in the year 1996, i was 23 years old. go ahead. do the math. yes, i'm that old. i'm like dirt. but in 1996, i was 23 years old and, honestly, kind of a mess. but i did have a real mission in life. i was working as an aids activist, and i had been for the previous, like, six years or so. six or seven years or so. so when you're 23, that's pretty big chunk of your life. and, in 1996, i went to the international aids conference that year. it's in a different city every year. that year was in vancouver. and i remember it like it was yesterday because it was -- it was a turning point in my life.

it was a landmark moment in my life. still, at age 46, when i talk about like things that happen in my life and important moments in my biography, going to that conference was one of them. at that conference, i felt like the whole world started spinning in a -- in a different direction than it had been spinning bury. before. there was before then and there was after them. because at that conference, which was then, you know, ten years into the aids epidemic, with more than 360,000 americans dead from aids by then. with more than 6 million people, worldwide, dead from aids by then, by 1996. >> a scientist gave a talk at that conference in vancouver in 1996 that changed the way we understood everything about that virus and how it kills us. scientist was a man named dr. david ho. a young scientist. even younger looking than he was at the time.

but the talk that he gave in vancouver changed the world because dr. david ho figured it out. with, literally, hundreds of thousands of americans dead and dying at the time, dr. ho designed studies and led research that figured out the mystery of how hiv replicates inside the body. once you get infected, the virus starts to make copies of itself in almost unimaginably large numbers. and it does it from the instant that you get infected. that's what dr. david ho saw around corners and got out of the box in order to see happening when it came to hiv and aids. and that new understanding how about hiv worked, about how it did its viral business to destroy our bodies. that led to a new understanding about the whole -- the whole life cycle, right? about how hiv led to aids, which led to opportunistic illnesses,

that then killed hiv-positive people. i mean, led to this crucial revelation in understanding the virus and in understanding how to treat the virus. how to treat hiv. and what we learned because of his research and is that you need strong anti-viral drugs to stop the virus from replicating out of control. to give the immune system some relief. so the replication of the virus doesn't exhaust the immune system and leave you open to the t opportunistic illnesses that are ready, willing, and able to kill you. dr. david ho is a molecular biologist. he trained at cal tech and m.i.t. resident resident in 1981 when he started seeing some of the very first cases of what would later be called aids. but as a researcher, it was his outside of the box thinking about how to understand the

virus's own work, how to understand the way the virus behaved inside the human body, that led to these, at the time, heretical ideas about how to treat the virus. how to treat hiv-positive people, well before they got sick. how to attack the virus early on. to undermine the work of the virus to give the body the best chance of holding it at bay. that led to these revolutions in hiv treatment. that started keeping people alive. that's why my life changed so much. because people who had previously been dying stopped dying and started living for long enough to get them to the next treatment. and, ultimately, to a long-term prognosis. that revelation about how to treat aids, about how the virus wo works and, therefore, how you should treat it, that is what changed profoundly from a disease that killed everybody to what it is today. it was that pivot point in 1996. if you are old enough to

remember that time in u.s. history which, granted is a long time ago, half my lifetime ago, you might remember that the "time magazine" mean of the year in 1996 was dr. david ho. and i think most people across the country were like, wait, dr. david who? what is this? but anybody, anywhere -- in any way related to the aids movement at the time was like, yes, exactly, david ho, man of the year. the man who made the world start spinning the other direction on its axis. well, today, dr. david ho is still a pretty young scientist. he heads up his own lab, which is still working to find the ultimate cure for aids. but he is also now working to find a cure for coronavirus. we called dr. ho today to ask what he wants people to know about in terms of prospects of beating this virus. and one of the things he sent

over to us was a short stack of three very simple graphs. i'll show you. here's the first one. you see the headline there. daily new confirmed cases. and in this graph, there's two different lines, right? one's red and one's green. the red line is china. the green line, which is harder to see -- it's on the right side there, lower on the screen -- that's south korea. and by daily new confirmed cases, what that means is that this is the number of newly reported cases, day by day. so it's not a graph of the total number of people who have the virus. it's the number of new infections per day. so this is a graph that basically shows you the rate at which people are being newly infected in those two countries, or at least the rate at which you can detect it by testing. and you see in china, the red line, daily new infections goes very, very high up. almost 4,000 new cases per day at the height of it. and then they come down to a pretty low level, where they are now. south korea, the green line, their epidemic starts a little bit later on in time. starts towards the end of

