that does it for us. we'll be back here at 6 p.m. eastern tomorrow night. up next our special coverage of tonight's presidential primaries. a primary day in america unlike anything we have seen before. as americans in three states go to the polls in the midst of a national emergency. nothing short of a global pandemic. voting is underway in arizona, illinois and florida as coronavirus shortcuts everything -- every aspect of american life. in florida today reports of polling locations with no poll workers on the job and chicago reports of extremely low turnout in some places, chaos and crowding in others.

voting notably not underway in the great state of ohio after governor mark dewine called yesterday for postponing the vote until june after initially being rejected by a judge, governor dewine ultimately got his way thanks to an assist from the state department of health which ordered polls closed because of the public health emergency. what we are witnessing is simply unprecedented. brian williams here in new york joined by rachel maddow at a safe distance. >> making his case to postpone ohio's primary governor dewine said that americans should not be forced to choose between their health and their constitutional duties as citizens. he said in his opinion the state could not conduct in person voting today while also complying with cdc advice about avoiding gatherings at which the virus could spread. well, the lack of clear and concise tend federal guidance

about what states should do has really forced local and state officials around the country to sort of macgyver their own solutions for these primaries, which is why we have a bit of a patch work response to the virus as a whole and to voting today. in phoenix, arizona, they eliminated some polling locations because they said they had a shortage of disinfectant. in florida and illinois they scrapped plans for polling places in senior living facilities. that's what they had planned to do in ohio as well before ohio switched gears and decided to call the whole thing off. chicago's board of elections called for today's in-person voting scrapped. it wasn't. when many poll workers stayed home, that resulted in some illinois voting sites not opening anyway. tom perez, the democratic party chairman is calling on upcoming primary states to institute vote by mail. more states are choosing to

delay their votes. in addition to ohio today, georgia, louisiana, kentucky have rescheduled their forthcoming primaries. maryland added that as well. they'll postpone the maryland primary from april until june at least. >> throughout our coverage tonight, over the next several hours we will be talking to mayors and governors across the country on the front lines of this pandemic in the hardest hit cities, among them, new york and seattle which had the nation's first confirmed case and the nation's first fatality. today marked a grim milestone in the u.s. the nation's 100th death from coronavirus. including the first state where they are voting tonight. there are now more cases. 5800 confirmed cases across all 50 states and the district of columbia. west virginia was the last holdout with no confirmed cases. that changed just tonight shortly before we came on the

air. notably west virginia announced a state of emergency even before announcing its first case as this virus spreads, it is inevitable that more public figures will be among the second and we have learned kevin durant has tested positive for coronavirus along with three of his teammates. >> just in the last 24 hours the white house announced it's considering a trillion dollar stimulus package including potentially sending checks to every single american to help mitigate the economic blow. yesterday the san francisco bay area issued the nation's first shelter in place order, and it is a huge one. it is san francisco and a number of surrounding counties in the san francisco bay area. ultimately that shelter in place, go home and stay there order applies to nearly 7 million americans. now new york city's mayor says the nation's largest city is

also considering a similar shelter in place order. another sign of just how big this is and the magnitude of the sort of response that the country is slowly waking up to, the defense department today announced they will dip into the military's strategic medical reserve stockpile to provide up to 5 million respirator masks and 2,000 deployable ventilators to the department of health and human services. given what the epidemiologists say we will soon need as a country, those numbers will be a good start. >> our friend steve kornacki is going to be busy tonight. he's at the big board as always. normally on a night like tonight we'd be talking about vote totals, but in this new world what are you monitoring as well, right? >> quickly, people are expecting election returns. polls in florida did just close. we'll get you a report on that. as you say, this is the story of the hour, the day, the week, the

month, the year, you name it. this is a look globally. these are numbers here you're seeing from johns hopkins university. globally what the situation looks like. now johns hopkins, their own count has this number approaching 200,000 worldwide cases. if you take a look at where we are now in that question of how did we get here and how did we get here as quickly as we got here. this began sometime in december 2019 in china. that is when you would have had patient zero. that's when this would have begun. since then in just a few short months, now more than 80,000 cases in china, more than 8,000 deaths in china where this began. it didn't just stay in china. it began spreading. in south korea it was january 20th. that was when the first recorded case came to light in south korea. since then in south korea more than 8,000 cases. there are 81 deaths now in south korea. of course it spread, italy. this is the one we've been

talking about so much recently. the virus has begun to have a run away effect there. the very end of january it hit italy. now 17,000 cases in italy. iran has been hard hit. in february that's when we had the first publicly released information there in iran. now 11,000 cases. sometime in this period it was actually in late january, january 21st, there was the first case here in the united states. it hit washington state first. you probably remember those stories going through that nursing home, that elder care facility out there. it began in washington state. as you say though, it has spread to preddy much to every state. we've had news out of west virginia, nearly 4500 cases. you can see here, just to get a sense of the scope of this, here's a map of the entire country. look at cases here by state. you now see every state colored in. if we looked at this map an hour ago west virginia would have been the one exception. but it is new york state, new york state where you have the

most cases so far. california's the biggest state by population but three times as many cases in new york state. if you look closely, see one of the patterns that you're seeing in states across the country, new york is a pretty vast state geographically. really you're seeing the two big clusters of cases here. what you're looking at is new york city and then if you go north of new york city to the suburbs, westchester county, new rochelle, if you're not too familiar with the area. new york city and the suburbs to the north of new york city, that's where you're talking about the bulk of those numbers coming from. you see pretty big state here, not a lot of red dots elsewhere. it's a pattern you're seeing in new york and it's a pattern we're seeing all around the country here. tightly bunched clusters where the case numbers have been exploding. >> the state number with the highest number of cases as steve kornacki said there is new york. more than 1500 people in new york state have tested positive.

that number is up from 950 cases yesterday, which gives you a rise of on the order of 50% in the number of cases in one day. today new york governor andrew cuomo announced that the latest models project the number of cases in new york may not peak for another 45 days or so. if that's the trajectory, the trajectory of the number of cases in new york keeps rising on that pace for that long, according to new york's governor, he says new york state alone will require somewhere in the range of 55 to 110,000 hospital beds just for people who are sick from coronavirus. the state doesn't have 100,000 hospital beds even if they were using them just to treat those people. >> right now the curve and the apex is at a point that is unsustainable for our health care system. >> as i mentioned, new york more

cases than any other state in the country right now. the state and this governor specifically has asked for help from the u.s. military. deploy the army corps of engineers to build extra hospital capacity. new york state has started looking at facilities around the state that could be converted to hospital overflow in a very short period of time. there is at least one good piece of news out of new york state though. the number of people being tested in the state is rieszing now. finally. with the addition of some new testing locations, there have been about 10,000 tests done in new york state thus far. obviously the need though, according to experts, is for the state to be doing thousands if not tens of thousands of tests per day. joining us now from alba my new york is new york's governor andrew cuomo. i thank you for taking the time. i know this is an incredibly busy time for you. >> my pleasure. good to be with you, rachel. >> you announced as far as new

york state can tell from the models, the number of cases in the state may not peak for another 45 days. could you explain it our audience what that means and how you arrived at that and how sobering that is in terms of new york's capacity to deal with this? >> well, this is all sobering, right? if you go back and you study the china model, the china trajectory, south korea, some of the other countries, the big question is what is the apex, what is the rise of the number of cases and can the health care system handle it? that's what this is really about, right? we know the mortality rate with this virus. we know who it affects. the problem is it communicates so quickly can your health care system handle it? that's the problem italy has. so we're trying to project when the numbers get highest. and the models that we've run suggest that in 45 days you'll

