america. >> americans are looking forward to safe and rapid reopening of our country. >> president trump ending the socially distancing guidelines. >> they will be phasing out because now the governors are doing -- >> americans desperate to get to work. >> nobodhas made money two months and ready to get in here and make money. >> they are urging caution. >> hopefully, everybody does it according to the glooiuidelines opening america forward again. >> we want to take one step forward and not two steps back.

>> new hope for a covid-19 treatment. >> the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recover. >> how long until we have a treatment or a vaccine i'll to sir john bell from oxford university, where a promising vaccine study is well under way. declaring victory? >> i think when you ask how did we do? i think they with a spectacular job! >> reporter: with more than 60,000 dead and 30 million out of work, is the trump administration risking its own "mission accomplished" moment? >> vlt joe biden takes the lead in the battleground states but calls are calling for investigation into his accuser tara reade.

here is a look at my upcoming guests welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press" and our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic >> announcer: this is "meet the press" with chuck todd good sunday morning. it was on january 6th that the cdc first issued a travel notice for one china. consider what has happened in less than four months time more than 1.1 million confirmed cases of covid-19 have been diagnosed in the u.s. and more than 66,000 americans have died. the american economy shrunk by nearly 5% in the first quarter with the worst yet to come some 30 million americans have filed for unemployment benefits just in the past six weeks those are the sobering numbers but this is not like another crisis think 9/11e "challenger acciden

>> we see it in states stay-at-home guidelines. we see it in a gallup poll find 44% of americans would be willing to return to activities right now if no restrictions right now while only 4% of democrats say the exact same thing. we see it in vice president not wearing a face mask at the mayo clinic where it's the rule we can even see it in the "the wall street journal" that the trump campaign has ordered trump face masks for supporters. it prompted this statement yesterday from former president george h.w. bush in the final unless, we are not partisan combatants. we are human beings. equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of god. there are other counts of heroism from our health care workers especially but much of that is obscured by the partisan debate over when and how to reopen this country. >> we got to open safely and

quickly, i hope, because we have to get our country back. >> reporter: the president is pressing states to end stay-at-home orders. by tomorrow, 33 states will have begun the process of at least partial reopening. after federal socially distancing guidelines expired on thursday. >> mother's day is coming up your mamma told you to wash your hands and cover your nose and mouth if you cough or sneeze as long as we do those simple things and use common sense, we ought to be just fine. >> they did misleading pictures acting like, you know, this was like lalapalooza on the beach or something like that? hearth black and blue a major outbreak >> swastika and rifles don't represent what we are from michigan nothing i want more than to flip the switch and return to normal but that is it not how it's going to work unfortunately.

>> reporter: president promised to meet a benchmark set by harvard study. >> you're confident you can surpass 5 million tests per day? >> we will be there soon. >> on wednesday he walked it back. >> i didn't say it but somebody had a report 5 million i think from the harvard report but we are going to be there at a certain point. >> reporter: even so the president and his political aides are trying to recast the response to the pandemic as a success story. >> we did all of the right moves. i think we did a spectacular job. we have saved thousands and thousands of lives i can even make that, if you want, hundreds of thousands of lives. >> the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. >> reporter: the language is nothing new. for months as the death toll has risen the president has declared any way, shape or form mission accomplished. >> you have down close to zero in 15 days pretty good job we have done.

we are here the end of the battle with our invisible enemy. we can ginel the nebegin the nr our war which we are calling opening up again. >> back in february you predicted the number of cases would go down to zero. how did we get from your prediction of zero to 1 million. >> well, it will go down to 1 million eventually. >> you can't just leap over things and get into a situation where you really are tempting a rebound. >> reporter: but perhaps motivated by the political calendar, th rosier time line. >> early summer, we could be in a much better place as a nation. >> may is the transition month may and june, probably. >> by june a lot of the country should be back to normal. >> reporter: joining me is dr. tom engelsby doctor, welcome to "meet the press. let me just start with a simple question 33 states are doing this