february. their number of new cases follows a similar shape. right? at least they -- they -- they seem to hit their own peak. and then start to come down from it. not quite as clearly as china did but still. broadly speaking, their number of new cases per day in south korea is heading down toward lower and lower numbers. one other thing you should notice on this graph. notice the timeframe. look at what's on the x-axis there, right? today is march 13th. so this, basically, ends yesterday or today. but it goes all the way back. it starts in january because that's when china started to see and document this rapid onset of new cases in this epidemic. so goes back to january. that's the first graph. here's the second graph. same kind of graph. measuring the same kind of thing. this time, it's two countries in europe. here, the green line is italy. red line is spain. and, here, the bad news is that the number of new infections per day is, still, trending up in both of those places.

does not look like they have peaked. it's a very high number of new cases per day in italy. and it is trending up, still quickly, day by day. that's the number of new cases per day. again, this is not the total number of people with the infection. this is new cases reported per day. so this is the rate at which people are getting newly infected in these countries. and you know, if you put these two side by side, the china and south korea one on the left, italy and spain one on the right, you can see not only is the shape of the graphs different. in italy and spain, it's not yet coming down. but also, the timeframe's different, right? in order to see what happened in china and south korea, you got to go back to january. the graph for italy and spain only goes back to february because, again, later onset. started spreading in china and is now moving out around the country. and people's epidemics in individual countries are starting at a different time. so the asia graph there goes back to january. the europe graph there goes back to february. here's now the third graph. and this one is new york city.

and look at the timeline here, first. this one only goes back to last week. and over the course of last week and this week, this is what's happened in new york city in terms of the rate of new infections being reported each day. this is a bad graph for new york city. this is a bad graph for any country that has this as its largest city. new yo new york city is our largest city as a country. and new york is not the place that has the largest number of cases in the united states. that continues to be washington state. today, has reported 572 confirmed cases. but when it comes to the numbers here in the united states, we have learned to be shy about taking any comfort in any apparent smallness in the numbers. because of the fact that we appear to be the worst industrialized country in the world when it comes to actually testing people to confirm cases. so nobody quite trusts our

numbers because we know they are artificially low because we're not doing very much testing at all. we're worst in the world among major industrialized countries who are facing this epidemic. when i spoke with washington state's governor, jay inslee, at the beginning of this week on monday night's show, at that point, they had 160 known cases in washington state. he said, within washington state government, they believed at that time, as of monday, they probably had more like a thousand cases, even though only 160 cases had been officially confirmed. he said he expected that number, even that number, to rise rapidly and dramatically. he said that if they thought they had about a thousand cases as of monday night, with the rate of the -- the -- the rate of -- the rate at which the infection is spreading, the number of infections are doubling every five or six days. the governor in washington, suggesting that they thought that, by the end of next month, they would go from a thousand cases this week to more than

60,000 cases. it's just one state by the end of next month. well, that appears to be borne out. the governor's expectations appear to be borne out by the math as we've seen it this week. there is 160 known cases in washington monday night. tonight, there's 592 case is 57. just before we got on the air tonight, washington's governor ordered a statewide shutdown of all k-12 schools and a statewide ban of all gatherings of 250 or more people. those measures were already in place in seattle, in washington's largest city, as of tonight, as of just hours ago, they are expanded statewide. but just look back at new york city for a second. because although it's washington state that has the largest number of cases in the country, new york state is absolutely hot on its heels. new york city reported the number of confirmed cases, just

in the city, rose by more than 50% just since yesterday. and it's hard to know if that 50% rise -- 50% rise in confirmed cases in new york city in a day -- it's hard to know if that 50% rise in one day is indicative of a huge spike in new infections in new york city. or whether it just indicates that more testing is now happening in new york city and more cases are, therefore, being found. i will tell you from anecdotal experience of working in new york city and knowing tons of people who live here, i don't know anybody who actually knows how to get a test in new york city, including a bunch of people who are symptomatic and in cases have been exposed to people who have the virus. almost impossible to get a test, even now. the governor of new york state has been very aggressive, very vocal about the need to get more testing done in new york and the plans to get more testing done in new york but there is not much sign of it in real life yet, other than one testing site that opened today for residents of westchester county, onliment only. but still, i mean, put up that new york -- that new york city

