home when possible. avoid gathering in groups of more than ten people. avoid discretionary travel. avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and public food courts. if everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation, and we will defeat the virus. >> a dramatic shift in tone from president trump yesterday as the white house releases new guidelines for the nation to combat the coronavirus. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, march 17th. along with joe, willie, and me, we have national security expert, columnist at "usa today," and author of "the death of expertise," tom nichols. historian, author of "the soul of america," and roger's professor of the presidency at vanderbilt, john meacham. nbc news and msnbc contributor.

this morning, the u.s. is inching closer to a coronavirus shutdown, as state and local officials take the lead in responding to the national crisis. 7 million residents in the san francisco bay area have been ordered to shelter in place. only allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons. it's the nation's strictest measures so far, seen only in places like italy, france, and spain, where the virus has exploded. the states of new york, new jersey, and connecticut have also launched an unprecedented, joint effort to close all gyms, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and restaurants, with the exception of take-out. businesses offering non-essential services will be shut down by 8:00 p.m. grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations excluded. citing a failure at the federal level, new york governor andrew cuomo says it is incumbent on states to step up.

>> the federal government should put one position in place and coordinate it with the states. we have set a template where our regional states work together. we are adopting the same policies. so there is no benefit to try to shop new york versus connecticut versus new jersey. you can't have one state taking actions that are different than other states. this is a national pandemic. there are no national rules. >> so, you know, it almost was a tale of two days. the first half of the day was focused on states taking a lot of these actions. there were news reports that the white house wasn't leading. then, mika, donald trump held a press conference with his team around 3:00/3:30. >> boy, did everything change.

>> it was a remarkable change. as far as the focus of the federal government, the focus of the coronavirus task force, and most specifically, the focus of donald trump. >> president trump was markedly more come bsomber and serious a briefing yesterday, in which the white house issued new guidelines aimed at stemming the spread of the illness. trump warned the outbreak could last months and drive the u.s. into an economic recession. >> a lot of people are concerned about how long all of this might last. do you have any kind of estimate, that if americans really were to band together, do what the white house is suggesting, how quickly you could turn this corner? >> my favorite question. i ask it all the time. how many times, anthony, i think i ask that question? every day. i speak to deborah. i speak to a lot of them. i get the opinions. it seems to me that if we do a

really good job, we'll not only hold the death down to a level that is much lower than the other way had we not done a good job, but people are talking about july, august, something like that. it could be right in that period of time. i say it washes through. other people don't like that term. but where it washes through. >> is this the new normal until the height of the summer? >> we'll see what happens, but they think august, could be july, could be longer than that. i've asked that question many, many times. >> the stock market took another hit today. is the u.s. economy heading into a recession? >> well, it may be. we're not thinking in terms of recession. we're thinking in terms of the virus. i think there is a pent up demand, in terms of the stock market and the economy. once this goes away, once it goes through and we're done with it, i think you're going to see a tremendous surge. you look at what's happening in

other countries. italy is having a very hard time. i think that what we do -- and i've spoken with my son. he says, how bad is this? it's bad. it's bad. but we're going to be, hopefully, a best case, not a worst case. that's what we're working for. >> willie, while this press conference was going on, i got phone calls from several people, saying who is that man at the press conference? >> what'd they hear? >> the president was sober. he did what a president is supposed to do. he delivered the bad news. there were a couple things that were just -- i found remarkable. talking about how, yes, we're probably going to go into a recession. well, yeah, we are. americans already know that. the ten people limit went further than most people in the administration were talking about going. limiting gatherings to ten people. don't go to restaurants. don't go to bars. don't go out.

this was a president even talking about, saying to his son, when asked, he said, no, it's bad. hopefully we can avoid the worst-case scenarios and bring this in for a landing and have the best-case scenarios. the president is doing what, at least i have said, and i think a lot of other people have said he should be doing from the beginning, and that is, tell the truth. give americans the worst-case scenario. they can handle it. start from there. >> yeah. it's a shame it took him this long to get there and he reverted back to his old self on twitter afterward, going after the "new york times" and other outlets, after saying he thought the media covered it fairly. you're right. as i watched that, and a lot of people watched the news briefing yesterday, you wondered, what did the president learn? what new information did he get to sober him up to how serious this is? we learned later, we learned actually during the briefing from dr. deborah burks, that there is a british research

report put together by a group of scientists that really woke up the people on that stage, but particularly the president of the united states, to how long this could be and how bad it potentially could be if we don't take dramatic steps right now. let's actually go to the white house, where we find nbc correspondent hans nichols. hans, what more can you tell us about what happened between the president's previous stance about this, where he talked about it going away, it'll be a miracle, it'll wash through, so yesterday, where he seemed to realize just how serious this really is? >> reporter: more important. you know, a lot of information has been coming in to the president. though there has been information from the beginning, so loike a lot of folks, i'm wondering what precipitated the marked change in tone from the president. you talk about how dramatic it was. for me, the most dramatic moments were when the president was given opportunities to go after some of his traditional whipping boys. jeff bezos, andrew cuomo. he passed up those opportunities. the only time he was a little

bit pugilistic was when he suggested no one is really to blame, except, then he hinted except when you look at the origin, the source. then we saw the reversion when the president, as you mentioned, was back on twitter late at night. he started calling this the chinese virus. i think we should be watching to what extent he uses anti-chinese rhetoric to make his point, as he is calling on all americans to band together. we know this is a president who enjoys a foil. he enjoys counterpunching. that's the sort of rhetorical change and slight shift i'm looking for today. i think it bears down on all of us to figure out, was there any new, additional, specific piece of information that really triggered this, as we're all acknowledging, dramatic change in tone? >> hans, do you hear anything coming out of the white house, that would suggest to you, and this was out of the president yesterday, that the president and the task force up on the podium is moving toward a full shutdown of the country?

he didn't want to go there yesterday. when you look at what's happening in italy, spain, and france, as well, and san francisco alone has taken the step, do you think we're headed in that direction, based on who you're talking to in the white house? >> reporter: i don't. i'll tell you why. number one, it is unclear what mechanism the united states government has to force that sort of change. when you look at what the president suggested yesterday, i think i just gave away the key part, suggested. these were recommendations. these were guidelines. these were not directives. these were not orders. people think of the president of the united states as being immensely powerful. on some things, they actually have to use persuasion. they have to pull certain levels of government. i'm not detecting that anywhere in the government, that the president wants to do a nationwide occcurfew. a lot of folks were shooting that down. they may do things regionally and locally, but the entire white house, the entire west wing is singularly focused on this. they're talking about additional, several packages going down to the house, maybe

mid-week. they'll ask for additional money. this is joe's old territory, but they'll be asking for a supplemental bill. this is totally separate from the big stimulus package that mnuchin and pelosi are working out. they're going to keep going out to all the agencies, like dod. what does dod need? what does dhs need? dhs has a need, because you saw those returning americans coming back, and there's not enough screenings. maybe dhs will be topped off, more money for them. so i think today is going to be sort of a gears of government day, but i'm not detecting anything of a total shutdown. again, i want to give a caveat. that could mean i'm a bad reporter and don't have the lines into the right places, guys. >> you're not a bad reporter, but you're right, this changes hour by hour. you don't want to make any predictions. you're a great reporter, hans. good to see you this morning. joe, the report dr. burks referenced, the british report, basically said that we would have to keep these measures in place until there is a vaccine for coronavirus. as we know, dr. fauci and others

have said that could be a year to 18 months. doesn't mean this is going to last this way, we're going to live this way for that long, but that's part of what, i think, opened the president's eyes yesterday. >> it was a sobering report that was delivered this weekend. 2 million, up to 2 million americans could die from the coronavirus. that's actually, think about it, willie, more americans than died in world war 1, world war ii, vietnam, and the civil war combined. it is a staggering number. the same thing happened in great britain, where they reversed course after finding out their models yesterday would lead to 250,000 british citizens dying. so there was, without a doubt, an awakening there. the white house is unusually focused and frightened about what is coming. i say frightfrightened.

i spoke to high-ranking officials yesterday, john meacham, who said this is going to be very bad. we are going to have to, you know -- it is all hands on deck. this isn't like 9/11. this is like world war ii. it is going to change the way we live as americans. and the atmosphere inside the white house was very sober. as i hear the president yesterday talking about voluntary measures, and then suggesting they may have to lock down so-called hot spots, i was thinking, that's actually the best way to go at first. because we americans might not respond as well, certainly not as well as, let's say, people in china, people in singapore, to federal government locking things down. it is going region by rejgion, state by state, locality by locality.

might that be a better way to start this? >> well, the policy is obviously evolving rapidly, and i think it's going to get more draconian before it gets less so. unquestionably. i think what dr. fauci has been saying about overreact and be criticized for that makes inherent good sense. the analogy i keep thinking of is less about america during world war ii, because though we mobilized, we did it very late. obviously, after pearl harbor and germany declared war on us. 16 million americans served, 11% of the male population. 2 million in europe. there were victory gardens, and there was a full mobilization. i think this is more like england and britain during world war ii. civilians are actually combatants, if you will, if you followed the analogy. everybody was at the front,

right? churchill said in the great finest hour speech, you know, let us so conduct ourselves that if the british empire were to last 1,000 years, men will still say, this was their finest hour. he needed everybody because germany was dropping bombs on everybody. where we're living right now, the lufwafa is overhead in the form of a pandemic. it requires, dare i say it, churchill-like leadership. yesterday was marginally better. it was like lucy and the football with the federal government the last three years. whenever you think things are moving in the right direction, they end up not. that's not a political partisan point. it's just an observation about the nature of public leadership. the other churchill line that i think is really important here is he once said, there's no

worse mistake in public leadership than holding out false hopes, soon to be swept away. to go directly to your question, i think you go hard at this, clean it up later. if you go soft and you have even more people dying, that's irreversible. >> and i think, tom, that's actually after three, four weeks of the white house being in denial, talking about this going away magically. i think that's a realization that finally landed hard on the white house yesterday, that there's not going to be a happy ending to this. you're just -- you're trying to -- >> mitigate. >> -- mitigate. you're trying to manage this and keep the death count as low as possible. what we saw yesterday was a white house finally focused on what they need to be focused on. i'm curious what your thoughts are about moving forward. do we need, from the white

house, to have a declaration that the entire country is locked down, like they're doing in france and spain, or is this a good first step? is this a good trial balloon to get people prepared? we've gone from emergency declaration to now the president and the white house saying ten or fewer people together, work at home, self-isolate in a dramatic way. are we just going step by step to the point where the country gets locked down like france and spain? >> well, i think, first of all, i agree with jon, that we have to be careful about a lucy and the football situation here. one press conference where the president meets kind of the minimum requirements of sobriety and clarity is not a sea change. it is something to be happy about. it is something to applaud, but i think, you know, the president has trouble focusing.

