the faces of the people we have met from one corner of this nation to the other. the compassion, love, and decency i have seen in them asked me so hopeful for our future. it also makes me more determined than ever to work to create a nation that reflects those values and lifts up all of our people. please stay in this fight with me. let us go forward together. the struggle continues. thank you all very much.

>> melissa: vermont senator bernie sanders officially suspending his campaign for president of the united states, clearing joe biden's path to the democratic nomination. joining us now on the phone is bret baier. he is fox news chief political anchor and anchor and executive editor of "special report." bret, very interesting what he said there. he is spending his campaign. you said he blamed it in large part on the crisis we are facing right now with the coronavirus, but he said he is going to stay on the ballot through the convention and continue to collect as many delegates as he can. what do you make of that? >> well, it's interesting. senator sanders saying the campaign is over and that joe biden will be the democratic nominee. but he said the movement is not over, and they are going to continue to push the democratic party to get more progressive policies or, in his view, policies he has been

planning for for decades. and we'll do that with the delegates he already has received, in the vote so far. and he'll be on the ballots going forward. so, any delegates he gets will still be in the pot, and he will use those as negotiating tools to affect policy with the democratic convention. i think it's fascinating. i think he's saying joe biden will be the nominee and he will work with him, but he needs to understand that the progressive policies will drive the day. i think, melissa, and everybody, i think this is a moment with now bernie sanders kind of stepping out of the campaign that you may start to see barack obama rise up and tried to bring the democratic party together behind joe biden. it may not be until the summer, but it does open the door for that. desperately, joe biden needs to get those progressive voters on his side if he's going to be

successful going forward against president trump. >> harris: hey, bret, it's harris. good to see you and hear you. you know, i'm curious. this gives joe biden a lot more time than hillary clinton had. bernie sanders dropping out at this point. and i wonder what happens in the gap for joe biden. clearly bernie sanders just handed him the nomination, and he wants influence over the platform, but what do you think joe biden does in the gap, in this time? >> i think he's trying to break through. he's trying to break through in this current environment, in the coronavirus campaign of 2020. and he continues to do interviews. i think he will do a lot more local interviews with different local affiliates to try and get his voice out there. in the meantime, fund-raise. to try and coalesce the party. there is a real big concern in

the democratic party that the bernie sanders people, the movement, doesn't sign on fully to joe biden. and it's evident in polls. but i think that is their challenge, to keep the party altogether heading into milwaukee either physically or digitally. one or the two. >> melissa: bret, why do you think he chose this day today to make this announcement? >> they must have looked at the numbers out of wisconsin. they must have looked at the path. it was already definitely narrow, very, very narrow, and i think he has been receiving, anecdotally, pressure from the party. to say, "we need to quicker get behind joe biden to use this time to not only sure am up but financially get behind him." remember, all of the small donors that bernie sanders got along the way, an amazing amount, now they want to take

that and move it toward a biden kind of democratic operation. the sooner that happened, that was where the pressure was coming from. >> harris: you know, bret, i'm curious about how you bring -- i guess to supporters that's one thing, but on capitol hill there are some more harder core progressives. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez and others. i say her name because aoc is someone that many people know. but the person who cowrote that legislation, the senator who cowrote the green new deal, there are other more progressive people on capitol hill. are they just suddenly going to become joe biden people? >> well, i mean, just look at the freezing senator sanders uses. he says, "joe biden is a decent man, and he will be the nominate." "i am using my power to the maximum two affect democratic policy and democratic platforms."