graph, side by side, with that graph of what's going on in italy. notice any similarities there? i mean, that's the same shape. even with almost no testing here. our numbers don't look like spain. which is the red line under italy there. our numbers don't look like south korea. you know, our numbers look like italy. italy, where they've got a nationwide lockdown of 60 million people. 60 million people quarantined. the number of confirmed cases, rising by thousands and thousands every day. hospitals in the worst-hit areas of italy are overwhelmed. the doctors and the nurses at those facilities are themselves infected. the healthcare system is broken in the places where it is the worst in italy. it is feared that it will break all over that country. thousands of new infections they're seeing every day. and 15 to 20% of everybody infected, needing to be hospitalized for serious illness. i mean, that's the devil in the data. all right.

this is the statistical manifestation of what it means for us, as americans, to have had a slow, confused, poorly-led response to this pandemic. with this only-in-america disaster at the core of our national response, which is the continuing lack of testing here. but you have to work with what you have? and we've only got one federal government and that's all we've got. we're not getting another one. you got to do what you can with what you've got. and so, you know, should we be cancelling events that bring people together in large numbers in any sort of face-to-face proximity where respiratory illness could be spread? absolutely. all over the country, we should be cancelling events of that kind. should we be cancelling travel? when it comes to air travel, if you are an older person or a person who's got underlying health issues, for you particularly, the answer is yes, and at least that is now clear. otherwise, the answer is probably yes. yeah.

if you have the option not to travel, don't travel. should businesses and different workplaces around the country be instituting rules now to have people working from home instead of working, collectively, in a single location alongside their colleagues? yes. that needs to be happening everywhere, everywhere, it can happen. and that's what we can do. we don't have testing. so this whole idea of being disease detectives and tracing everybody's contacts and figuring out sources of infection and getting all those people tested. i mean, you can't do that if you can't test. so we do what we can, which is mitigation, assuming that we're positive. president today, finally declared a national state of emergency, which he had been reluctant to do for days. that declaration will free up some federal funding. but it won't undo the mistakes and the bungling that has happened thus far. the emergency announcement did lead to a rally in the stock market, which we know is very important to the president. i'm sure that felt great to him in terms of the immediate impact

of that national emergency announcement. but the economic pain that is going to be inflicted by this pandemic is not going to be helped by that rally today. the economic pain that's going to be inflicted as a consequence of this pandemic is going to be severe. we should start preparing for that, too. i mean, if you just want one little business snapshot of that today, take this from delta airlines. announced they're going to reduce their overall flying capacity by 40%. that's the largest reduction delta airlines has ever instituted, including during the period following the attacks of 9/11. festi effective immediately, grounding up to 300 planes. grounding all continental flights to europe. we learned just today that schools will be closed statewide in virginia, west virginia,

rhode island, maryland, pennsylvania, michigan, washington state, new mexico, louisiana, florida. some of the biggest school districts in the country. l.a. boston. san diego. miami. all announced full closures today. interestingly, new york city schools are not closing even as there's been a state of emergency declared in new york city. and even as we're seeing, what the city itself is reporting in terms of numbers. bost boston marathon was postponed today. the louisiana democratic primary was postponed today. moved to late june instead. mt. everest is now closed to climbers. the eiffel tower is now closed to visitors. denmark is closed to everyone. denmark has closed its borders to everyone. kuwait has closed its main airport. ireland has closed all schools, all colleges, all childcare facilities. in iraq, where there are nearly 200,000 people in displaced-persons camps, which alongside prisons and jails, are the absolute nightmare scenario

for pandemic spread. in northern iraq, they have identified their first coronavirus case in a displaced-persons camp. in canada, there was a unanimous vote to suspend parliament. all members of parliament sent home. canada's first lady, the prime minister's wife, has tested positive for coronavirus. she's ill. she is in quarantine. her husband, the prime minister, is quarantined as well, although he is reportedly not symptomatic. but as we thunder into another day of this, wondering if this was another day when american hospital capacity should have noticeably increased. as we thunder into another day of this, with americans still being given wildly contradictory and inconsistent advice about whether, and when, to self-quarantine. and what it means to isolate or self-quarantine. and whether you should seek testing and with more government happy talk about the