i think that's true for this administration in general. i think most americans probably would be happy if tony fauci became president right about now. i don't think it's going to be a good move to try to go for a national lockdown. i don't say this because i'm not a medical doctor. looking at this as a matter of policy, i think the problem is that this president has lost the benefit of the doubt with a lot of people. so things like very draconian measures that look like curtailments of freedom, especially during an election season, are going to get a jaundice eye from a lot of americans. that's unfortunate. i don't say that because i somehow think the president would be up to no good doing that, or the team around him, or the doctors advising him. rather, because of the president's track record, not just for three years, but especially in the past three months, where he has been really

inconstant and lacked transparency and put out a lot of bad information. if the president and the white house tries to move forward now with, you know, these really draconian solutions, i think you're going to have people second-guessing him because, again, he's lost the benefit of the doubt among a lot of americans. i think what they're doing is they're trying to edge us toward more tougher solutions incrementally, so that we can accept it more easily. >> yeah, which i think is actually the proper approach. again, i will associate myself with everything that's been said about how this president, this white house bungled this crisis over the past. of course, if you've watched the show for nor thmore than ten mi the last three and a half years, you understand we're critical about just everything the president does. mika, i'll pull out jon's world

war ii analogy. we are all joined together as a country, fighting an epidemic that could end up -- let me say this again. based on the study that got to the white house yesterday -- kill more americans than died in world war ii, world war i, the civil war, and vietnam. we all have to work together. i am hopeful that the white house and that the president continues this somber approach. because, you know, at the beginning of this administration, when we had a lot of leaders, like, well, your father, robert gates, others, all said, we only have one president at a time. >> right. >> we have to do everything we can do to make sure this president succeeds. well, obviously, this president has made that very difficult over the past three years. i'm hopeful that yesterday was a new beginning, especially as it pertains to this battle that

we're all facing. one final thought. and, you know what, we can sit here and say whatever the hell we want to say on tv. there's 45% of americans that aren't going to believe this is a crisis until donald trump says it is a crisis. we have the south carolina governor saying he was going to go to mardi gras -- or going to go to the st. patrick's day parade, and people should just stay at home, until the president declared a national emergency. you have other people being irresponsible on cable news until the president said this was a serious challenge. we need buy-in from all americans to win this battle against a pandemic that will end up killing at least 100,000 americans most likely. >> what you saw yesterday was the president getting better when it came to matching his tone and his own kind of gut response to questions that he was getting, to the reality of

the situation. whether or not you have a jaundiced eye, you noticed that, and you sat up and took note. i mean, the president of the united states made it easier to parent teens yesterday. because if you don't have groups of ten or more, and the president is saying you can't do that, it is much easier to communicate that to the young population. he did a lot to get people to take it seriously yesterday. i mean, i've seen where we are right now, and where we go during the day or communities that might be more pro-trump, that might think this is hoaxy. nope, everyone is in. immediately, you could feel a difference after the news conference yesterday. i don't know if the jaundiced eye on both sides applies to right now because people are really scared. they're seeing the signs. they're seeing the maps. they're seeing this spread across the world. what they want to see from washington is a mass mobilization, a war footing. the president is beginning to

show that. the only thing i would say, willie, is that every time he tweets or gets personal, he hurts that really realistic, effective approach. i'm really hoping he takes it down a notch on anything that's sort of vintage trump, going after people, fighting the fight. at this point, it is uniform what we need. uniform mobilization. >> yeah, and consistency. i think you and joe are exactly right about that. he did his job at the press conference, but as i said at the top of the show, if you go to twitter afterward, he went back to old donald trump. during the press conference he said the media has been good and fair during this, getting information out. then he is tweeting about the "new york times" afterwards. we need consistency from the president all the way through. meanwhile, financial markets took another big hit yesterday. the dow suffering its third worst day ever. the nasdaq, its worst day. stocks now trying to claw back after the president tweeted, signaling a bailout for the

airline and travel industries. let's bring in business colu columnist at "new york" magazine. josh, the dow was down 3,000 points yesterday, 13%. people feel helpless because this isn't an economic crisis. it is brought on by a virus, and they don't know where it ends. >> i think the key thing, or one of the key things for the markets yesterday, was the comment from the president, that it might be until july or august. i think the president is right about that. a lot of the measures being taken right now, that i think may be quite effective in slowing and stopping the spread of the virus, the lockdown of the bay area, orders for people to stay home, to work from home, sending children home from school, closing restaurants and bars, it'll be economically disruptive. we don't know how long it'll go on. likely to have lay-offs, business failures. when people are laid off, they

won't have money to spend. the knock-offs throughout the economy can be enormous. what was settling into the market yesterday afternoon is this may not be a one-month thing. it could be something businesses aren't prepared for. we'll have lost economic activity along the way. there may be a trade-off here. some of those projections where you could have 2 million deaths if you don't take the steps you need. a lot of the steps that you need to take, i think, could be effective in reducing the deaths. economic effects could be very large, very serious and, obviously, very bad for the financial market. >> josh, what about offsets from the government? what can congress do? obviously, the fed has done almost all it can do at this point. what is a reasonable approach from the federal government to try to help a crisis where we don't know where the end is? >> well, first of all, the best thing the government can do for the economy and the financial markets is to stop the virus. in the end, we'll have to have an effective response. that's the first line of policy response. in terms of monetary policy,

fiscal policy, you saw the fed cut interest rates a full p percent teena percentage point. it was the right move. other things to support the financial system are necessary, but they don't fix the fundamental problems. this is going to eknonormously disrupt the economy. businesses won't be investing, even at low interest rates. what business activity is there for them to do? then you're seeing a discussion about how to support the economy through this. expanding unemployment. mitt romney proposing to send $1,000 check to every adult american. i think this is right in terms of when we come out of the epidemic. a lot of people will have wrecked balance sheets. they'll have missed weeks and weeks, months of work. some of that paid. some unpaid. a lot of it unpaid. so, you know, are they going to be in a good position to start going to restaurants again, start spending again? they need to figure out how to pay the rent they owed for months going back. the government needs to find ways to support people through that. we also need to be realistic.

that is going to be a thing that will help us recover faster out of this. economists say, natural disasters, we have fast bounce-backs, but usually it's because things shut for a couple weeks, then people go back to doing what they were doing before. if it is months and months, businesses failed, there's no jobs to go back to, and people have to find new jobs, and they don't have money, it could be a slow and prolonged thing to recover from. you're going to need a lot of government fiscal support for something like that. >> when the president said july and august in the news briefing, it opened a lot of people's eyes. josh borro, as you say in your piece, the fed rate was cut to zero, but the market wasn't impressed. thank you for skyping in. >> thank you. as you said earlier, joe, even the president himself, who doesn't like to admit when the economy is not going well because he thinks it reflects poorly on him, had to admit yesterday at the news briefing that, yes, we may be headed for a recession. >> also, i thought it was interesting, he was asked about

the markets. he said the markets will take care of themselves. again, this is what we have been saying from the very beginning. this is not a financial crisis. this is a health care crisis. take care of the underlying health care crisis, and the economy will follow. josh put up a tweet yesterday. i don't know if we have it, alex. josh put up a tweet yesterday after the press conference. he actually said -- 2008, no, those aren't the tweets i was talking about. however, those are interesting tweets. he put up a tweet saying that, for the first time since this crisis began, he was more optimistic today than he was yesterday. i think that's the way a lot of people were feeling yesterday. jon meacham, by the way, i have no doubt there were people who spit out their cheerios across the table this morning when mika said donald trump made being a parent easier yesterday. something i know. if you had a bingo sheet of

things you were going to predict mika brzezinski was going to say on the show, that would not be on the first 50 sheets printed, right? >> no, it wasn't. >> it was interesting. no, it was not. but it was very interesting. we have, you know, quite a few children between us, 87, 88, who still wanted to go out to restaurants. who still wanted to go out and do things every day. who, every day, made us say, no, you can't do that. no, you need to stay at home. no, we need to socially separate. no, i don't care if your friend's stupid parents are having parties at restaurants. you can't go. it is very interesting, that after three years of political norms being shattered, we saw yesterday, when used correctly, the power of the bully pulpit. when the president of the united states, whoever the president of the united states is, says, no more than ten people should be together, don't go to restaurants, don't go to bars,

don't go on airplanes unless you have to, work from home, laid all of these things out, someone who had not been taking it seriously enough, a remarkable thing happened yesterday. when we went out to the grocery store, suddenly, you could tell, everybody was taking it seriously. our children seemed to understand. the community seemed to understand. this wasn't a battle between the right and the left. this wasn't a battle between the hysterical press and republicans. this was a serious matter. i just sat there thinking, wait a second, after three years of shattered political norms, a president can still stand behind a podium and force everybody from republican governors to our children to stop and listen and act accordingly. >> yeah. and there's something about the resilience of the american people and the american spirit

and the american presidency. maybe not the president but the presidency. one of the great questions we've been facing, and this is not necessarily the time to delve into it, but one of the great questions we've been facing is, we know the presidency did not change donald trump. the question always has been to what extent has donald trump changed the presidency? all of that is interesting and academic, and you and i can bore people for the rest of the yoea on that. here's a moment where the word "crisis" is from the greek, from hi hypocraties. it is the course of a disease in which a patient lives or dies. that's why we use the word "crisis" so much. it is supposed to be an inflection point, turning point. this is as genuine a crisis as possible. there is a model of presidential

leadership, and it is franklin roosevelt through the tumult of the '30s. it is john kennedy saying that we have to be patient in tribulation, quoting st. paul in the long twilight struggle of the cold war. we need this kind of leadership. one of the things that we have to focus on is ohio, georgia, louisiana, i think i have those right, are not holding primaries today. one of the things we have to be -- pay enormous amount of attention to here is the ordinary unfolding of democracy. lincoln didn't cancel 1864 in the midst of an armed rebellion. to me, the deeply scary thing about this is there's a health crisis and, yes, you're right about the causality of the crisis, but there is going to be a significant fear as the economic fallout settles in. >> yes. >> i think there's sort of two

or three bounces to this. it is going to require a consistent presidential voice. i leave it to meamericans who pd attention the last four years to see whether they think they're confident they're going to receive that. >> that consistency could be really challenging, from what we've seen in the past. you know, you have to look at what's always driving this president's behavior. it could be very grave news, that is, and that's fine, as long as he sticks to the tone. i'm watching the election process very closely. >> i think a lot of people are. we're watching ohio yesterday, where the governor of ohio tried to cancel the elections. a judge said you can't do it. he ignored, apparently, the judge's orders. we'll look into that more closely. mika, you know, again, if you are -- and let's just -- getting out of this bubble, of course, we do live in, if you are

someone with an eld lerly mothe or father, who understands the coronavirus could be a death sentence. if you are the father, as i am, of a child with diabetes, who is just more at risk than others. or a parent with a child with upper respiratory issues. any of these things. you're hoping the president of the united states leads. you're actually cheering on the president of the united states to get this right. because, again, what's at stake for this country is something that we really haven't experienced in our lifetimes. we just haven't. the next three, four, five months are going to test this nation, and we are all in this together. >> yeah. >> we can only hope that our

leaders act responsibly and help us get through this, as we do our part, too. just like jon said, this is more like britain in world war ii. again, i'll say, in closing, if you think we're being melodramatic, look at the report that sobered up the white house yesterday. when you start talking about the possibility of 2 million deaths, when you start talking about the hospitals being overrun, even if we do everything right, and when you look at the fact that more people, if these projections ended up being correct, if we botch this, more people could die of this than died in world war i, ii, vietnam, and also, of course, in the civil war. more american soldiers, more american troops. you realize we all have to get this right. >> as meacham mentioned, there were four primaries that were scheduled for today, but the state of ohio defied a judge's

order, not to delay the election. florida, illinois, and arizona will vote today as scheduled. georgia and louisiana have postponed their upcoming primaries, as well, along with kentucky. we'll be watching all of that. still ahead on "morning joe," how the outbreak is impacting those who americans need the most, the nurses and health care workers on the front lines, being exposed every day. also, important pieces from two of our forthcoming guests. eugene robinson looking at how life in the time of covid-19 is totally unsented. plus, nick cristoph on the 12 steps to tackle the coronavirus. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker,

the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. hey allergy muddlers... achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day.

zyrtec muddle no more. wean air force veteran made of doing what's right,. not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for.

usaa

i don't believe we're going to be able to flatten the curve

enough to meet the capacity of the health care system. >> new york governor andrew cuomo still fears his state's best efforts might not be enough, as concern mounts over the demand for respirators, ventilators, and other essential equipment needed for the expected influx of people requiring treatment. potential exposure to the coronavirus is also limiting the number of nurses available to help treat patients. connecticut governor ed lamont said last night that 200 employees, including nurses employed by an interstate health system in new york and connecticut, have been out of work over exposure to the virus. let's bring in the president and ceo of new york presbyterian hospital, dr. steven corwin. dr. corwin, thank you so much for being on with us. i have to start by asking, are your health care workers exposed to the coronavirus? do people who have suspected

symptoms of the coronavirus walk in and mix with your health care workers in the regular er? >> we've taken extraordinary steps on our emergency department to prevent that, but there's no question that the availability of health care workers is going to be key for this crisis. the ability not to furlough health care workers becomes critically important. i think what the president did yesterday was the right move. having worked with governor cuomo now the past couple weeks, i think he's made extraordinary steps. i also want to congratulate, thank all americans for the sacrifice they're making. we're talking about, as you know, a harsh economic impact. businesses going down. people losing their jobs. if we can flatten the peak of this, then the hospitals in new york and the surrounding areas can meet the surge. >> so there was talk of military hospitals and coronavirus care centers separate from hospitals.