be at the high point. 55,000 to 100,000 cases which overwhelms our health care system. even worse, most people will need icu beds, most will need ventilators. it's a respiratory illness. we only have about 3,000. we would need about 30,000. and, by the way, you can't get ventilators. so that's what it's all about, overwhelming the melt cahealth system. >> in terms of the options that new york has to try to avoid that eventuality or try to minimize that as much as possible, obviously every day brings a solution. you might have been at odds over whether the city should consider a shelter in place like has been instituted in the san francisco area. mayor de blasio said it's under consideration. your office said it's not under

consideration. what's going on there? >> well, they are talking about it in new york city as a public options and everybody has an opinion in this case. for my point of view, i need a statewide plan that works and a plan that doesn't shift people from one place to another place. the population in new york is very mobile. if new york city puts a policy in place that people don't like, they'll just move to nassau, they'll go to westchester, they'll stay with their brother, they'll stay with their sister. i've gone through this with other emergencies, we have to do it statewide. we've taken it a step further in new york. i'm doing policies jointly with new jersey and connecticut and now we're bringing in pennsylvania because none of these policies work unless you have a big enough geographic area. we just closed bars, for example. if you close the bars in new

york, people will drive to new jersey or they'll drive to connecticut. that actually makes the situation worse. so you need policies that are a big enough geographic area. rather than people just move where they can stay with a friend or family member. >> you say new yorker. i was boorn and bred a new york city queens boy. >> we're pretty good at getting around rules, rachel. if you were in queens, we need statewide policies that work. >> are you considering a statewide shelter in place order or indeed a try state order because whast happening. it's about 7 million people have the range of a sings county

epidemiologists. i've spoken to several epidemiologists. if it was statewide, the try state governors, would you consider that as a larger scale order? >> well, i think you have to have more than a comprehensive approach. you tell people -- for example, you close schools. okay. we close schools. sounds good. now what happened to child care? how does my policeman come to work or my firefighter come to work or my nurse come to work which is essential. if you wanted shoes, then you have to put a child care in place. you want to show her in place, we're closing the which ises, right? if you can't come out of your house, then every business shuts down in the city. if that's what you want to do, do it that way. shut down businesses, that will reduce the density. what is the goal and what is the

best way to get there and how do you do it on a geographic basis. to shut down all businesses in the state of new york is a very big deal. especially when other states aren't shutting down, right? because now you'll have a question for a business, maybe i go to miami, maybe i go to chicago, maybe i go -- this is a -- i just picked it up. everybody in this kun stri stay home, nobody go outside. we'll figure out how to get you a meal. no doubt that's the best strategy to stop the spread of the disease. >> governor, it's brian. do you have a formula or theory for how many positive cases are likely out there in your state if we, in fact, were able to test on demand. >> tens of thousands. i think we're kidding ourselves,

brian. all the tests are telling us how many tests we are taking. we were so slow on testing that the virus got way ahead of us. i believe there were tens of thousands of people who had the virus and resolved and never knew they had it. the numbers are just a reflection of how many tests she was taken. now we have 1500 people who tested positive. that's because we took 10,000 tests. we were so slow in the testing as a nation, but i would bet you dollars to donuts that the number of cases are exponentially larger than what we're actually seeing. i think if we could test, try to test the antibodies in new york, you would find that people had

it and resolved and i think that would relax some of this fear. you know, we're talking about it like it's a death sentence, right? i handled the ebola situation. ebola was close to a death sentence. coronavirus is not, but that's how we're talking about it. i literally want to find ways to test people to prove that they were exposed and resolved and if you want to have fear not outpace you? >> right. people who come in and build big projects on little or new knits. due see adjacent to your major hospitals you're going to have 10 cities, certainly outdoor triage, maybe containerized shipping. maybe rvs where people are living.

>> yeah. brian, we have only three possible strategies. number one, flatten the curve as they all say. they talk about a curve. i see it as a wave. it's not a curve. it's a wave. the question is when does that wave break and when does it crash onto the hospital system. so you flatten the curve by hitening the density controls. the next move is to start limiting businesses. second, increase the existing hospital capacity. i spoke to all the hospital administrators today. we have about 50,000 beds. i said, tell me how we can just maximize your appropriate and then, third, build more medical facilities. you can't build an icu bed, it's too technical. you could build a medical

facility to get it so she can speak with me. i don't want to get to the point of tents, et cetera. i've been talking to president trump and working in partnership and he has activated the federal government. we're looking at the u.s. army corps of engineers to come in and help us build and construct, fema to help us come in with emergency supplies but that's the third strategy if you will, build new beds in 45 days, if that's even possible. >> governor, just to be clear in terms of your partnership as you described it with president trump, there's obviously been friction there, there always is, even in normal political times between federal and state leaders. do you feel like you're working constructively with the urgent

planning process you're talking about for getting them built and rowing in the same direction? >> i think it's fair to say, rachel, that my relationship with the president went beyond mere state/federal institutional frictions. we have had significant differences, there is no doubt for that. i have for many years, i have been very outspoken about it as has he. i had a very good conversation. i said, forget democrat/republican. we're americans. we're talking life/death. we're going to have a tragedy in this state. we're going to have a real tragedy where people die because they couldn't get the right health care and i need the help of the federal government. i need that partnership. i'm a former cabinet secretary in the clinton administration. i did disasters all across the

country. i know the potential of the federal government and we need it here. i put out my hand in partnership. i want to work with you. i'll be a good partner. i need your help. let's do what we were elected to do. let's fulfill our constitutional duty and the president said, yes. i believe he's sincere. more than just belief, he has acted on it, rachel. i spoke to the secretary of defense today. i got a call from the white house team late last night, early this morning. i have the army corps of engineers coming in here tomorrow so i believe he is doing -- he's doing what he has to do and i respect him for it. i respect him for it. >> andrew cuomo, governor the state of new york as we are wishing, imploring all of our guests tonight, thank you and be well most importantly. >> thank you. >> interesting. making news there, the governor over the weekend called for the army corps of engineers to build

capacity. the governor saying the army corps, he's going to be meeting with them tomorrow and the federal government has responded to that cue. we'll have to watch to make sure that that comes to something. that meeting happening tomorrow is news and that's a good sign. >> with this duel structure, steve kornacki i'm told has some primary election news out of the state of florida tonight. steve? >> brian, we've got -- nearly 40% of the vote is in in florida. i want to remind you there are some counties near the panhandle that are part of the central time zone. there will be no formal characterization. look, the bulk of the state is reporting vote. what do you see here, you see joe biden running away with this thing. a 37 point margin over bernie sanders. remember, in 2016 florida was one of bernie sanders worst states. he got 33% against hillary clinton in a one-on-one race in

2016ment. we are seeing in the counties coming in sanders running below the bad 2016 numbers. some of the population centers, this is fort lauderdale. here's bernie sanders running at 18%. lots of early voting. lots of mail-in voting. michael bloomberg not in the race but is getting double digits here. broward was a nightmare for bernie in 2016. he's falling below that. sort of smaller rural counties where you've had more of a blue collar white population. in 2016 you saw sanders picking up a lot of votes. here's one county. sanders is losing here by 46 points. against hillary clinton he was in the game in counties like

this. brian, you look at these numbers here, in florida, we'll check in. over 40%, this is great news for joe biden to look at those numbers. >> steve, thank you. hey, political news. we're going to be joined by the guy running third in florida only he's not here in that capacity. michael bloomberg is here in the capacity of philanthropist and former mayor of the city. we'll talk to both of them when we come back. at's my man there. at'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.

