an extra thanks today to nick, a.b., donna and all of you for watching. that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" with the fabulous katy tur in for chuck starts now. ♪ welcome to monday, it is "meet the press" daily, good evening, i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd. on a day of bleak headlines connected to the coronavirus, we

are awaiting the vice president public health officials and other members of the white house's coronavirus task force to brief the public and take questions from reporters. as the number of cases in the u.s. has just recently now risen to 620. more than that, actually. across more than 30 states and the district of columbia. the u.s. surgeon general today warned that he expects the number of cases to increase rapidly. he also suggested the u.s. is shifting its strategy to focus on mitigating the threat, signaling that the efforts to contain the virus are failing. economic anxieties are also building, markets today plummeted more than 7%. it was the worst single day since the height of the 2008 financial crisis. the selloff was so severe in morning that it triggered a rare halt in all trading. on capitol hill we now have at least five members of congress who are kwaurn teeng themselves after potentially being exposed

to the vierg and two of the five have had recent contact with president trump. meanwhile, state and local officials are holding briefings as they try to gain control of an increasingly chaotic situation. ohio has just declared a state of emergency, new york officials announced the head of the new york authority who oversees the bridge crossings has coronavirus. in california the cruise liner has docked in oakland after at least 21 passengers tested positive. president trump has been responding to the headlines with defiance tweeting dismissively about the threat, even as health officials escalate their warnings. and around the world governments are clamping down as cases now surpass 100,000 globally. the prime minister of italy just announced that the entire country is effectively on lockdown and all public gatherings will be banned,

gatherings of over 1,000 people are prohibited in france and israel announced a 14-day quarantine for everybody entering the country. as we await the latest updates from the white house we are left to wonder if those kind of measures are a sing nl of what could be headed our way if the current friends continue. with the latest from the white house we have shannon pettypiece, leigh ann caldwell and here with me in new york nbc business correspondent and msnbc anchor stephanie ruhle and nbc science contributor and epidemiologist joseph fare. joseph, the size and scope of this, do you expect things to get that much worse here? >> i expect the size and scope to grow much larger. i mean, we saw in italy offer the weekend the cases doubled just because they rolled out broad scale testing. i think we can probably assume the same thing will happen here. once we have those tests we will know more, but without those tests we are flying blind. >> there are a lot of people who are watching television right now and wondering if they should just continue on washing their

hands or if they should go to the market and stock up on food and supplies for two weeks or maybe even longer. >> i've lived through a couple natural disasters myself not related to outbreaks, it's good to always have a few days of supplies in your home. we are not promoting panic buying to be honest that's a huge problem, panic buying, you go to costco or anywhere else and you will see that going on right now. most of the population is going to survive this, the 80th percentile is going to have mild cold, flu-like symptoms for, you know, 14 or 15 days. that being said, they risk infecting those with the underlying health conditions which it's much more fatal in that category. >> what do you make of the surgeon general basically saying that containment is over, we are looking at mitigation. >> he is absolutely right. genie is out of the bottle, the containment has not worked, we have seen state to state spread, the states that have not yet reported it i'm sure we will see

that once those states have testing up and running. >> do you expect to see what's happening in italy or what's happening in israel or france happening here at some point? >> it could very well be a good possibility that that could happen. thatting with said, unless we provide some kind of safety mechanism for people, especially in the lower income strata, there is not an option for them to stay home for 14 days, how are they going to pay rent, get food, et cetera. to do so we would have to declare a national disaster or national that happening. stephanie, let's talk about the comic-con stagen at play here. you spent the day down at the stock exchange and the markets are we are not showing them right now but they have been in free all all day. >> indeed they have in part because of the oil price war that's going on that was launched between saudi arabia and russia and it impacts us of course because we have massive u.s. oil producers here, but that's just part of it. really at the heart of it is the