i know it's really difficult in new york city. i believe somebody that we know walked into one of your hospitals and was sitting in a hallway. he ultimately was diagnosed with the coronavirus. just like what the president is doing, which is separate americans to protect them, how are health care workers in your ers and in the hallways of your hospitals being separated to be protected? then again, allowing some health care workers who are protected with gear address the problem. is that -- is that worked out yet? >> we worked it out in our emergency department. i saw your segment yesterday with the patient who become positive. part of the issue is the availability or lack of availability of testing. we wish him well. i think we followed all the protocols in terms of testing him. we're assuming now when people come into our emergency department that they are going to potentially be infected. we've changed the protective

equipment for all of our emergency personnel. remember, mika, that one of the issues that we have to solve is the availability of ppe, patient protective equipment. in particular, masks, which are in short supply. >> dr. corwin, it's willie geist. thanks so much for all the work you all are doing. please send your best to your nurses and your doctors, working around the clock on this. >> thanks. >> as we talk about hospitals being swamped, can you explain what that means exactly, what that looks like, and why that would happen, and implications, also, for people who don't have coronavirus? other surgeries that have to be put on the back burner. >> first, we canceled all the elective surgeries. all hospitals are meeting today to give the governor a report on surge capacity. second, swamped means, do you have enough icu beds? do you have enough health care workers? do you have enough ventilators,

et cetera? we're a 4,000-bed system. 3,500 medical surgical beds. about 10% to 15% of the beds are icu beds, maybe a little more. we have 500 ventilators. we have an additional capacity for 250 ventilators. that's what we're talking about in terms of if we reach those limits, are we overwhelmed? it's fine to talk about having military hospitals or field hospitals, but it is really people who know how to take care of intensively ill patients, as you saw in italy. i think what we're trying to do is make sure we can flatten that curve so that we have the icu capability available. >> dr. corwin, you have an audience right now. a lot of people in washington who can do things about this problem. you have senators and governors and the white house watching. what do you need, speaking not just for your hospital but perhaps hospitals across the country, what to you need as of today to flatten the curve and stop yourself from being swamped? >> well, the first thing is

everything the president did yesterday and more, so that we can socially isolate people. there's no treatment for this at this point. no vaccine. second then is make sure we ramp up the manufacturing of protective equipment and ventilators. then the third thing, tome meik point, is protect our health care workers. which gets back to having enough protective equipment so they don't become infected. >> all right. keep us posted on that. dr. steven corwin, thank you very much for coming on "morning joe" this morning. >> thank you. we turn now to "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave camcampbell, who has been this from the beginning for us. dr. dave, some reports of people in japan, china, south korea, who contracted the coronavirus and then recovered and then tested positive again. can you get this more than once? >> mika, scientists agree that

it is unlikely that you will catch this twice. it is far more likely that those few patients who have had recurrent disease either had some faulty testing or they were released from the hospital too soon. with all considerations, the only people who would perhaps be able to have a second infection are the severely immunocompromised who are really never able to eradicate the disease in the first place. the answer, the short answer is no. >> all right. >> let me ask you, dr. dave, about -- it is very interesting. a lot of people trying to figure out where we are as a nation right now. are we taking the path of china? are we taking the path of south korea? are we taking the path of italy? after yesterday's press conference, i heard from some doctors that has been following

this and were very concerned, saying that while we got a late start in many areas, if we take dramatic enough steps, we can -- we may not be able to follow the path of south korea, but we can avoid italy's wretched fate. what are your thoughts on that? >> joe, if we do not take the steps, and if young people or people that aren't listening to the news, quite frankly, every day -- i worked yesterday on an emergency operation. i was appalled at the number of people who were behind in the news by several days, which is catastrophic. if we follow the path of italy, italy has, in two weeks, gone from where they were to a 15-fold increase in the number of cases and a 52-fold increase in the number of deaths. two weeks.

that will put us, in two weeks from now, at over 50,000 cases and over 3,000 deaths. that sounds a lot like the vietnam war and 9/11. it's frightening, joe. >> yeah. but if we do begin to lockdown, the way the president suggested yesterday, the way we're seeing leaders from new york to california begin to lockdown their localities, if we begin to take these aggressive steps, now that all our leaders are suggesting we take, do the odds -- do we help our odds to avoid an italy type outbreak? >> joe, we absolutely do. every single step that's been mentioned by all the public health experts and all of our leaders are important steps. we just don't know in the last

seven to ten days, particularly in south florida, but across the country, what the real number of people are who are infected with the coronavirus because of the shortage in testing. so we're going to see, the next week or two, as every expert has said, will be very telling. you have to hang on, joe. >> yeah. we'll have to hang on. thank you so much, dr. dave. >> thanks, dr. dave. also, you know, willie, you look at the pictures every day. of course, we were shocked and horrified by the pictures we saw in the airports this weekend because the government didn't prepare for those people coming pa back. sunday noiight, we saw picturesf disney world jam-packed of people. yesterday, bill karins showing pictures of beaches in florida, jammed with people. there are still so many americans that don't understand they are spreading the virus. they may not have any symptoms

themselves, but they come in contact with their parents, with their grandparents, with their siblings, with loved ones who have a weakened resistance. they are, in effect, putting their lives in danger. >> yeah. you know, i had that foeeling o saturday night looking on twitter as i was going to bed, and seeing the bars across america. i won't point to one city, but across america, packed with people, side by side. largely young people, same with the pictures from florida, the overhead helicopter shots of the beaches packed with people. i think people weren't taking this seriously. perhaps yesterday the president's message to them will cause them to take it serious l as you said earlier. polling shows there is a large swath of the country told by the media that this was a hoax, it was being overblown, or people were overreacting to it. i hope the president's change in tone yesterday, at least during

the press conference, will send the message, get off the crowded beaches, get out of the crowded bars, which aren't an option anymore in most places, and follow these rules. this doesn't have to be as bad as it is. you said, too, joe, just because you're young doesn't mean you can't have an adverse and negative role in this, by passing it on to someone more vulnerable. >> tom nichols, it's not just the president whose tone changed dramatically yesterday. also, of course, certain radio and tv hosts who have been parodying his mockery of the coronavirus, certainly calling it something the media was overhyping, that has seemed to dissipate over the past 24 to 48 hours, as well. >> yeah. it makes me wonder if the president's change in tone was not because the experts and the scientists finally got to him, but because somebody at his favorite conservative outlets

got to him and said, you really need to change your tone. yet, if you tuned in to, you know, fox, for example, last night, they were still talking about things like will we make china pay, you know, for what they've done, as if that ought to be the thing we're thinking about. but i think it was important for the president to take the tone he did, as you mentioned earlier, to get through to the 40% of the people that he had already kind of insulated from believing that this is a threat. in some sense, what the president had to do yesterday was undo the damage that he and the other conservative outlets had been doing for months. at a time, by dismissing this. it was interesting that the conservative outlets, the change in just 24 to 48 hours, has been remarkable. i don't think it is enough, but it is at least a good sign that they're starting to get on the page.

i think one other thing that's good is that the president has -- whatever change in tone there may be -- because, again, with this president, it can be temporary -- he has started to push experts further into the fore. i think that gets people's attention. i think people are finally realizing that -- >> i think so. >> yeah, when you have somebody like fauci or burks stepping forward to the podium and saying, look, we're not political people. we're doctors. this is the real deal. i think that's a really important thing to do, and the president needs to do more of that. >> i agree. it's so important. jon meacham, of course, we have you because you're a presidential historian, because you're a pulitzer prize-winning author. also, of course, because as you walk around middle america in your paisley smoking jacket, you are a man of the people. we're curious. we'd like a report from middle america, where you live. are you sensing -- seriously,

are you sensing that your friends, your neighbors, the people that you sip pims cups with on the veranda late at night, are you sensing people in middle america are beginning to understand the severity of this crisis? >> yes. it's about truth and trust. i think people have been conc n concerned about whether they were getting the truth or not. i'm lucky that i have a lot of doctor friends who have been having very sober-minded conversations. i trust them. i think that the health officials we were talking about can be trusted. one of the things that, culturally, we are accustomed to is we listen to presidents in moments like this. if the president of yesterday endures, we're okay. if not, i have a feeling it's going to be more chaotic and going to be less of an atmosphere of trust.

so my sense is, people get that they now have a role in this. >> jon meacham and tom nichols, thank you very much. coming up, a new study on how many people may be able to transmit the virus without even knowing they have it. plus, new reporting on what may have led the striking shift in the president's tone yesterday. also, the dow jones dropped nearly 3,000 points yesterday. right now, stock futures point to a higher open this morning. steve rattner will join us to weigh in on that. and what the coronavirus outbreak could mean for other important aspects of american life, including the court system and the important 2020 census. we'll get to all of that ahead on "morning joe." tv sports announcer: five seconds left. oh ho! yeah, that's my man there. tv sports announcer: time out. let's go to a commercial. 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. what? bundle and save with allstate. click or call for a quote today. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. ior anything i want to buy isk going to be on rakuten. rakuten is easy to use, free to sign up and it's in over 3,000 stores. i buy a lot of makeup. shampoo, conditioner. books, food. travel. shoes. stuff for my backyard. anything from clothes to electronics. workout gear. i even recently got cash back on domain hosting. you can buy tires.

to me, rakuten is a great way to get cash back on anything you buy. rack it up with rakuten, sign up today to get cash back on everything you buy.

welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, march 17th. joining -- >> happy st. patrick's day. >> -- joe, willie, and me, we have associated editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve rattner. a lot to get to this morning. >> a lot to get to. donnie, i'm curious, you've dealt with crisis management throughout your life. >> yeah. >> dealt with brands that fell on hard times. seems to me we've been saying for some time that the white house and the government, overall the president, needs to deliver the bad news. let people know how bad it is, and then work from that point. i'm curious if you agree with me, that yesterday was a good first step for the president and the white house, to deliver the

bad news. yes, there's going to be a recession. yes, this still may be going on in july or august. yes, it is -- you know, the president is saying he is even telling his child that this is bad. this is very bad. we can only hope to avoid the worst-case scenario. is that a good first step back to get us moving in the right direction? >> joe, i agree emphatically. it is a great first step back. leadership is about two things, honesty and empathy. clearly, at least we got the first one yesterday, and hopefully the second will be coming. look, i also agree with what you said in the first hour. nobody has been more critical of the president than me. this is the time we get together. we have one president. we stand behind our president. our president showed us something yesterday he hasn't shown us before, and that's honesty. hopefully the empathy will come. one more note of what a leader should also do, and i'd like to hear it coming out of his mouth, is right now we're in the darkness. i think when we come out the other side, and there's going to be a lot of health pain and

economic pain, we will be better. if you think about the way you look at your life right now, the way you look at your children, the decisions we make, i think this is a very strong reboot for who we are, how we behave, what we believe, what's important. you know, there is a great scene at the beginning of "love actually," when they talk about people calling in from 9/11 when it was happening. all of the calls were about love. things like that. hopefully, out of this, and once again, there will be a lot of collateral damage, but hopefully we all will be better, and we will be a better people. right now, we need to stand together and behind our president. thank you, mr. president, yesterday for stepping up in the way we need you to. >> of course, willie, there is going to be economic damage. i'm hopeful congress will work with the president of the united states, and they will come up with packages that will alleviate the suffering that so many americans are going to