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live picture of times square in new york having driven to new york today across that very intersection, i can tell you it is an eerie sight. usually those sidewalks packed with pedestrians and vehicles. that's the cross roads of the vehicle. coming up on 7:30 eastern time. breaking news from our colleagues on cnbc who are reporting that treasury secretary mnuchin told republican senators on the hill that u.s. unemployment could hit 20% if congress doesn't enact the stimulus package. some will argue it could hit 20% either way. stephanie ruhle, host of the 9 a.m. hour here on this network and of course our nbc news senior business correspondent. stef, for people just coming in on the financial news, the dow

swung back up today as did the s&p. what kind of damage is being done to the u.s. economy right now? >> enormous. we know that medical experts and now government leaders have made it very clear. in order to really go out there and stop the spread of the coronavirus you've got to shut down the economy. for anyone who says oh, the economy was doing so well, what people were doing was spending in the economy. that was pushing our economy forward, consumer spending. as soon as consumers are not spending, look what is about to happen. steve mnuchin said unemployment could spike to 20%. marriott following tense of thousands of employees. right here we have gone from a health emergency that's turned into a financial crisis that across the board people are saying is tipping us into a recession. >> stef, hang on. former new york city mayor michael bloomberg wrapping up his efforts to fight coronavirus. his foundation has launched a

coronavirus response network for local mayors dealing with the crisis. it's also pledged 40 million to battle coronavirus around the world. with us for more, the afore mentioned former mayor of new york and former democratic presidential candidate and with him tonight in our studio, dr. tom freedman, former director of the cdc. gentlemen, welcome to you both. mayor bloomberg, fair to say, approximately $8 billion given away thus far by your personal foundation and this is the next new front you are opening. what can you do? >> well, we can do some things. gates is also helping. you can do some research. you really need the federal government and the taxing power of the government to do big things, but private philanthropy can try new things that others are unwilling to spend government money on and that's the symbiotic relationship between private philanthropy and government. we can do a private relationship

and then you need the government to build hospitals, distribute kits across the entire country. >> mr. mayor, in terms of where you see this going and how you see new york city re1307bding and the kinds of help they're asking for from the federal government, do you feel like this is proceeding in a way that is starting to make more sense or does the response continue to be as muddled as it did at the outset. >> i think what it shows is we didn't do any preparation for something like this. that was the sin. now we have to learn about how are you going to come out of this, get businesses restarted. as stephanie talked about the economy, get that going again. right now in order to fight the disease, tell people what to do, tell them when they should be tested, when they should worry, when they should just stay home and live with it. if it's a mild case, i think that's what tom would suggest.

what i did all the time, tom was the commissioner of the health department when i was mayor. he would be the one i would turn to and i've given this to the president, he should not be involved. let cdc do it, let the professionals do this. the mayors still have to assure the people. that's what our virtual response team is doing. >> doctor, we've been admonished by our surgeon general not to look in the past and not to criticize but i am going to do just that. as you look at this, is it a done deal that we've just lost eight weeks in planning and preparation and more than that because of systems we have pulled out from under ourselves? and do you share the urgency of the governor of new york about a coming hospital room deficit? >> there is no doubt that this is a situation that is going to

get much worse in the near future. it will get better, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. one of the most important things we have to do is prepare our health care facilities to surge safely. that means infection control. there are places, take singapore, where they have had hundreds of cases but not a single health care worker infected. we have to protect our health care workers. they're a precious resource. we also have to be ready for a surge in patients as the governor was saying. it is possible there could be many more patients who need intensive care and respiratory support and we have capacity for. china built a 1,000 bed hospital in eight days. we don't have the ability to do that. we have to take the measures to tamp down the peak so we don't outstretch the health care system which results in health care workers getting infected and patient outcomes not being as good as possible.

what's crucial also is to understand vulnerability here. there are some people much more vulnerable than others. the risk of someone who is over 60 who has underlying conditions is many, many times higher than the risk in a younger person. that is why it's so important for people particularly who are medically vulnerable to stay home and avoid contact with others. >> how concerned are you of how economically crippling this is especially so some of the most vulnerable americans. >> if they don't have a job they can't pay for food much less pay their rent. the wealthy people have some room to maneuver, but if we keep closing all the small stores where the less fortunate work and where they shop and where they leave their kids, then the whole thing falls apart. when you close the schools, unfortunately one of the people has to stay home. if you've closed all of their

businesses, it probably doesn't matter. the bottom line is, if you shut down the economy, the ones at the bottom of the food chain are the ones that invariably get hurt worse. a lot of money never gets down to their area as well. >> lets me ask you both this. we're at this position in every classroom where they deal with these dilemmas may come into conflict. safety and lisch bert at this may come into conflict. now we have decisions to make. governor cuomo was talking about a shelter in place, stay in your home order which he described as an order that would close most businesses. he said that would be the right thing to do when it comes to just trying to control the virus. he's not ordering that. he's not negotiating for that right now clearly because he thinks the economic impact of

that would be too great. where do you both think the balance lies. >> it's not just the economic impact. anybody who has kids realizes you're not going to keep your kids indoors for four weeks and not let them go out. >> italy, spain, france, all of those countries are doing that. >> i don't know whether they're doing that or what the reports are. the bottom line is, you have to go out and go shopping. you have to go get medical care. you have to go pick up the mail and all of the things we normally do. it's unrealistic to think people are going to sit inside holding each other tight and think that they're going to get through this. >> this is a new virus. it's an unprecedented situation. perhaps the single most important thing we need to be doing is learning more about it using everything we learn to protect people. if you look around the world, singapore, taiwan, they functioned without having everybody stay home. i'm not saying we shouldn't take

strong measures because by reducing the number of people get infected, it's better than outstripping our health care. we have to use data in real time to adjust our response. what i'm most concerned is i don't see the cdc either at the decision table or at the podium either helping to make the decisions that are life and death decisions or to communicate them with the best public health experts we have working on the infections. they're the people i would turn to. they're a subspecialty of that. respiratory viral infections. that's the person you need understanding what's happening in the u.s. there's so much we don't know. we don't know whether asymptomatic people spread this. trying to stop this without the cdc at the podium is like fighting with one hand behind your back. >> to the extent we can model our response, those examples you

cited about countries and cities have done a good job without the lockdown. they've been able to do it because they've had mass, mass testing and technologically driven testing that we don't have. we have to radically upscale our testing in a way that allows them to do things or if we can't do that, we have to come up with some other way that doesn't work on testing. >> i asked tom, if you come down with a fever and small cough, go home and get into bed. i said, should i go get tested? his answer was, no. >> it depends where you are. testing is not a cure al. what we need is to skate where the puck is going and where the puck is going is the risk that they will be more sanded. that's why staying at home for the medically vulnerable is so

ip be credibly important. that's why we have to work on stopping the spread and the recommendation is, as mike bloomberg says, to not get tested if you have mild illness. if you have trouble breathing, of course, seek care. here in new york city it's the local health department which is terrific. if you have mild illness, don't get tested. because we're so outraged by the lack of the availability of the testing. >> the world health organization, with all due respect, is calling for simple advice to every country in the world. test, test, test. test people who are mildly symptomatic. >> that's absolutely correct if you are in a community if you don't know where it's spreading or a nursing home if you are trying to stop it. where we are today in new york