coronavirus and what we're having in terms of wall street is not the financial crisis, it's a crisis of confidence, consumer confidence. we know that consumers are not going out, we don't want them to go -- we don't want them to travel, we don't want them necessarily on certain subways or buses or trains and more people are being spent home from school and work, and remember, the thing that's driven the economy in the last three years has been consumer spending. the opposite of what we're being instructed to do around corona. >> what are you expecting in terms of the businesses that will be hardest hit? i know airlines are having an issue, travel companies are having an issue, things that would involve large public gatherings or in a confined space are not doing so well right now. >> no, they're definitely getting hit the worst. we could see the government step in and look at those specific industries and see what they can do to help. this is very different from the financial crisis which was man made where you could point to the auto industry or the banking industry and say these are bad decisions, but in this case this is more of a natural disaster

and if you were to see the government step in it's not to make sure that airlines ceos are doing well in terms of how their stock is performing, think of the trickle down, think of all the people associated to those industries who want to go to work, who want to get paid, we want to make sure they are getting paid, they are getting sick leave so they can take care of their families. that could have a real economic impact. >> when an industry collapses it doesn't just affect the top it affects everybody. the president is getting a lot of criticism for the way that he has been handling this and there are people blaming him for the stock market taking a downturn. given that this is not a manned-made problem, this is a problem that you can't contain or at least we haven't contained it yet, is it fair to heap as much criticism on him? could he do something different that would level out the stock markets? >> i'm not going to blame the president for anything, but what we've seen is a huge issue around lack of communication and clear, honest response. we know that the white house has not been honest or

straightforward with the american people about what the scope of the virus really s if you are running a major company and you know the information you're getting from the white house does not reflect what you're hearing from health professionals, you are going to err on the side of super caution because you need to put safety first. if the administration was working more hand in hand with business leaders, community leaders and health professionals, there would be more clarity and people wouldn't be so scared. >> shannon, i want to bring new on this. hans nichols one of the white house correspondents for nbc news is reporting that donald trump's economic team is preparing to present him with a set of policy options this afternoon to combat the financial implications. some of those include -- or at least are being considered -- paid sick leave for individuals and a direct stimulus for affected industries. >> reporter: right. one of my sources tell me that as of around 4:00 that meeting was happening right now, that the president was meeting with his economic team to go over these different options and that

paid sick leave you mentioned is one of the items at the top of the list. it would require congressional approval, of course, so there are some barriers there, but despite the president tweeting out that there's nothing to worry about here, down playing the risk, suggesting earlier today in a tweet that this should be treated like we treat seasonal flu, in the white house they are taking this very seriously and the president has been in florida for the past weekend, he just got back about two hours ago, so this is really the first time he has met face-to-face with his team and gotten a briefing. so when the vice president comes out in the next half hour or so we may get some more insight on where the president's thinking is. i will also note you mentioned this this in your introduction, katie, that this virus is getting closer and closer to the president's inner circle, it is actually in there. representative matt gaetz was on air force one with the president just a few hours ago and there is video of gaetz riding in the

beast with the president to air force one. so someone who was in direct contact with a patient was also interacting with the president and his staff. so a lot going on here right now, so potentially we could start seeing that reflected in the president's tone going forward. >> that was my next question, is the president going to change the way that he is going about his reaction to this virus? he's tweeting that it's not really a big deal, comparing it to the flu even though dr. anthony fauci has said that the flu has -- >> reporter: much lower mortality rate. >> there are mitigation effects for the flu, there's treatment, it's a seasonal thing, there is a vaccine. this does not have it. >> reporter: right. when we talked to sources this weekend and, again, i think we will see what happens after the president meets with his team, but as of this weekend there was a lot of frustration among white house officials, administration officials who wanted to see a different message getting out, who wanted to see the president, you know, warning the public more about what could come and

what steps they could take, but one person close to the president told us that the president believes he needs to think about the politics, the optics of this and that his messaging is what he needs to do for himself politically. of course, he almost admitted as much on friday when he talked about not wanting to let the cruise passengers back into the u.s. because it would hurt the statistics and the number of cases. so definitely mixed messaging, the president has been on a different wavelength from his team and no indications yet that's going to change, but we will see obviously. >> in invoking congress as shannon just did with matt gaetz we should also mention that doug collins as a congressman who also came in contact with that cpac person who contracted the virus and he shook hands with the president on friday at the cdc. what's happening in congress? what is the plan in place for how to limit the exposure for our lawmakers? >> reporter: things are moving pretty quickly around here, katy, fewer than 20 hours we have five members come out and