endu endure. donny is right, this is going to be a reset for america, for american society. families are going to be spending more time together. we're not going to be going out as much. it's going to be a reordering of society in a way we haven't seen. >> ever seen. >> since, let me say it again, most likely since world war ii. >> absolutely. and it's changed exponentially, day by day by day. could you imagine even a week ago, the steps that have been taken now? it was less than a week ago, actually, that the nba canceled its season, that the president had the oval office address, that the diagnosis of tom hanks and rita wilson, all these things that woke the country up. now, all of the schools are closed across the country. bars and restaurants are closed. a lot of people speculating about whether this could move toward a full national shutdown, like we're seeing in spain and italy. not there yet, but the president indicated everything is on the table, even if he hopes we don't get there. another thing, steve rattner,

the president indicated yesterday, which he has been reluctant to do in the past, is that, yes, we're probably headed to a recession. he said it may be. he doesn't like talking that way because he thinks it reflects on him somehow. he acknowledged publicly yesterday how bad this economic fallout is going to be. 3,000 points offhardly g lly be story of what will happen to so many small businesses across the country. >> two days ago, secretary mnuchin said, we're not in a recession. now, the president is getting more honest about it. i think there is almost no question we're going to be in a recession of substantial magnitude. could it be as bad as 2008 or 2009? absolutely, it could be. do we think that at the moment? no. but who knows? this is unprecedented in the sense that we never have had this total economic shutdown before. you know, the fact is, the more we do on the public health side, what we should do on the public

health side, the harder it'll be for the economy in the short run. as you said, you'll have thousands of small businesses shutting down with no particular way to reopen. employers may disperse with no capital. you have major industries, airlines, asking for huge bailouts and things like that the government has to consider. you can look at china, where they had double digit, 20% declines in consumption in january and february. it is starting to come back. they had massive, massive declines. i don't think yet -- i think washington is just beginning to come to grips with what it'll have to do. $850 billion stimulus package is floating around. we need to do something like that. i don't think the president's idea of apparel tax is a good idea. i doesn't put money in the right people's hands quickly enough. it is going to -- congress needs to act. i don't think congress yet completely grasps the severity of what's going to happen to this economy. >> steve, quick question. it was interesting -- not interesting -- when we had the meltdown in 2008, you had six

banks, give them the money. how do you get money into the system? announce a $2 trillion tarp, yet we're not set up as a government -- we're not a socialist government -- to distribute that money. how does it get out there? >> well, it depends what money and how you do it. there are ideas around. the best idea for general stimulus for the economy is something like $1,000 rebate for every person. that may not sound like a lot in the context of what's going on, but that alone would be an almost $300 billion project. double it and make it a of 600. people are trying to figure out how to help small business and large business. through banks, maybe give banks the credit to extend it to the individual businesses. they have the ability to do that. we'll also have to come to the grips as a country about the bailouts. after 2008, we said, no more bailouts. you have the airlines asking for a $58 billion, and you have hotels behind that. you'll have all other leisure behind that. then you'll have other

industries. how does it work? where does it stop? how much do we do? these are tough questions, and i don't think congress has begun to come to grips with it. >> the president said explicitly yesterday at the news briefing that he is going to take care of the american airline industry. clearly, they'll need it. >> yeah, they are. a lot of industries will. this morning, the u.s. is inching closer to a coronavirus shutdown across the board. 7 million residents in the san francisco bay area have been ordered to shelter in place, only allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons. it is the nation's strictest measures so far, seen only in places like italy, france, and spain, where the virus has exploded. more on that in a moment. the states of new york, new jersey, and connecticut have also launched an unprecedented, joint effort to close gyms, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and restaurants, with the exception of take-out. businesses offering

non-essential services will be shut down by 8:00 p.m., with grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations excluded. governments around the world are racing to stem the outbreak of the coronavirus, shutting schools and shops and implementing lockdowns, even emergency wartime measures. the european union announced it will close its borders to non-essential travel for 30 days, as the continent is now at the center of the pandemic. france's president, emmanuel macron, ordered the country to lock down for 15 days, deploying 100,000 police officers to enforce the measure, saying, quote, we are at war. german chancellor angela merkel announced sweeping, new measures yesterday, shutting down restaurants, shops, schools, banning religious gatherings and holiday travel. germany also moved to close the borders with its neighbors, except for commercial traffic. in the united kingdom, prime minister boris johnson stopped short of announcing a lockdown,

with schools still open in the uk. yesterday, the prime minister told citizens to stop all unnecessary travel outside of the country, to limit their contact with others, and to avoid social venues. saying that the outbreak in the uk was, quote, approaching the fast growth part of the upward curve. spain has deployed more than 1,000 troops to enforce the lockdown in its country, as more than 290 people have died from the virus. italy, the worst-hit country in europe, the death toll continues to mount, reaching more than 2,100, inundating morgues. in north america, canada moved to close borders to all foreign nationals, except for americans. willie? let's go to italy. in rome, we find nbc news foreign correspondent matt bradley. it is feeling haunted on the

streets of rome where you are and across the nation of italy. what is it like there right now, and how long do they expect this to go on? >> reporter: yeah, it is noon on a tuesday here, willie. as you can hear, we kind of found you the world's loneliest area. you've probably been to italy. there's some cars. there's some people walking around, but there's really not very much activity. this is normally a really bustling, frenetic city. you can hear some, you know, horns honking, but it is very quiet. it is actually quite chilling. this kind of lockdown that we've seen nationwide here in italy, as you mentioned, it is now spilling over borders into france and spain now. there's now 100 million europeans who are under some form of lockdown. we expect that to expand. germany is considering that. britain has been considering that. as mika mentioned, you know, boris johnson has been facing

some pressure and some criticism for not locking down britain in the same way that italy, spain, and france has. you know, some of the real effects we're going to start seeing here are economic. here in italy, they announced a $28 billion, 25 billion euro, plan to try to shore up the economy. it is called cure or heal italy. that's going to be similar to what we're seeing in other countries. the idea is to provide for workers who can't just shelter at home. it is to help those who need to expand the ranks of doctors, nurses, even the army medical corps. it'll be needed here. the economic impact has already hit, but it's the european union that will be tested. the past couple years, we kept hearing the european union, its bold experiment with open borders, common currency, was

under threat. first from the financial crisis, then the greek financial crisis, then the immigration crisis in 2015, from brexit. well, now, this almost natural disaster is what is actually really tested the experiment of the european union. we're hearing today that the european union will be voting on whether or not to ban all non-europeans from entering into the 26-nation shenzhen area. it is not as big an issue as the closing of the borders within the shenzhen area. that's not happening the past several decades. germany closed its borders to five different countries. spain has closed its land borders to all of its neighbors. that is something that is going to really challenge the economy and challenge that european union experiment that has been going on for so long, that so many people in this continent had been so hopeful about. it is testing a lot of the european sensibilities we've seen before. >> matt bradley in the near empty streets of rome for us this morning. save that one horn player over

your shoulder. thank you very much. joe, a lot of americans watching our show this morning are wondering if what we see in the streets of rome today are coming to the streets of new york, chicago, los angeles in the next few days or weeks. >> i would guess it would be. certainly, if we want to limit the spread of this virus so we don't end up like italy, it most likely needs to be. i'm reading gene robinson's column about life with the coronavirus. gene, there's a couple lines here i really want to share with the audience and have you talk about it. "my wife and i are in an age group that is to be more concerned about the prospect of contracting the virus than, say, our millennial sons. each day then involves a series of decisions. do i really need to pick up the dry cleaning? if i wait until later in the week, will the dry cleaner still be open? if there are errands i believe i can run safely, there is an

incentive to do it today, what i might not be able to do tomorrow. but i miss going to the office. i've worked in newsrooms all my adult life. i miss the bustle and excitement. somehow, perhaps, counterintuitively, it helps me concentrate." talk about these unique times, gene, that we live in. times like no other. >> yeah. i've never seen anything like this. this is going to go on for a while. you see the effects here in the washington metropolitan area already. there's no traffic anymore. i mean, there just isn't because so many people are working at home. there's no school, so there's no school buses. you know, everything is different. restaurants in most of the jurisdictions around here, there

has been a directive, an order for restaurants to, at some point, either now or within a couple of days, go to take-out only. where i live, there is a request for restaurants to do that. i know they have been starting to do it. it's -- again, i've never seen anything like it. i hope what we saw yesterday, the president's news conference, the measures that are being taken, i hope it was, you know -- not meacham, but i hope it was churchill's the end of the beginning here in this country. the beginning was a phase in which a lot of people did not take this seriously, did not look at what had happened in china, what was happening in italy and now the rest of europe. went about their daily lives in

a state of denial. i hope no one can do that anymore. that we can't be in denial and that we have to change our routines, which is a difficult thing to do. it's hard to break a habit. we need to break habits. we need to change routines. we need to live in a different way for the foreseeable future. that could -- the president talked about, essentially, a lockdown for 15 days, but we all know it is going to be quite a bit longer than 15 days. i think i can say that. >> oh, yeah. >> and it is all on us, basically. because, again, the federal government's recommendations were just that, they're recommendations. they are instructions. they are not, at this point, mandatory. so it's up to all of us individually and as communities to do our part.

if we do our part, we can get this over with a lot quicker, with a lot fewer deaths. >> and let's just say it, too, this talk about schools going back sometime in april, that's just not going to happen. the semesters are over. they're not going to have people coming back on campus before. >> graduations, everything. >> yeah, graduations. so much of this, we're just not going to be doing. so as we talk about -- we've been talking about the health impact of this. steve rattner, we find ourselves in this terrible position where the more responsible we are when it comes to america's health care, and the more we save lives, the more of an economic impact it is going to have, and the more the government is going to need to step in and help. i spoke with someone yesterday involved in march madness, the ncaa tournaments, which would be going on, and he explained it. you have to think about it.

just look at the ncaa men's basketball tournament. think about the billions of dollars. forget about the billions of dollars in ad revenue. think about the tickets, the concessions, the restaurants, the bars that are around there. think about the family businesses that are going to be wiped out because they had been planning for this for some time. it reminded me of a hurricane. you know, if a hurricane came, let's say, memorial day weekend, and wiped out an entire summer's worth of income for a family business in pensacola. you know, i saw family businesses that had been around for 30, 40, 50 years wiped out by one hurricane. we're in that position here, where the economic impact could be so great, that if the government doesn't figure out a

timely and expeditious response, there are family businesses that have been around for generations that will be wiped out. >> yeah. that's, of course, absolutely right, joe. starting with your first point, one of the paradoxes of this, but i think we're going in the right direction, is that the faster we deal with the public health aspects of it, in terms of this quasi lockdown that going on, the harder it'll be for the economy in the short term. we have a model from china. they went into lockdown in january. they quarantined 507 million people, and did all kinds of social tracing and contact avoid tans a avoidance and so on. numbers show they're coming out of the back end slowly, but they're starting to come out the back end. you can see a path. we're not doing everything china is doing. we can want. it is not our nature, not the way our system works. you can see an example of possibly coming out the back

end. the point joe made is an important point. a lot of these businesses are just going to shut down, these small businesses, these restaurants. i was in a restaurant sunday night, one of the few, now that they're going to close. three people in the whole restaurant. what do they do with workers? how long can they last? then they close. all the workers disappear. the owner has no capital. all this ends. fine, how does he restart again? you see this initially going on in the travel-related industries. we have the airlines in deep, deep trouble. one airline told me yesterday they're literally spending more on refunding ticket than taking in on revenue. negative revenue, let alone cash flow and all that. then all the travel-related stuff. now we're moving to the consumption stuff. you'll have trillions of dollars, literally trillions of dollars of lost spending during this period. a wave of bankruptcies. there are ways to address it somewhat, but the government has to get its acts together. >> i had three phone calls from

personal friends of mine with small businesses yesterday. with the conundrum that every small business owner is facing, how long do i keep my people? i had people with me six years, ten years, 20 years, 30 years. my advice to everyone running a business is you have to manage somewhere with your heart and somewhere with the bottom line. only you know where the continuum is. it is very, very difficult. let's use the dry cleaner. the dry cleaner has seven employees with him. dry cleaner has no money coming in. what do you do? i think the answer is, everybody -- you have -- this is where we're together. you have to go as tough as you can go to take care of other people without really devastating yourself. this is going to be an interesting gut check, beyond, as i talked about earlier in the show, as far as how we come out on the other side. for individual businesses, my advice is, manage with your heart as far as you can. that will take you to the right place. >> you know, donny, that's fine for companies that have the money to do that. >> i'm saying, everybody has --