all these people, bernie sanders, aoc, all of the gang that is behind all of that, the leadership in the progressive side, is going to be fighting for policy planks, if you will. and drawing joe biden to the left. that will be a fascinating development as you get toward him accepting the nomination. >> melissa: i wonder how joe biden takes the narrative. we so i'm doing interviews, i think it was last weekend. the clips that went out, they had a lot of nonsensical answers. where you were trying to figure out where he was going or what he was trying to say. he had this phone call with president trump, they didn't reveal a lot about what was sa said. at this point we are so focused -- and rightly so -- on this pandemic and getting through it,

and the economic challenge, that this is the first time we've done -- especially lead with -- a political story in a very long time. i'm just wondering, how does joe biden get attention back on him? >> expect funding, outside groups to start running a lot of ads about joe biden. it's already started. i've seen a couple. expect there to be a real effort to spend now, to kind of shore them up. this primary race is over. think about how long we spent looking at bernie sanders the front runner. think about how long we spent talking about a contested convention. you know? again, it goes by the wayside. south carolina was the turning point. joe biden's dominance there changed the entire race more than any single event we've seen, really, in recent years. i think the outside democratic

groups are going to be shoring up joe biden whether interviews go well or not. they will be shoring him up that way. >> harris: interesting. bret, as you were saying previously, the pole will be to get joe biden to go to the left, from bernie sanders supporters d those who are more progressive on capitol hill. my question then becomes, how do the democrats -- i mean, i know they want to be united -- but how do they legitimately stop donald trump? the incumbent right now, in a crisis, from capitalizing on the fact that they are leaning so hard left that they are going to tip over? that's been his push all along. it's been effective. when you look at just, categorically, generic polling, when the word "socialist" is brought up, how well president trump does against that. i don't know how the calculation has changed in the last 60 days because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it was a very real

thing. how do dems not just unite but keep the president from capitalizing when they don't, if they don't? >> i think they continue to try to paint him as this evil figure who is screwing things up. that's the kind of talking point. and then, remember that this environment changes our perspective on things, as well. think of the money that's going out the door from the federal government. $2.2 trillion. we are looking at another trillion dollar bill coming soon. all this money to do with this crisis, legitimate. it does fit into a lot of the things that democrats have wanted to do. you know, expect that talking point, i think, from capitol hill. and maybe from bernie sanders. "you see what's happening now? we could do more to change the fabric of the country." it's going to be a different challenge for the trump campaign. not one that he's going to shrink away from, but it's going

to be different than it was heading into the coronavirus time. >> melissa: you know, one thing i'm curious about, bret -- you talk about the money that is going to be behind joe biden now. i just wonder, the economy has more than ground to a halt. i mean, it's a disaster in business circles. of the money that has been promised to the democrats, is it already banked? has already been collected, has it gone into the account, or has it been pledged? people aren't paying their bills right now, big and small. big and small donors. i wonder, do you have any sense how much of it is actually sitting in the bank account and how much is pledged? >> i don't have it off the top of my head, but i do know that his fund-raising had increased in recent weeks. they are doing more and more digital fund-raising, not surprisingly. they, i think, will take this

moment to start pushing for small donors. much like the bernie sanders team does, and has done so effectively from the beginning. they are in a battle. the trump campaign has been flush with cash. i think both campaigns are going to see it diminishing, dwindling political out paid during this time. >> harris: bret, so great to have you break down this breaking news, as always. when we see you at 6:00 p.m. eastern there might have been a situation. we don't know. you know the president and the task force speak every night about the time of your show. if not before, right after. there may have been an opportunity for there to be a response, if not before then. so, this story today, with bernie sanders dropping out of the race, continues on. we look at you to book-end it tonight with the next chapter, if you will, politically. thank you so very much. we are waiting now for chris wallace to join us and to get up and join us on this breaking news story.

i do want to say, something bret said really resonated there. i don't know if you caught this. "the campaign over, but the movement is not," for bernie sanders. there are millions of people, millions of people who wanted this to be bernie sanders' time. he tried before, he tried this time, he said that the numbers were changing for him, and we could see that he was struggling a bit toward the end. particularly among communities of color. on the phone with us now is chris wallace, anchor of ""fox news sunday"." chris, if you could just weigh in on what i just said there, that was really the numbers that bernie sanders and his campaign must have been watching at this point. maybe there was an aha moment, maybe it was just -- what would that have looked like? >> first of all, this is a little bit of a surprise. not that it was going to end,