city with what we fear is widespread transmission, the hospitals are overwhelmed and people are mildly ill. if they go in, first off, they may infect others. second off, they may use up scarce equipment. in the course of going in, they may infect others. if you have trouble breathing in new york city. >> should we talk about staying at home? we want our doctors to go to the hospitals. we want our nurses to go to the hospitals. we need to have the san any trags department take the trash. the transit workers, give them the ability to get where they are going to go. >> what you're talking about, essential workers in san francisco doing what needs to be done and keeping civilization going. they have an excuse to go out. other than that, people are

staying home. >> one of the other problems, only the essentials do something. everybody who doesn't go gets insulted. we not only did that, if the essential people went in, the nonessential people had to get paid the same amount but then the essential people got doubled because they had to do something. it sounds simple to do these things but when you have 8.4 million people, you still -- what do you do with your kids? what do you do when you have to go visit your elderly grand parent? what do you do when the boss says stop by and pick up something. one of the things my company did, we practiced everybody at home being able to work from home. so 95% of all of our employees are working from home. it turns out a lot of our customers never did that. we had equipment ready to get them going. we thought about the problem and did something about it. that's not the real world for businesses and most people.

>> in the san francisco bay area, it's the real world today. >> the real world today in new york city is the risk of outstripping the area. we don't want that kind of explosive spread that we saw in wuhan, china. >> one more question. understood in this kk could find a test -- find a medical practitioner and get tested right now tonight. what about those who can't? what about the low income new yorkers in washington heights? in parts of the bronx who might love to be tested, who might be symptomatic. how do you plan -- i know if we have a disaster i'll have to make some calls to the press. when was the last time you

checked the phone number. they never prepared for that making sure the right people could get to the hospital, get to the television station or we could distribute the medicines or the firefighters knew what to do. that's the mistake in this country and we have to get armed with it. we should learn our lesson. not go into the future without preparation, and we certainly had plenty of experience with 9/11, with swine flu and all of these things. we have to start getting the hearing going. they aren't going to have jobs, food, medicine. it's a disz saster. >> the eke no, ma'am mifks know that will have to be moved. are people going to change their

tastes and instead of going to movies they'll go buy stuff from amazon, go on to netflix and that sort of thing. when we recover, it won't be the same world we left. >> doc, quick last word and then i have to go to a break. if you have fever, cough, difficulty breathing wherever you are. and every patient with pneumonia should get tested so we can understand where it is and how we can stop it. >> let's at least agree with that. mayor bloomberg, tom freedman. thank you very much. come back before we're in the studio again. stephanie, thank you for being part of our questioning. after this break when we come back, we are going to be about 14 minutes away here in a short while from the first polls closing. we're going to hear from ohio senior senator, the democrat sherod brown about the primary that was not there tonight.

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let's not forget the political subplot tonight. this is what we're also covering this evening in our spare time and in addition to a pandemic. as you see, 58% of all the vote is in in florida. though only at the top of the hour will we have a total polls close when the polls close in the florida panhandle.

that still is a good chunk of the democratic primary vote. you see the result thus far in the raw vote from florida. we've also been talking about ohio tonight. governor mike dewine mike de wine declared this health emergency late last night postponing the election there, announcing the polls would not open despite a state judge ruling that the election must go on. with us from cleveland tonight is correspondent trymaine lee. hey, trymaine. >> reporter: hey, brian. there is very real concern mike de wine's last hour postponement of the election would turn permanent. what they say is the democratic party say there are two bodies that have power over the elections, 9 courts or state legislature. by having the state's top health official declare a emergency, he essentially did an end around those two bodies. the state democratic party filed what they call a writ of prohibition, which in this case is essentially a mechanism aimed at restoring power back to the

state legislature. my producer and i spoke with david pepper who is the chair of the democratic party and he said it was a very real concern that this cancellation will go on forever. and not because governor de wine is acting in bad faith, but that bad actors would try to muck up the system. but there is also concern about the actual date, june 2nd. it's very close to the dnc's deadline where states have to have their primaries or they risk losing delegates, brian. >> thank you for that. the postponement will be a cancellation and high of high's votes in the democratic party primary might, therefore, be at risk is a concern that, again, you have to understand the different rules in every state and the different dynamics at work. this is clearly an evolving situation in the cancellation of this primary today. happened so late in the game, there's been a ton of confusion on the ground. joining us now by phone is ohio's senior u.s. senator sherrod brown who joins us now. senator, thank you so much for

taking time. i appreciate you being here. >> rachel, thank you. it's an honor always. >> let me ask you about the evolving -- this fast evolving situation in your state over the past 24 hours. we had the state initially announcing that they would move some polling locations out of senior living facilities, nursing home facilities to protect the elderly, then we got word yesterday the governor wanted to call it off. a state judge says, no, you have to do it. then we got a public health statement, public health announcement from the state health officer saying, no, the election is off because of the health emergency, a lot of confusion. what do you make of it? >> well, go back a few days when -- i mean, governor de wine, a republican, someone who i've watched him and talked to him frequently during all of this with the coronavirus. he has been as good or better than any governor in the country, anticipating. he shut the schools down when there were i think only three people diagnosed at that point.

he understood. i mean, he was looking at this and dealing with this for weeks when trump was still saying that it was a hoax put out by msnbc and the media or democrats or whatever. so de wine was absolutely acting in good faith. i think he waited too long, but i also know that he was seeing more and more things happen on friday and saturday and sunday in terms of closing restaurants and public places and saying no more than -- i can't remember if he said 100 or 150 or ten ultimately people in one place. so, and he was hearing lots of calls from poll workers saying they weren't going to come, they simply weren't going to show up. so i'm not exactly defending it because i wish he had done it earlier. i understood how it happened this way. i'm very concerned about any precedent it sets. i think that the legislature should meet and call this -- set this primary earlier. i hope this leads to a national discussion that we adopt what a few states, maybe only two -- i

think oregon does vote by mail, where everybody votes by mail. i worry about any precedent that any governor on behalf of president trump or any other candidate for president in the future decides to do something. de wine totally did it in good faith. i know him pretty well. i know his department of health director, dr. amy atkin is terrific. they have done the right thing in ohio. i wish the president were 1/10 as good as dealing with the coronavirus. it is massive and i hope the florida legislature will sort it out. >> what do you make of the democratic party concern we heard from tremayne, they're worried the postponement of the primary will be permanent, ohio may essentially lose delegates in terms of the democratic nominating process if this has to be delayed beyond june 2nd? >> well, sounds like they have legitimate case. i'm hopeful that the democrat and the state party filing this

will make the governor and the legislature decide to meet and the legislature to meet the governor, ask him to set a date or even set up in this case everybody votes by mail or everybody votes early in the boards of elections. that's where i voted before i drove to washington this week. in large part, to model behavior. my daughter said to me, don't think about when you're out getting infected by others. think of your having the infection and not giving it to others. i think that's more and more what all of us who are public people, including the -- including matt alan williams do that. i think it's important we do that and model that. but i'm hopeful the legislature does that and gets this done right so we don't -- so it's not as late as june 2nd. i have no why they picked a date as late as they did. >> senator, on that point, we just got word in the last couple minutes one of your colleagues in the senate, corey gardener of