we noted that 18 states have hit their one-day case total high of those 33 in the last two weeks so technical not meeting those phase one metrics. are we ready to be doing this as a country? >> i think we need to be going forward very cautiously. i think if you look at the overall country numbers, we are about 200,000 new cases a week at this point. the last month, we have had something on the order of 60,000 deaths so most of the illness and death has occurred over the last 30 days so, overall, as a country, we still have a long way to go, but the states are in very different places and some states, a smial minority of states are getting closer to the white house metrics of two weeks in decline. in those places if they have other capabilities in place and this they are able to rapidly isolate and trace the contacts

of patients with covid and if they are able to diagnose very widely the people who have symptoms of covid, not just the sick people but everybody, those are the states that it's less risky to go ahead and be ready to be reopen. >> do we not have the testing capacity right now to give the states the security they have of making these decisions how much is this somewhat guesswork because of our lack of surveillance capabilities when it comes to where the virus is in many of these places? >> yeah, i think the a lot of uncertainty but there is a range of diagnostict in the percent of persons who are-- who are positive in some states, they are testing so many people that the percent of people who are positive is very low and that is a good number in other places, the percent of people testing is very high and

that is worrisome. it depends on where are you in the country in terms of access to testing, the operations around testing, and it's like a patchwork across the country. >> is there a way? when were you going to know whether this is a mistake or not? is it basically waiting the next two to four weeks in these incubation periods >> yeah. for this disease, it's going to take about two weeks -- two to three weeks for us to begin to see trends that come out of the changes in socially distancing, so a measure taken this morning, you probably won't see a change in hospitalization rates or icu capacity until two or three weeks from now that is the nature o the system. >> what is something that the state health officials don't have access to data wise that you wish they did before making these decisions?

>> i think we should -- in the coming weeks and months, we need to get a much better handle on the number of mild and moderate cases of disease that we have. the good news is that many, many people do not get seriously ill with this disease. but the bad news is that we are not capturing those people in terms of numbers for the country and if we don't know who they are, then we can't break their chains of transmission we can't isolate them or know their quarantine contacts and we need to know about the moderate cases and that will come with testing. >> i want to ask you something about something wrote at the cdc. it was sort of the odd lacking of missing data that the cdc normally tracks. he said the following.

what is going on here? are we missing a huge component of our public health response? >> i think we do need more data. clearly, i certainly agree with the need for the data that dr. jha outlined there i think we are tracking this epidemic in a different way than we have tracked others we haven't had this urgent need to understand hospitalizations on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, as we have had for some of the other things we have confronted before. and we need to get better as a country. we need to get our -- like if you will look at state health department data right now, some states are not reporting their hospitalization data we live in a federal system. if they are not reporting at the

state level it's hard for cdc to get that real data in real-time so i think we need to collectively get better and some states have more data than others but we should all be rising. >> let's get a realistic time line next three months, next six months a lot of people are concerned about the fall how concerned are you? and is there any way of avoiding a bad fall outcome at this point without advancements in a treatment or a vaccine >> well, before we even get to the fall, i am worried that we will have small waves in various places around the country for the coming months. hopefully, we won't, but as we begin to ease socially distancing in various places in the country,ing has changed in e virus. if we stop socially distancing tomorrow we will recreate the conditions that existed in february and march so what we

need to do is continue to our best possible individuals all of the individual ests making around socially distancing, staying six feet apart, wear masks in public and avoiding large gatherings the extent we are able to do that the next couple of months will dictate how we do as states and a country. hopefully, in the fall we will covid-19 that will be mixed with the flu and we both will be contributing to hospitalizations and icu beds so we are going to have two concurrent large public health challenges at the same time i am worried about the uptick in hospitalization rate and the more people needing intensive care in the fall but i don't think people should think that there will be a lull, that just because the summer is coming, we are going to have a lull before the fall it would be wonderful if that happens, but i don't think we should at all assume that at this point, given the nature of

this virus. >> i'm going to leave it there because i think that is a single most important take-away viewers need to have don't call it a lull it's unlikely we will have a lull in the summer dr. inglesby from johns hopkins university, thank you for your expertise on this. much appreciate it. >> thank you for having me, chuck. joining me are two state officials central to making decisions how their state should reopen dr. scott harris is from alabama department of health and dr. janay caldoon. thank you both for joining us. i want to start with you, dr. harris, since alabama is doing a little more opening right now than michigan, although compared to some of your southern neighbors, i would argue you guys are being a bit more cautious than others but tell me the metrics you used

