you have had it as well. it's news, news packed. it's super interesting. thank you for promoting mike tirico coming up. people spend sunday watching sports. not so much now. we will get to that. be safe, my friend. >> thank you. good day to you from msnbc world headquarters in new york. it's high noon in the east. how long will this go on? new insight in the past couple of hours into the coronavirus crisis. >> i think americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down a significantly more than we as a country are doing. >> we will see the number of tests go up dramatically. >> this is a crisis that will be with us, i believe, at least six months. >> we know there are a lot of people out there carrying this. >> the long wait for answers as patients line up for testing. a new poll shows whether many feel the worst is yet to come.

americans crammed in customs as they try to return home. did this just make the situation worse? the governor telling everyone to just stay home. presidential primaries are going on. the expectation for voter turnout tuesday. we begin with the coronavirus pandemic here in the u.s. there are at least 2,980 confirmed cases. this as coronavirus hits across 49 states as well as puerto rico. the death toll now 60. a warning today from the administration and new questions over what the next steps for combating this crisis may be. >> would you prefer a 14-day just sort of national shutdown to slow this? >> i would prefer as much as we could. i think we should be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting. i think americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down a significantly more than we as a country are doing. >> local leaders are sounding the alarm.

new york governor andrew cuomo one of the many telling con city ed constituents to stay home. >> we're playing a huge game of catchup in this country. let me say it blundly. federal government at least the last few days has started to come alive. we are so far behind. there's no way states and localities can make adjustments we need to. >> to hans nickhnichols. stark words from bill de blasio. with regard to the white house and the president's task force team, are we hearing more updates? how about tests? when are they available? >> reporter: not tomorrow. we heard that clearly from dr.

fauci. don't have expectations that widespread testing will be tomorrow. when you listen to them talk about this, it's clear they are thinking about this in geographic locations, scaling it up and having almost pilot programs. they still haven't given us a great indication on the when and where. certainly not tomorrow. when dr. fauci was pressed, he seemed to be pleading for patience. >> starting very soon. i'm talking about days to a week. we will see a revving up of implementation. saying a test is available isn't the end game. saying it's not only available but you can actually get it. the ultimate goal is to get to a drive-thru. it's different next week than it was four weeks ago. that's for sure. >> there's . >> reporter: there's a couple questions. the treasury secretary is talking to house speaker nancy pelosi. those discussions are ongoing.

what you heard from the administration, what you heard over the last 24 or 36 hours is this will get worse before it gets better. we did hear from the president about the test he took. his test came back negative. yesterday though at that briefing, you did hear just because a test comes back negative entirely in the clear. we need to figure out whether the vice-president has been tested. he seemed to be indicating yesterday that he would be interested in it but nothing official just yet from the white house. >> both he and mrs. pence. thank you so much. we will check with you again. joining me a doctor who is a practicing physician and fellow at the brookings institution. a welcome to you. let's pick up on a few issues brought up by fauci. he said americans will have to hunker down for weeks, even months. how extreme are these measures that you think are needed to

stop the worse case scenario? >> not extreme at all. everybody has been talking about social distancing. let me break down kind of why i think what dr. fauci said is critical. people should not be near public gatherings. those should be completely ending. even things like school activities, sports activities, taking your kid to the playground just because of contact with surfaces, play dates. people think working from home and staying home means let me invite my child's best friend over. that really should stop. that's really, for myself, it's hard to do as an american. we need to take it seriously. >> can i pick up on that? there are kids who will be out of school. there are a lot of parents that will stay home from work to take care of their kids. thus, considering having play dates. we hear about kids being somewhat immune or not falling as seriously ill as adults.

what are play dates like? do you recommend that? does outdoors help better than indoors? what are you thinking about all these parents who will have to keep their kids home inside? >> i'm right there with them. we're all getting cabin fever. my message is simple. this is really the time, it's hard, but this is the time to actually be as completely kind of conservative as possible. i would not encourage play dates. >> not even one or two kids? >> here is why. it's hard to think this way. this is consider people keep talking about this curve that we're on. why it's going to get worse before it gets better. it's not because i infect one person and then that one person infects one person. it's one person that can infect ten people. with children as you mentioned, there's something about them that makes them less likely to get as seriously ill. but they can carry. we think they can be almost like

vectors. they can have the virus, not have symptoms and actually pass it to people like you and me. that's exponential. >> you are saying this. we heard the ohio governor saying this, that there will be a lot of people out there carrying this, perhaps without their knowledge at this point. beyond testing, how can that be helped? is it all about social distancing? >> it's not all about social distancing. social distancing is how we will flatten the curve. it's also about being -- to be honest, it's what you should be doing when you are sick with any other illness. you really should be trying to just kind of minimize not just the contact you have but also -- we talk about hand washing. you can be socially distant but you might not wash your hands as often. i talk to people who say i washed my hands until they are cracking. you know you are doing it right. these are -- this is not about panic. we need -- there's a lot of anxiety that we're feeling. we have to recognize that. as a health care worker, you

feel like you are really kind of putting yourself out there. i kind of commend the huntd hun of thousands that are putting this tolgether. the next two weeks, as dr. fauci alluded to, these are critical to flattening the curve. make no mistake, this isn't just one and done. we are going to see this coming back. the hope is that we will have developed immunity as a community and as a country that helps us the next time this comes around. >> concerns about supplies of any sort. let's talk about ventilators for those who would be so seriously fli afflicted. are you concerned that american doctors are going to have to be in a position because of lack of equipment to make these life and death decisions about who gets one? >> about slully. we have a million hospital beds in this country. there are about 130,000 icu

beds. they have to be staffed by humans. the real capacity in this country is around 65,000 i will call them ventilator icu beds. that's simply not going to be enough. we don't want to get to the icu. that's a capacity concern. hospitals have started cancelling many elective procedures to free up the staff. the truth is that even in our own local hospitals, we could turn the whole hospital into an icu but we need the staffing, we need supplies and we also need a real aggressive protocol to protect health workers. we don't have enough masks. hospitals that i have worked at were re-using masks because we don't have enough of them. the supply issue goes all the way from ventilators down to the reagent kits to test.

that's why we don't have enough tests. >> stay where you are. speaking of tests, i want to get to a new fangled way to test. in colorado, you have a long line of cars. they flooded through a drive-thru testing site in denver. eventually, officials had to shut it down. it got too packed. in new york state this week, the first drive-thru testing site in new rochelle. that's an area with one of the biggest outbreaks in the u.s. it was the first to implement a containment zone. chris is there and gone to the area in new rochelle. let's talk about the testing sites, what are you seeing? rr . >> reporter: how six of day three of the drive-thru testing zone in new rochellrochelle. a knfew miles from the bronx. a few miles from the first real big cluster of positive

coronavirus -- people who tested positive, 170 in this again area. that number has been surpassed by new york city. this was the first around the beginning of the month of march. officials set up this testing area. the governor hopes 6,000 new yorkers a day tested by the end of the week. at this point at this one location, the only drive-thru in the state, they test 150 to 200 cars a day. they did that friday and saturday. they opened up shortly after 6:00 this morning. we have seen a steady stream of cars coming through here. here is how the procedure goes. people are being told to either contact this hotline number or have their doctors contact the hotline to make an appointment. everybody has to have an appointment. you will see cars coming by me here in a second hopefully. they approach police officers. they confirm they have an appointment. they are instructed to keep