with joe biden as the nominee. it certainly seemed headed that way. but that bernie sanders would pull out now. i wonder -- frankly, i'm out sheltering in place, all of us are, in our own homes. my wife and i just went out for a long walk and came back to this news -- i wonder if, to some degree, bernie sanders was moved by what was going on in wisconsin yesterday. look, his path to the nomination was getting slimmer and slimmer. frankly, i don't think it was almost existent anymore. and to see all of those people risking their lives to go out and vote in a primary, i'm sure some of them supporters voting for bernie sanders, when there was very little chance he was going to win, in the middle of this coronavirus. my guess is that played a role. and i suspect also -- you know, i heard the tail end of your conversation with bret, there are a lot of practical issues. how do they raise money, how do

they organize? is going to take all hands on deck to be donald trump and the democratic party. every day spent fighting inside the party just makes it that much harder to raise money and to prepare and to build organization for the general election in the fall. my guess is there were a lot of people calling bernie sanders and saying -- i hope we'll talk about this, because a lot of the accomplishment in this campaign, moving the party to the left, he basically accomplished that by now. i'm sure there were people saying, "bernie, it's time to leave." >> melissa: chris, it's melissa francis. you know, it's interesting, everyone is going to try to use this moment to sort of stand up and say, "this is why you should believe in what i believe in, because this crisis has been caused by the opposite policies." in fact, we heard bernie sanders say a bit of that when he was talking about the fact -- "this crisis proves that

employer-based health care does not work. it proves that we need a medicare for all system where there is equal access to health care." and it's an interesting point when you have people in a lot of places, daley, who are saying they've been calling their state government and they can't even register for unemployment becauh people there on the line in order to take their claims in, in order to be able to file those forms and get started. and you look at, on the national level, all the criticism about the testing and how the testing was flawed and it was so slow to roll out. you know, one of the big challenges we've seen here has been bureaucracy. so, as he tries to make that point that you want more bureaucracy, it's kind of a tough one to make. no doubt, everyone is going to try at some point to point how, in this moment, it proves how their point of view and their approach to government works. who do you think is best able to

sort of shape that argument? >> well, you are exactly right. everybody is going to take this crisis -- and it clearly is a crisis, a public health crisis, now an economic crisis -- and say their solution for that, their prescription for that or they general governmental policy, would have been best-suited to deal with it. you can't run a government on the basis of, "well, this is how we're going to handle a pandemic." you know, these are once-in-a-lifetime events. but certainly, medicare for all and a total government takeover of the health care system is proven by the fact that people are out of jobs. a lot of them lose their health insurance. so the employer-based system, as you point out, doesn't work as well. the flip side is this is not necessarily an argument for big government and big government bureaucracy. i look at bernie sanders'

campaign from a different point of view, and that is the degree -- though he lost, again -- the degree to which he shifted the debate inside the party. if you were to look at the things that joe biden, who seems certain to be the nominee, is now supporting, it is so far -- although it certainly in the middle of what bernie sanders was saying in this campaign, it is so far to the left of what even barack obama was in 2012. you know, you've got joe biden supporting a public option. not medicare for all, but a public option. that was not something that barack obama went for. you got joe biden talking about health care for people who were getting health insurance. illegal immigrants were people getting health insurance. that is not something obama supported. decriminalizing illegal immigration, not something that obama supported. so, sanders lost, but he moved

to the entire conversation in the democratic party and the policy positions of joe biden significantly to the left. it won't be enough for sanders and his supporters, but he can take some solace in that period that the democratic party is much closer to bernie sanders, then perhaps it is to even where barack obama was when he left office just three and a half years ago. >> harris: you know, kris, as you were talking, of course the image of joe biden pops up flanked not just by bernie sanders but also elizabeth warren. i wonder now, because we really haven't heard much from her recently since she suspended her campaign, didn't have a lot of delegates comparatively as bernie sanders has, but she, too, still has leverage on that progressive arm of the party. and also helped tilt the platform, to some degree, if not for the party also for bernie sanders. excuse me, for joe biden.