say they are self-quarantine. four are republicans in touch with the cpac person attendees and then there is one democrat as well. as far as the plan is, it's not completely clear at this point. our nbc team caught up with speaker pelosi just moments ago and they asked her about this and here is what she had to say. >> should the capitol be closed for a period of time? >> no. no. no. >> what about members? >> no. do you understand no? >> so you are not going to change the schedule at all? >> at this time there is no reason to do so, but it's not my decision, it's a security and a health decision and we will be depending on -- >> reporter: so nancy pelosi is talking about a health decision and a national security decision and she's talking about experts there. who she's talking about specifically is the sergeant of arms here in the house and the senate who oversees security here and also the attending physician who is giving the speaker and mcconnell and

schumer and mccarthy guidance on how to deal with this. you heard from her that she has no plans at this point to close down the capitol, but you can also be sure that she's getting some pressure from her members. remember, congress and the senate, they are an aging body, there is a lot of older elderly people here and they are the ones who are most at risk. there's leadership meetings both on the house side and the senate side tonight where we're told there could be a lot of decisions that are made, but at this point it's business as usual, they're asking people who have come into contact with people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus to self-quarantine, they're pleased with the ones who have done so, but at this point there's just no overall broad plan except for, again, wash your hands, take precautions and be careful. >> as the expert here, joseph, is it a good idea to continue business as usual in congress when so many of the members are above 60 or 70?

>> you know, i can't comment specifically on whether they should continue to do business, but that is a mass gathering and that is what we're trying to avoid. they are in very close proximity with one another. i would say start avoid shaking hands which we see politicians still doing every day, that's sending the wrong message. >> the president did that today. >> i would say definitely avoid that and a avoid the same things we are telling everyone else. cough into your sleeve, et cetera. >> social safety nets, is this exposing the problem with the lack of fortified safety nets we have in this country? >> absolutely. there are laws and mandates in place, the stafford act, for example, was created for a situation just like this. so if we enact the stafford act, fund it and give it an economic stimulus that could help everyone get through this, but the reality is it goes back to the testing. there is going to be mass fear, panic and hysteria which is what we're seeing right now because we don't know for sure if you

have it or you don't and without those diagnostics you won't know that answer. people will be left to their own devices to come up with the worst-case scenario which is typically what we think of until we get the tests rolled out. >> joe self-fare, thank you for being here, stephanie ruhle, thank you, shannon pettypiece and leigh ann caldwell, threw thank you as well. joseph, you're sticking around, we want to hear from you after this white house presser. ahead as the number of cases are rising and thoughts about u.s. preparedness are growing what more should america be doing right now to combat the coronavirus? i'm going to ask somebody who understands the threat well, former health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius. bernie sanders goes on offense as new polls show biden with a big lead in michigan ahead of tomorrow's primary there. ig lead in michigan ahead of tomroorw's primary there. ♪ ♪

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well, i think no state and no city wants to be the first to basically shut down their economy, but that's what's going

to need to happen, states and cities will have to act in the there of the national interest to prevent a broader epidemic. >> shut down their economy. >> close businesses, close large gatherings, close theaters, cancel events. i think we need to think about how do we provide assistance to the people of the cities who will be hit by hardship as well as the located amounts themselves. >> welcome. that was former trump fda commissioner scott gottlieb yesterday saying it may be a matter of time before local governments take further measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, even if it goes against their own economic interests in the short term. you are looking at live pictures from the white house briefing room where we are counting down to an update from the vice president and coronavirus task force. joining me now a kathleen sebelius, she also served as governor of kansas. secretary, thank you so much for joining us. i want to know if you think -- >> sure. hi, katy. >> -- what should happen next for american cities is what we're also seeing in countries