windows up at all times. if they do have an appointment, they are allowed into one of six lanes that they have set up where health care workers will scab the nostril, submit the test and send them on their way to go home if they are symptomatic. that's been going on since friday. the state is considering opening a second one. they would like to do more. the second is being proposed for long island, possibly in the jones beach area. they hope to have that set up this week. the governor is putting a strong emphasis on testing because they really want to get a sense of where this disease is, how it can be contained and what they need to do. >> chris, thank you for the setup right there. want to let you know, andrew cuomo will be having -- a statement we're told at the bottom of the hour. perhaps it has to do with the drive-thru testing. we will watch that for you as well. back with me now, dr. patel. this testing, what kind of an

impact do you think that will have? you are not going to be able to run this through a huge volume of patients. >> right. remember, it's not like going to get a hamburger in a drive-thru. the process is not that straightforward. as a health care worker, to gown up and glove and mask and do what i need to do, it does take time and training. it's a huge step in the right direction. but the truth is that it's just a first of what i hope we are starting to see, including kind of self-testing -- reliable self-testing. if you are quarantined, you are not just sitting there for 14 days wondering what's happening. you might be able to test yourself reliably and safely. we have been talking about nasal swabs and oral swabs. we need to do what we do for glucose checks with a pin prick of blood. researchers are trying to do that as well. we're just at the beginning.

>> i'm equating the tests and the wait line with what we saw with people who were returning on international flights, trying to get through customs. frightening scene. they were packed in like sardines into these areas that funneled into their customs in large part it took longer because they were having thermometer testing. when you saw those pictures, did you think, uh-huh? >> it wasn't just those pictures. months ago, even when china started talking about building a hospital, it was at that point that every health person i knew, including public health training officials, had said, we're in trouble in this country. not to insight panic. the key with that statistic about the cars and waiting, it tells you americans really do need a little bit of certainty in when can they get tested.

they feel like they have to jam the drive-thru test. we need to have -- there's no reason that in 2020 we can't have a little bit more certainty over why it's taking so long. >> let me try to get a silver lining to what i was talking about with the mass packing in. in great britain you heard that they are talking about herd immunity. what is that? does that work? is that something that you think is applicable here? >> the controversy with there is they didn't decide not to close schools. they have put in more travel restrictions. herd immunity is what we encourage with the seasonal flu. it's why we want everyone to get vaccinated. even if not everyone gets vaccinated, we think that there's a way, believe it or not, you transfer the immunity from having a great number of people who have the disease or

actually have the vaccine, which remember is a little bit of a killed version of the disease, which we don't have for coronavirus. >> we don't have it. >> we don't have it. their concept instead of the killed version, what we do in the flu season, is to let people actually get the coronavirus. here is the problem. we're all citing these higher case fatality rates from china. we don't know what the true case fatality -- what i mean is we have been saying, anywhere from 2% to 3% of people will die. that's a lot of people. it might not be that number in the u.s. if we can help it. the uk is basically making a decision as a nation that they really want to encourage as fast as possible for us to get this immunity. quite frankly, i think that that's just not a reasonable choice in the united states. >> dr. patel, i want to thank you for your voice of reason and calm as we get through this together. thank you. we are supposed to be avoiding large crowds.

look at what happened. these are pictures i was mentioning. these are airports. folks waiting to go through customers across this country. four-hour long waits, staying up until the wee hours of the morning. morning. (snoring) what's going on? it's the 3pm slump. should have had a p3. oh yeah. should have had a p3. need energy? get p3. with a mix of meat, cheese and nuts.

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a okchaotic scene across airports. an influx of american travellers trying to get back in the country flooding customs, creating waits and standstills with travellers packed closely together. airport officials are bracing for more scenes now that the uk is added to the list of restricted countries. let's check out airports. wendy, ladies first. go to you at chicago. what are you seeing? >> good afternoon to you. as you know, traveling overseas

when you have several transatlantic flights landing carrying in the neighborhood of 200, 300 people each, they land at the issame time period, on a good day you have a nightmare, a cluster of people into customs. can you imagine when you add additional screening and taking temperatures? obviously, it's going to snowball like it did last night. that nightmare played out here at o'hare as well as dallas-ft. worth and jfk. among the 13 international airports funneling passengers running home to the u.s. from europe. when passengers started posting pictures on social immediate yashgs t media, hundreds waits in lines four, six, eight hours to get through customs, it was obvious there was not enough staff to handle the numbers. customs is under federal jurisdiction. illinois governor blasted the administration on "meet the press."

>> what should have happened? they should have increased the customs and border patrol numbers. they should have increased the number of cdc personnel on the ground doing those checks. they did neither. last night, as people were flooding into o'hare airport, they were stuck in a small area, hundreds and hundreds of people. that's exactly what you don't want in this pandemic. >> we have spoken to ground crews. these planes are full. the department of hoof homeland security is tweeting for passengers to give them patience while they add more staff. we have another cluster of four flights from europe coming this afternoon. we will see if round number two goes a little smoother. >> fingers crossed. thank you so much. let's go to ali from london. how about travellers there, how are they react together uk having been added to the travel ban? >> welcome to a wet and windy

london. we have been talking to a lot of american passengers over the last few days. they have been scrambling to get from europe to here in the uk because this was the last path back to the united states. now the uk has been added to that travel ban list. a as of midnight tomorrow, no more flights from the uk will be allowed into the united states. that's causing anxiety with american passengers. that gateway is a closed. they are wondering how they will get back home if no flights are allowed to go. are they going to have to fly to mexico or canada and make their way from there? is the u.s. government going to lay on flights for them, emergency flights? are the carriers going to make some sort of special dispensation to take americans back home to the states? those questions all remain unanswered for now. i have to say, there was a feeling in this country that that ban was going to affect the

uk as well. the head of the world health organization said that europe is now the epicenter of this pandemic. great britain was not immune from that either. the cases here in the uk keep ticking up on a daily basis. we haven't had official numbers from the government yet. yesterday, there were 1,100 positive cases with 21 deaths. that's double the number of friday. the prime minister boris johnson said this is the worst public health crisis in a generation. but yet in this country, they still haven't taken any drastic measures. bars, restaurants, museums are all open here. schools are still open. there's a feeling that they may have to play catchup next week and start closing those things down. >> oh, boy, so much to look forward to. thank you so much. back here at home, among the most iconic coronavirus

casualties, broadway shows. andrew cuomo ordered all performances to go dark after a ban on crowd size. no public gatherings of 500 or more allowed until april. it's the first time these theaters will be going dark for a prolonged period since the 19-day stage hand strike in 2007. joining me is a broadway actress and president of the actors equity association. big welcome to you, kate. we have the 2007 stage hand strike, 19 days. in the wake of 9/11, the theaters opened up on the 13th of september. look at 2012, we had hurricane sandy and flooding here in new york. theaters opened up three days later. what are your concerns about there month-long closure? what are the effects? >> it's hard for anybody to know right now. of course, when we're talking about hurricane sandy or 9/11, the concern is people able to

get back and forth to the theater and not get stranded in city. in the case of this closure, it seems like the biggest concern is not people getting to and from but actually being in a gathering of that size. i have said several times recently, whether it's on broadway or anywhere else in the country -- we're a national union that represents about 52,000 actors and stage managers. there's no such thing as social distancing for those of us on the stage. if i hand you a prop, there's no time to sanitize it. the nature of our work makes it difficult. >> a lot of symbolism for new yorkers. for the country really. broadway has its image. how do you think people are interpreting this? broadway is dark for a month. >> i think people are interpreting it in different ways. ticket holders are probably disappointed. we hear they can't go to a show they were planning to go to. i have heard from a lot of actors and stage managers and people who work in the theater they were starting to get

nervous going to work. a lot of economic uncertainty. >> those of us in the audience, someone coughed behind me when i was in the show and i -- >> yeah. >> thought the worst. you represent 52,000? >> just about. >> with regard to canceled shows, does that mean canceled paychecks? >> yes. >> is there anything in the $50 billion emergency fund that has been provided that the president has signed do you expect to see any of that? will that go to you? >> for some people that will help. there are different vehicsector. those people who will experience this and when the shutdown is over they will have a show to go back to. when the shutdown is over, they may not have a show to go back to. either the production couldn't sustain the interval or there's not enough revenue to reopen. there are those of us who depend on event-based income and independent contractor work.