that gave you the confidence to give you phased-in reopenings. >> sure. we have followed a number of metrics like most states have including the white house for reopening the gating criteria i'm sure you've talked about many times on this show. we are certainly part of the things we have considered. we are not fully satisfied those in terms of cases per day, but we felt pretty good about our surveillance numbers and we felt very good about our hospital capacity what our governor chose to do is to make a very measured step, a very gradual reopening of certain types of businesses. we did not proceed to a full phased reopening like in the white house plan things like entertainment venues and gyms and in-person person, we have not chosen to do that so far. we think this is a gradual first step. >> what data are you missing, dr. harris, you wish you had but whether it's capacity or other

reasons you don't have >> there are a number of things. i think, clearly, we would like to make sure we are testing to the level we would like. we probably have a total amount of laboratory bench capacity to do the number of tests that we would like to do, but those tests are really unevenly distributed throughout the state. if you're in a bigger more urbanized part of our state like jefferson county where birmingham is located or madison county, where huntsville is located, you can probably have really good access to testing whenever you'd like. in some of our more real parts of the state, we are able to get testing done but there are definitely barriers there for people to attain that particularly if they have to find transportation or they don't have access to a health care provider. we have also been surprised to find we have not necessarily gotten negative tests. it's hard to come up with a denominator so we not percent of positive tests we have we reached out to the labs that report to us but many are out of

state and difficult to get all of that information. >> dr. caldoon, let me ask the question slightly different. what are you seeing in your state that makes you uncomfortable advising the governor to begin even a partial phase one reopening? >> yes so here in the state of michigan, we have over 43,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths. we are actually third in the country when it comes to the number of deaths while we have seen significantly improvement in the past couple of weeks but over capacity in the southeast part of the state several weeks ago but part of the state are seeing an increase in the rise of cases and we know their hospital capacity so not what it should be. we have to get our testing up as i know people across the country are working on while we are cautiously optimistic, we still think we need to be very careful. >> all right

but dr. caldoon, what are you saying to those in the state southeast michigan is hit hard, yes. are you not comfortable having sort of a let's isolate parts of the state, tougher stay-at-home measures for southeast michigan and let's loosen things up in more rural parts of the state? why are you not there yet? >> we actually looked at this data on a daily basis regionally again, we are still seeing, for example, on the western side of the state that there are increases in the rates of rise of cases we have several outbreaks there. we know in some of our rural areas the number of hospital beds is not what it should be. many rural hospitals in the area are at capacity. every part of the state is different. in the southeast even though seeing a decrease in the rates of rise, we seeing many cases and many deaths every day. we will be working on dialing up as far as how reopening the

economy. the governor has actually already started that so we have to it in a incremental data-driven approach. >> i imagine both of you are feeling pressure, whether it's pressure from friends and family tired of the quarantine, pressure from friends of yours who maybe run businesses, or full-on political pressure dr. khaldun, how have you handled it how have you handled the public blow-back and how do you strike that balance in your own head where you're giving full-on medical advice versus let me give you the best medical advice i can for the policy you want to implement? >> you know, this is certainly not personal people hire me to give mental and public health advice and that is what i do. i take you to the governor and other folks in the governor's office on a regular basis to tell them the facts. these are the number of tests that we are currently doing, this is where we want to be. this is what is going on with our hospitals. and, again, if we don't do well

with these socially distancing measures, more people will die and that is just the fact. >> dr. harris, how much have you felt that pressure >> obviously, it's significant as you know. there are, you know, many alabamans that don't have the option of making a living, you know, under certain health orders we have to find a way to strike the right balance there. i think our governor has done a great job of trying to balance the health of the economy with the health of everybody from alabama. my job is public health is to give her the best health information i can. we present the data on just as dr. khaldun on how many cases we have and what our deaths look like i think alabama has been a little bit different you know, every state is different. 51 different plans for reopening, i guess, because we are all trying to look at the data and make our own decisions with the best information that we have about how to proceed