abroad. france is banning gatherings of 1,000 people or more, italy has said the north is no longer part of the red zone, all of italy is the red zone, they're telling people to stay home and only go out for work or emergencies, there is no soccer gatherings, they're basically shutting down the country. >> well, i think, again, it goes back to what your earlier guests have said. we need to test like crazy in the united states. we need to know where this disease s what the frequency of occurrence is and that means how many people have it out of what kind of a population and then what the pattern is. because until we know those things people are, again, making decisions that aren't based really on science and on facts. so getting this test broadly distributed, numbers will go up, cases will go up, unfortunately we're likely to see deaths go up because it's already in circulation in 30 states. that's step one. you're seeing things like the city of austin shutting down

south by southwest, that's a big blow to that city. we've got a number of other big gatherings, i mean, new orleans has a yearly jazz fest, there is the ncaa tournament coming up and cities all over this country are participating, there are conventions -- >> political rallies that are still being held right now. >> you bet. you bet. by the way, politicians, just stop shaking hands. this isn't really so tricky, just stop shaking hands. jazz hands or wave at people or smile at them or give an elbow bump. i'm sorry that chuck isn't here today, katy, because i was able to reprimand him in the green room during h1n1 because he sneezed into his hands instead of his elbow. >> chuck todd. >> there are some things we all can do. yeah, you need to remind him of that. >> let me ask you this -- >> we need to make smart decisions. >> at what point do you decide to ban public gatherings? >> well, i think as the

outbreak -- washington state will clearly not have big public gatherings, i would assume, as we move forward, at least until they get a handle on how widely spread the disease already is in their state. at least around the city of seattle. we will have hot spots appear in various parts of this country, not one or two cases. with he just had our first case in kansas, does that shut down all events in kansas? no. if we begin to see a cluster of events around a metro area, this is a great big country and you forget that a lot of european countries which are dealing with this are much smaller and more come tact in size. we can make smart decisions but testing gives us the environment where scientists can give us good information and right now we have no idea. >> do we have the mindset to actually do what other countries are doing to shut down the country in order to protect public health? do we have the social safety nets in place to make that

possible? >> well, i think that we saw when h1n1 began to emerge and it was a north american pandemic, it started in mexico. mexico made very tough early decisio decisions, they shut down their beaches, shut down public events, they shut down a lot of transportation. this he took a huge hit and they shared that information openly and willingly with the rest of the country. the united states began to do similar things with schools were shut down, a school at a time, with he made a decision not to preemptively shut down schools but to close them as the population got sick in that area, to give businesses protocol around having people stay at home. we worked on a vaccine, but this was an all of government approach and it was also an all of world approach. i'm really struck by the fact that we don't hear anything about this administration talking to health leaders in other parts of the country,

sharing information, getting their best advice, what works, what doesn't work, because, you know, we're two months behind china in this outbreak, so what did they learn? what does south korea know? what's going on elsewhere? and share that then with the american public. this seems to be a very isolated situation where america first means that we've put a wall around our information sharing and that's really dangerous for our population. >> let me ask you this, 550 people in d.c. are being asked to self-quarantine after coming into contact in a small space with a d.c. priest who has contracted coronavirus. i'm sure maybe all of those people have paid sick leave, but maybe some of them don't. what do you say to people who are asked -- >> i'm sure some of them don't. >> -- who don't have paid sick leave and frankly cannot afford to stay home for those two weeks without a paycheck and might be worried about losing their jobs? >> well, i think they are in the worst of all worlds. they have to make a decision

about feeding their family and paying -- >> shouldn't the government step in? >> -- and potentially making other people sick. i think the government should step in, that would be the most logical choice. i also think when testing is available we have need to make sure community health centers across this country have the tests, have trained personnel, because a lot of people who are not insured and some people who are here legally, working but undocumented, might be reluctant to -- they don't have doctors, they don't have any insurance coverage. we want everybody to be tested. we have to make these steps that we're asking people to take, a third of workers in this country have no paid sick leave. let's just start there. so we are talking about a huge portion of the population who can't afford to stay home. >> not to mention those who might be on visas or green cards who are worried about becoming a public charge and being sent home. former health and human services