people were working on a tv show and the production has been shut down or a friend of a friend got off a plane in miami to start a convention and got an email it was canceled and went right back. a friend who has two kids and lost $7,000 in one day. what we are pushing for is an expansion of the family leave that would apply to those people who had a bona fide accepted offer of employment or who may just not fit into the category of after 14 days or 30 days you go back to the job that you were doing in the first place. >> you talked about shows that remain closed. some don't come back. a show that was scheduled to close or a show scheduled to open, i think six -- >> yeah. there are 16 that were scheduled to open on broadway during this period of announced shutdown. >> we will see what happens. >> honestly, the value of a pre-emptive shutdown versus what could have happened if this took hold does carry weight.

we are trying to take care of our people. >> i'm sure you will do the best you can. thank you so much. from game on to game off. how long will coronavirus sideline sports? mike tirico of nbc sports next. and save in more ways than one. for small prices, you can build big dreams, spend less, get way more. shop everything home at wayfair.com get 'em while they're hot. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings are back in your choice of three sauces.

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get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/try and never go to the post office again! it may be one of the less concerning yet at same tomorrow most jarring affect, the absence of sports. that part of our lives at a standstill. major league baseball, national basketball association, national hockey league, nascar, golf, soccer worldwide, all at a standstill and in limbo. no word on the tokyo olympics. joining me now, mike tirico. also the face of the olympics for nbc sports. mike, i'm going to get to the olympics in a moment. i'm curious what went through your mind when you heard the cancelling until further notice of pro basketball. it was the first to go.

>> it was. that was that hour on wednesday night that everything seemed to change quickly. the president was speaking. we found out about tom hanks and his wife in australia testing positive for the coronavirus. then the nba had the bizarre scene where a game was about to start. a team doctor from the utah jazz today the officials in consultation with the league they couldn't play. adam silver, a terrific leader, commissioner of the nba said we have to start and suspended the sport. everything seemed to follow after that. we were in florida covering the players championship. one of the biggest final rounds of the year. they had spectators there thursday. it was interesting. it speaks to the spread. in that part of northeast florida, there wasn't as much concern as in other places like seattle or the bay area or new york. once it started to become obvious this was affecting

everyone, they decided no fans for the rest of the weekend and shut down the sport for the month. >> i can understand basketball. a super physical sport. you see the players hitting each oth other. i get that. golf? why would they have suspended that sport? couldn't you have done golf without fans on the sidelines? >> that was the initial thought. think about it. there were 144 competitors. each has a caddie. it's 244 folk88 folks. all have families. the players have dieticians, nutritioners, trainers. you have hundreds of people out there to televise the events. volunteers to make sure the logistics can take place, people keeping score. you have a gatherings of 1,000 people. initial thought was it's outside. we believe spread is less likely.

the reality set in quick. nothing was going to happen around the globe. it looks like we're in the shutdown for six, eight weeks at least. then who knows? >> you schooled me on that. i get it. i agree. what about "the new york times," you have seen it asking that does coronavirus mean the end of sports as we know them? that's a big question to ask. what are your thoughts on the answer? >> i think we're all asking that same question. nominally. we see high five, those things, probably not. we understand the inter-connect of sports and how many people it touches. think about the players and autographs. rudy gobert, he had an autograph session for many people over the last week or so when he could have been in that transmission, incubation period. you see how many people sports touch. certainly i think like every walk of life, we had the person

on representing the broadway actors and actresses. we will go through an adjusted time. when and how will we have these mass gatherings? there are a few with this many people in one enclosed place in sports, i like to say sports is one of the great uniters. if you welcome at one section in a venue, a football game, you may have people from all walks of life, ages, religions, high fi fiving, together. that's what community spread is the essence. how will we go on? we will at some point. probably like everything else be adjusted and different. >> it's extraordinary to think about not having that at a time when sports can bring people together. you take comfort from it. remember the yankee game in the wake of 9/11? everybody was a new york yankee. let me talk about the olympics.

was there anything that made you envision that you would not be able to be the face of the nbc olympics in tokyo? not that we have gone there. but there's talk about will those games go on. what are your thoughts? what do we know, if we know anything for sure? >> we don't know much except the organizers are trying to push down the road as much as possible the fact that we still have time to see how this plays out. japan was very aggressive early on. had the cruise ship near japan. there was an issue. they shut down their schools early. they are now a month away from being 100 days away from the start of the olympic games. we didn't think this last week. everything seems to be on the table. they continue to say, planning is going ahead. the olympic flame was lit in greece in the ceremony and tradition. it will be taken to japan. there won't be the usual fanfare

of the torch relay that was set up for fans to see and share for at least right now. we're all tba. we're all on pause. obviously, 11,000 athletes from over 200 countries around the world to one place with this pandemic depending how each country deals with this over the next couple of months will certainly factor into that. all of our sporting events, masters on pause, our sports here, global sports around the world, perhaps for right now the one immediate impact is how people and teams and countries qualify for the olympics. that would be happening over the next six or eight weeks in many sports. that's the immediate impact. what will happen in 130 some odd days, it's hard to say. i think like everything in life, we're just figuring out what the new normal is. we are on pause. >> the best normal for me would be seeing you on july 24 with the opening games and getting underway. i'm hoping that is the case. thank you for your time.

appreciate it. stay safe. breaking news. i want to take you to albany why andrew cuomo is speaking to the media. was expected to make an announcement. >> presently about 80% occupied. okay? that means you have several hundred icu beds available. why are the icu beds important? because the people who come in, vulnerable population, older people, underlying illnesses, respiratory problems, they need the icu bed. they need the ventilators. they need the machines that breathe for them. those are the ventilators. they are in icu beds. the overwhelming crush is going to be on the icu beds. not the 53,000 normal hospital

beds. those are basically going to be people recovering from the flu. you can recover from the flu at home if it's really bad, you go into the hospital, they make sure that you are not dehydrated. the critical people are the people who had underlying illnesses and need those icu beds and those ventilators. 3,000 goes very, very quickly. on any projection of these numbers. what do we do? maximize existing hospital beds and hospital capacity. potentially build more capacity. again, we're talking about several weeks here before that wave breaks. potentially build more on the existing hospitals. provide more staff. identify backup staff.