my question is, how do they go forward? i asked bret this, i'll ask it of you in a slightly different way. when you look at going too far left, recent polling right before the pandemic -- so we have to redo it, perhaps, because of coronavirus. don't know how it would really have an effect, but maybe it does. more recent polling shows that when you go too far left you don't do well against president trump. in fact, his numbers have remained relatively stubborn in terms of how people feel about the politics of the economy. look, we are in a tough stretch right now. notwithstanding that. how do you go forth and lean too far left and go for donald trump? i mean, his supporters, they are not only five of them, there are millions of them, too. >> it's a very good question, and the answer is very delicately.

on the one hand, if you are joe biden, obviously you are happy sanders is out. you are now the de facto democratic nominee. maybe he was before, but now he really is, with his sole opposition out of the race. and you need that support. you need the support of bernie sanders' followers and elizabeth warren's supporters. you could argue, "where are they going to go? they're not going to vote for donald trump." but i think he's got to reach out, joe biden does, and say enough to satisfy them and give them a sense, "i hear what you're saying, maybe i won't go all the way, but i'm sensitive to your concerns." without, as you rightly point out, going so far to the left that you alienate the mainstream. because he's got to win those republican-suburban voters. he's got to win those independent voters. a lot of whom weren't sure they could go for bernie sanders.

and his avowedly socialist views. he's got to find that delicate balance where he satisfies the sanders voters but he doesn't go so far in their direction that he alienates the people in the center but he's going to need when it gets to the general election. i heard you incidentally asking bret about money. it's an awful strong group of people who do not want donald trump reelected. i just don't see -- first of all, we have no idea what kind of a campaign this is going to be, because we don't know what state our country is going to be in with the coronavirus come the summer and come especially post-labor day, the general election. whether this is going to be a virtual campaign on both sides, whether it's going to be, you know, the old-fashioned getting on airplanes and traveling to big rallies are not. but i've got to think, particularly with the internet and virtual donations, that

there's going to be plenty of money for joe biden and for donald trump, for both of them to wage their campaigns. this is a 50-country -- 52, 48, one way or the other. people have a lot of vested interest in supporting donald trump or joe biden when they get into the fall election. one interesting point is i think our campaigns are way too long anyway. this campaign, had it not been interrupted, was going to be a 2-year campaign starting in the beginning of 2015. this is going to be much more like a british election. six weeks or two months, where it's kind of a snap election, and maybe that's good for the country that we are not going to be listening to this nonstop from now until november. >> melissa: i like that. that's definitely a bright side. maybe we won't be listening to it quite as long. chris wallace, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you, melissa.

>> melissa: if you're just joining us, senator bernie sanders from vermont announcing that he is officially suspending his campaign, although he is staying on the ballot in the remaining races that are out there. we want to bring in on the phone now cohost of "the five," juan williams joins us. juan, as we said, he is staying on the ballot. he wants to collect as many delegates as he can between now and then. but he says that now joe biden will in fact be the nominee. what impact do you think this has on the race in general? how much of an impact, given that we were really in this quiet period for campaigning? >> well, i think it's clear the race is over. joe biden is the democrats' nominee. some people want to say presumptive just to be cautious, but the loan contender remaining really was bernie sanders. now that that race is over, the

question becomes how do you achieve unity? how do you bring people together, especially the most passionate sanders supporters -- i think it was 15% said they couldn't back biden, that they would stick with sanders no matter what. i think that's why the key points to take away from this morning is, one, bernie sanders says he still on the ballot in the remaining races, but most of those races -- because of the virus in the crisis this has prompted in our country -- are now being pushed into summer. it would have been until late summer, maybe even close to the convention, that you had joe biden dealing with bernie sanders, as some would say a distraction, while president trump was not only raising money but consolidating his forces, building his social media campaign for the fall. well, you think back to what hillary clinton faced in '16,