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welcome back. the number of people with the coronavirus in the united states continues to steadily climb. just since we've been on the air

the number of cases has risen, it is now at 674 and the death toll has now risen to 26. meanwhile, we are awaiting an update from the white house as the president has taken to twitter to downplay the danger of the virus, at times contradicting his own officials. joining me now associated press white house correspondent jonathan lemire, former adviser to the clinton campaign zur lena maxwell and noah rothman, they are all msnbc contributors. jonathan, the president has now come into contact, close contact, with two people who have come into close contact with somebody who has the coronavirus, both matt gaetz and doug collins. he is a known germophobe. does the president change his tone now that it's come to close to him? >> we are about to find out. the white house briefing which has been delayed is now suppose to the start at 6:00, but it was the vice president's seal and now its the president's seal. it stands to reason that

president trump will be coming to the podium shortly to talk to the media. where we are now, though, in terms of the president, we will see if his rhetoric has changed. there was great frustration and concern within the administration about his performance friday at the cdc where they had felt like not that things were necessarily perfect but they felt like they were getting their hands around some of the messaging. long way to go in terms of the testing and the response to the crisis but at least the white house in terms of messaging felt like thern lining up behind the vice president and some of the experts and the president himself went to the cdc in atlanta on friday and spewed frankly a lot of nonsense about saying any american who wants a testing kit can get one, that's not true. talked about how the people on the cruise ships should stay offshore so they don't play into the totals. today of course we've seen the markets totally melt down in a real sense of concern in the white house not just any incumbent of course is damaged if the economy slows down, this one is particular who has tied his fortunes to the stock market

seems rather vulnerable. to your point real quick, to have it come so close to home, congressman gaetz literally self-quarantined on air force one, he sat in a section of the plane by himself so he would not expose anyone else potentially to the coronavirus. >> let's look at the messaging around this. the president has not been taking it as seriously as some health officials want him to and there are some voters that don't trust anything the president says and there are people out there who only trust what the president says. i can tell you that a friend of mine or a family member of mine had dinner with a couple of trump supporters just the other night and they said that the coronavirus was just fake news, didn't exist. >> yeah, so i don't think i'm breaking in i ground to note that the president is something of a populist figure and it's been a source of frustration for his populist supporters that his tone is not more emphatic in favor of at least for cautionary

measures verge on panic. what he has adopted -- first of all, the president seems to be belatedly discovered that having a populist that is mistrustful of public health experts and public officials in a health crisis is counterproductive. he has tried to talk down the panic and tried to talk up the markets and that's something that has been frustrating for many of his supporters on the right for whom border cloche sewers is the order of the day, canceling gatherings, ordering stringent measures is somewhat they would like to see. the president is doing what i think any incumbent would do which is trying to avert panic and there is a good instinct there. nevertheless when he's getting closer to what you've been describing, unverifiable statements then it dee frakts from the message. >> if he was to come out and say this is a very serious thing and people should take heed, are there going to be americans out there who listen to him and say he is blowing it up? is he in a scenario where he's damned if he does, damned if he

doesn't? >> no, we've lived through these kinds of crises before and other presidents have done a better or worse job than the president currently. i think that you stick to the facts, you give people the information that they need, you point them to their local health source of information so the new york department of health is the place to go if you live in new york and the same is true for all of the states because each state has a different set of parameters in terms of how at risk you are, depending on what state you live in. i would say that he should stick to the facts. part of the problem here, i think, is that he is tying his response to this to his political prospects and that's exactly what he got impeached for. what came to my mind over the weekend was a closer argument that adam schiff gave, which it went in one ear and out the other and we forgot about t essentially the through line in the entire argument for why he was impeached was that he put his personal political interests above the interests of the american people.