colorado, visited in his washington office with a constitco constituent, a colorado resident who is -- he is self-quarantining. a number of senators had to go through that now. do you think the senate by and large is making the right decisions? are you expecting the senate may ultimately have to go to unprecedented steps like voting by proxy or voting remotely if it becomes unsafe to convene? >> i don't know. i think we can convene without, without doing what we usually do. i just find it amazing that i watch the president's news conference with sitting standing with six or seven position shoulder to shoulder and they tell everybody else to practice social distancing. the most important thing we should do and we should care about our own health, we should care partly because we can infect others. but we need to vote now. mcconnell sent us home thursday. i went on the floor and begged him to meet and keep us there

and finish what we needed to do with the legislation that was about to pass the house. it will make a huge difference in getting help, getting checks, getting -- scaling unemployment compensation, in speeding up and especially dealing with sick days. and since then mcconnell sent us home. he had something, i guess, in kentucky. it's friday, saturday, sunday, monday, today is tuesday. still we haven't voted and we haven't done our job. so that's the most important thing to do. whether we do it remote or whether -- remotely, i guess, or whether we do it in person, we need to vote like this week and start this process. there is so much -- you listen to what mayor bloomberg said. you listen to what dr. frieden said. we have to move quickly on the virus and the economic side of this which is so -- >> senator sherrod brown of ohio where the in-person voting in the primary today was called off. we appreciate you being with us, sir. thank you. >> thank you. >> you and i have about two

minutes until the top of the hour when we're going to have a poll closing. time enough to talk about our conversation with mayor bloomberg. what should we add in after that? >> i mean, listen, new york state is emerging as a state that is most challenged right now. washington was first. new york's governor warned towards the end of last week new york's cases were going to surpass washington, they were going to rise quickly and that was going to reflect both the spread in the state and going to reflect the fact that they were starting to institute new testing. there is more testing in new york. the cases are rising like by 50% a day at this point. the seriousness of what they are asking for in terms of the help from the federal government and what they are asking for of new yorkers to try to, to try to slow this thing down are equivalent. and they've got hard decision to make, but the idea that it's complicated and therefore you shouldn't broach these decisions -- we shouldn't think about what might be the right thing to do because it's all too hard to do, i find it difficult to hear. >> and cuomo's explanation of

some of the risk was quite real world. it made great sense to me as he was talking. you go to your sisters in jersey, you go to a friend on long island, you go to someone's house in westchester, he's worried about the emptying out of the city of new york. >> right. and what governor cuomo is talking about, he said this is why we're trying to do tri-state efforts. we're trying to do regional efforts. that's why san francisco didn't announce that shelter-in-place order alone. it's san francisco and the six counties of the bay area. the idea is we need -- we don't have a federal response. we still don't have a federal response. we need, therefore, local, state and increasingly regional responses that make sense and that are going to have to be incredibly aggressive. i mean, in ohio where mike de wine has been aggressive, they ordered today a statewide ban on elective surgeries. new york city as of today, hospitals in new york city as of today still performing elective surgery. that's failure of leadership,

foresight and will cost lives in the end. >> seconds away from the top of the 8th our on the west coast. that means among other things we have a poll closing on the prize, the state of florida and its 219 delegates. so here we go. at 8:00 p.m., we have an election alert. nbc news is projecting that when all the votes are counted in the state of florida, there is your projected winner, joe biden. nbc news is further reporting at this hour that in the primary in illinois, the race is too early to call. at 8:00 eastern time, steve kornacki over at a altered to fit circumstances big board including a new location tonight given social and election return distancing, steve. >> yeah, brian, a little different in this corner tonight, but you're familiar with how these exit polls go. let's just show you here from a

couple of these states. illinois, florida as you mention, the black vote in illinois tonight, you see 70% for joe biden. 27% for bernie sanders. two things you might notice about this. number one, sanders doing a little bit better in the north among african americans than he did in the south, but still losing by more than 40 points here. this is consistent with what we saw in illinois in 2016 among black voters. but if you look at -- let me see if i can find it here in this list here. here is the change we're seeing in illinois. if you remember, four years ago, illinois is one of the tightest primary states in the democratic side. bernie sanders nearly lost it. the change in white voters in illinois, tonight joe biden is winning white voters without a college degree by better than 2-1 margin over bernie sanders. four years ago in the same primary, sanders won this group by double digits. that's the kind of swing you're seeing here in illinois. the kind of swing we were talking about last week in michigan, in missouri.

we saw it on super tuesday in places like minnesota. that group of voters in particular, non-college white voters, there are a lot of them out there. and in 2016 bernie sanders was doing a lot better with them. certainly than he is right now. and joe biden, for that matter, doing a lot better with them than hillary clinton did. you're seeing that there in illinois. you're seeing it for that matter in florida. you can just see here, again, white college grads in florida, biden winning this thing in a landslide. you can see the basic split here, white and black voters in florida, this will tell the story. biden winning by 43% in florida among white voters. among black voters winning by 57.75 to 18. there is a substantial hispanic vote in florida as well. unfortunately right now, we don't have a large enough sample there to get you a number. one of the complications tonight is this is not a traditional exit poll. we weren't able to send folks out there to do in-person exit poll interviewing. this is a phone poll that was taken in the last couple of days, so it's a little bit

different than we've seen in the past for exit polls. still we reached a large number of voters hoping to be able to get more numbers to you from it. you can just see here in florida, this comports with what we're seeing in the returns. and in illinois, too, it's that major, major change among white voters, particularly among white voters, blue collar white voters without a college degree who in 2016 kept bernie sanders in that race all the way to june. week after week in 2016, bernie sanders was competitive in states like illinois. he was able to win states like michigan. and he was able to keep that campaign going all the way through june. and what you're seeing here, the pattern is clear now over three weeks among black voters, sanders struggles just like he did in 2016. among white voters, there really has been a c change there and it's moved away from bernie sanders dramatically and it's changing dra malt kelley how he performs in states like michigan, illinois, places like that. >> steve, i know you said there isn't traditional exit polling like we've seen on other big

primary nights over the course of this night -- over the course of the primaries tonight. we are also seeing anecdotal reports about turnout being way down, particularly in illinois where nbc still says it's too early to call. is there any data that we have, anyway we can talk meaningfully about how the decrease in turnout has been demographically inflected? are we seeing -- do we know anything about what the constituency is that's actually turned out today, even if turnout is down overall? >> it's interesting. turnout may not be down overall. i can tell you, first of all, in florida if you start adding the numbers up, 1.2, 1.3, 11.5 million -- it adds up to about 1.6 million counted so far here with 77% of the vote in. >> yeah. >> you can see this is going to exceed the 1.7 million that turned out for the 2016 florida primary. it's probably going to end up over 2 million tonight before the night is over. >> steve, is that a product of early voting and mail-in voting or is that a product of what happened today? >> so, here's an interesting

story we were looking at today. you have seen this big gulf between when it comes to age, biden doing so well with older voters, sanders doing so well with younger voters. was that going to be an issue for joe biden potentially with older voters staying home? here's one county we were tracking in particular. a small county, this would be big on the republican side. this is the oldest median age not just in florida, but in america. you heard of the villages, the giant retirement community. that's sumpter county here. here is a great place to test this. you see virtually all of the vote is in. and two things jump out here. number one, the early vote and the mail-in vote from sumpter county here, alone, exceeded the entire turnout in this community in 2016. so you did see older voters here not wanting to go to the polls today, but still wanting to vote and finding a way to do that irma, finding a way to do that by mail. and, by the way, we talk about that struggle bernie sanders has had with older voters. my goodness, in the oldest