that's why we're going to p medical schools, retired nurses, retired doctors. develop a reserve staff. health care workers will get sick. when they get sick, they go home. you want to limit the hospitals, limit staff, that's the way you limit the hospitals. find doctors who are on reserve and purchase the necessary equipment. what makes an icu bed an icu bed? primarily the ventilator. these ventilators are expensive to begin with. they are scarce. you can't find available ventilators -- >> we are going to monitor andrew cuomo there speaking from the albany and see what more details he has for the residents of new york and those in the surrounding area. joining me now an infectious

disease expert. welcome, sir. i appreciate your time. i sure you listened to what dr. fauci had to say. part of what he said today, he doesn't want people to be overreacting. give me your thought on that. how much does anxiety, the overreacting play into the way people are behaving? >> first of all, you have to think about it in two ways. one is, what makes a difference and what doesn't? the school closing issue, we don't have data that supports a two to three-week closing has any long-term impact at all on this transmission of agents like this. is this just a kind of you might say, a run to the roads to get schools closed because it's something to do or does it make a difference? we have to think about what makes a difference. the second thing that people are missing is, they are approaching this like a minneapolis blizzard. if we hunker down for a couple

days, have movies, extra food, we will get through. this is more like a coronavirus winter. this is a season ahead of us. we're in the first weeks. we need to understand that this will unfold in north america for clearly months to come. we're not acting like that. we act like it's an inconvenience for a couple of weeks. >> stunningly i might say here, you warned of a pandemic like this in 2005. there was an article in which you wrote in "foreign affair" magazine -- the reality of a coming pandemic cannot be avoided. only its impact can be changed. 15 years later, how prepared do you think the u.s. is? >> actually, in many ways we're less prepared than we were in 2005 and in 2017. for example, we are much more vulnerable today to the supply

chains that come from china for medicines, for medical equipment, that didn't exist in 2005. we have to understand, when something happens in china, we will see compromised situations in terms of critical products coming to us. second thing is that our health care systems have really been put even further into the hole in terms of preparedness because of financial issues. as you heard from governor cuomo, we have virtually no additional capacity. we don't have beds, we don't have ventilators. we don't have adequate protection for our health care workers. we will run out of the masks they need. that's going to put them at increased risk. when people ask are we prepared? sure, we will do whatever we have to do. it's like we are in a war. at the same time, we don't have the same tools we had ten or 15 years ago which at that time we said we needed better tools. now today we are stuck with

less. >> with the rate of cases spiraling -- spiking, rather, here in the u.s., certainly not at its peak. i want to get to what you said in which you said, conservatively estimate this outbreak could require 48 million hospitalizations and over 480,000 deaths over the next three to seven months. stunning numbers to say the least. i do not want to cause panic. do you stand by that? is that really something we might be looking at? >> first of all, let's clarify one thing about panic. the only place i hear panic is in the news media. have you seen people rioting in the streets? have you seen people hurting each other? people are concerned. let me -- people are concerned. absolutely. think about the fact here how many people live in this country. if we have an attack rate between 20% to 60%, which at

this point is the general consensus number public health has used, these are just straightforward numbers. there's no extrapolation here. just take it back from 80% of 20% or 80% of 60% and you can do the numbers yourself. it's simple. i think it's important that when we hear this, we understand that we will get through this. what we have to keep understanding also is that people want straightforward information. they want the facts. they don't want panic. that's not what they are doing. they want to know, what is it we're going to do to get through this this? we have to let them know how dire this situation is. >> i will say a word i will use is sobering, the numbers you put out there. let me give you what andy slavitt put out. he warns in just over one week, we could be in a similar situation as italy, describing it as a tsunami. how do the hospitals and health

care systems prepare for that? do you think that is true? >> i don't think we will see that in the next week. one of the things we have to understand -- we're almost seeing that in localized areas. context. if you look at around the world, southern italy right now is in a different situation than northern italy. in this country, we're likely to see a series of rolling intenseointense outbreaks. we don't want people in this week if they are not seeing an increase say we dodged the bullet. there are communities that will have to really beef up whatever we can in terms of how they care for patients. this is going to be a rolling situation for months to come. that's what we have to get away from the fact there's one big peak that will occur next week and then we are over it. it's not going to happen that way. >> do you have a sense how long this will last? >> we don't. our group has predicted this

right on. we put a document out january 20th and said this would be a global pandemic. the following week we said cases would escalate around the world. we were on the world, that was of february, we were on the mark with each one of them. now we're on the point of asking how many of these outbreaks will continue to happen. let's remind people about china. china had by far the most aggressive, almost draconian measures to limit population movement of any modern kind of population movement we've ever seen. and yet they're still seeing cases. this is going into the fifth month of their pan dodemic epidc there. we have to understand, it wouldn't be a surprising finding at all to know that come early fall, we're still in the middle of this here in north america. >> infectious disease expert dr. michael osterholm, thank you for your insights, sobering though

they may be. our team of doctors and experts will answer your questions at 3:00 eastern here on msnbc. my next guest is a congressman and former emergency room physician. how worried is he about the spread of the coronavirus? i'll ask him next. f the coronav? i'll ask him next. applying topil relievers first. salonpas lidocaine patch blocks pain receptors for effective, non-addictive relief. salonpas lidocaine. patch, roll-on or cream. hisamitsu.

♪all strength, we ain't stoppin' believe me♪ ♪go straight till the morning look like we♪ ♪won't wait, we're taking everything we wanted we can do it♪ ♪all strength, no sweat are you thinking that hundreds of thousands of americans could die from this? >> you know, i say that and it sometimes gets taken out of context. but we have to be realistic and honest. yes, it is possible. our job, our challenge, is to try and make that not happen. >> a familiar face to all of us now, infectious disease expert dr. anthony fauci this morning as the number of coronavirus cases in the u.s. inches toward 3,000. joining me now, a congressman who has extensive experience as

an emergency room physician. i'll call you dr. ruiz. dr. fauci says it is possible for hundreds of thousands of americans to die from this. from everything you've seen, sir, are we on track to prevent that from happening? >> no. we're not on track of preventing that from happening, because of the latency of leadership taking this serious at the front end. what we're doing now, we should have done when we saw how aggressive the coronavirus was in china and moving towards europe and other countries. that was the time where the alarm switch should have gone up. we should have started making preparations to have enough equipment, to reinforce the front line health care workers, and to really start aggressively educating the public. but it's not too late. it's not too late to do that. >> okay. that's good. so when you say it's not too late, where do we stand in our ability to remedy the fact that we certainly are behind? >> well, we need to absolutely

ramp up testing. we need to open up the markets from other countries who already have those tests and purchase those immediately. we need to send them out to local hospitals so that they can have point of care testing to make epidemiological decisions on how to contain the virus in certain regions in our country. we also need to start mobilizing fema, the dmat team, the dod, the national guard, the coast guard's equipment into locations where they're needed and they're needed most. right now our front line is fragile. we need to protect and hold the front line. that means we have to have enough equipment and we need to protect our health care workers and start thinking of overload or overcapacity abilities that the president and the administration has to set up tent hospitals. i know that. i worked during the h1n1 pandemic in the emergency department. i worked in haiti after the earthquake. i know the capacity that we've with our dod, the department of

defense, to rapidly mobilize and set up tent hospitals at quarantine locations around the country. >> so we're talking about masks, about protective gowns, gloves, those sort of things for our front line health care workers. but for those more seriously afflicted with covid-19, those that need ventilators, are you concerned about the availability of those? those are not the kind of things that you have a dime a dozen. there are not as many as we may need. >> absolutely. i am concerned about that. i've been on the phones with all the different hospitals in my district asking what is our capacity, how many ventilators, how many extra we can get immediately so that we can start planning ahead in case we need to start moving ventilators around from hospital to hospital. the president declared a national emergency. he can mobilize ventilators from

the army, the department of defense, to set up icu-type hospitals and equip hospitals in communities right now with the supplies. the second thing is we need to start increasing the production of very mobile ventilators and start moving those around the country where they're needed the most. we can do this if we focus. if we have consistent leadership with clear, concise messaging to really put this in gear. but once again, all of this should have been done. we're about two months behind. but we can kick it up and together with social responsibility, it's our patriotic duty to do our part to make sure we stop the spread of the virus in our own communities. >> california congressman and doctor raul ruiz, thank you, sir, for your insights. a new poll out today shows how worried americans are about coronavirus and the scientists who predicted an outbreak like

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good day, everyone, from msnbc headquarters in new york, welcome to "weekends with alex witt." on the sunday morning talk shows the topic front and center, the coronavirus pandemic. >> i think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting. >> that's part of the message particularly to young people who aren't so worried about it, the 20-somethings, look a, you may t get really sick, but you may take it to your grandma in her 80s, and the mortality rate among the elderly is 15 to 20%. >> you're going to carry it to somebody else. >> the federal government needs to wake up and realize we're in a war.