let's give an example. there's always an elasticity to it. until it hurts you. obviously, you can't do something that will devastate your own family. if everybody takes the one extra step, maybe it's one extra week, two extra weeks for people, something like that. that's where we are. >> there are so many of the businesses that don't have the money. >> they don't. >> they operate on a shoestring. >> i prefaced it, whatever you can do, elasticity. this is what makes us who we are at this point. this is the gut check for who we are. >> willie, that was getting uncomfortable. this is what happens when you get two irishmen together on st. patrick's day. >> with the bars closed, no less. >> seriously, with the bars closed. >> well, no. >> early in the morning, they're fighting each other. but, you know, it is a terrible choice that people are going to have to make. >> uncomfortable. >> it's not just small businesses. i've talked to people, willie, that have massive businesses,

that have global businesses, they've looked at the fact that the economy is doing really well. money is relatively cheap. man, they went all in on expansion. they said, this is the time to expand. the economy is going to be great for the next year at least. money is historically cheap. they went all in. here we are, three, four weeks into this, and the person i talked to yesterday said, i'm at the end of my credit line. i'm not really sure what i'm going to do. i'm not sure what a lot of other businesses are going to do right now. nobody ever expected this to happen because nothing like this has ever happened before. >> that's sinking in, mika, this week. i mean, this is when people -- even hearing the president yesterday say july or august, being realistic about how long

this is going to go. at the beginning of this, i think people thought, all right, we'll shut it down for a week, maybe we'll have the ncaa tournament, have it without crowds. no, we can't have a tournament. it is cascading onward and onward. you wonder what we can do as consumers. there's only so much you can bu card from a restaurant. it is a nice gesture but it won't help the restaurants survive across the country. there's too many. too many people working for them who will be struggling because of this virus, this unforeseen, this unseen enemy, as the president called it yesterday. >> there's going to have to be more from the president. we had tens of thousands of people on beaches and people who are not heeding the warnings. we've got to continue the very consistent communication with them. steve rattner, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," we just mentioned potential stimulus plans, including one idea to give every adult american $1,000 each. mitt romney is pushing that, but

would capitol hill support it? you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

and i don't count the wrinkles. but what i do count on is boost high protein. and now, introducing new boost women... with key nutrients to help support thyroid, bone, hair and skin health. all with great taste. new, boost women. designed just for you. for adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb.

tell your doctor if you have an infection or flu-like symptoms or sores, have had cancer, or develop new skin growths, or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options. remission can start with stelara®.

we have a simple message for all countries. test, test, test. test every suspected case. >> the director general of the world health organization with that message. but the suspected cases might not be the biggest issue. a new study published in the journal "science" is putting a hard figure behind the number of people who may be walking around with the virus unknowingly. based on data from the china, researchers found that undocumented infections were responsible for 79% of documented cases. to put in another way, scientists say, for every known

case, there are about five to ten undetected cases. the study found that those with undocumented infections experience mild, limited, or no symptoms at all. that, of course, puts more people at risk, paubecause the illnesses go undefected. joining us now, the director of the harvard global institution. he is a practicing physician and also professor of medicine at harvard medical school. welcome back to the show. great to have you back on. doctor -- >> good morning. >> -- where do we stand right now? there are hospitals in new york city, in major cities, where the emergency rooms are not that separated in terms of people coming in and trying to get tests. tests not being available. waiting in hallways. this has happened in the past week. this appears to be headed in a very bad direction. >> yeah. so, look, we're still way behind the curve in terms of where we need to be on testing. the good news is just in the

last 12, 24 hours, i'm starting to see data, hearing from colleagues, that we're starting to get moving on testing. again, we're way behind. i don't want to over-sell this. we absolutely need a lot more tests. my sense is we're doing about 10,000 tests a day, maybe, across the country. we probably should be doing 100,000 to 150,000 tests a day, maybe even more. we have a long way to go. just starting to see a little progress. >> dr. jha, willie geist. help us understand that. the white house told us that 1 million test kits have been sent out. there are 5 million on the way. where are those? why aren't they being used at the pace you say we should be using them? >> yeah. you know, look, we heard a couple weeks ago from vice president pence there were a million kits on the way. i don't know where we are. none of the health officials i'm talking to know where they are. what hospitals are starting to do is much more coming from their own labs, from private labs. i think all of us are a little baffled by what the federal

government is saying. the progress is at the local level. >> you said -- i was reading you on twitter before you came on, dr. jha. you're calling for a national quarantine. can you explain what exactly that would look like in this country? >> yeah. you know, this is -- look, i don't say this lightly, and i've been thinking about this for a couple of days. what i'm watching the data, america, you know, we're up to 4,500 cases. i think most experts i talk to, my own guess is that we probably have 30,000, 40,000 americans infected right now, and it is growing exponentially. our hospitals and emergency rooms are not ready. so we have two choices. basically, we can either have a national quarantine now, two weeks. get a grip on where things are, and reassess. or we cannot, wait another week, and when things look really terrible, be forced into it. that's going to last much longer. many more people will die. those are our two choices. get ahead of it or wait until

we're even further behind. what it is going to look like is italy. essential services will be open, groceries, pharmacies. non-essential stuff, people stay home. no public gatherings. no bars, no restaurants. it is going to be really hard. economically, very tough. the alternative is economically more devastating. we're between a rock and a hard place. we have to make the right call. >> we're looking at -- are we locking at mshemergency rooms a icus being filled beyond capacity, and the united states not being able to keep up? >> yeah. you know, we've been doing some analyses, hoping to make them public later this afternoon when we get the numbers finalized. basically, even under very rosy scenarios, if we do nothing, most hospitals in america will get overwhelmed, will have too many cases.

they won't have enough icu beds. every hospital executive this morning has to be cancelling all elective cases, strategizing for how you keep covid and non-covid patients separated. if we overreact, we'll waste money. if we underreact, we'll count losses in lives and money. to me, this is not a close call. we have to get much more serious than we are. >> dr. jha, donny deutsch. what is the data point we wait for, that there is a little light? what has to be said that -- right now, are we shut down through august? what would be the point that your community says, okay, we can start to get back to who we are? >> yeah. it is a great question. so we're, like, two steps away from even being able to make that decision. right now, because we don't have tests, we don't know how many cases there are in america. we don't know where on the curve we are.

everybody is saying we're two weeks behind italy. i don't know if we're two weeks behind italy. we may be closer to italy because we're not testing adequately. what i would like is for us to take a big pause, two weeks. during that time, ramp up testing. get all the people who need to be tested te, tested. we'll have a grip on the extent of the infections, what communities are affected, we can strategize and plan, then we can say, how do we bend the curve and get off of what is a tsunami in front of us, how do we get ahead of it? we need the national pause now. i don't see anybody being able to make predictions about is it may, is it august, is it all year? i think it is too early to tell. we don't even know where we are today. >> dr. jha, thank you for coming back on the show. >> sorry to be delivering bad news. thank you.

>> no, we appreciate it. i think we're all beginning to understand this and take it in. it is day by day. dr. jha, we really do need the science here. we need the reality check. it's not pretty. that is for sure. >> yup. >> so thank you. we're going to turn now to columnist for the "new york times," nick kristof. you are writing a lot, 12 steps to confront this. i want to ask your reflections from what you're seeing in the u.s. you travel all around the world, all the time. are there any comparisons you can make from the work you're doing? >> yeah, i mean, i think there has, to an extent, been a wake-up call. americans think that we have the greatest health care system in the world, the greatest technology, the greatest science, and we have clearly been left behind compared to other countries in our response.

partly, that's a question of political issues. frankly, it is also because, i think, we have emphasized clinical medical but we, frankly, haven't done as well with public health. the lack of access also plays a role. places like singapore, south korea, i mean, even japan has made some impressive headway on this. i think, in particular, taiwan is another example. south korea and taiwan, i think, are excellent examples of places that put in place really good public health systems and responded very aggressively. as a result, they've saved lives in both places. we should be learning from them. >> gene? >> nick, you know, i think your "new york times" column, i think a lot of people, you know, think of you in that context. but you're from out west. you're from a place where you

definitely see and feel that sort of rugged american individualism. how do we sort of reach and, in some cases, alter this fundamental american character, of individualism, of going it alone, of i'll do what i please? is that an issue here? how do we get to that? >> you know, it's true that has been one strain in our history, and i think it's been an unhelpful strain. you know, we are the only advanced country that doesn't have paid sick leave. we're the only advanced country that doesn't have universal health care. in times of chronic disease, then those who suffer the consequence tend to be those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. in times of infectious disease,

those gaps hurt absolutely everyone. reminds us we're all on the same ship. we have to appeal to another strain in american history, which is the history of barn raisings, the history of efforts to work together to, you know, the homestead acts, which is how my area in oregon got settled in the first place, which was a question of public policy. providing a certain amount of opportunity, at least to, you know, white americans, historically. those collective actions did help bring the country together and respond to challenges we face. that's what we have to try to resume, learning from some of these countries. >> nick, i also see a lot of americans just completely detached from this. going to beaches, going to bars, not hearing it, not seeing it, not feeling it. what's it going to take? i mean, we're all connected by

phones, but for some reason, the information is not filtering to large sectors of a population. >> yeah, that's right. i mean, one of the problems is the age distribution of the consequences of the coronavirus. i mean, the evidence from both south korea and italy and china is that young people, in particular, you know, typically will recover pretty well. they have to understand that, who while they themselves may not be at severe risk, they are placing every elderly person, every person who has some immunodeficiency problem, at severe risk. somebody who is in their 20s may feel invincible. the data is actually somewhat supportive of their own personal invinceability. but they may kill their grandmother. they may kill their grandfather. they may kill their neighbor. that's the ethic we have to

emphasize in people. you are doing this for your community. >> the "new york times" nick kristof. thank you very much for coming on this morning. still ahead, on sunday, president trump was telling americans to just relax when it comes to the coronavirus. now, he's changing his tone in a big way. warning this virus could last for months. "washington post" philip rutger joins us with new reporting about the trump administration response to the pandemic. that's ahead on "morning joe." - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker,

the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. unitedhealthcare medicare advantage plans come with renewactive- a free gym membership, a personalized fitness plan, and more- a free gym membership- plus up to $115 in rewards for staying active

go ahead, take advantage. plus up to $115 in rewards for staying active a former army medic, made of the we maflexibility to handle members like kate. whatever monday has in store and tackle four things at once. so when her car got hit, she didn't worry. she simply filed a claim on her usaa app and said... i got this. usaa insurance is made the way kate needs it - easy. she can even pick her payment plan so it's easy on her budget and her life. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa

the u.s. health and human services department suffered a cyber attack on its computer system sunday night. in a crude effort by hackers to test its defenses, as the agency worked to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. it's getting crazy. according to the "new york times," the incident appeared to be a particularly aggressive

effort to scan the department's networks for vulnerabilities, and tried to break into its email system. while the attack set off alarms, officials denied earlier suggestions that a foreign power was behind the attack. hhs spokesperson issued a statement yesterday, writing in part, quote, hhs has an i.t. infrastructure with risk-based security controls continuously monitored in order to detect and address cyber security threats and vulnerabilities. early on, while preparing and responding to covid-19, hhs put extra protections in place. we are coordinating with federal law enforcement and remain vigilant and focused on ensuring the integrity of our i.t. infrastructure. another angle to this point, the criminal justice system is struggling to limit large courthouse gatherings, while ensuring people accused of crimes receive due process