and bernie sanders did hang around right up until the convention. so there was a contest, there was that level of hillary being distracted. it won't be the case this time. i think maybe, most of all, this is a signal to the big donors. again, it's hard to raise money in this interim period. it's been hard for joe biden all along. bernie sanders raised an incredible amount of money, mostly from small done dog owners. i think you may recall, he raised like $60 million in the first 24 hours he was running. it was an incredible show of support for bernie sanders. well, now i think a lot of those sanders supporters, they are modeling their behavior on their leader, on sanders. "maybe it's time to close ranks." the question will be whether or not biden can reach out to, but also whether or not sanders sends a clear signal. does he at some point endorse? what is he saying? just earlier, this week or last

week, you saw senator elizabeth warren, who is sanders' kind of powell on the left, see that she sees joe biden as strong and capable and steady, and a very good leader. well, that kind of language, it wasn't an all out endorsement, but that kind of language said to the elizabeth warren supporters, "we are getting in line with joe biden." will easy similar language now coming from bernie sanders? he was praising in his remarks his surrogate. what about aoc? what about alexandria ocasio-cortez? can she now say, "our goal is no longer beating joe biden, our goal is defeating donald trump, and i'm in line --" >> harris: she had already started to do that, though. she had already started to say, she said, "medicare for all but were, we have to take a look." remember, she was the protege of bernie sanders. even a few weeks ago she had seen the light on. at least she indicated that she

did, that there was a greater goal. and that the stubbornness about health care was really going to be something that needed to be dealt with. real quickly, we do have a statement. we can even put part of it on the screen, i believe, from biden. "while the sanders campaign has been suspended, its impact on this election and on elections to come is far from over. we will address the existential crisis of climate change. we will confront income inequality in our nation. we will make sure health care is affordable and accessible to every american. we will make education at our public colleges and universities free. most important of all, we will defeat donald trump." real quick comment as we slide to break, juan williams? >> well, the whole argument against bernie sanders had been electability. people didn't think he could defeat donald trump. he's out now, and i suspect this all becomes about joe biden. can he beat donald trump? for many democrats, it's the

only choice remaining. >> harris: well, there's a treat from the president of the united states. we are going to take a quick commercial break. when we come back, we'll have it for you. stay tuned.

this is an athlete, twenty reps deep, sprinting past every leak in our softest, smoothest fabric. she's confident, protected, her strength respected. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. >> harris: the governor of new york, andrew cuomo, is speaking now. as we've seen another spike in the death toll from coronavirus. let's watch. >> what we have done and what we are doing is actually working and making a difference. we took dramatic actions in this state. the program to close down schools, businesses, social distancing. it's working. it is flattening the curve.

we see that again today. so far. meaning what? meaning that curve is flattening, because we are flattening the curve by what we are doing. if we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change. that curve is purely a function of what we do day in and day out. but right now it is flattening. the number of patients hospitalized is down, again, we don't look at just day-to-day data. you look at the three-day trend. but that number is down. the three-day average trend is also down. anecdotally, the individual hospitals, the larger systems are reporting that some of them are actually releasing more people that are coming in. so they are net down. we see the "flattening of the

curve." we have more capacity in the hospital system than ever before, so we've had more capacity in that system to absorb more people. the sharing of equipment, which has been really one of the beautiful cooperative generous acts among different partners in the health care system, has worked. if the hospitalization rate keeps decreasing the way it is now, then the system should stabilize over these next couple of weeks, which will minimize the need for overflow on the system that we have built in at javits and the usns comfort. so, that is all good news. there is a big caution sign. thoughts, if we continue doing

what we are doing. if we continue what we're doing. we are flattening the curve because we are rigorous about social distancing, et cetera. so, if we continue doing what we are doing, we believe the curve will continue to flatten. but it's not a time to get complacent, it's not a time to do anything differently than we've been doing. remember what happened in italy, when the entire health care system became overrun. we have to remain diligent. we have to remain disciplined going forward. but there's no doubt that we are now bending the curve, and there is no doubt that we can't stop doing what we're doing. that's the good news. the bad news isn't just bad, the bad news is actually terrible. highest single-day death toll yet, 779 people. when you look at the numbers on the death toll, it has been going steadily up. it reached a new height