>> we have reporters covering all angles of the story for you. we'll begin with the pandemic in the u.s. where there are at least 2,980 cases across 49 states, the death toll climbing to 60. new york governor andrew cuomo announcing 69 new cases in the state of new york, the death toll in the state of new york up to three. starting tomorrow at midnight the trump administration's european travel ban will include the uk and ireland. this comes as several countries around the world announced tighter restrictions in response to the pandemic. also an urgent demand for tests across this country. in denver you're seeing long lines of cars, all people wait to go get tested, so many that officials had to shut that site down. let's head over to nbc's chris pollone in new rochelle, new york, westchester county just north of the city, where a new drive-through test site has been set up. chris, we've been listening to andrew cuomo, we played part of

that in our show in the last hour, we're monitoring that in our control booth right now. have you been told what he's been saying, have you been monitoring it as well? >> reporter: yeah, alex, i was listening just now until you tossed to me a couple of seconds ago. the governor announced a third fatality, a 79-year-old woman. i did miss where he said she was located, but he emphasized she had myriad health problems before contracting coronavirus and then succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours or so. when you take that case, that makes now three deaths in the state. the first was on thursday, a 64-year-old man in rockland county which is a few miles north of new york city. and then the second case was yesterday, that was a woman in her low 80s who was in brooklyn, she also -- all three, according to the governor, had further

health problems than just coronavirus, the three that have passed away from this disease right now. the governor also talking about a little bit about strategies to slow the spread. all health officials, all politicians now are talking about flattening that curve. you've been talking about it with your guest. the governor is asking businesses to implement work from home problems or voluntarily shut down for the time being. at the news conference they had reporters sitting several feet away from each other and the public officials were also sitting far away from each other, trying to give an example of how people should really be trying to avoid human contact if at all possible. that was generally the bulk. he went through a lengthy portion, talking about why some school districts are not stopping having school, and that deals with students who may only get two meals a day, getting

them through the schools. how do you get food to those children if they're home. also a big concern, especially in a place like new york city where you have firefighters, you have police officers, you have health care workers who need their children in school in order to go to work. and the city and municipalities really need those workers to go to work at this time. so the governor went through a lot of things. we did learn in the last 24 hours or so here in westchester county, you'll recall this area, new rochelle, was kind of the epicenter of the outbreak in new york state when it first started happening around the 1st, 2nd of march or so. since yesterday we have learned there have been 109 more people tested here in westchester county, ostensibly, he didn't say this explicitly but ostensibly most of those have been at this location, a drive-through testing center.

one is possibly slated to open up on long island sometime this week. but right now, since friday, this center has been seeing people come in in their cars for the last three days for about 12 hours a day. they've tested about 500 cars that have come through here, not necessarily people, but cars over the last three days, alex. >> okay, chris pollone, very comprehensive report for which i thank you very much. joining me right now, nbc's josh lederman, welcome to you. what is the new administration line in this battle from what we've heard on the morning talk shows today? >> a couple of points, alex, one is from dr. fauci and other public health officials that we should expect the steps people will have to take to do this social distancing to get more severe. public health officials now suggesting people do not go and frequent bars, restaurants, be in public places like that. even if we're talking about far fewer numbers than the 250 cap that a lot of municipalities and

states have put on social gatherings. our public health officials advise us, if you can avoid even those smaller interactions, you should do it, and that more steps like that are likely to be coming. the other point we want to emphasize, alex, we're starting to hear from public health officials a concern that one of the ways this may be being spread the most efficiently is through young people who are asymptomatic, who may never feel sick, may never come down with the symptoms of coronavirus, but still may have it and may be able to spread it at a much more efficient rate than even people who are older and actually showing symptoms. so another reminder that even if you're feeling okay, even if you don't think that you're part of a high risk category, that it is all the more important that you follow these social distancing practices that public health officials are suggesting. >> can i just say anecdotally, a cousin of mine texted me, as we looked at the pictures of the

coronavirus task force members, shoulder to shoulder, she said, maybe they should do some social distancing as well, bring in one or two of the leaders and not pack them in so titghtly in the briefing room. i want to run through some of the poll numbers on people's attitudes towards coronavirus, josh. americans are clearly following this closely. overall 45% approve of the president's handling of coronavirus, 51% disapproving. what's the takeaway from that? >> americans are not panicking but are concerned, a majority of americans say they expect this to get worse before it gets better. one number that jumped out to me from this nbc news/"wall street journal" poll has to do with, as you were saying, people's views on the way the president has been handling this. while overall those numbers general match people's impression of the job performance overall, there's a real split when it comes to democrats versus republicans on

this, with roughly eight in ten democrats saying that they disapprove of the way the president has been handling this is and 81% of republicans saying that they do approve. so you see this following similar partisan lines with democrats less confident in the way the administration is handling this. >> josh lederman, thank you so much, from washington, i know we'll be seeing a lot more of you. the virus is raising the prospect today, anecdotally speaking, that new york city could be headed for a lockdown. here is the city's mayor, bill de blasio, on the sunday shows. >> are you considering putting in place a lockdown in new york city or are you considering having restaurants and bars shut down it in new york city? >> brianna, every option is on the table. we've never seen anything like this, let's be clear. this is a crisis that will be with us, first of all, i believe, at least six months. >> new york's governor andrew cuomo saying earlier that public

health can only be maintained by keeping people apart, adding in all caps, you see it at the bottom, they should stay home. here with me in studio, stephen levin, member of the new york city council. you've been with me since the top of the show, you've been nodding in agreement with many things out there, you were nodding at the fact that many people need to stay home. >> absolutely, yeah. >> you also heard bill de blasio say this could last six months. do you think that could be the case? >> we don't know how long it will last but what we need to do right now is start a planned, controlled, and orderly shutdown of new york city over the next few days. >> what does that look like? >> that will look like, we should be closing schools. that is a no-brainer. my colleague in the council, mark traeger, chair of the education committee, came up with a plan last week that goes for a summer school model or hub

model. most of the schools should be shut down. a few of the schools should stay open, for children of first responders, essential workers, children with no other way to access to a meal, special needs kids, so they have a place to go. but the vast majority of kids will have to stay home with their parents because their parents need to be working from home as well. so we need to close bars and restaurants. we need to close all types of retail, except for pharmacies and grocery stores. the subway should probably stay running so that first responders and essential health care workers and other essential workers are able to get to where they need to go. we need to obviously close down gathering places for more than, say, 25 people. and this all has to start right now, because -- go ahead. >> no, stephen, i want to put up a tweet you put up on twitter, you wrote that if new york city

is not shut down like cities in spain and france, the other option will mean shutting down amid chaos, overrun hospitals, emergency departments that can't take any more patients, and all the tragedy and suffering that ensues. your seeing this as something of an all or nothing proposition. >> and the reason i say that is there is a convergence of all the indicators out there. there was a model put together by a data scientist named michael donnelly that's up on medium right now. there is a modeling that is put together by the harvard school of public health, it's called the lipchitz model. those two models are saying the same story, which is that if we do not halt the spread of this virus in new york city by march 23rd, that's eight or nine days away, by the beginning of april, maybe the first two weeks, somewhere in that range, new york city's hospitals will be

overrun and that means that you will see a piece of paper go up on the emergency department of some of our major hospitals saying no more vacancies, we can't take you. >> yikes. >> that's exactly when you will start to see a surge in cases, of critical cases, because it's a lagging indicator. i don't want to get too technical, but a virus spreads exponentially. there's an exponential curve right there. we're right here in that curve. every day that goes by, that curve starts to increase dramatically. and if you look at the critical cases, it's seven days behind the infection curve. if you have that infection curve going up, which is where it's going right now, seven days from now is where whyou'll have the reflecti inflection point in critical cases.