availability of testing. when, in real life, by and large, people still can't get it even if they seek it out aggressively and even if they have reason to. as we thunder through another day of this, i'm at the point where i want to know about the replication of this virus inside our system. and where we really are on the epidemiological curve here. and how worried we should be about our hospital capacity, our intensive care beds, the safety of our hospital and healthcare workers. our ability to prevent them from being overwhelmed despite the way that we are seeing these numbers grow in the united states. i know there's been a lot of talk about vaccines. i think that's, in part, because the president, for a long time while facing this, seemed to have no idea what a vaccine was. and so he frequently said things that made no sense about vaccines, and that led to news coverage about vaccines. in reality, best-case scenario

for a vaccine is that we're talking about a year and a half from now. if you set aside the talk about what might happen with vaccines a year and a half from now, what about treatment? what about potential treatment for this, for people who have got it? is there outside-the-box thinking right now that might hold the potential for a moment like we had in 1996 in vancouver? is there outside-the-box thinking right now that has the potential to turn this in another direction? for making us see how this might, conceivably, veer off the course that it seems to be on now, toward the worst disaster we're all now capable of imagining. dr. david ho. that same dr. david ho is now working on coronavirus. and he is going to join us live, in studio, here next. o, here net

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with $2.1 million grant from chinese technology mogul jack ma will oversee treatment to covid-19. his groundbreaking hiv research changed the course of the aids epidemic in the 1990s. he's been researching viruses ever since. dr. ho is now ceo of the diamond research center and i am very pleased he joins us now here on set. dr. ho, you are far away from me. when i was talk about you and your research and questions about the coronavirus, i just want to ask you if i said anything that was -- that seemed wrong or wrong headed to you. >> no, you got it right. >> okay. we asked you, today, about things that we might -- you -- you might want to convey to the american people to help people

understand better about where we are at where this coronavirus problem. and you sent us these graphs. fairly simple graphs and i walked through them a little bit. but can you describe what's important? we can put them up on the screen again. what's important about the -- the shape that's evident in these graphs? and what you see as a scientist looking at these. >> well, the first graph involved what happened in china and in south korea. and you could see the epidemic just took off based on those daily case numbers. and peaked around february 4th, with 4,000 cases a day. but with the draconian measures implemented within central china, it got controlled. and it was dropping every week by half. very steadily and -- and this past week, i think there are only a handful of cases outside the central province of hubei in a country of 1.2 billion.

so that control is remarkable. and what was not on the graph is what's happening in various provinces and cities in china. and they were held under pretty tight control with no city or province over 1,500 cases. and so what was done in china is quite remarkable. in south korea, there was also a rather explosive epidemic that followed a few weeks later. and without implementing harsh measures, but by social distancing and good hygiene, they were able to bring it down. albeit with a slope that's not as sharp. >> very aggressive testing was also a characteristic of the south korean response. >> yes, testing, obviously, is central. without testing, you are blind. and if you have no tests, you have no cases. so the -- so the other graphs that show what happened in italy

and spain occur weeks later. and it's following the same trend. it's an exponential growth. with italy taking off first. but now, spain is following and germany and many western european countries are going through the same thing. and then, in new york, what we're seeing is just the beginning. so we're lagging behind another couple weeks. and if we think back 11 days ago, we had the first case in new york city. and then there were handful of cases every -- every day for about a week. and then three days ago, we're seeing cases in the teens. that's the inflexion point. >> part -- part of what we're seeing here is, as this moves through time, we see different countries deal with it as it arrives and then takes off. but part of what we are seeing here is that even when the raw numbers are different between individual -- between us and

italy, the raw numbers that you are talking about here in terms of measuring on these dwragraphe different. the shape of the curve implies we are headed in the same direction. >> right. we're just lagging behind by a certain time. china started over two months ago. italy, about six weeks ago. and we're just catching up. and this implies the same wave of epidemic could sweep through, let's say, middle america, which is lagging behind the new york area and the west coast. >> with the sort of scattershot mitigation measures that are starting to be implemented now in the united states. new york city schools, for example, are still open. with the lack of testing that we've got which, as you say, leaves us blind in terms of how to target these sorts of measuresment do y measure. do you think the united states holds any hope of bending that curve down? at this point, are we looking at