rights. according to data selecollected the national courts, 27 states are under orders to stop jury trials and restrict the number of people who can come to court. some federal courts postponed trials. while many aspects of the criminal justice system can be put off, others, such as bail hearings or juvenile detention hearings cannot. a small number of jurisdictions have sought to reduce the number of people held in jail before trial. health experts tell nbc news that an outbreak in a jail or a prison is not a question of if but when. meanwhile, the supreme court said it'd postpone oral arguments scheduled for march and early april, including cases regarding access to president donald trump's financial records, because of health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. the last time oral arguments were postponed was in 1918 amid

the spanish flu epidemic. willie? we're also watching state elections and the upcoming census. ohio postponed its primary, set for today, over coronavirus fears, but could this happen, as well, for the 2020 census? the virus raising concerns that some undercounted populations could be further underrepresented in the once-a-decade head count. so far, the pandemic had an impact within the census bureau. the mobile questionnaire assistance program has been delayed, and training for field staff has been moved online. the bureau is asking nursing homes, dorms, and prisons, to respond to the census online. while the count has launched for most of america this week, the bureau has not ruled out extending the count past the end of july, when it was scheduled to end. bureau officials will make a decision after reviewing response rates. this past sunday, a person who works in the census bureau tested positive for the virus. joining us now, president and ceo of the national urban league and the former mayor to have the

great city of new orleans. mayor, great to see you. let's talk about the impact of where you live and also focus first on the census. we know the communities are underrepresented. this could go to further under representing them, if door knockers can't get to the doors to count all these people in those communities. >> this coronavirus has complicated the execution of this census in a number of ways. i think it is fairly certain that the census, the time period for the census, is going to have to be extended. i think we need to get, and i hope the census bureau will get in front of that. here are the problems. number one, the counting of students has now been in peril. they're no longer going to be in their dorms. the counting of anyone in group quarters, nursing homes, assistant living centers, halfway houses, those that live in correctional facilities is also in peril because of the

coronavirus. secondly, the entire enumeration effort, which is the last step in the census, where the enumerators, or the census officials go out and knock on doors to people who have not responded on doors to people who have not responded on, that could be impacted because they're in the hiring and training phase. so the inspector general at census really called the census to task and said what is your plan to deal with the coronavirus? i'd like the census to be transparent about it, to indicate they do have a backup plan, but here's the other thing, right now i filled out my census form online last night. the american people can go online if you have broadband connection, computer availability and fill your form out now since many are working from hem, maome, many cannot go. we're going to hold them accountable on this because we

don't want this to produce an undercount. >> you're looking for an extension beyond the july 31st dead line, which has more gravity as the president said this will go on at least until july or august. what does it mean to have an urban community represented? >> any community that's undercounted is going to be robbed of political power for the entire decade of the 20s. city council seats, state legislative seats, congressional seats. they also will not get their fair share of federal and in many instances state resources, which are allocated based on population data and population calculations. ephs i was in orlando about ten days ago. they determined that their 2010 undercount has affected as many as 7,000 to 10,000 early childhood seats they need in

that community, which is indeed a growing community. i think i'd say to people, this is not a count for count, this is a count for economic and political power. it's important and i want to encourage people to participate, to count their babies, to count their children, to count their mothers, their fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, anyone who lives in the dwelling where they are. >> i hope the census bureau heeds your warning and takes the time to get the count right. we saw pictures over the weekend of bourbon street packed on the streets and the police had to move they out. what's the long-term impact on a city like new orleans? >> mayors and governors have really stepped up to be the first responders and the people to whom people are really looking for leadership in this

crisis. i think mayor cantrell have taken the steps to institute social distancing. in new orleans, which is a magnet for people and a place where people go to enjoy themselves and visit and view culture, people are going to have to remain inside. this is going to be difficult for us as a nation but we've got to heed the public health authorities right now. we've got to understand this is essential. my employees here in new york for the national urban league, we're all on a work-from-home protocol. we've got 2,000 employees across the nation, but there's going to be an impact that could have in our ability to deliver services, as we work to respond to the large number of americans who are going to find themselves without a paycheck, who are going to found themselves out of

work. that hardship, that economic hardship in addition to the health challenges we face has to be top of mind for the congress, the president because they've got to respond. >> those are all small businesses throwing those parties on bourbon street. >> small businesses and hourly employees, dishwashers, waiters, bartenders, cooks and the others, they work paycheck to paycheck. any recovery plan has to be bottoms up and provide relief for those workers. >> mr. mayor, gene robinson has a question for you. >> mark, one question i've had the last few days and i haven't been able to get an answer, is anything being done in terms of the coronavirus with the populations in public housing, which is a place where in many cases people live close together. i haven't heard of the federal government doing anything in particular to test and potentially isolate people in public housing so that we don't

have -- those don't become centers of infection. are you aware of anything that's being done and what do you think should be done? >> i am not, gene. that's an excellent question because it points to yet another part of our communities where people live closely together. in public housing and many infans in multi-family units. this is where the hud secretary should be on the phone with public housing leaders across the nation offering guidance to respond to this. now, i'll tell you a concern i have relative to not only public housing residents but certainly many, many others, and that is when the testing becomes generally available, which i think is what we're all hoping and we're all waiting on, the concern is whether people in public housing, people in communities -- urban communities are going to be the last to be

tested because the public health infrastructure isn't what it ought to be. so it's important, i think, as congress considers a recovery plan, as public health authorities develop their plans that they understand that this has got to be an equitable distribution of testing and treatment resources. >> mayor, we appreciate your time as always. >> thank you. >> eugene robinson, thank you as well. still ahead, from small businesses to major players on the stock market, coronavirus tests the strength of the u.s. economy in a big way. we'll take a closer look at the threat and the new guidelines as the president admits for the first time that the u.s. may be headed for a recession. ♪

if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently.

with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated... ...with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression... ...or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. tthe bad news? our so will this recital.day. depend® fit-flex underwear offers your best comfort and protection guaranteed. because, perfect or not, life's better when you're in it. be there with depend®. >> tech: don't wait for a chip like this to crack your whole windshield. with safelite's exclusive resin, you get a strong repair that you can trust. plus, with most insurance a safelite repair is no cost to you. >> customer: really?!

>> singers: safelite repair, safelite replace. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. ♪[ siren ] & doug give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ which of your devices are protected by daily security updates? daily security updates... daily? i don't know. the only thing... i'm struggling with this. some providers you have to manually download updates to each device.

comcast business securityedge updates every 10 minutes to help keep your connected devices protected against new ransomware, malware and phishing threats. every 10 minutes feels pretty good. get secure, reliable internet and voice for an amazing price. call today. comcast business. beyond fast. my administration is recommending that all americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from

home when possible, avoid gathering in groups of more than ten people, avoid discretionary travel and avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants and public food courts. if everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus. >> a dramatic shift in tone from president trump yesterday as the white house releases new guidelines for the nation to combat the coronavirus. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, march 17th. along with joe, willie and me, we have national security expert columnist at "usa today" and author of the book "the death of expertise" tom nichols. historian, author of "the soul of america," john meacham, an

nbc news and msnbc contributor. this morning the u.s. is inching closer to a coronavirus shutdown as state and local officials take the lead in responding to the national crisis. 7 million residents in the san francisco bay have been ordered to shelter in place, only allowed to leave their home for essential reasons. it's the nation's strictest measures so far, seen only in places like italy, france and spain where the virus has exploded. the states of new york, new jersey and connecticut have also launched an unprecedented joint effort to close all gyms, movie theaters, casinos, bars and restaurants with the exception of takeout. businesses offering nonessential services will be shut down by 8 p.m. with grocery stores, pharmacies and gas station excluded. citing a failure at the federal

level, new york governor andrew cuomo says it's now incumbent on states to step up. >> the federal government should put position in place and coordinate it with the states. we have set a template where our regional states work to the. -- together. we are adopting the same policies. so there is no benefit to shop new york versus connecticut versus new jersey. you can't have one state taking actions that are different than other states. this is a national pandemic and there are no national rules. >> it almost was a tale of two days. the first half of the day was focused on states taking a lot of these actions. there were news reports that the white house want leading. but then, mika, donald trump held a press conference with his

team around 3, 3:30 -- >> boy, did everything change. >> it was a remarkable change. as far as the focus of the federal government, the focus of the coronavirus task force and most specifically the focus of donald trump. >> president trump was markedly more somber and serious at the briefing yesterday, in which the white house issued new guidelines aimed at stemming the spread of the illness. trump warned the outbreak could last months and drive the u.s. into an economic recession. >> a lot of people are concerned about how long all of this might last. do you have any kind of estimate that if americans really were to band together and do what the white house is suggesting, how quickly you could turn this corner? >> my favorite question. how many times, anthony, i think i ask him that question every day and i speak to deborah, i speak to a lot of them, i get the opinion.

so it seems to me that if we do a really good job, we'll not only hold the death down to a level that is much lower than the other way had we not done a good job but people are talking about july, august, something like that. so it could be right in that period of time where it i say it washes through. other people don't like that term. but where it washes through. >> reporter: is this the new normal until height of the summer? >> we'll see what happens. they think it could be august, july. >> the stock market took another hit today. is the economy heading in terms of a recession sm. >> well, it could be. i think there is a pent-up demand in terms of the stock market and the economy, and once this goes away and we're done

with it, i think you're going to see a tremendous surge. italy is having a very hard time. i think that what we do and i've spoken with my son and he said how bad is this? it's bad, it's bad. we're going to be hopefully a best case, no the a wor-- not at case. that's what we're working for. >> i got phone calls from several people saying who is that man? at the press conference -- >> what did they hear? >> the president was sober. he actually did what a president is supposed to do. he delivered the bad news. there are a couple things that were just -- i found remarkable talking about how, yes, we're probably going to go into a recession. we are. americans already know that. the ten-people limit actually went further than most people in the administration were talking about going, but limiting

gatherings to ten people, don't go to restaurants, don't go to bars, don't go out. this was a president even talking about saying to his son when asked how it was, he said it's bad, it's bad. hopefully we can avoid the worst case scenarios and bring this in for a landing and have the best case scenarios. the president is doing what at least i have said and i think a lot of other people have said he should have been doing from the very beginning. that is tell the truth, give americans the worst case scenario, they can handle it, and start from there. >> it's a shame it took him this long to get there and he reverted to his old self after. as i watched that news briefing yesterday, you wondered what did the president learn, what new information did he get to sober him up to how serious this is. we learned later -- actually

during that briefing from dr. deborah birx there's a british reself-report put together by scientists that really woke up the people on that stage bush particularly the president of the united states to how long this could be and how bad it potentially could be if we don't take dramatic steps right now. >> it's a very sobering report delivered this weekend, up to 2 million americans could die from the coronavirus. that's actually, think about it, willie, that's more american than died in war war i, world war ii, vietnam and the civil war combined. it a staggering number. the same thing happened in great britain where they reversed course after finding out their models would lead to 250,000 british sit sense -- citizens dyingthere was an awakening

there. the white house is unusually focused and i say frightened. they speak to several officials yesterday who said this is going to be very bad. it all hands on deck. this isn't like 9/11, this is like world war ii. it's going to change the way we live as americans, and the atmosphere inside the white house was very sober. but, john, as i heard the president yesterday talking about voluntary measures and then suggesting they may have to lock down so-called hot spots, i was thinking that's actually the best way to go at first because we americans might not respond as as well, certainly not as well as, say, let's say people

in china in locking things down. it's going region by region, state by state, locality by locality. might that be a better way to start this? >> well, the policy is obviously evolving rapidly and i think it's going to get more draconian before it gets less so, unquestionably. i think what dr. fauci has been saying about overreact and then be criticized for that makes inherent good sense. the analogy i keep think about is less about america during world war ii, though we mobilized, we did it very late, after pearl harbor and germany declared war on us. 16% of americans served, 11% of the male population, 2 million in europe and there were victory gardens and a full mobilization. i this i this was more like

england and britain in world war ii because civilians are actually combatants, if you follow the analogy. everybody was at the front, churchill said in the great finest hour speech, let us so conduct ourselves that if the british empire were to last a thousand years, men will still say this was their finest hour. he needed everybody because germany was dropping bombs on everybody. and where we're living, right now, it's overhead in the form of a pandemic. so it requires, dare i say it, churchill-like leadership. and, yes, yesterday was morj nally better but anyone -- it's like lucy and the football with the federal government of the last three years. whenever you think things are moving in the right direction, they end up not. and that's not a political partisan point, it's just an observation about the nature of

public leadership. the other churchill line that's important is he said there's no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. to be directly to your question, i think you go hard at this and clean it up later. if you go soft and you have even more people dying, that's irreversible. >> i think, tom, that's actually after three, four weeks of the white house being in denial, talking about this going away magically, i think that's a realization that finally landed hard at the white house yesterday that, there's not going to be a happy ending to this, you're trying to -- >> mitigate. >> -- mitigate, trying to manage this and keep the death count as low as possible. and what we saw yesterday was a white house finally focused on what they need to be focused on.