county in america, bernie sanders is running at 9%. it looks like he's going to finish under michael bloomberg who, of course, dropped out of the race. >> big hello tonight, special greeting from anyone watching us from the villages in florida, a nation state all its own, sprawling community. >> when brian and i ultimately start doing our traveling road show commentary -- >> do a traveling pickle ball tournament. >> we're coming to you. >> this is probably the last time for a long time we'll be together, probably the last time in a long time we'll be originating from this studio because of social distancing and this other story we've been covering. we're all kind of scattering to individual studios where we don't have to use employees and potentially be interacting with people. and some of that starting tonight has involved our frequent contributors and friends here on the broadcast. claire mccaskill, for example,

being a former senator from missouri is tonight with us from st. louis. joy reid, host of a.m. joy is hosting with us from washington. and jose diaz belart, the host of noticias telemundo and nbc news saturday edition around these parts. friends, it's good to have you even electronically as part of our conversation. senator, you first. your reaction to a polls close calling on the state of florida tonight and the margin steve was just talking about for joe biden. >> well, i think the conversation is going to quickly turn to how and when does bernie sanders unite the democratic party. i predict that just like in michigan and mississippi and missouri, we're going to see every county in florida go for joe biden, every county in

arizona go for joe biden, and every county in illinois go for joe biden. he's going to end up netting a big number of delegates after tonight. and so i think it is time -- and bernie is going to have plenty of delegates and power to influence the platform because we all want to come together. so i do think the pressure is going to mount, especially at this time of crisis in this country, for the democrats to unite behind clearly the voters' preference, not the institution's preference, not the dnc's preference, but the folks that are voting now all over this country from sea to shining sea. >> joy reid, every one of these election nights we've spent together in this studio, you have had almost the unique ability to deliver a summation of what it is we're watching in real-time. and i'm asking you nothing less than to do that right now with no prep. >> well, no pressure, no pressure at all.

hello to everybody who is all social distancing with me tonight. so, i will say that i've been on the phone a lot today with a good friend of mine in florida who we met working on the 2004 campaign for america coming together, that effort. it was sort of an effort just outside of the kerry campaign effort. and the thing she was really impressing upon me is that absentee voting is huge this year. i just want to zero in really quickly on broward county, my former county in florida. it is the county you have to win and you have to win it big in order to win as a democrat. democrats carry it, but when people in broward county voted high rates, democrats win. when the vote there is soft, democrats tend to lose. what the friend of mine that i spoke to today was seeing was really almost record, mabl not record, but really high turnout in terms of people requesting absentee ballots that she was saying may exceed the 2016 primaries, may get closer to what you saw in '08. so you have lots of people

interested in being a part of this vote. it's a heavy african-american vote so that's very good for joe biden. but the fact that people are actually getting out and making sure that they vote is also good for joe biden. it shows that he does have strength in that state. i think for bernie sanders there were already a few challenges. i think that his "60 minutes" interview, i am still getting texts from people in florida about that interview. it really hurt him with latino voters. but i think on top of it, coronavirus has really sobered a lot of these voters up. what they're really looking for is to move on, they're looking to have a nominee, they're looking for leadership. florida has not done a great job in dealing with this crisis. a lot of people are just scared, scared to leave their homes. and i think fear is driving people. and i think that it's helping biden really in every state, but i think florida is a pretty important test case. >> and let's move on with the one person in this conversation from florida. jose, this is to you. both a expects spects of this,

take on the coronavirus co component of this election, a place traditionally staffed by old folks, and also bernie sanders. you have to give him credit to thine own self be true. he didn't run from it, in fact, he doubled down on it, but at the end of the day he put fidel castro on the ballot in the state of florida. >> good point, brian. by the way, just start things off, joy reid is also a florida person. for many years she worked down here. tried to call her a floridian, co-floridian. another thing, brian, i'm exactly 286.4 miles from the villages. just wanted to give you a geographic location of where we are in florida. very close emotionally. i think that the fact that florida has about 20.5% latino vote as an entire state, you're absolutely right. what goes on in latin america,

what fidel castro and his brother's 60-year dictatorship in cuba, morales in venezuela, maduro in venezuela, daniel ortega in nicaragua, those are local stories and local feelings for a lot of people in florida. and so the no doubt about the fact that sanders from that "60 minutes" interview that joy brings up, to the times he's spoken about, the castro dictatorship, about nicaragua, sandanistas, played a part in florida. interesting to see how many democratic elected officials in south florida spoke out to criticize senator sanders when he did give those statements at "60 minutes." so very much a part of it. i think coronavirus has played a very important part in people not turning out to vote today as much as maybe they could have. but steve is absolutely right. if you look at some of the preliminary numbers, i'm looking here from the democratic --

florida democratic party, they're saying 2016 between early voting and vote by mail 2016 saw 889,000 people vote. and so far this year 1,104,000 votes between early votes and vote by mail. >> that, as they say, gets your attention. to jose, to joy to claire, thanks. we'll be talking along the way. >> speaking of the great city of miami, the mayor of miami, florida, has been keeping his constituents updated lately from his own quarantine. >> hey, guys, this is day five since i've been diagnosed, day six since i've had the coronavirus, my fifth diary entry. so far so good. >> miami mayor francis suarez tested positive for coronavirus after being in contact with a delegation from brazil who met with him, and also president trump this month, a member of that brazilian party later

tested positive. miami mayor's message from quarantine is everybody needs to take coronavirus seriously and take social distancing seriously. this is the day florida voters went forward with primary voting. and as you just heard brian say here in studio new york, nbc news has just projected that the winner of the florida democratic primary will be vice-president joe biden. joining us from his ongoing quarantine at home is francis suarez, the mayor of miami. thank you for joining us. i appreciate you being here. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> first of all, how are you feeling and how -- what's your personal trajectory been like since you first decided to get tested and found out that you're positive? >> so, i feel well. i'm very blessed that i seem to be in the 80% category that is experiencing mild symptoms as a result of the coronavirus. as you said, i've been video

blogging at francis torres every single day since i was diagnosed last friday. it's brought a tremendous sense of comfort for those who have watched it. for me i'm on the other side of the ledger, i got the unfortunate news i am positive for the coronavirus. i'm still functioning, still running the city and still able from quarantine to do all the things that i need to do to take care of a city that is in crisis just like the country and the world. >> a lot of local and state officials felt like they had hard decisions to make today about this primary. we've seen a number of states postpone their primaries. we've seen, for example, in chicago where the illinois democratic primary we saw the chicago board of elections call for it be called off. we saw ohio make a late decision to call off its in-person vote today. how did you feel about florida going ahead with its primary vote today and how do you feel

about the numbers that we've been talking about in terms of who turned out? >> you know, they are very tough decisions. we took some difficult and early decisions to cancel major music festivals. we were one of the first cities in the country to cancel the ultra music festival, an a-street festival that would have congregated a quarter million people. it's an incredibly difficult decision. it will be interesting to see what the turnout is for in-person voting today. i have a feeling it's going to be extremely light. as you said, the turnout seems to be heavy on absentee and early voting. maybe there were residents that anticipated today might not happen and decided they wanted to go out early. i'm pretty certain that after today or when the announcement is done, the in-person voting will be very, very light. >> i know your city instituted restrictions on public places, the kinds of things we're seeing now in more and more large cities. closing bars, closing gyms, allowing restaurants to operate