but there are people who are certainly wanting to maintain their livelihood and their businesses and we have to balance that with keeping everyone safe and healthy as much as possible. >> dr. harris, are you concerned that california has been more aggressive senator doug jones in alabama has encouraged alabamians to be careful traveling to georgia. >> we look at that very closely. certainly some good aspects about having, you know, every state having its own plan because every state is a little bi clearly, all states affect the others we are watching that very carefully. what we have done in alabama, i think, is, again, have this sort of measured approach and i think what i've heard many states say and what our governor has certainly said is that these aren't steps forward that are just going to ratchet forward and never come back. these are gradual steps and we certainly will consider dialing things back if we see an

increase in cases. i think that is the approach probably all states would want to take. we see where we are after changes are made and then make changes, if necessary. >> thank you both, doctors, for sharing your expertise in the sort of the regional observations that you both can share with the country good luck and stay healthy out there. >> thank you. >> thank you when we come back, the race for a coronavirus vaccine. i'm going to talk to a professor of medicine at oxford university in the uk as they think they have a vaccine that is showing real promise that is next right now, there's over a million walmart associates doing their best to keep our nation going, while keeping us safe. we've given masks to all our people and we're helping our customers practice social distancing in stores.

we've implemented shorter hours, so we can sanitize our stores from top to bottom while also restocking our products. but if anything, these days have reminded us why we do what we do. because despite everything that's changed, one thing hasn't, and that's our devotion to you and our communities. we're working together, in-store and online, through pickup and delivery, to make sure you can still get the essentials you need. and as we move forward, know that our first priority will always be to keep you and our associates safe. ♪ ♪ i'm feeling good. ♪ doing it my own way, ♪ ♪ every single day. from sunsweet's family of farms and employees, we hope your family stays healthy and safe.

make it tough to take care of yourself, that's why you can rely on nature's bounty... to give you the support you need... to stay motivated keep active and sleep well. add a little more health to your day... with nature's bounty. and other money managers don't understand why. because our way works great for us! but not for your clients. that's why we're a fiduciary, obligated to put clients first. so, what do you provide? cookie cutter portfolios? nope. we tailor portfolios to our client's needs. but you do sell investments that earn you high commissions, right? we don't have those. so, what's in it for you? our fees are structured so we do better when you do better. at fisher investments we're clearly different. welcome back the race for a coronavirus vaccine is on. and nowhere is there more they're testing a vaccine that

has shown success in rhesus monkeys. what's more, they're ahead of competitors because earlier testing of the vaccine for other viruses has shown it to be safely in people, so human testing can begin much sooner. joining me now is sir john bell, the regius professor of medicine at oxford university and he's going to tell us more about this welcome to "meet the press," sir bell let me start with this question. one of your colleagues used the percentage of 80% chance that this vaccine is at least somewhat successful in the next year are you that optimistic? and are you at all concerned our optimism around the world for what you guys are doing has gotten a bit overexuberant >> yeah, so obviously, people who have dedicated their careers to this kind of a problem have a tendency to get excited about

the prospects because the prospects are pretty good. i certainly wouldn't put the possibility at 80% that's a pretty big number but we're gradually reeling it in bit by bit, and as every day goes by, the likelihood of success goes up. >> you're in the midst of you want to start some human trials. one of your potential hurdles is the lack of outbreaks, right in order to do this, you need to try your next set of trials. do you know when you're going to be able to do this and where are you looking? are you looking at places like india? where are you looking to do these trials >> so we have still got lots of disease in the uk. we probably have something in the order of 15,000 or 20,000 transmissions a day in the uk, so there's no shortage of disease here and we'll push -- we have already started clinical trials,

so we have already given the vaccine to about 1,000 people. and we're going to grow that pretty rapidly we have consolidated the phase one and two programs because we are pretty confident that the vector itself is safe, because it's been used in about 5,000 people already up to now so that's allowed us to really accelerate the phase one program, and we hope that there would be enough disease that we would get evidence that the vaccine has efficacy by the beginning of june. >> what's the likelihood that if this fails as a vaccine, there will be something that is usable as a therapeutic and i'm just wondering, in the reverse, as we hear good news about, for instance, remdesivir, on its ability as a therapeutic, how helpful is that in the development of the vaccine