explosive growth for the foreseeable future until we can do something radically different as a country? >> well, we have to remember the cases that were found yesterday in new york city represent what happened about a week ago. >> right. >> when transmission occurred. so what we're seeing is about a week behind. and, of course, the virus could go through several rounds of spread and expand at least tenfold and maybe twentyfold. so what we see yesterday, is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a huge mass that we cannot see. >> we need a treatment men. we can't wait we can't wait a year and a half for a vaccine and pin all of our hopes on some sort of pharmaceutical intervention, on a vaccine. we need a therapy that cures people of this virus when they've been infected. >> we need some intervention that works. vaccine, if it works, great. drugs or antibodies all could be

utilized to treat infection, as well as to block infection. >> that's what you're working on now. >> we are, as you mentioned, we were funded, initially, by jack ma's foundation. to begin to search for drugs that could target this coronavirus. in particular, we're looking at two targets of the coronavirus. one these are important enzymes that the virus uses to replicate itself. and to make viruses. and if you block either one, you would interrupt the replication cycle and, therefore, kill the virus. in essence. and importantly, these are two areas that are well investigated in the context of hiv drug development and hepatitis c drug development. so there's a wealth of knowledge, and there's -- there's a very rich library of

chemicals that are designed, already, to target protiases. so it's area where we can move very fast to see if we can find a hit. a hit means it may have some activity against one of those two enzymes. and then optimize that hit into a -- a -- what we think a candidate drug. but this, too, is a prolonged process. we could, perhaps, find a hit in -- in a couple months. but the optimization process would take several more months. and then, you then have to do all the manufacturing and safety testing. so nothing is going to come really fast. and, certainly, for this coming year, we're going to have to fight the virus without any effective drug or vaccine. >> dr. david ho, hearing it from you makes me understand it in a way i didn't before. it is stark but it is good to know. sir, thank you for being here. thanks. now, go back to work.

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the first coronavirus case in the u.s. was reported january 20th. it was a 35-year-old man who had a cough and a fever. he just returned from wuhan, china. when he got back to the u.s., he took himself to his care clinic just north of seattle. on february 29th, the first death from coronavirus in the u.s. was confirmed. it was also in washington state.

and now, of course, corona cases are everywhere. alaska reported their first case yesterday. idaho joined this afternoon. it's everywhere. as of today, it is new york state that is fast closing in on washington state as potentially ending up with the most cases in the nation. but washington's been the bullseye from day one, and nowhere has felt that more acutely than the great american city of seattle. where they have been living this crisis from the front and without a compass. without much advice on what to do. certainly, not from the federal government or from the rest of the country. james ross gardener writes for the new yorker. today, he wrote everyday life in seattle right now is, quote, like living in a kind of laboratory of the country's future. i think that's right. seattle public schools, all closed, as of yesterday. today, washington's governor ordered that schools all over that state join them. officials in seattle pioneered the move to buy modular housing

units to house people who don't necessarily need to be hospitalized. how about a motel to quarantine sick patients? gatherings of 250 people are banned statewide. state and local officials have been leading on this crisis from the beginning, while the federal government has dithered and off offered very little guidance. now, the rest of us across the country have opportunity to learn from the states that have had to go first and had to deal with this hardest and without examples of what to do from inside in country. joining me now, mayor of seattle. she signed a proclamation of civil emergency in her city back on march 3rd. mayor, thank you so much for being with us. i appreciate you taking the time. >> thank you, rachel. thanks for having me on. >> is it fair to say that you have been leading without a compass here in some ways? that there haven't been many examples from other places in the u.s. and much leadership from the federal government in terms of how to do -- how to do what needed to be done in seattle given how early you had to face this and on such stark

terms? >> no question about it, rachel. i mean, i heard your previous guest. and when he said, you know, without testing, you're blind that's absolutely was the case for us. by the time we had our first positive cases, which seems unbelievable was only 13 days ago. >> wow. >> we knew, already, that there was a bigger problem. and we could not get enough testing. fortunately,wear t fortunately, we're the home to some of the best scientists and researchers and nonprofits. so we put our scientists to work on it. they were able to actually genome. from that, the county executive and i got really sobering news. as of last monday, their calculations were we had at least a thousand cases. and then those cases would be doubling at least weekly. and if we didn't take some big grave actions, by early april, april 7th, we'd have over 30,000