yesterday. the number of deaths is a matter of fact. the number of deaths will continue to rise, as those hospitalized for a longer period of time pass away. the longer you are on a ventilator, the less likely you will come off the ventilator. dr. fauci spoke to me about this, and he was 100% right. the "lagging" indicator between hospitalizations and deaths, the hospitalizations can start to drop. the deaths actually increase, because the people who have been in the hospital for 11 days, 14 days, 17 days, pass away. that's what we're seeing. hospitalizations drop, and the death toll rises.

i understand the science of it, i understand the facts and the logic of it, but it is still incredibly difficult to deal with. every number is a face, right? and that has been painfully obvious to me every day. but we have lost people, many of them front-line workers, many of them health care workers, many of them people who were doing the essential functions that we all needed for society to go on. and they were putting themselves at risk. and they knew they were. many of them, vulnerable people who this vicious predator of a virus targeted from day one. this virus attacked the

vulnerable, and attacked the week. it's our job as a society to protect those vulnerable. that's what this has always been about from day one. it still is about it. be responsible. not just for yourself, but to protect the vulnerable. be responsible, because the life you risk may not be your own. those people who walk into an emergency room every day and put themselves at peril, don't make the situation worse. don't infect yourself or infect someone else so their situation becomes more dangerous. just to put a perspective on this, 9/11, which so many of us lived through in this state and in this nation, 2753 lives lost.

this crisis, we lost 6268 new yorkers. i'm going to direct all flags to be flown at half mast in honor of those who we have lost to this virus. big question from everyone, my daughter'daughters, i'm sure, rt people's inner table. "when will things go back to the way they were?" i don't think it's about going back. i don't think it's ever about going back. i think the question is about going forward. that's what we have to deal with here. it's about learning from what we have experienced, and it's about growing, and it's about moving forward. "well, when newly returned to normal," i don't think we returned to normal. i don't think we returned to yesterday were everywhere. i think if we are smart we achieve a new normal.

the way we are understanding a new normal when it comes to the economy, and a new normal when it comes to the environment, now we understand a new normal in terms of health and public health. and we have to learn, just the way we've been learning about the new normal in other aspects of society. we have to learn what it means. "global pandemic." how small the world has actually gotten. someone sneezes in asia today, you catch a cold tomorrow. whatever happens in any country on this globe can get on an airplane and be here literally overnight. understanding this phenomenon, and having a new appreciation for it. however public health system has to be prepared, and the scale to which we need a public health system. look at the way we are

scrambling right now to make this work. we have to learn from that. i think we have also learned positive lessons. we have found ways to use technology that we never explored before. you have a new york state court system that, thank you, chief judges, basically developing a virtual online court system which has all sorts of positive benefits going forward. using technology for health care, using technology to work from home, using technology for education. i think these are all positives that we can learn. testing capacity, which we still have to develop. that is going to be the bridge from where we are today to the new economy, in my opinion. it's going to be a testing inform transition to the new economy. people who have the antibodies, people who are negative, people who have been exposed, they now

are better. those are the people. you know who they are, because you can do testing. but that we have all developed a sense of scale over the past few weeks in dealing with this. there's also lessons to be learned, why are more african-americans and latinos affected? we are seeing this around the country. now, the numbers in new york are not as bad as the disparity we see in other places across the country, but there still are apparently disparities. why? comorbidity, i understand that. but i think there is something more to it. it always seems that the poorest people pay the highest price. why is that? why is that? whatever the situation is,