i'm curious what your thoughts are about moving forward. do we need from the white house to have a declaration that the entire country's locked down like they're doing in france and spain, or is this a good first step? is this a good trial balloon to get people prepared. we've gone from emergency declaration to now the white house saying ten or fewer people together, work at home, self-isolate in a dramatic way. are we going step by step to the point where the country gets locked down like transand spain? >> first of all, i agree with john that we have to be careful about a lucy and the football situation here. one press conference where the president meets kind of the minimum requirements of sobriety and clarity is not a sea change, it's something to be happy

about, it's something to applaud but i think, you know, the president has trouble focusing and i think that's true for this administration innen. i think most americans would be happy if tony fauchi game president right about now. i don't think it's going to be a good move to try to go for a national lockdown and i don't say this because ie'm not a medical doctor. looking at this as a matter of policy, i think the problem is this president has lost the benefit of the doubt with a lot of people. and so things like very draconian measures that look like curtailments of freedom, especially during an election season, are going to get a jaundiced eye from a lot of americans. that's unfortunate. i don't say that because i somehow think the president would be up to no good doing that or the team around him or the doctors advising him, but rather because of the president's track record, not

just for three years but especially in the past three months where he has been really inconstant and land transparency and put out a lot of bad information. if the president in the white house tries to move forward with these really draconian solutions, i think you're going to have people second guessing him because, again, he's lost the benefit of the doubt among a love the americans. i think what they're doing is they're trying to edge us toward more tougher solutions incrementally so we can accept it more easily. >> ed sti >>. >> still ahead on "morning joe", there one-two punch of the coronavirus and then there's the economy. we'll break down all of that next on "morning joe." tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside

and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. good moves. or hydration. neutrogena® hydro boost. the #1 hyaluronic acid moisturizer delivers 2x the hydration for supple, bouncy skin. neutrogena®.

financial markets took another big hit yesterday, the

dow suffering its third worst day ever and the nasdaq its worst day. stocks now trying to claw back after the president tweeted, signaling a bailout for the airline and travel industries. let's bring in business colu columnist at "new york magazine." the dow was down nearly 13%. wall street and the business community feel almost helpless. this isn't really an economic crisis. this is brought on by a virus and they don't though where it ends. >> yeah, i mean, i think the key thing or one of the key things for the market yesterday was the comment from the president it may be until july and august. i think the president is right about that but a lot of these measures that are being taken right now that may be quite effective in slowing and stopping the spread of the virus, the lockout of the bay area, orders for people to stay home, to work from home, sending children home from school, closing restaurant and bars, this is going to be very

economically destructive and a lot of people have not processed how long this may go on. i think part of what was settling into the market yesterday afternoon was this may not be a one-month thing. this may be something a lot of businesses are not prepared for and we'll have a lot of lost economic activity along the way. you have projections you could have 2 million deaths if you don't take the steps you need. a lot of the steps you need to take could be very effective in reducing those deaths but the economic effects could be very large, serious and very bad for the financial markets. >> what about offsets for the government? what can congress do? the fed has done almost all it can do at this point. what is a reasonable approach from the federal government to try to help a crisis where we don't know where the end is? >> well, i think, first of all, the best thing the government can do for the economy and financial markets is to stop the

virus. in the end in order to bounce back we'll have to have an effective response. in terps of monetad terms of mo fiscal policy, you saw them cut interest rates a full percentage point. i think that's good and necessary but they don't fix the fundamental problems, that this is going to enormously disrupt the economy. businesses are not going to be investing at this moment, even at very low interest rates because of what business activity is there for them to do. then you're seeing discussion about how to support the economy through this. expanding unemployment, mitt romney proposing to send a $1,000 check to every adult american. i think this is right in terms of when we come out of the epidemic, a lot of people will have wrecked balance sheet, they will have nemissed weeks and wes and months of work, some of that paid and some unpaid.

will they be in a good position to go out and go shopping and to bars again. they will need to pay the rent that they haven't paid for months. we usually have fast bouncebacks from natural disasters, but that's because things shut down for a couple weeks and go back to work. if there are no jobs to go back to and people don't have money, you're going to need a lot of government fiscal support for that. >> when people said july and august in that news briefing, it opened a lot of people's eyes. >> the fed may have cut its rate to zero but the market was not impressed. thanks for skyping in. >> coming up, we'll talk to the head of one of new york city's leading hospitals. he outlines the most important

things he needs to flatten of curve of coronavirus. (woman) somebody would ask her something and she would just walk right past them because she didn't know they were talking to her. (deborah) i just could not hear. i was hesitant to get the hearing aids because of my short hair, but nobody even sees them.

(avo) our nearly invisible hearing aids are just one reason we've been the brand leader for over 70 years. (deborah) when i finally could hear for the first time, i started crying. i could hear everything. (avo) call 1-800-miracle to start your 30 day risk-free trial and schedule your free hearing evaluation today. it's only human to find inspiration in nature. and also find answers. our search to transform... ...farm waste into renewable natural gas led chevron to partner with california bioenergy. working to provide an alternative source of power... ...for a cleaner way forward.

the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. johnsbut we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you. when it comes to your business internet, which is more important? ♪ ♪ okay, i wish i didn't have to choose. like the more i think about it, the more i want to jump to each room. what if i said you can have it all? ♪ ♪

comcast business gives you connectivity that goes beyond. that's what we want! that's speed, reliability, and security, all from one provider. touchdown! comcast business goes beyond with the extraordinary speed, reliability and security your business needs. call today. comcast business. beyond fast. i don't believe we're going to be able to flatten the curve

enough to meet the capacity of the health care system. >> new york governor andrew cuomo still fears his state's best efforts might not be enough as concern mounts over the demand for respirators, ventilators and other essential equipment needed for the expected influx of people requiring treatment. potential exposure to the coronavirus is limiting the number of nurses available to help treat patients. connecticut governor ned lamont last night said 200 employees, including nurses employed by an interstate health system in new york and connecticut have been out of work over exposure to the virus. let's bring in the president and ceo of new york presbyterian hospital, dr. steven corwin. i have to start by asking, are your health care workers exposed to the coronavirus? do people who have suspected

symptoms of the coronavirus walk in and mix with your health care workers in the regular e.r.? >> we've taken extraordinary steps on our emergency department to prevent that, but there's no question that the availability of health care workers is going to be key for this crisis and the ability not to furlough health care workers becomes critically important. i this i whnk what the presiden yesterday of the right move. having worked with governor cuomo over the last couple of weeks, i think he's made extraordinary steps. i also want to congratulate, thank all americans for the sacrifice they're making. we're talking about, as you know, a harsh economic impact, businesses going down, people losing their jobs, but if we can flatten the peak of this, then the hospitals in new york and the surrounding areas can meet the surge. >> there was talk of military hospitals and coronavirus care

centers separate from hospitals. i know that's really difficult in new york city. i believe someone that we know walked into one of your hospitals and was sitting in a hallway and he ultimately was diagnosed with the coronavirus. just like what the president is doing, which is separate americans to protect them, how are health care workers in your e.r.s and in the hallways of your hospitals be separated to be protected and then allowing some health care workers who are protected with gear address the problem? is that worked out yet? >> worked out in our emergency department. i saw your segment yesterday with the patient. part of the issue is the availability or lack of availability of testing. we wish him well. i think we followed all the protocols in terms of testing him. we're assuming when people come into our emergency department that they are going to potentially being infected. so we've changed the protective

equipment for all of our emergency personnel. one of the issues that we have to solve is the availability of ppe, patient protective equipment, in particular masks which are in short may have. >> we appreciate all you're doing. pleased send our best to your nurses and doctors. in terms of being swamped, can you explain what that looks like and implications for those who don't have coronavirus, other emergencies or surgeries that may need to be put on the back burner? >> great question. first, we cancelled all of our elective surgeries. second, swamped means do you have enough i.c.u. beds, do you have another health care workers and ventilators, et cetera.

we're a 4,000 bed system, 3,500 medical/surge rahical beds, abo% are icu beds, maybe a little bit more. we have 500 ventilators, have additional capacity for 250 ventilators, thattes what we're talking about in terms of if we reach those limits, are we overwhelmed. it's fine to talk about having military or field hospitals but it's really people who know how to take care of intensively ill patients, as you usa in italy. we're trying to make sure we can flatten that curve so that we have the icu capability availability. >> dr. corwin, you have an audience, senators and governors and the white house watching. what do you need, speaking not just for your hospital but perhaps for hospitals across the country, what do you need as of today to flatten that curve and stop yourself from being swamped? >> well, the first thing is everything the president did

yesterday and more so that we can socially isolate people because there's no treatment for this at this point, no vaccine. the second then is make sure we ramp up the manufacturing of protective equipment and ventilators. and then the third thing, to mika's point, is to make sure we're protect our health care workers, which gets back to having enough protective equipment so they don't become infected. >> all right. well, keep us posted on that, dr. steven corwin, thank you very much for coming on "morning joe" this morning. coming up, our next guest writes about infighting, missteps and a son-in-law hungry for results. phil rucker goes inside the trump administration's troubled coronavirus response. "morning joe" is back in a moment. the good news? our protection lasts all day.

the bad news? so will this recital. depend® fit-flex underwear offers your best comfort and protection guaranteed. because, perfect or not, life's better when you're in it.

be there with depend®. no. uh uh, no way. ♪ come on. no. no. n... ni ni, no no! only discover has no annual fee on any card. try eucerin advanced repair and switch. it doubles your skin's moisture and repairs dry skin over time. so tomorrow can be a different story. eucerin - recommended and used by dermatologists. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker,

the pressure cooker that crisps. when it comes to your business internet, which is more important? ♪ ♪ okay, i wish i didn't have to choose. like the more i think about it, the more i want to jump to each room. what if i said you can have it all? ♪ ♪

comcast business gives you connectivity that goes beyond. that's what we want! that's speed, reliability, and security, all from one provider. touchdown! comcast business goes beyond with the extraordinary speed, reliability and security your business needs. call today. comcast business. beyond fast. welcome back. the first potential vaccine for coronavirus is now in trials.

at a white house coronavirus briefing yesterday, dr. anthony fauci told reporters that healthy volunteers in the seattle area became the first to test a remedy for the rapidly spreading disease. >> what it is is a trial of 45 normal individuals between the ages of 18 and 55. the trial is taking place in seattle. there will be two injections, one at zero day, first one, then 28 days. there will be three separate doses. 25 milligrams, 100 milligrams and 250 milligrams and the individuals will be followed for one year, both for safety and whether it induces the kind of response that we predict would be protective. >> scientists at the kaiser permanente washington research institute are conducting the first stage study, which is expected to take up to 18 months to complete. joining me now public health

professor at george washington universi university, previously served at baltimore's health commissioner. as we work to spread the word, the president's tone yesterday was far more serious, asking people not to gather in groups over ten people is a big change and could potentially shut down a lot of society. what can families do? what are the things that you are most worried about as the word trickles out and people start getting the message? >> well, i'm glad that the president is emphasizing the importance of flat i don't knowing -- flattening the curve, of all of us doing our part and staying at home. but there is so much that we have to do. i'm seeing stores being shut down, schools be closed but people are still congregating we shouldn't be treating this like a snow day. kids should not be going on play dates. we should not be having birthday parties and celebrations.