cases and 400 deaths. so we have been really grounding our decisions based on the science and what the scientists tell us to do oh to flatten oute curve you just showed all of your viewers. it's one of the most complex things i've ever been involved in. to have to make decisions on such a rapid pace looking at, first, how do you protect the healthcare system? how do you protect those people most vulnerable in the healthcare system? and how do you protect the people most vulnerable in the economic system? and having to do that simultaneously, with no compass, has been challenging. but i can't say enough about the work i've done with governor inside insi inslee and our county executive. we're speaking with oun voicne . and our healthcare workers have been astonishingly amazing through this whole thing. >> if that modeling you just described is correct, if by less than a month from now, you are going to have 40,000 cases, and

we know that 15 to 20% of people get seriously ill and need potentially hospitalization. how do you protect the healthcare system to avoid overtopping the number of icu beds and of actually hospital beds that you need? how do you protect the capacity and the people who provide the care within the system? >> so i think you have to do a range of things. first, we had to take those really significant interventions to -- to really reduce the amount of public gatherings. because all the scientists say you want to change that point of inflexion to flatten that curve. because if it grows so steeply, that's what really overwhelms the system. that's what's happening in italy. so the governor and us taking those interventions to have people work from home. to cancel public gatherings. to really tell people what they need to do to keep themselves safe. but the other thing we have to do, and this is where we still need help from the federal government and i'm hoping the federal emergency today helps us, is they need to have the

basic equipment that they need to do their jobs. and, for example, right now, our hospital workers and our first responders, like our firefighters and our police, are running out of the protective equipment like goggles and masks and gowns that they need to deliver the care safely. so each one of those things can become a fail point and you are really trying to work to avoid those fail points in any one of your systems because then you get the cascading events. and so you work on the healthcare side. and you also have to work on the economic side to make sure those people who are going to suffer most from the huge economic impacts we're going to see from this as a region and as a country. that you build in as much resiliency as you can. i will say this, rachel. we will get through this. seattle will get through it. washington state and our country. it will be a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. but if we all act together and do the best we can, our goal needs to be to come out together

and to be as strong and resilient at the end of this. but there's a lot of tough suffering that's going to happen between now and then. tough decisions that other people have to make. today, was on a call with over 100 mayors. giving them some of the lessons we've learned. and i think that that's how we really move forward. and it's been hard not having that clear voice from the top so that all of america knew about the seriousness of the threat that we faced. and what we can do to protect ourselves. >> mayor jenny durkan of seattle. you are in a unique place in this country and a lot of people are going to be learning from your example and watching how things unfold there. thank you for taking time to help us understand it. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> all right. we got much more ahead tonight. stay with us. it's tough to quit smoking cold turkey.

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you have power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength of advil. what pain? this is wuhan, china. on january 23rd of this year. i see an empty plot of land. it became a 24/7, round-the-clock construction site. live streamed by the chinese

government, as that site was transformed into a fully functional, 1,000 bed hospital that began accepting patients ten days after they broke ground on building it. ten days. a whole hospital, up and running. here, in the u.s., we looked on with amazement at this incredible feat that just seems unimaginable maybe anywhere other than china. but now, we're belatedly starting to realize why the chinese government might have taken measures that extreme. in washington state, as i just mentioned, king county recently bought an 84-bed motel to help combat what's expected to be an impending hospital bed shortage in washington state. it will be a place to house people who need to be isolated but not yet hospitalized. the state also set up rvs as a temporary set of quarantine sites. again, trying to preserve critical hospital beds for the expected crush. yesterday, the governor of california issued an executive order that allows the state to

take over hotels and medical facilities. the state now has the power to commandeer those places, if need be, if it wants to use them for california's response to the pandemic. that was as the u.s. braces for the inevitable surge of new patients into our already-full hospitals. we are also confronting the fact that we probably should have made plans for this a long tile ago. and that right now is probably the golden hour that we should probably be doing our last-minute shoring up of these facilities. jeremy konyndyke, who led the response to disasters and played a key role in response to the ebola epidemic. now senior fellow for development. thank you for being here tonight. i first have to ask you you have a lot of ys in your name and i have been practicing all day. but is that right? >> you got it. you nailed it. >> first thing i've definitely nailed all week. thank you very much. just kept me alive for another three years.