natural disaster, hurricane katrina, the people standing on those rooftops were not rich white people. why? why is it that the poorest people always pay the highest price? but let's figure it out. let's do the work. let's do the research. let's learn from this moment, and let's learn the lessons, and let's do it now. we are going to do more testing in minority communities. not just testing for the virus. let's actually get research and data that can inform us as to why we are having more people in minority communities, more people in certain neighborhoods, why do they have higher rates of infection? i get the comorbidity. i get the underlying illness issue. but what else is at play? are more public workers latino

and african-american? who don't have a choice, frankly, but to go out there every day and drive the bus and drive the train and show up for work and wind up subjecting themselves to come in this case, the virus? whereas many of the people who have the option just absented themselves. they live in more dense communities, more urban environments. but what is it? and let's learn from that, and let's do it now. i'm going to ask our suny albany chief rodriguez too had an effort. we will do more testing in minority communities right now come with more data research done now. so, let's learn now. department of health will be doing it along with northwell.

let's learn these lessons now. we're also going to make an additional -- >> harris: we been watching come of course, as we do pretty much every day at this time when hereabouts, the governor of new york giving the nation and his state and neighboring states the latest. he had a lot of -- i guess you could call it good news, because he said the curve is flattening. the spike in the deaths, 779 yesterday overnight. 731 the day before. you see not go up. he says, in part, that is because there are so many people who've been on long term, more than 20--25 days, ventilators. he says the longer your on them, you don't survive. i want to bring in dr. marc siegel, part of our virtual couch today. we've had so much breaking news, our first opportunity. doctor, i lean on you now to navigate us through what is positive in all of this and with the harsh realities are, as we

well. >> dr. siegel: harris, he made a really good point, the governor. i was glad he put the dots together on this. because we tend to present both of those things simultaneously. number of new cases, which is starting to flatten in new york, thank god, and number of deaths. which is not directly related, because it has more to do with if care is working for the sickest patients who have it. keep in mind, by the way, the number of cases that occur is a big underestimation. as we've said, at least 50% of the people who get covid-19 are a symptomatic. you don't diagnose them or they have other symptoms mistaken for something else. we are missing a lot of these cases. i don't think in the united states and in new york we are missing the deaths and hospitalizations. we diagnosed those cases. patients that are on ventilators are dealing not with a pneumonia from the virus itself, but generally an inflammatory pneumonia. something called a cytokine storm, where the immune system is attacking the lungs. and that is really hard to get

somebody off of a ventilator from. i don't want to make this more negative, but i would say it's about 50/50 with you can survive that. it may take 10-14 days. so, the deaths we are seeing are delayed from what we saw a couple weeks ago, with cases we diagnosed a couple weeks ago now either recovering or not. >> melissa: doctor, we are finally seeing some numbers behind some of the trends that we feel we have seen anecdotally. now backing them up. you look at, in chicago, 72% of the virus-related fatalities were african-americans. in louisiana, statewide, 70% of the people who died were black. because of the stats i'm looking at here that are coming out. the governor talked about something, the president talked about last night, as well. we have to figure out what the connection is so we can do better going forward, just in general and health. something i've heard a lot of

doctors say so far is that people come in with this illness they say otherwise they are perfectly healthy. "wait, no, we took a look deeper and you had these underlying conditions that you didn't know about, that weren't being addressed." maybe because they are working so hard and don't have the luxury of taking days off to go to the doctor and get diagnosed for things like diabetes or underlying heart conditions. i wonder if, going forward, maybe one thing away from this is more of a focus on that well-being. you know, going to the doctor when you think you are well, for that checkup, to diagnose some of these underlying things that, when a giant storm like this comes along, makes you one of the people that's more vulnerable. do you think that's one of the reasons why we are seeing some of the minority groups fall victim to this more frequently than others? what are your thoughts? >> dr. siegel: melissa, you made two really good points there. one, if you look at the african-american community, you