only as take-out or delivery. how tough was it to make that call? do you have additional options in mind for further steps that miami might take if those prove to be not enough? >> it's very tough. i mean obviously, we're living in a world that is evolving minute by minute. we know that these are decisions that are going to impact people dramatically, economically. obviously there are going to be people who are working at these restaurants, at these establishments that are not going to be getting paid so we're looking for help from the federal government, the state government along with our county and our city to try to do what we can to help people who are going to be struggling in these days. we know it's going to be difficult, but if we all come together we think it's something we can all get through. >> mayor francis suarez of miami joining us from his own site of quarantine having himself tested positive for coronavirus. sir, i wish you all the best in your -- the end of your quarantine. i hope you don't get any further symptoms than you got. thanks for making time to be

with us tonight. >> thank you, rachel. >> our thanks to the mayor and our wish that he be well. another break in our coverage. a lot to get to tonight. we still have a too early to call consequential call in the state of illinois. florida we're projecting already on the boards for joe biden. let's not forget it is a primary night in three, was supposed to be four states. all the while covering a pandemic. neezes] i see something else... a star... with three points. you're in a... mercedes. yeah, we wish. wish granted. with four models starting under 37 thousand, there could be a mercedes-benz in your very near future at the spring event. lease the a 220 sedan for just $349 a month with credit toward your first month's payment at your local mercedes-benz dealer.

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new york state as we have established here tonight has the most cases of the coronavirus in our country. the town of new rochelle, about 25 miles north of where we are in new york city, was the epicenter of the outbreak. five days ago it became the first community in our country to set up a one-mile so-called containment zone to try to slow the spread of the infection. the national guard were brought in, part of that effort, to help with deep cleaning of public buildings among other things, and with meal deliveries. friday, new row tell also opened new york's first drive-thru facility to test people for the virus which was also the first of its kind on the east coast. the mayor of new rochelle lives, oddly, within the containment zone, and is with us tonight. hey, mr. mayor, for people in a

national audience who may not know from new rochelle the way we know it from local news here on wnbc-tv in new york, are these cases still stemming from the one guy, the one nninnocent man, the lawyer and commuter who brought, as far as we know, the first case to your town? >> it's impossible to know. the initial burst of cases was clearly connected to that first index patient. as the numbers have been risen, it's harder to trace it back to certainty because the numbers are too tangential. you mention the containment zone. what's interesting about new rochelle's experience and what it illustrates is just how quickly this is moving. when the containment zone was established, it was rightly seen as a forceful and necessary measure to limit the spread of the virus in an area with a high concentration. and now here we are one week later and every restriction within the containment zone has

been overtaken and exceeded by new statewide restrictions. in a sense all of new york is a containment zone. we can expect before long all of america will be a containment zone. >> we've been saying, it's become popular in the media to say our country is running about two weeks behind the experience in italy. you being an early containment zone and your town having dealt with a cluster of cases kind of puts you somewhere between the united states and italy in present time. >> that's correct. and no community would want that kind of challenge. >> that's right. >> we're not happy about the fact we've gone first, but it is true that our experience has been earlier. and as a consequence, there may be lessons that will be relevant to cities like new rochelle. and the thing i'd say is although, of course, it's been enormously difficult for us concerning on every level, concern for one's health,

concerns for the disruption of daily life. if there is any good news, it is that our social infrastructure has held firm in the face of enormous and unprecedented pressure. we've had not for profit organizations that have really stepped up in a remarkable way. the city has adjusted to an altered work environment, delivering basic services, the school district has mobilize today provide meals to children who need free and reduced cost breakfasts and lunches. the people of new rochelle have advise ento the occasion in a remarkable way. neighbor supporting neighbor, a real organic outburst of volunteerism. so that social infrastructure will be really important to us as we move forward. in a way, we benefited from having unique state focus on what's happening here from having a mobile testing center that was introduced, from having the national guard to assist us with logistical and operational challenges. but as new rochelle moves from being unique to being typical,

increasingly we'll be on our own and that's why those internal partnerships, mobilizing those internal resources will be really essential in making sure that our community emerges on the other side as healthy and strong as possible. >> mayor of new rochelle, new york, drove past your town, too. was thinking of all of you folks up there. our best to you. our best to all your citizens. thank you very much for taking time to join our coverage tonight. >> let's bring to the conversation now dr. michael osterholm at the university of minnesota. he's the author of "deadliest enemy, our war against killer germs" in which he lays out a strategy for keeping ourselves safer from disease threats globally. thank you for being with us tonight. we appreciate you making the time. >> thank you. >> so, i feel like there is a special form of public service that's being carried out by people like yourself who have your own life's work and your own daily work to get done,

particul particularly given your expertise, your specific expertise in trying to lead and trying to explain the fight against something like this. but you're also taking time to communicate with the public directly by doing media hits like this. first of all, i appreciate you doing that and i thank you for it and i value it. but i also wanted to ask, with somebody who has the kind of expertise that you've got, what do you think is the most important thing to be conveyed to the public? what is the thing that members of the public broadly don't yet get that we really need to understand about this thing? >> i think quite simply the most significant thing that we have to remember is that this is not an event like a minneapolis blizzard where we're going to hunker down a couple of days with a little extra food and a few movies. this is really a coronavirus winter we're entering and we're just in the very, very first days of that season. and as much as we're talking about peaks of cases in a couple weeks, we're talking about putting in place measures to try to stop the transmission of this

virus, city lockdowns. we really believe that we're going to be well into this into the fall. this is going to be months and months. just remember in china right now, even though the virus emerged in november and surely flamed up hot and heavy in december, january, the chinese have been able to use extreme measures to drive down that transmission. and guess what, it's still occurring. 4 1/2 months later it's still occurring. i think we have to get a long game here. we're going to have to, as much as we're dying with this virus and it's tragic, it's horrible, we have to learn how to live with it. i think that's the message we have to focus on because that will help direct us what we're going to do, when we're going to do it and how we're going to do it. >> if this is a long game, as you said, a winter and not an individual storm, if we're going to be coping with this right through the fall, how do you think we then balance the measures that need to be taken to contain it, to try to save as many lives as possible with what is sustainable in terms of what

policy makers and leaders are asking of americans in terms of how far we change our day to day lives and how much economic pain we can take? >> and i think what has happened over the past week-and-a-half to two weeks, as you've seen the emergence of a number of state and local leaders who have really come forward in elected offices and otherwise to layout rather major efforts to deal with this issue, and i think that they should be applauded. it's been remarkable. but what they also have done is responded as if somehow this is going to be the blizzard. they've put in place the dates and the couple of weeks they will go back and reconsider all these issues of closing schools, shutting down cities and so forth. and again, as i said a moment ago, we're going to have to learn to live with this. last night a very important paper was published looking at the modelling of this disease in the united states. and this was from a group in

london, one of the most well-respected modelling groups in the world. they made it very clear that until we have a vaccine, as long as we have this virus here, we have to use these stringent measures or it will flame up. it will actually explode. and so i don't think people realize, i think they think that well, if we get through a couple weeks we'll be okay. if we really want to suppress these cases and as everybody talks about flattening the curve, we're going to have to talk about this literally for months until we potentially have a vaccine. if we think we can't live with that, we have to talk about do you relax certain measures, how is our health care system going to respond to that. i think this is a very important discussion to have right now and nobody is right or nobody's wrong. nobody has done anything that hasn't been in the best interest of the country. but i don't think it's sustainable. i don't think you can shutdown san francisco or new york city for six or seven months. we have to have that discussion, where should we be. >> if new york city and san francisco to cite the examples