the president, today, announced a national emergency in response to the coronavirus outbreak. a lot of people said that was over due. a lot of people were happy to hear him announcement. do you think that was the right move to make here? what do you think of its timing and its scope? >> yeah, it was the right move to make several weeks ago and a number of the other things they announced today would have been the right move to make several weeks ago. you know, they're final announcing measures to help shore up hospitals. taking the reigns off the federal government processes saying it's no longer time for business as usual. the full measure of the federal government will be thrown at this problem. that's great. you know, we saw what happened in wuhan in mid-january. the lockdown of wuhan started on january 23. we've had ample warning and it's amazing to me that it's only now that they're really beginning to act. >> when the president gave his sort of ill-fated oval office address, you said at the time that if you were making such an address, one of the things that you would announce was that you

had assigned the army corps of engineers to, literally, get out there and start building additional housing capacity -- excuse me -- additional hospital capacity in places where we expect to have the first crush. was that hyperbolic? or do you really think that the u.s. should be physically building new facilities or commandeering existing facilities to try to save the hospitals? >> i think we need outside the box ideas. you know, china built this house-behous thousand bed hospital as you talked about. i don't think we have the ability to do that but it could be other ways to be creative. it could be the army corps expanding or building facilities. setting up triage tents outside hospitals. it could be reactivating hospitals. we have lots of shuddered hospitals in this country. there's one just down the street from me in washington, d.c. we need that sort of creative thinking. and what's so shocking and saddening is that we really have had two months to be thinking about and planning for this and now, instead, we're scrambling.

>> you, as i mentioned, helped oversee the obama administration response to the ebola outbreak. there's been a lot of lamentation over the fact that the president just did away with so much of the pandemic preparedness that existed in the federal government, that was created in part in response to the ebola epidemic so we wouldn't be starting from zero when the next one came. what can you tell us specifically about what the federal government did in dealing with ebola? what the federal government did right that is missing from this administration's response. >> you know, there's a lot that we did right. there are a things that we did wrong. but i think what was fundamentally different was a check your math mentality. you know, we were looking for the weak points in our plan. the things that could derail us and undermine us. and building backups to that so that we weren't vulnerable if something went wrong. and that, i think, is what's so problematic about the whole testing issue is it's a little like the military going to war and all their coms linked to one

satellite. is that the fault of the satellite? or is that the fault of you putting all your eggs in that basket? >> former head of foreign disaster assistance at usaid. thank -- i want to thank you for what you have been doing just as a public intellectual and public expert on the subject. in terms of putting out critical questions at this time. but thanks also making time to be here tonight. appreciate it. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> we'll be right back. back get 'em while they're hot. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings are back in your choice of three sauces. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings looking to repair dry, damaged hair without weighing it down? try pantene daily moisture renewal conditioner. its color-safe formula uses smart conditioners to micro-target damage helping to repair hair without weighing it down. try pantene. unlike ordinary memory wsupplements-neuriva? has clinically proven ingredients that fuel

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so heads up. one more thing to watch out for tonight. we are expecting a late-night vote tonight in the house of representatives. we got word late tonight that lawmakers have struck a deal with the white house? maybe? for a coronavirus relief package. among other things, it would provide free-of-charge testing for the virus, as well as emergency leave for all americans. which, my god, that's the least they can do, right? the house is expected to vote on this bill sometime tonight. again, it is supposedly been worked out with the white house. the bill, after it gets voted on in the house, is supposed to get zipped right over to the senate. there, a vote is expected as early as monday? yeah. monday. the senate got sent home for the weekend so they won't get around to it, at the earliest, until monday. keep in mind, the number of new infections, scientists believe, is doubling every five or six days now. so time is of the essence and taking three days off doesn't make much sense. but i guess time isn't of the essence in the united states

senate. watch this space. we do expect that house vote tonight. here's the thing you should know and you should stick around for. up next here live, our colleagues at "the last word" are going to offer a special edition of their show where a team of doctors and experts will be answering your live questions. tweet your questions to #msnbcanswers or e-mail them to talk @msnbc.com. so that's going to do it for me but you should definitely stick around for that live special. have an excellent weekend. get your rest. stay strong. do what you love. we'll get through this. i'll see you monday. (dad vo) i saw them out of the corner of my eye.

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and now we need to get back to work. [ applause and band playing ] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ . good friday evening. i'm joy reid. this is a special edition of "the last word." donald trump says he takes no responsibility for the testing failures and the spread of the coronavirus in the united states because of course he doesn't. we'll be joined by who challenged trump at his news conference asking him to explain to the american people why he disbanded the pandemic office and of course, trump attacked her question as nasty. plus, breaking news, donald trump fully supports the coronavirus legislation that nancy pelosi negotiated and that should p