tend to see a higher rate of high blood pressure, a known heart, diabetes, weight issues. these are definitely population-based. we call this population studies. on top of that, we're going to have to figure out, in retrospect, we will have to figure out what made somebody more susceptible to a severe outcome. we know that males are more susceptible than females to severe outcomes and death. in italy, 70% of the deaths were males. they weren't all smokers and drinkers, although that has a factor, too. we look at the socioeconomic issues. what is your diet? are you a smoker, are you a drink or? all these factor in. age, of course, is the one we focus on the most. but different ethnicities have different proclivities to different diseases that are pre-existing conditions. your point very well taken, they may not be diagnosed. >> dagen: dr. siegel, it's dagen. one thing talked about that

anybody wants to get back to work and have this economy reopened , but number one on the list, even beginning those steps, is a steep drop. a sharp reduction in infections. also, the serology test, to test for antibodies, which should be coming out in a few weeks according to the cdc. in terms of the infection, how much of a drop do we need to see before we can really start moving toward a more normal way of life? >> dr. siegel: dagen, i would answer that question in a different way then you ask it. i think i want to see how much immunity there is. in other words, how many people are recovering? it is such a big hole here in the situation, that we are basically cordoning off all of society and assuming everybody has this virus rather than testing everybody and figuring out who actually has it and who has recovered from it. people that have gotten over it that can return to work. so we need that serology test to

help guide us. have you had an infection? are you better now? can you return to work? that will certainly flatten the curve, because we are missing a lot of diagnoses. once we have the ability with rapid testing to make the diagnosis and then see if you're getting over it, we can separate out those who are sick from those who either are immune or haven't been exposed. that's the way forward in the future here. >> carley: dr. siegel, it's carley. the glimmer of hope and all of this is that there's been a decrease in hospitalizations. my concern about that is that hospitals, especially in metropolitan areas, aren't admitting as many patients as they normally would because they are afraid of running out of ventilators and hospital beds. do you think that's the case, and if it's true, is that number skewed? >> dr. siegel: certainly that number is skewed, carley. of course, in new york city, more attempts are being made to provide alternatives. patients being sent to the

comfort now, patients going to the javits center. but, you realize, it's not really safe to be transferring patients between hospitals if you think they have covid-19. so there is a problem with triage. i will make another point that is kind of the opposite. i don't really want my patients going to the hospital if i think they have this, because it increases the chances they are going to contaminate the hospital and get other people sick. so i'm not against the idea of having people stay home with this diagnosis, provided they are in touch with a physician like me who can help guide the situation. i do want less hospitalizations. it will free up the hospitals for taking care of the sickest. >> harris: you know, dr. siegel, i was looking down because i was looking for this article i read this morning. it talks about the low levels of antibodies found in some of the recovered patients, and how that is frustrating and kind of a mystery for doctors now. because we want, when people get better, the thousands of them, we don't have that enough but thousands of people have recovered from this. we want them to be able to share

their plasma. what are your thoughts? it's not as powerful as we were hoping for. >> dr. siegel: i was concerned about that study, too, harris. i'm really glad you saw that. it basically said one-third of all people in recovery have a low number of antibodies, especially the young. it's called neutralizing the antibody to see if you are immune. it may be that people don't have full immunity come one-third of the time, when we are recovering from this. we need more information. the good news is they probably have some protection, and that's what we need. we need as much protection as possible once you been exposed. after all, we can group together people who have recovered, and they're hopefully not going to get it again. >> melissa: it certainly signals some hope on a day where overnight we saw the largest number of fatalities here in new york. we will stay on this story and also that breaking news. senator bernie sanders leaving

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>> melissa: another blistering news day here as we work through the news on the coronavirus pandemic, and also that senator bernie sanders has now suspended his campaign for president. we want to thank dr. marc siegel and the rest of our virtual couch. we are back here at noon eastern tomorrow. here's harris. ♪ >> harris: this is "coronavirus pandemic: questions answered." i'm harris faulkner. the united states is staring down the deadliest day yet in the battle against covid-19. nearly 2,000 americans died in one day yesterday. the numbers of fatalities have been rising in recent days, but there is more to the story on that. we'll get to it momentarily. right now more than 401,000 coronavirus cases confirmed in the u.s. the deathol