>> so probably -- it's helpful for sure, it's probably not helpful in the development of the vaccine. i don't think it really -- it works by a completely different mechanism. it works on -- >> gotcha. >> -- on the rna preliminaries which is a completely different replication method in the virus. we're stimulating the immune response to the virus, which is at the other end of the therapeutic options that we've got. so the two are probably not connected. but both could be helpful steps to try to get the virus under control. >> there's been some concern that you guys are going too fast, that -- and it's not just you. it's all of the labs that are attempting to get a vaccine. that there's such pressure coming from national governments that some safety protocols will be overlooked. i'm sure you, like others, are

claiming you're meeting all those protocols, but there has to be some concern that the pressure is going to create gaps on this. what are you doing to try to prevent that >> yeah, so you're absolutely right. it's a big issue for us, is trying to be sure that we do this quickly, but we don't miss out any of the key safety steps. i think we've got reason to believe that the efficacy, the efficacy of the vaccine in terms of generating strong antibody responses is probably going to be okay. the real question is whether the safety profile is going to be fine so that's actually the main focus of the clinical studies. we did all of the preclinical work you would expect anybody to do, and, in fact, although some companies have left out, for example, primate studies, they haven't done as many preclinical studies as we have, we did all of them. we did mouse, ferret, primate. we wanted to get a good read on what's going on. and now we're being very careful in the clinic to try to monitor exactly what's happening

but you know, that doesn't mean there won't be safety signals because there may well be and will find out if this n work? you know, there's these different moments where you'll find out, oh, we can go to a next step. when will you know if this isn't going to be a successful vaccine effort >> yeah, so i think there will be primate data released this week that will be an important milestone. and then we'll have to wait until there's enough incident disease in the phase two cohort, which has been vaccinated now to see whether we have largely eliminated the disease in those vaccinated with this vaccine as opposed to the placebo that's really the test that's what -- we'll probably get a signal based on current

relsy to move trials overse out in the uk, so we have got sites already in play in other bits of the world where it's active so we're pretty sure we'll get a signal by june of about whether this works or not. >> and. finally, do you have a sense of if this will be a one-time vaccine or something closer to the flu where perhaps we have to have a different vaccine due to a mutation every year >> yeah, so coronavirus doesn't mutate at the pace of flu. as far as we can see but it's also quite a tricky virus in terms of generating long-standing immune responses to it. and as a result, i suspect we may need to have relatively regular vaccinations against coronavirus going into the future that, of course, remains to be seen, but that's my bet at the moment, is that this is likely to be a seasonal coronavirus

vaccine. >> sir john bell at oxford, the whole world is rooting for you thanks for coming on >> thanks so much. thank you very much. take care. when we come back, finding a vaccine is one thing fixing our economy is anothe gargantuan challenge the panel is next. >> as we go to break, look up in the sky. it's the navy's blue angels and the air force's thunderbirds flying around the country in honor of the nation's health care workers

sometimes the challenges of today's world make it tough to take care of yourself, that's why you can rely on nature's bounty... to give you the support you need... to stay motivated keep active and sleep well. add a little more health to your day... with nature's bounty. high protein. low sugar. tastes great! high protein. low sugar. so good. high protein. low sugar.

mmm, birthday cake. pure protein. the best combination to help you stay fit. pure protein. ♪ (vo) we could never do what they do. but what we can do, is be a partner that never quits. verizon is the most reliable network in america and puts first responders first. giving their calls priority 24/7. we built it for interoperability. because during an emergency, sharing critical information should never be limited by your choice of network. and we're the number-one network for public safety. which is much more than a statistic when you're talking about people who dedicate their lives to saving lives. for us, we're in the reliability business. like we always have been. 365 days a year. we do what we do best, so they can too.

the panel is with us from their remote locations nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt former congressional budget director and current president of the american action forum, dougl douglas buhlia we have done a on the vaccine, on the reopening but let's talk about the economy. just give us your big picture

sense. you hear about 2008, you hear about the great depression how would you describe where we're at right now, and where you think we're realistically headed >> well, chuck, we had some horrific economic data we saw the largest one-month decline in consumer confidence, the largest one-month decline in consumer spending. we had 30 million people apply for unemployment insurance in the past six weeks i think it's fair to expect that over the months of april, may, and june, we'll see national income decline by 10%. the worst year in the great depression was 12% we're going to experience that this spring. >> do you think, doug, i want to stick with you for a minute. do you think the ideas that have been perkulating in congress left and right in general have been meeting the moment or do you feel as if in some ways members of congress haven't fully grasped how big and how gargantuan this is >> i think congress deserves credit for moving quickly,