we need to be clear with people that that means we are going to run out of hospital beds and there will be nowhere for critical patients that are in acute respiratory distress to go. we will run out of ventilators. we will run out of hospital beds. >> what about the prospect of food shortages? i mean, everybody has been going to the grocery store. there are reports of not only long lines but, even more distressing, empty shelves. >> this is where a planned shutdown makes a heck of a lot more sense than a chaotic shutdown. because if we can plan this out over the next week, because that's about as much time as we have, we really have a few days, but if we can do this as quickly as possible, we can plan for how to make sure we have food deliveries that are maintained in an orderly way. we need to make sure the new york stock exchange remains open. we should be on the phone right now with the new york stock exchange, the new york fed, and the head of all of the brokerage houses and banks to make sure,

okay, what do we need to do starting tomorrow to keep most of your staff at home but have enough staff to come in so we don't have a worldwide run on the new york stock exchange? but these are things that have to be happening as we speak right now. >> i think a lot of people have taken to haeart what you've sai, thank you very much, steven levin. we'll bring in an epidemiologist and a doctor, joining us from our l.a. bureau, good to see you. let's get to a breaking headline from "the hill" which reports that a person in japan that was reinfected with coronavirus is the issue here, although others think it could be the results of errors in testing. matthew, can one get covid-19 twice? >> so ann -- i'm sorry, so alex, i don't think so. first of all, there has been

reports initially from china and also from japan and south korea that people have tested positive. they recovered, and tested positive again. i personally think it's a problem with testing. i think right now it's not a big concern. >> next one, and i've been struck by the video of customs lines at chicago o'hare airport. we are supposed to be social distancing, but as we put this video up, ann, this is not social distancing. you've got people packed together for four hours, some were saying, even longer to get through customs. what are your thoughts on that? >> absolutely, so dr. waxman and i have been talking about this, and really thinking about what can be done here. this is not social distancing. and of course in any outbreak or epidemic setting you're going to have situations where people just by nature of how systems work, are going to be close together. so airlines, tsa, all of these organizations have to work

together to be able to find ways to stretch outlin lines, keep people as far from each other as they can. dr. waxman and i have worked in ebola epidemics for many years, and other countries have been able to do this in very, very serious circumstances. i think it's very important for all of us to know there are solutions, it just means everybody, all government, hospitals, public health, businesses need to be working together to be able to flatten this curve. social distancing is key. >> working together and anticipating the issues other than reacting to them. >> exactly. >> let's get to some viewer questions. nancy asks, i am a retail worker. besides cashiering part of my job is straightening up after people on the sales floor. i wash my hands, use sanitizer, and stay away from people as much as i can but i'm constantly touching things other people have touched. how long does the coronavirus live on surfaces?

matthew, you get that one. >> so literally viruses usually live on surfaces for a matter of hours. there's been some recent data done at ucla saying that coronavirus in the lab may last longer, up to 24, 72 hours. that was in very controlled laboratory conditions. that was not in usual state of affairs in a retail store. so i think if you're using social distancing, if you're using hand sanitizer, washing your hands, following good precautions, you should be okay. >> this next one to you, anne, chris asks, how long can the covid-19 coronavirus stay alive in airborne/arrerosolized droplets? >> we're not really worried about aerosol here, we're

worried about person to person spread, through droplets. droplets is only a few seconds as it's going from you to somebody else, maybe a second or two. what we're worried about here is social distancing, keeping people apart as far as possible to avoid direct contact and really were people are getting this virus also is when you cough or sneeze, you get it on your hands, you touch something. people are doing the best they can to wash their hands regularly, not touch their face. if you are sick, stay at home. >> so i just want to be clear, you don't think the aerosolized version here, you don't think that by standing next to somebody who may have the coronavirus in terms of breathing back and forth, what are your thoughts, could you get it that way or not? >> you know, we're still looking at the data and trying to understand the length of time. and most of these studies have been done in lab-controlled settings. it's very difficult to be able

to extrapolate to a day to day situation. but because aerosol is possible, what we want to say to people is, you want to minimize going outside. the maximum, the most likely scenario for being exposed is going to be when you're very close to somebody who is causing or sneezing. either they get it on you directly or you've toughed something they've touched. and should there be any concern about it staying in the air for any small period of time, the best thing to do is not go out unless you have to. that is really the key here. this is a new virus, we're still learning quite a bit about it. the best things to do are all the things that everybody keeps talking about. social distancing. don't go out unless you have to. people are not taking this as seriously as they need to. there are things we can do to flatten the curve. >> that is the goal, certainly, flattening that curve. matthew, a question here that

picks up on the issue of a cold, "my husband has a bad respiratory cold but doesn't have a fever or body aches. should he be tested only if he has a fever?" >> so the answer is no. he should be tested if he has shortness of breath, if he's feeling severely ill, he's going to be tested. if you come into my busy emergency department where i'm working tomorrow morning, and you have a regular cough, low fever, you're able to walk without shortly of breath, we currently are not able to test you. stay at home, do normal self-care, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, which is tylenol. stay in your room, drink liquids, do what you normally do. >> you guys sound like a broken record but everything you've said bears repeating. thank you.

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senator bernie sanders and joe biden face off in four state primaries tuesday. a new nbc poll shows biden leading among voters nationwide, 61% support for him, sanders has 32%. daniel straws, senior political reporter for "the guardian," good to see you, daniel. >> hey. >> if we look back a month ago after the new hampshire primary, a much different story then. how surprised are you, if at all, at the comeback of joe biden? >> alex, i have never seen a sea change like this in a short amount of time. it's remarkable. >> to what do you attribute it? what's behind it? >> there's always been a large hunger in the democratic party, a prioritization to find someone the party feels is electable.