we keep going back to that. when he's saying don't test people because then the number of cases will go up, that's chernobyl level gas lighting in my opinion, in my view. >> let's pick up on that. there are people out there who will ask the question does the president care more about americans and their health and safety or does he care more about the stock market? >> certainly in the initial days of the crisis he's questioned his advisers according to our reporting and others were far more about the economy and the stock market. i was with him on his trip to india and that was when the markets first started to take a hit as the virus started to get widespread. that's what he was asking about. getting updates from aides about how the markets were doing. when he addressed the crisis in new delhi it wasn't about we're hoping americans recover who are sick or preventing others from getting sick, it was rather about how the markets have taken a hit, we expect them to bounce back. certainly as the numbers have grown the white house's focus has shifted and there has been more of an effort at first to try to prevent these cases from

coming in, now as the surgeon general said it's about mitigating, there is no way this can be containment anymore and they are acknowledging the numbers will go up, things will get worse before they get better. the president himself in terms of his personal rhetoric it still remains a lot about the economy and his political fortunes. >> let me read about is that "vanity fair" is reporting. sources say he's privately concerned about getting the white house. last week trump told aides he is afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on air force one. the source also said trump has asked the secret service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has had a cough from the white house grounds. he's definitely melting down over this. >> well, there hasn't been any measures imposed yet. the white house just put out a statement denying basically every aspect of that story and is suggesting that the reporter had not asked for comment. he has said that he did and he

stands by husband reporting. >> all right. let's talk about the president going against what his own health officials have been saying. he's calling this nothing more than the flu and he's actually saying it's better than the flu because the flu kills a ton of people and this has only killed a few hundred he says, but at the same time his own health officials are saying you can't compare it to the flu because the flu has a vaccine. >> right. >> the flu has treatment. the flu is seasonal. >> also viruses mutate. i think, you know, i'm a daughter of a scientist so part of me and we've been watching this all unfold is that viruses -- the reason why there is a new flu shot every year is because it changes a little bit every year and so in this family of viruses that's one thing that i know scientists are paying attention to and so you don't want to get too far out ahead and act like this is not a big deal when you are not the scientists doing the tests to determine that. i think the president needs to stick to the facts. >> last word. >> that's an apples and oranges comparison to say this is a year worth of flu and two months of

covid-19, they are not comparable. it is something that a president should be concerned about, the prospect of a recession and considering that and trying to talk down markets is something any president should be concerned with. this is a crisis but so too is a recession in which people lose their jobs and houses and families fall apart or fail to come together. that's a crisis that would impact potentially more americans than would be affected by this disease. >> this is clearly the hardest issue that he has had to face while being president or the most complicated issue with the most potential pitfalls, noah, thank you, jonathan, thank you all. coming up, the troubling lack of coronavirus testing in the united states and what u.s. officials are doing now. he united states and what u.s. officials are doing now. break out the butter lobsterfest has something for every lobster fan like wild caught lobster, butter poached, creamy and roasted. or try lobster sautéed with crab, shrimp and more. so hurry in and let's lobsterfest. or get it to go at red lobster dot com

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who gives you clarity at every step, [ running and you can run likely ] there's no tomorrow. but tomorrow always comes. and so does the pain. after much delay and very high demand the administration is now saying about 1.4 million coronavirus test kits have finally been rolled out. offer 2 million testing kits are also expected to go out by the end of this week, but as the number of cases continues to

rise rapidly the question remains how many people have actually been tested and how many still need to be tested? joining me now is robinson meyer a staff writing for the atlantic who on friday wrote a story that raised eyebrows about the lack of testing in the country. the title "the strongest evidence yet that america is botching coronavirus testing." thank you for joining us. the administration has announced 2 million testing kits, this he expect the number of tested to rise. does that line up with the reporting that you have? >> so thank you for having me, first of all. what we've found so far is that if you look at all the states that are reporting the various tests that they've done, you get 4,300 tests conducted nationwide. right now there may be many tests going out, they haven't reached their location yet, there may be tests going out millions of tests going out that they don't have labor to actually use, but right now we think for the best -- only 4,300

people across the united states have been tested for this virus. >> 4,300 people. i know that you went through each state and went through their records to find out how many people have been tested and how many people had tested positive and you got some discrepancies or not a full accounting of what was out there. has that changed? can we trust what the government is putting out? >> it has not changed, in fact. so some states have actually -- we are posting the number of all tests -- all the tests that were conducting before and now they have just moved to positive tests. some states like texas and pennsylvania have actually not said how many tests they are conducting at all. and so basically what has happened is that over the past two weeks the federal government, which was reporting the number of tests that it was conducting overall for coronavirus and that were being conducted nationwide for coronavirus, stopped reporting those numbers publicly. so factually, if you want to figure out how many people have done it you have to go state by state but not all the states are reporting all the tests they're