moving dramatically. if you think about what's going on, we're losing 10% of national income the so-called cares act borrows 10% of national income and is trying to distribute it to americans in the form of unemployment insurance, loans to businesses, grants to businesses, checks that's however just a band-aid the real work has to be to get the economy to stop falling. we cannot do that continuously, so we have to get the economy moving again the there, you're add the tough intersection of the public health mission, which is the primary objective, also the most important economic policy. >>bhadelia, i feel like this is the challenge you in the public health community and health officials in general, there is life and livelihood, and that balance, and what do you fear from that the pressure public health officials are going to be feeling about reopening the economy, what do you fear that's going to lead to

>> chuck, you heard tom inglesby talk about the fact the conditions haven't changed from when we put the lockdown into place, which means reopening is this balance of restarting the economy against acceptance of the risk that we will get more infections and of course, those infections will result in hospitalizations and deaths when you look at the preparedness of the states, it's kind of a patchwork. so the capacity, the poor capacities in certain terms of testing, dr. inglesby mentioned the fact of how many people you test, and w.h.o. says if you're testing to a point where more than 10% of the people you're testing are still coming back positive, you're not testing enough of the 33 states, 12 of them have rates above 10% when you look at icu capacity, of those 33 states, eight of them have already hit their head room for icu capacity. when you talk about contact tracing, there's a hopkins study that says we need 100,000 contact tracers and npr did a study of all of the states, 41 states responded and said we

have about 7.6,000 contact tracers and we're looking to hire 36,000 more we're not there in terms of capacity or it's a patchwork where some states are potentially doing it better than others so my fear as it is with a lot of public health folks is insuring that states meet those capacities before they take the risk of putting particularly the vulnerable among our communities at risk. so nursing homes, prisons, minority communities >> let me ask you the question this way over the last two months, in the medical community, what -- have we learned enough and with the news on remdesivir, how much now -- how much capacity has that bought us how much of an ability that we know there is some best practices that can lessen the time in the hospital or lessen the mortality rate how comfortable are you getting that we're there where that can allow us to have some more

reopenings >> we're definitely in a better place than we were in some ways. so one part is our testing capacity is better if you look at the numbers, about a month ago, we were testing ten people, you know, eight to ten people per 1,000, and we're now testing 18 to 19, so that's better remdesivir is promising in the fact that it provides you with the proof of concept as dr. fauci said that drugs like it or in itself could help reduce mortality, but we still need a whole other range of drugs such as we need medications that if you're exposed potentially, it keeps you from getting sick. and then from what we know about this disease, you know, we're learning that it's basically making the body attack, uses the body's immune system to basically attack itself. the virus wreaks havoc and a lot of drugs are still in the works, haven't shown -- are starting to show some promise,

but we don't have a slam dunk in helping with that aspect of the disease yet. >> let me move to the politics kasie hunt, we're going to get in front of the split clean, the senate is coming back, the house isn't. the senate is saying, well, look, we have to tough it out,ll the house is saying it's not safe it's the divide we're seeing in america in some ways between left and right >> and chuck, you're even seeing it in who is deciding to wear masks when they come up to capitol hill and who isn't and you know, this is emerging as the kind of partisan divide that i think if you listen to the experts like those that we have just been talking to, you know, if americans are not all on the same page about engaging in the public health protection measures, it gets a lot harder to get to the point where you can feel confident in reopening,

that everybody will remain healthy. and the longer that this goes on and the sharper those divisions become, the harder the overall mission is and you know, don't forget, every month that goes by, we're a month closer to a presidential election and that's going to influence so much of this conversation as well >> i'm curious, kasie, the whole testing weirdness of the senate. the president said, oh, use this quick testing feature we have been using at the white house, and then mcconnell and pelosi decided not to accept it what is going on there >> they don't think that they should be seeing having access to things that regular everyday americans don't have access to and in that way, the imperative is a little different. my question is, if they do bring the house back, it's different than the senate in that it's 435 people they are scattered across all corners of this country, all coming back. the risk is very high. will those rank and file members say, this is something that we need in order to be able to