joe biden's performance in south carolina, his far and away win there really convinced a lot of voters that biden seems the most electable, he can rally the african-american voters, the core of the democratic party, behind him, which is what a large portion of the democratic party feels is the criteria they need to have someone who can win in november. >> let's look at this hypothetical general election matchup, both biden and sanders among registered voters beat out trump but not by much. do these numbers stay the same by the general election, should democrats worry about it? >> we've seen for months now most of the democratic primary field has held a small lead over the president. this has been during the primary. usually those numbers change in a general election matchup when we see an actual nominee versus an incumbent president. at the same time, though, the president's poll numbers have

been higher than they've been in the past, and it's conceivable that if the economy rebounds, if he is able to navigate this crisis, this coronavirus crisis deftly, he could see another spike in his poll numbers. >> that might take a while because he's been hovering at about 45% for a while. what do you expect on tuesday, do you think we see a trend similar to the past few weeks with biden coming out on top? >> part of it depends on the debate tonight. and part of it is that the biden campaign, and also the sanders campaign, sees the next few states as advantageous toward the former vice president and less so towards the vermont senator right now. >> how much does that potentially seal a deal? if you have the wind at your back, the more time it appears that way, even just for appearanc appearance's sake, how troubling is that for the sanders

campaign? >> this is not the situation they want to be in. an internal memo from the biden campaign that we obtained indicated they feel they have the lead over sanders. it's not a good place for sanders at this point. >> good to have you, daniel straws, thank you so much. so biden and sanders will face off on their first one on one democratic debate. because of coronavirus fears, it will be held without an audience. shaq brewster and ali havevitale in washington, d.c., i've missed you guys, we've been focusing so much on coronavirus over the last few days, understandably. how will the candidates do in the backdrop of this global pandemic? >> reporter: alex, we've missed you too, it's nice to be back talking about politics. it's just going to be the two

candidates onstage. the conversation will be coronavirus-centric. just think about the way the candidates have campaigned for the entirety of this primary. joe biden has sought to make this a choice between joe biden and donald trump consistently. you see how he's talking about coronavirus, an op ed he put out today, he said this coronavirus crisis shows the lack of ability of the trump administration. bernie sanders is running on the issues. think about the way joe biden has spending the last few days, he's been dabbling in tele-town-halls with all the glitches that sometimes come with doing that but that's the new reality on the campaign trail, you're trying to reduce these large gatherings of people. he's also been talking about the issues. one of the things that really stood out to me in recent days is he said he would back elizabeth warren's bankruptcy

plan. that's a tea leaf worth reading because for elizabeth warren, she dropped out of the race, we know she isn't endorsing, but seeing joe biden come around on a big proposal like that, one they sparred over 15 years ago in that archival footage we all love to show on tv, it's worth noting that he's come around on elizabeth warren's proposal, which for her is the most important thing, keeping her ideas in the mainstream of democratic politics now that we're getting into the ending part of this primary. >> we'll see if she throws her support behind him, she has yet to do so at this point. shaq, what's bernie sanders doing to get ready for this debate? what has to happen tonight for the senator to pull ahead of biden with the voters? >> reporter: it's going to be become increasingly difficult for senator sanders to pull ahead of vice president biden in this contest especially when you consider the fact that in the

states that will be voting on tuesday, there's still this primary going on, people will be voting on tuesday. in these states that are coming up on tuesday, senator sanders lost them all in 2016. there's an uphill battle that he has. if he wants to mount a comeback, it will have to begin on this debate stage tonight. this debate is the one this campaign has been talking about since the beginning of this race. the clear debate between the two ends of the party as they see it, the progressive end of bernie sanders and the more moderate wing of the party in vice president biden. it's because of that, senator sanders himself has been teeing up this debate, talking about it and teasing it. we heard a little bit of it last night in this fireside chat he had, an online event viewed by over 100,000 people at one point, his campaign said. listen to what senator sanders said about the debate tonight. >> i'm looking forward to this debate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it's a two-person debate. i have a real problem, as i

think many americans do, with the debates turning into food fights. we can explore some of the issues facing this country. >> reporter: so you see what the campaign is having to resort to, the form of communication with their supporters, having that casual online event with his campaign manager instead of those rallies he wants to be at. this is an opportunity to have that large audience that he's been missing out on for the past week, alex. >> shaq brewster and ali vitali, virtual hugs and thanks to you both. stay with msnbc for live post-debate analysis, tonight only on msnbc. the domino effect of coronavirus on food supply chains and what it means for americans as those store shelves are clearing out. store shelves are clearing out get 'em while they're hot. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings are back in your choice of three sauces.

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psychologists call panic buying. nbc's scott cohen is standing by for us. scott, are people still clearing out the shelves? behind you it looks well-stocked. >> reporter: alex, it definitely has settled down a little bit. this is a good place to get some perspective as people across the country look to see what's going to happen. santa clara county, where i am, they've got their first case back on january 31st, which seems like ancient history. now 114 cases in this county and two deaths and counting. people have been kind of getting accustomed to this for a while now. there's flurries of buying here, and the shelves are a little bit barer than they would normally be. but it feels like people are starting to settle in for a new normal. >> i want us to be able to keep eating kind of normally, with me

having to go on fewer shopping trips, maybe i can go two or three weeks without needing to shop rather than a couple of times a week, just so i don't have to leave the house if i don't want to. people are being responsible, actually, they're putting themselves in the position where they can self-isolate more and create more social distance. >> reporter: that pressure may amp up just a little bit more because now santa clara county has banned all gatherings of more than 35 people. so the social distancing is now being enforced and that may put more pressure on people to get to the store and stock up, alex. >> perhaps so. all right, scott cohn there in sunnyvale, california. thanks so much, scott. also concerning is the stock market. thursday officially brought the dow jones into bear market territory after the race to regain its gains from last month's high.

treasury secretary mnuchin addressed that this morning. >> the real issue is not the economic situation today. the real issue is what economic tools are we going to use to get through this, because this is a unique situation. travel has been ground to a halt. we're clearly going to have a slowdown. we're addressing issues for small and medium sized businesses. later in the year obviously the economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus. >> joining me now, david wilcox, senior fellow at the peterson institute for international economics. david, welcome to you. what do you think of secretary mnuchin's statement right there, do you think the economy will pick back up later this year or are you concerned about something worse happening? >> well, thank you for having me. i think it's very clear that we're on the cusp here of an extraordinarily serious situation. this is extremely unusual in our economic history because large swaths of the economy are essentially going into a deep freeze here on a synchronized

basis. that's going to make the situation very dangerous. there are a number of other confounding factors. the fact that every economy around the globe is experiencing the same adverse shock all at once means that there will be no locomotive available to pull the rest of the economy forward. the fact that the federal reserve, which has traditionally been our first responder in fighting recessions, is soon to be out of ammunition, is a worrisome contributing factor. i think we need to be prepared here for this to be a very serious economic downdraft. >> i'm going to ask you another question about that in a second, but can you predict what will happen at the morning bell tomorrow? >> absolutely not, that's a lifetime away. i think the events of last week show, with market moves up and down 10% on successive days, that they're grappling just as

hard as everybody else is to get a handle on what the parameters of the situation will be. >> less than 24 hours to go until the market bell opens, so we'll see what happens. let's get to the "washington post" headline that says that a recession is coming and it could be even worse than it was in 2008. do you see the potential for a repeat of 2008 coming our way? >> well, i think a starting point is, to be absolutely clear, a recession is coming, there's little doubt about that. the situation is very serious, and the depth of the response and the duration of the economic downdraft will depend critically on the policy steps that are taken both in the public health realm and in the economic realm. so i think the true answer is that the jury still is out on that. the initial steps that have just been taken in the last couple of days are encouraging, but

there's much more to come in the way of really compelling steps to fight the situation. >> so i want to get to some nitty greet nit nitty gritty here because we're seeing the first layoffs from coronavirus, ports, bakeries, travel agencies among those affected, according to "the washington post." how long will this continue, will it get worse, will businesses have to close and put even more people out of work because americans are being told to stay home which means some sales are plummeting? >> there's no question that it's going to get worse than it is today. we're only on the going-in phase of this. this is early days now. we're going to go through an extended period of essentially suspended animation for the economy. a lengthy period of enforced social isolation here. for some people, for a few of your voiiewers, that will amoun

to an inconvenience, working from home and caring for elderly people or children for whom they're responsible. but for many others there will be a very threatening economic circumstance where their income essentially drops out from underneath them. so i think one additional aspect of this situation that's going to be quite notable is just how different the experience is of different viewers on your station. >> interesting. david wilcox, thank you, from the peterson institute. we'll look forward to speaking with you again. why is the coronavirus virus such a mess? such a mess? let's go to a comm. nooooooo! not another commercial! when you bundle your home, auto and life insurance with allstate you could save 25%. in fact, the more you bundle the more you can save. put the other game on if it's important to you allstate can protect it. ...home auto and life insurance you could save 25%. if it's important to you allstate can protect it.