doing, some are only reporting their positive results. >> well, why is it so hard to get these numbers? >> that's a really good question. we don't have an answer on that. actually, the cdc collects negative test results for many other diseases that i would say are of less pressing public concern. so every week, for instance, during seasonal flu season the cdc contacts 2,600h care providers acrossyou would think states or 50 states and d.c. would be a lot easier, but they stopped doing that early last week. >> usually we are at the forefront of combating this sort of thing and we are praised around the world for our ability to handle health crises. why has that changed this time around? >> we don't have a good answer, but, i mean, that's exactly right. the field of public health, the idea of public health transparency is something that the united states kind of invented. i have had colleagues who go, why do we have a cdc if not to

produce exactly this kind of data where, you know, you can look at a glance, we have the best version of the numbers available ott our fingertips for how many people have been tested and how many positive cases there are and how many pending results there are. we don't have that right now, of course, the president has said he hinted he doesn't want people to come off a cruise ship because he wanted the numbers to stay low and with testing becoming i would say an increasingly dire issue of public concern for the administration we did see them pull these numbers off the cdc website. >> that is a question that needs to be raised whether the administration is trying to keep them artificially low. how many people need to be tested before we get an accurate picture of how many people might have this virus? >> that's a really good question. i haven't heard a good estimate there. i can say what our partner countries are doing. in south korea at their point in the outbreak where they had been 10 or 11 days out from the first confirmed case of person to

person transmission they were testing 15,000 people a day. our estimate that the u.s. right now is testing about 1,000 people a day. the uk has tested close to 25,000 people overall at this point and they have only had three deaths due to covid-19 while we have had 22. >> interesting. >> so we could be testing many, many people and with a lack of testing we don't know how many people are sick and i think that's the key take away here. like we only know how many people are sick if we're testing and right now we just do not have enough tests out there right now to know. >> i think that's part of the reason why so many people are nervous and certainly scared right now, robinson meyer, thanks so much for joining us and thank you for your intrepid reporting on this. we are going to stay in touch. we appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. next up, we will turn the focus to 2020 and a huge test bernie sanders is facing in battle ground michigan. bernie sanders is facing in battle ground michigan ♪

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welcome back. turning now to 2020. tomorrow is also primary day in six states, including michigan, and its 125 delegates. bernie sanders won michigan four years ago, but right now he trails joe biden by 15 points here in a new monmouth university poll. today both candidates campaigned in michigan, sanders in detroit after a rally this morning in st. louis, and biden who's being joined by two of his former 2020 rivals who have now endorsed him in the last 36 hours. senators kamala harris and cory

booker. biden sat down with our own lawrence o'donnell on the eve of tomorrow's crucial primaries. be sure to tune in to the last word tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern to watch that interview in full. we will be right back. family's land. when the first snow fell, the kids went sledding right there. this used to be a shed. now, it's where they get breakfast. this is more than just land. it's home. the frels family runs with us on a john deere 1 series tractor. this land isn't the only thing which you live on for generations. nothing runs like a deere.

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live sports - with real-time stats and scores. access to the most 4k content. and your movies and shows to go. the best tv experience is the best tv value. xfinity x1. simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. i think there's no confidence in the president, and anything he says or does. he turns everything into what he thinks is a political benefit for himself, and he's actually imploding in the process. but there's a lot of innocent bystanders who are being badly hurt, and i just think -- i

mean, i wish he would just be quiet. i really mean it. that's an awful thing to say about a president, i wish he'd be quiet. just let the experts speak and acknowledge whatever they suggest to him is what we should be doing st. >> welcome back. that was joe biden in an interview with lawrence o'donnell. back with me to wait for the coronavirus briefing at the white house, jackie speier, congresswoman jackie speier said today all of the candidates -- there's three of them left -- should stop holding large public reallili rallies. the cdc recommends no public rallies and they should lead by exam ppl example. >> the president did today at the airport in orlando when he arrived for some fundraisers. there is not a rally on the books right now. there's been a west coast trip to the works later this week. there has been talk of a rally. there still might be one added.