function pelosi and mcconnell are relatively old school in their thinking about things like this. i mean, there was a lot of reluctance in the beginning to even close tours at the capitol, and nancy pelosi was saying we're the captains of the ship we are the last to leave at the end of the day, concerns among her members pushed her to change course on that. >> all right douglas holtz-eakins with the economy, nahid bhadelia, and kasie hunt on politics kasie, you're going to stick arndback, how four plus one is... 16. (laughter) how many pints of iced tea are left in the pitcher? times... ten... so, wait... (errhhhhh) do you want to show us the continents on the... no. it is not going good. my mom is getting stressed out.

(speaks hebrew) momma's tired. i, i'm, like... woooo... (screams) (sighs heavily) so, starting just quickly by breathing in... i never thought i'd say this, but i kind of miss school! the teachers, i mean, y'all are gifted people! i thank you so much for what you're doing. their investment into our children is beyond what we can even imagine. appreciate all that you do.

that's why i take osteo bi-flex, to keep me moving the way i was made to. it nourishes and strengthens my joints for the long term. osteo bi-flex. find our coupon in sunday's paper. ♪ i'm feeling good. ♪ doing it my own way, ♪ ♪ every single day. from sunsweet's family of farms and employees, we hope your family stays healthy and safe.

. welcome back data download time as some states begin to reopen, many americans are trying to adapt to this new normal a survey has been asking if americans feel that the worst of the pandemic is behind us or is yet to come. in week one, which was the week starting on march 15th, only 7% of registered voters said the worst was behind us. by week four, beginning april 5th, that number only rose to 11% who felt that way. by week seven, beginning on

april 26th, 29%, four times the original number, did believe the worst of this virus is behind us in week one, more than a third of americans said they were very concerned about their family's financial stubltd. by week four, that it slipped and is now down to 27% as states begin to reopen some businesses. while americans are feeling likely better about their physical and financial health, they're also increasingly resigned to the fact this is not ending anytime soon. on week one, only a quirter said they expect the pandemic to last six month or more. that ticked up 11 points by week four and now, a majority, 56%, believe the pandemic will last six months or more which is probably why when asked about a return to some pre-covid-19 activities, many say they'll move slowly. in some cases, very slowly more than 60% of americans who fly regularly said this week that they would wait at least

four months before flying again. and 42% of regular air travelers said they would wait even longer, seven months or more nearly half of those surveyed remained concerned about their health they seem to agree that coronavirus is difficult to manage, causing pain, and it's not going away anytime soon. when we come back, we're going to turn to politics. joe biden has denied the allegations made by tara ♪ limu emu & doug [ siren ]

give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ that's why i take osteo bi-flex,

to keep me moving the way i was made to. it nourishes and strengthens my joints for the long term. osteo bi-flex. find our coupon in sunday's paper. and sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. but when you're with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, there's nothing to stop you from moving forward.

a partner who makes sure every step is clear, this virus is testing all of us. and it's testing the people on the front lines of this fight most of all. so abbott is getting new tests into their hands, delivering the critical results they need. and until this fight is over, we...will...never...quit. because they never quit.

welcome back kasie hunt is still with us. joining us is amy walter, national editor of the cook political report all righty let me play one of the bites from joe biden's interview on "morning joe" from friday. here it is >> would you please go on the record with the american people. did you sexually assault tara reade? >> no. it is not true i'm saying unequivocally, it never, never happened. and it didn't. it never happened. >> amy walter, "the new york times" is not satisfied with the vice president's answer. in fact, they write, mr. biden's word is insufficient to dispel the cloud, and the inventory should be striktdly limited to information about mrs. reade and by a panel put together by the

dnc and foster as much trush in its findings as possible how much appetite is there in the democratic party to do something as extensive as "the new york times" is outlining >> not much, chuck and i think for a lot of republicans and conservatives, the idea that the dnc is going to put together an unbiased panel to look through the documents of joe biden is kind of stretching it look, chuck, we are in the place where we have been for so much of these last couple years especially in the light of this me too movement about the fight not just over who to believe but the fight over hypocrisy that's where a lot of this debate is being centered on. democrats, including joe biden, but a lot of democrats and liberals who held one standard for folks like brett kavanaugh and seem to be holding a different standard for joe biden. this, chuck, reminds me a little bit of the battle we saw in 2016, and quite frankly, we still see today with