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more. >> reporter: alex, she called what happened behind these doors a total fail and the federal government is to blame. we've all seen the pictures from last night which several planes landed from europe, jamming people into a small area waiting four, six, in some cases eight hours to get screened and through customs. that goes directly against federal guidelines to prevent covid-19. the mayor frustrated that she was not consulted. >> when the federal government doesn't listen and when it doesn't bring the considerations of mayors and governors and other local officials into the equation, not only are you creating a disaster, not only are you creating a hazardous circumstance that threatens the public, you risk causing serious illness and death. regarding staffing for customs

and border patrol, the federal government must immediately and significantly increase personnel devoted to airport screening. and rather than sending i.c.e. into the streets, send screeners to our airports. that's what we need. that's what will be helpful. >> reporter: the mayor is acknowledging, though, that today is still going to be another tough day at chicago international airport. she asked the federal aviation administration to stagger the arrival times of flights that are already obligatn their way o'hare. she's asking them to keep passengers on planes until they can be processed, two very good ideas by a local jurisdiction that certainly has perspective here, alex. she's hoping to get through some of this red tape and get local

emts that can screen these passengers. >> strong words, she had them, that's for sure, thanks to much, wendy. how bipartisanship in the time of coronavirus may be helping both sides of the aisle to come together. yes! yes. yes. yeah sure. yes yes. yeah, yeah no problem. yes. yes, yes a thousand times yes! discover. accepted at over 95% of places in the u.s. from anyone else. so why accept it from your allergy pills?

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-i do. for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. we thought, let's do it right with our friends in labor, in the house community, work in a bipartisan way. i'm proud of the work we've done. >> the speaker was able to make some changes, shortly it will be coming out, that does all of that. i think this is a really good sign that shows the bipartisanship. >> leaders of the house there reacting late friday after democrats and republicans all came together to pass legislation for coronavirus aid. that bill covers things like paid sick leave, free testing, and food programs. joining me now, a political reporter for "the l.a. times."

seema, this was a welcome tenor to things in this era of extreme partisanship. how did both sides manage to put their differences aside and agree? >> we'reseeing, which led to the rare display of bipartisanship, where the numbers kept growing of the number of people in this country who have tested positive, the number of deaths has been growing, i think it became clear there was major action required by both parties. this is something we haven't seen a lot of in our nation's capital frankly for the last onel of years. california has a very democratic governor, gavin newsom. he and president trump have been complimenting each other over their handling of this crisis. it's amazing. >> you heard the president complimenting nancy pelosi, which a lot of us thought that would never happen again. is this agreement, do you think it's a testament to how

seriously they're taking the pandemic? >> it seems it has. we'll have to see what the vote in the senate is going to be like early in week likely. in addition we're going to have to see -- there's other legislation that's going to be proposed. >> we will see. seema, we will come back with you at another time. thank you for this brief encounter. >> thank you. we have new york governor andrew cuomo who has wrapped up a conference where he is calling for more nonmandatory -- let's talk about what you wrote, what was your message? >> good to be with you again, alex. you know, governor, it's nice to hear all the conversation in washington, it's good that they passed the bill. i'm more concerned with what is actually happening on the ground and what is actually going to happen on the ground operationally. and everyone says, we have to

flatten the curve, flatten the curve, reduce the spread of the virus. are what they're really saying is we have to reduce the spread of a virus to a rate that won't overwhelm our hospital care system. that's what happened in italy. we had too many people coming into the hospital care system, they tend to need the icu beds, don't have many intensive care unit beds, ventilators. and if you don't slow that curve, it will overwhelm the hospitals. by any projection, especially here in the state of new york where we have a high number of cases, you're not going to slow that curve to a level that won't overwhelm the hospital system. that curve is not a curve. i see that curve as a wave, and the wave is going to break, ands wave is going to break and crush our hospital system. that is what all the numbers say now, alex. and i'm calling on the president to look at those facts, react

before, plan forward, and let's use the army corps of engineers to come in and retrofit existing buildings to provide medical care facilities when the hospitals get overwhelmed. it is going to happen. we have a brief window. we need more medical facilities. a state can't do it. state government doesn't really build. i don't have the personnel, the resources. only the federal government billion dollars. only the army corp of engineers builds. i'll give you student dorms, colleges. but send in the army corp of engineers to make those medical facilities ready so when the hospitals get overwhelmed, at least there's a backup. >> governor, a short time ago in the news conference we took some of that live, sir, and you referred to this virus as a new war. talk about your very main concern right now. you've talked about the hospitals and over compassty,

not being able to address everyone who might need their help. is that your main concern or are there others? >> the main -- what is going to happen here, by any of the projections, and we don't have to guess, there's no crystal ball. we saw china, south korea, italy. if you don't reduce that curve, it is going overwhelm the hospital care system. it is going to overwhelm the hospital care system. i am telling you that right now today with any of the projections. we only have 3,000 intensive care unit beds in this state. 3,000. 80% are occupied. the people who wind up needing hospital assistance, senior citizens, underlying illness, they need the vent lairtsz. the ventilators are in the intensive care units. we don't have enough. if we don't create more space quickly, and only the army corp

of engineers can do that, we're going to see people dying who didn't need to die. i don't mean to be alarmist. but i am a realist. that is what is going to happen. and we have been a step behind this disease from day one. we were a step behind on testing, on acknowledgement. we saw what was happening in china and we all stood still. let's get ahead of it. and you get ahead of it by knowing what's going to happen by the numbers, and do your best to at least create as many beds as you can. and you will save as many lives as you can. >> governor, what are your thoughts on the prospect of shutting down new york city? there's a proposal that was discussed on that broadcast earlier. do you support the possibility of that and what might that look, look? >> there is no such thing as shutting down new york city if you talk about meaning, like,

it's a quarantine area. you can't get out of new york city. that is not going to happen. there are rumors that circulate around that. no city in the state of new york can close down if the state government doesn't want it to close down. and i'm not closing down any city in this state. now, if you mean closing down businesses, ramping down activity, that would do it. i passed mandatory regulations that say a business that has over 500 people is out of business for the time being. you can't have more than 50% of the occupancy in the building at any time. so that reduces the density. we can do more of that. i called on businesses today on a voluntary basis. we'll see how they respond. i said, if you don't need to be

open, don't be open. if you can work from home, work from home. and i am aggressively recommending that voluntary action. actions like that, if they don't do it on a voluntary basis, we do it on a mandatory basis. closing down schools, which is a good idea with a big "if." if you make sure the essential personnel you need have backup child care. why? because the wave is going to break on the hospitals. we need to make sure those health care workers show up for work. if you create a situation where the health care worker can't show up because their child is home and they have no other child care, well, then you just cut your nose to spite your face. it wasn't a positive. it was a negative. what we're trying to work out is child care for essential workers if you close down the school.

and if you can do that, then i'm in favor of closing down schools. but i'm not quarantining any area. >> governor andrew cuomo, sending a big message to all of us here in the state of new york as well as to the federal government. thank you so much for your time. we appreciate it here on msnbc. take good care. >> thank you. that's going to do it for me. i'm alex witt. joshua johnson is up next. our team will answer your questions and tweets today right here on msnbc. 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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