everything should be placed on hold. i think this is a time when each of us has to take that responsibility as well. dr. fauci said yesterday that we will always be behind where we think we are and we just all have to take part now. >> so i want to know what that looks like. you're a mom running a household. you've got parents to take care of, you've got kids who are just going nuts and want to go out and play with their friends. exactly how does it work to be able to take the best advice from doctors and social distance as a family, what does that look like? >> it's important to tell everybody in the household that this is not life as usual, that these are extraordinary times and we always have to make sacrifices. that means no play dates. it's hard with kids who are restless at homes. find some projects do things together as a family. spend time outdoors as family unit but don't get together with other people, including extended

family. in particular, i would keep little kids away from elderly grandparents and others who have chronic medical conditions. and try to limit your trips to grocery stores. don't go to coffee shops, restaurants, other crowded places. really think about what are the absolutely essential things that you need. take those essential trips but -- >> you're asking all americans to completely isolate. when you say no play dates, no children playing together, that's complete isolation from society. >> well, it doesn't have to be if we use face time, skype, other electronic methods of communication. the whole reason that we're closing down schools is to prevent kids from interacting with each other and spreading germs to each other. kids are taking huge sacrifices, especially kids who depend on their schools as their only meals. if they're making that sacrifice, the least that we can do for people who have a bit more privilege is to keep our kids away from each other. other people are making much

bigger sacrifices than us and we need to do our part, too. >> doctor, we've talked about the president's tone being more sober yesterday. that's one day. lets hope that he follows that conference with a sober press conference today but that's just one day. but let's say that the federal government begins to move forward aggressively, has these recommendations. i've been stunned that my children have been asking me if they can go to parties and restaurants overs past two, three days, birthday parties. it's staggering and you wonder what parents are still setting up birthday parties at this stage. but if we self-separate, like you're talking about doing, do we have a chance to avoid italy's fate? can we move the curve closer to south korea, even with the failure of testing over the past

month and a half, can we move that curve closer to south korea than say italy. ? >> y >> yes, we can. and that's the reason why we all have to act now. it's not too late but it will be too late in two weeks. it will certainly be too late in three weeks. i don't want us to look pack and say here are all the things that we could have done. governments can do their part and close down shops and events but people have to take responsibility, too. it's just totally irresponsible at this time to go to a celebration, to go drinking with friends when we know that people's lives are going to be at stake and that window of opportunity to intervene, flatten the curve, that window is closing every single day. what looks like an overreaction now is going to look like not nearly enough in two or three weeks' time. >> dr. wen, it's will liie geis. thanks for being here this morning. the task force yesterday stopped

short of calling for a national quarantine. last hour we had dr. jha of harvard saying it took him a while to get to this place but it is finally now time for an italian-style national quarantine where everybody just stays home. do you agree with dr. jha? >> i think we should have a voluntary quan teerantine. i want to see what happens if everybody takes that responsibility and does it with something that's so rather draconian. public health is about balancing the rights of the public versus individual rights. and i understand the fear and panic that people may have but this is not life as normal. we are at a war against this virus and we need wartime measures, including things that each of us have to do, sacrifices that we each have to make.

>> dr. wen, it's donny deutsch. we talked a lot about kids. we know what to tell them as far as what they can't do and very structurally. how do you handle an 8, 9, 10-year-old with getting them where they need to be without terrifying them? is there a phrase, is there a way of serving this up and at the same time not terrify kids that really can't process it? >> it is really hard. i think it is prn to explain to kids the facts and depending on their age talk about what this virus is, that most who have it be healthy, will recover. this doesn't seem to particularly affect kids. but i think it's also important to lay down what needs to be done and why that's the case and talk about the importance of spending time together as a family but not seeing their friends, at least not in person. and maybe it's time to also build some fun probablies and doing things together as a family, ma that i help kids cope

in this particularly stressful time. >> thank you. and at knowyourvalue.com, we'll post her thoughts on what women need to know and do during the coronavirus outbreak. thank you. >> first of all, she gave great advice for parents, for fathers and mothers. it's really important when our children are coming to us and asking, hey, can i go to a birthday party? the answer has to be no. and, again, i'm hoping that more parents understand the situation that we have right now and actually are not endangering their children and others' lives by continuing to have big celebrations in restaurants. we're past that time now. i mean, the time will return again at some point but between now and then we all have a responsibility to each other to be safe and to be cautious and

to take care. >> with us now white house bureau chief at the "washington post" and political analyst philip rucker. let's talk about what could have been behind the dramatic change in tone from the president yesterday. >> you're right that it was a dramatic change. the president has been slow. it's taken hmm eight weeks to recognize the severity of the crisis on his hands. i think the stock market in particular triggered that realization for him. he thought friday last week when he came out into the rose garden that the stocks would rally and the market would rally and things would get better. they actually got a lot worse over the weekend and that was a shock to him. >> you're writing about the president's sober tone up there yesterday. as soon as he got off that podium, he was tweeting at the

know, and andrew cuomo. >> do you think in the gravity of the information he's been given by doctors fauci and birx, for example, that may perhaps suggest that this time can be different? >> i wouldn't go that far. i mean, clearly he has shown that he's capable of pulling it together in certain moments. we see him, for example, deliver state of the union speeches where he reads from the teleprompter and makes it through that hours without be undisciplined, but there's really no history of president trump avoiding the sort of grievances and attacks and distractions that have consumed him throughout this presidency on twitter we saw that again last night. i imagine we'll see that in the days ahead. but one ning that seems to be going on is that the governor and the governors are trying to fill that laeership vacuum. they're making tough decisions, trying to give guidance to their

citizens, even if the president is focused on other things. >> thank you very much for your reporting. and up next, four states were set to vote today but now it's three after a ohio defied a judge's order and postponed its election anyway. we'll explain how that all unfolded ahead on "morning joe." . i thought, i'm not letting anything take me away from my family that loves me and needs me without a fight. when i came to cancer treatment centers of america, they said we're going to do everything we can. i just felt confident, they are behind me. i had six, seven doctors that worked together to take me through this journey. they're not just treating the cancer,

they're treating me as a whole person. they have naturopathic support, occupational therapy, nutritionists, i took advantage of all of that. and that's why i think i am where i am today and i'm very grateful for that. get care like no other. call us at cancer treatment centers of america. get it's a day filled with promise and new beginnings, challenges and opportunities.

at ameriprise financial we can't predict what tomorrow will bring. but our comprehensive approach to financial planning can help make sure you're prepared for what's expected and even what's not. and that kind of financial confidence can help you sleep better at night. ♪ with the right financial advisor life can be brilliant. ♪ the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. (past them because she didn't sknow they were talking to her.g and she would just walk right (deborah) i just could not hear. i was hesitant to get the hearing aids because of my short hair, but nobody even sees them. (avo) our nearly invisible hearing aids are just one reason we've been the brand leader for over 70 years. (deborah) when i finally could hear for the first time, i started crying. i could hear everything.

(avo) call 1-800-miracle to start your 30 day risk-free trial and schedule your free hearing evaluation today.

ohio's primary election, which was scheduled for today, has been postponed by the governor due to coronavirus fears. late last night, governor mike dewine tweeted during this time when we face an unprecedented public health crisis, to conduct an election tomorrow would force poll workers and voters to place themselves at an unacceptable health risk of contracting coronavirus. earlier in the day, a judge rejected an effort backed by the governor to move ohio's primary election to june 2nd. the judge said it would set a terrible precedent to step in 12 hours before polls open and rewrite ohio election code. a spokesman for the governor said ohio's secretary of state would seek through the courts to have another date set for in-person voting in the state. ohio supreme court spokesman said that the court was watching

for a possible appeal. three other states are expected to hold their primaries today. officials in illinois, arizona and florida have all said elections will be proceeding. so there you go. as the polls are already open in florida and illinois this morning, we are seeing firsthand how the coronavirus is changing how americans vote. in chicago, cook county clerk karen yarbrough tweeted this photo out this morning that shows poll workers are being supplied with a tape measure, painter's tape and a rope to mark the floor in six-foot increments to remind voters to practice social distancing. joining us now, chairman of the libertarian party, nicholas sarwar. >> great to have you on. a lot of questions that i would love to ask you. let's start with the question about civil liberties. and balancing that against

public health. obviously, the more draconian approaches that are taken, the more americans are required to separate over the next several months. i mean, health care officials just say it's the more likelihood we have of avoiding a worst case scenario. how do we balance that in america? we obviously know china takes draconian measures we could never take but how do we balance that to worry about public health safety while protecting civil liberties? >> you know, i think what we have to do is follow the advice of dr. michael osterholm who is an infectious disease expert who points out this is not a coronavirus snowstorm. we don't hunker down for a couple of days and come out after this is over. this is a coronavirus winter which means we'll have to figure out how to live our normal lives as americans. and i think the most important

thing that's just started to happen is giving good, accurate information to the american people so that they can make good choices for each other. you don't need to have draconian measures from the government if people are accurately informed about what's going on. and that's what's so terrible about how this president has handled the crisis early on in minimizing the danger and blowing it off and making it seem like, you know, we're going to be courageous and brave. this is a virus. it doesn't care if you're brave. so we need to do what's next to keep people safe, but we also need to remember that we are americans, and we've made it through a lot of crises before. and our political system, our way of life, our constitution can't be let go just because there is a terrible illness spreading through the country. >> so what are you going to do as the leader of the libertarian party. you have a convention coming up

in may. you have a few parties that you have ballot access in all 50 states. how are you going to conduct your regular business to have your convention and to nominate someone who will be on the ballot in november? >> so the first thing that we're doing is we are actively contacting governors in states like illinois where there is a requirement they make, the l libertarian party gather signatures to be on the ballot, many more than the republicans and democrats have to do. in the midvst of a public healt crisis where you have a virus that's more serious before symptoms show up that would be nightmarish to ask them to go out with clipboards and gather signatures. we're asking them to suspend the requirements that would endanger the public. we've been on the ballot before. we would be on the ballot again but we all need to come together as americans and set aside

politics and remember that we should be trying to help each other. we should do as mr. rogers said and in a crisis, we look for the helpers, and we help the helpers. and that's what we're asking people to do. we've suspended many state conventions. they're shifting to virtual. i get briefings on what the city of austin and texas are doing. whether or not we'll have a venue. we will have a candidate. we will nominate. we will have elections, and we will carry on. what we need is leadership from our government or if they can't lead, then what we need to do is look to leadership, to people like dr. helen chu who, when told by the government to stop testing people in seattle, ignored a law that would stop her from saving lives. >> chairman of the libertarian party, nick sarwar, thank you very, very much. >> nick, thanks for being with us. we'd love for you to come back in a couple of days. we want to talk about some of the economic plans that are going through congress right now and get your insights.

thanks for being on today. we're up against a hard break. we will talk to you later this week. so donny deutsch, final thoughts. >> we grew up with that test on tv, the emergency broadcast system, this is just a test. the president set a precedent yesterday. be honest, direct, transparent and empathetic. we're going to be better on the other end. we're going to be a stronger society. the key right now is to think about the other. however bad you are in your situation, however frightened, there's somebody worse. focus on that. >> just focus on that and, yes, we are going to be better, willie. we are going to be stronger on the other end. but it appears the new england patriots fans will not be. word coming across twitter right now, tom brady saying thanks for the memories, boston. i'm out of here. >> y tom brady just put up a post. he is leaving new england after 20 seasons, nine super bowl titles.

appeared in nine super bowls there. said my football journey will take place elsewhere. he's probably going to still play, just not in new england. >> and our final thoughts here. first of all, we want to thank our "morning joe" team for continues to work under such difficult circumstances. we are proud to be a part of your team. we also thank everybody else at this network and the other networks for bringing news to americans who badly need it. let us hope that our government leaders wake up and continue to move in the right direction. that's it for us this morning. >> stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika. thanks, joe. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's tuesday, march 17 ppt th. we begin with the latest on the coronavirus. millions of people being told the best way to stay safe is to simply stay home. as of this morning, there are nearly