that has not happened yet. it is, you know, to see how this campaign will be conducted perhaps differently with the coronavirus. a are we going to have the conventions as we normally do this summer? i asked this morning on "morning joe," pete buttigieg, he was pretty candid. he said this might be a moment where they have to re-evaluate how this might be done, not just for the health of the candidates, mind you they're all in they're 70s. >> bernie sanders just had a heart attack. >> that's right. we know that donald trump has some underlying health issues as well, and joe biden is also in his late 70s but also for their supporters who might be exposed to the virus. >> i think it's something they need to take a look at. use it as a different way to organize whether that be a national conference call or a conference call in place of an in-person rally, and maybe there are ways you can make it more productive anyway as opposed to holding a big event. the additional thing i'm concerned about is campaign staffers. nobody remembers them, but

campaign headquarters are germ infested places if you think about people sitting on top of each other and working, you know, 12 to 15 hours every single day of the week. so not just the candidates and the folks at the rallies, but you have staffers sort of rolling in and out and off the plane with these candidates, and i know in 2016 the day hillary clinton fainted, i was home sick, and so i think, you know, these are things that everyone kneads to consider, and we should just all be washing our hands first and foremost. >> it's a new kind of polit politicking in the age of emergency. this is not like past emergencies. >> no, it's unique and very different. the trajectory of the -- it's very difficult to tell a candidate, particularly one who's down, to say listen, you've got to forgo your best get out the vote opportunity, but the trajectory of the race might accelerate this process, if it's moving along the pathway it seems to be moving along -- >> does it help bernie sanders or does it help joe biden? >> it's hard to game out. given the vulnerable populations

here which trend to be older, most of whom are more biden voters than bernie voters, i have to say it probably helps biden. the trajectory of the race is moving in biden's favor. >> ben terrace says he spoke to representative gates who says he was put in a closed up room on air force one. after landing trump coaxed him up to the front before leaving. he was not hyper cautious about being in the same space i was in said gates. he also said i refused to go into his office. i stood outside the door and told him he could talk from that distance. he also said i've been with the president the last three days. i was at a fundraiser with the president this afternoon, and he was shaking hands, taking pictures just like he always does. this conventional wisdom that he's a germophobe, is he actually a germophobe? >> he has said himself he is. >> this isn't the behavior of a germophobe. >> the staffers initially had to coax him to shake hands at the

beginning of his campaign. as the campaign went on, he's become more comfortable with it, though the hand sanitizer is never too far away. >> the level of caution, how can the president have a representative who had been in contact with a coronavirus patient? is there a staff member in place that says, hey, no, i know you might want to talk to him, but this is a really bad idea. >> it's one of two things. either the president is not taking this seriously so therefore he doesn't think he could get that sick or he's trying to project confidence and strength and say this isn't that big of a deal. i'm still going to be dealing with someone who's exposed to it. >> either way, dangerous. >> we're told as of this morning the president had not been tested for this virus. >> i wonder if that changes. >> i mean, i think it should. i think for the safety and security of the country, it would be helpful to know that information. >> jonathan, zerlina, noah, it would be helpful to know that information. we're going to i guess ask the white house for that. that is all for tonight. we will be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." in the meantime, "the beat" with

ari melber starts now. >> twice in one day. >> good to see you both times. >> you too. >> appreciate you. we are keeping an eye on this looming white house briefing room where we expect president trump to join his coronavirus team for this news conference on the growing outbreak. indeed, you can see all the preparations that suggest this is imminent. they've moved the timing once. we will bring it to you. the virus has now been reported in 34 states, 600 cases and 26 deaths, and the very thing the trump white house had said it feared, bad news leading to a market scare, it came in earnest today. the worst market drop in over a decade. the decline was so steep the trading was frozen for about 15 minutes this morning just to calm the market panic. americans also watched this scene unfold at an oakland port. passengers are being isolated