evangelicals and their support for donald trump how can you support this personal who is going against the standards you set for somebody else? at the end of the day, this is what voters are left with. not so much who they believe or don't believe but how they battle this cognitive dissidence, and usually partisanship is what breaks the tie. >> and kasie, on social media, it's basically the hypocrisy of the defenders of the party of bill clinton and donald trump. right? that's what every social media debate devolves into, whataboutism on the part of those two gentlemen? >> i think also to amy's point, republicans are focusing on how brett kavanaugh was handled and how the media handled brett kavanaugh. how democrats talked about brett kavanaugh. they're not talking about donald trump because the reality is that they can't. because the list of accusers that this president has is very long, and you know, each

individual accusation has a different set of facts, a different set of claims. in the case of joe biden, there is one, and that claim is now being explored and they're having to grapple with it, but you're right that, you know, this debate has become very muddled and devolved into lobbing charges back and forth at the end of the day, i think americans who care deeply about this issue and care about women and harassment and changing that culture, at the end of the day, this is going to be a choice between joe biden and donald trump. there are two separate sets of facts there. voters will be able to make up their own minds about that >> kasie, i think without the piece of paper showing up, but i am curious, how many democrats on capitol hill are empathetic, do you think, quietly, are quietly empathetic with the call by "the new york times" for some formal investigation >> chuck, i don't know if

there's a huge appetite for that you talk about shifting the debate into a different sphere, the email question around hillary clinton, that's kind of the first memory that democrats have and you know, i think behind the scenes, the biden campaign is very much trying to focus on insisting they're not going to get into a situation where it's but her emails but i do think, you know, democrats want this campaign to be as clean and straightforward as possible, and to extent there are questions about transparency, that's going to be a problem for every democrat, and particularly women democrats. they have been the ones who have had to answer questions about this accusation. nancy pelosi has defended joe biden, kirsten gillibrand as well the easier the biden campaign can make them in terms of answers our questions in hallways the happier democrats are going to be. >> as difficult as perhaps friday and the weekend has been for joe biden, amy walter, if you just looked at the polls, the last two weeks in particular, i mean, whether it's a battleground state or a quasi-battleground state, it

seems as if it doesn't matter if it's a national poll, a state poll biden is ahead or on the move everywhere how much of it do you attribute to just the pandemic and donald trump? and how much of this is democratic rallying around -- democrats rallying a bit around biden? >> yeah, it seems more like the former, chuck, that this is as much about donald trump as anything else. i mean, what you noticed over this last couple of weeks is that, you know, voters are expecting their political leaders to meet the moment a lot of governors have and you're seeing their approval ratings up in the 70s in some cases, close to 80%. donald trump's are back where they have always been because he met this moment in the same way he meets every moment. it's polarizing, divisive, and putting people back into their political camps. the one thing i will note, though, chuck, is for as strong as joe biden is looking in those states, and in national polls, what you also see is that

president trump hasn't cratered. and his overall vote share, if you look at the matchup between joe biden and donald trump, doesn't match his approval ra states. in other words, he still has room to grow in these states there's a group of people saying i like the job that the president is doing i'm not yet quite ready to say i'm going to vote for him. it's easier for trump to getthosis people back. they haven't defected, at least not yet, to joe biden. >> it's a reminder, amy, and something john reese and i talked about yesterday he's still in his range. his trading range. may be at the low end of his trading range, but he's still sitting in his range and we know what that means. >> anyway, kasie hunt, amy walter, thank you. that's all we have for today thank you for watching thank you for trusting us here at nbc stay safe. be well. practice social distancing we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press.

ken foreman: i once had a chance to go skydiving. i'm afraid of heights, and being near the open door of an airplane 14,000 feet in the air, are you kidding me? i was terrified. but that's the thing about courage. you know, courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. i felt fear right up until the time that i jumped. and then soaring through the air at 100 miles an hour, you talk about a total rush. now, one thing that helped me to have courage is that it was a tandem jump. i was literally attached to an instructor. and his nudge is what gave me the guts to take that flying leap of faith.