you described, if they can't sustain the kind of most aggressive measures that have been at least talked about if not put in place, is this the sort of thing where specific parts of the country should be under the most draconian measures and there should be relief and perhaps go back to them, is this something where the whole country should try to do the same thing at once? the sustainability argument is not theoretical. this is not an academic thing. the paper you're citing is talking about a million dead americans. if we want to avoid that, we need not only to know what's sustainable. we need ways around the worst case scenarios. >> this is an incredibly important point, rachel. thank you. let me say at the outset most people think of the united states as one monolithic outbreak. they talk about italy that way. i heard this a number of times in the media today. don't forget southern italy is very different than northern italy. while we're concerned about both, it's northern italy that's

really under this heavy, heavy covid-19 attack. the same thing is going to happen in this country. we're going to see areas that will have very limited activity for sometime and then as we see with seasonal flu, we'll suddenly become a hot spot. while others that were hot spots will actually potentially peak and come down. and so i think that one of the things we have to do is realize there won't be a national approach to this that is all states at all times will do this. i think that one of the things we have to learn is it has to be adjustable to what's happening at the time and i think you made a very good point. we in public health have to understand when is that curve about to go up, and that's when we have to put the pedal to the medal and say now is the time we have to break the particular increase. >> let me ask you one last question, doctor, which is about the possibility of immunity. i know that this is a novel virus. we don't know as much about it as we will as weeks and months go by. but how much do the models for

how america might combat this might contain this, might try to avoid the worst case scenarios, depend on the hypothesis that people who get infected and survive it are then immune to getting it again? is that assumption key to our national planning around this sort of thing and how safe is that assumption? >> that's a very key assumption. what we're counting on is that as people get infected and recover, that they will be immune and they're like rods in a reaction. they slow it down. the more immune people you have, the slower the transmission will be, the less will be. we have to yet show that. we have reasons to believe that's the case, but you're right on the mark. we have not demonstrated with any confidence from a scientific standpoint that that's the case. i believe it is, but we need the data. >> director of the center of infectious disease policy in minute anyone. one of the leading experts on these things. thank you for making time.

we'll be back with you sooner than you want i'm sure. thank you. >> thank you. >> fascinating conversation. look at where we are. we're going to take a break. when we come back, a part of everyday life, people have been alarmed at. if you've been to the super market, many people reporting that for starters, bread aisles, paper product aisles have been empty. a whole lot of people hear an expert like that and wonder, is this stuff still going to be available to us? and how do we shop for it? some good news about the supply chain, at least. when we come right back. you can't claim that as a dependent! because it's inanimate! people ask me what sort of person should become a celebrity accountant. and, i tell them, "nobody should." hey, buddy. what's the damage? i bought it! the waterfall? nope! a new volkswagen. a volkswagen?! i think we're having a breakthrough here!

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we have a little bit of breaking news that just happened over the last few minutes. the great state of kansas has become the first u.s. state to announce a formally and definitively that k through 12 schools will be closed for the rest of the academic year. in most states in the country there have been school closures announced. oftentimes they've been announced as having an indefinite duration or short duration after which point state officials will revisit the question. but kansas's democratic governor laura kelly has said definitively tonight in a news conference k to 12 schools in kansas will be closed until the summer break. she said, quote, unprecedented circumstances threaten the safety of our students and the professionals would work with them every day. we must respond accordingly.

the reality of this pandemic is that it cannot be controlled statewide if school buildings return to normal operations or if they respond inconsistently within our local communities. so there will be no further in-person instruction for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year. they are saying that school staff will continue to be paid in terms of whether or not there is online instruction or what happens to kids' education, a state task force is being convened to try to handle that, to make decisions about that very, very quickly. again, that's kansas. that announcement just coming in. within the last hour, california's governor gavin newsom was asked about whether or not this might be the direction that california is heading as well. california is a place where all schools are closed, but they have not said it's for the duration of the year. governor gavin newsom saying tonight in response that he, quote, would not be surprised if schools in california go the same way and do not reopen before the end of the school year. >> unbelievable. american families, remember, getting used to the idea of the

kids being home, getting used to the idea of being unable largely to leave that home depending on where they live. think of what this does, where this puts the grocery industry in the united states, and everyone with a link in that supply chain. they're almost in a national sustenance role that they have never been in before. our correspondent jo ling kent is with us from los angeles, california, to talk about exactly this. hey, jo ling. >> reporter: that's exactly right. the grocery industry has never been put to a test like this before in the united states. we've been talking to the supplier whether it is the biggest grocery chains across the country, those who are generating the meat and the vegetables and the toilet paper and everything you would need. and what we have found is that the food supply and the household supply goods are going to be just fine. this is a major test of the

supply chain because as you have more people buying groceries all at once, this has gone from last week where cashiers were telling me this was an issue that looked like thanksgiving or christmas to now much more frequent buying. so as a result, the grocery stores are having to readjust so they can keep these shelves stocked. and what do they do? they cut down their hours so they can come out at night to restock the shelves. as the supply chain is tested, it's testing the logistics of this entire store. food at the grocery store, a lot of it comes from warehouses and those things -- those supply need to be driven in by trucks. they come from warehouses. and you have warehouses, including costco and amazon telling us that they are having to sanitize, they're trying to practice that safe social distancing, hiring lots of workers, so this is slowing things down a little bit. but the good news tonight is that the food supply is going to be fine. we've heard from the national chicken council. we've heard from others that there is enough. it's just the panic buying that is breeding a lot of these

short-term shortages you may be seeing at your local grocery store. >> jo ling kent, we're going to hold you to exactly that. thank you for the live report from los angeles tonight. >> it's interesting, too. we've had, as we've been talking about, there's contradictory and muddled message being from the federal government. we did have at the white house yesterday the president distributing that odd sort of word processor document that was like the president's tips. >> the 15 points. >> and it was unusual list, but it had some good and direct advice in it. one of the things the president advised was that people should avoid unnecessary shopping trips. and that's a reasonable form of physical distancing that you shouldn't have -- in the president's advice, you shouldn't have unnecessary social visits, unnecessary travel, unnecessary shopping trips. i think part of what is being described as panicked buying is some people making rational decisions that they're trying to limit the number of times they have to go to the store. >> that is absolutely right. >> so they're buying a lot when

they go. and, yes, to the extent people are hoarding supplies, that's unconscionable. we have to come up with some way to deal with that. the fact people are being told to limit the number of times they go to the store, it's going to determine how much they buy. it would be helpful if the advice was well thought out and spoke with a unified voice. >> not kuft and pasted. >> now we want to talk with somebody who has dealt with these things in a coordinated role inside the federal governme government. the coronavirus is scary and unprecedented times in our country. we have been through frightening encounters with dangerous things in the past. president obama responded to the ebola crisis to guide the federal effort. the chief of staff to al gore and vice-president biden. ron joins us now. thanks for being here. it's good to have you.

>> thanks for having me. >> we've been talking regularly as the national response to the coronavirus crisis gets more urgent and more patchwork really. we are now seeing some aggressive measures taken around the country that set a new sort of standard that other jurisdictions, other local leaders, other governors then decide if they're going to match. does that seem like a rational way forward for you for somebody who has looked at this from a national response point of view? >> look, i think it would be much better if we were getting better leadership and coordination from washington. i think in the absence of that, governors are stepping up. that's not a partisan statement. i include in that republican governors like mike de wine, like governor hogan in my home state of maryland, governor baker of massachusetts, obviously governor cuomo where you are. you're seeing governors having to step up and fill the void from washington. the policies being uneven.

restaurants half closed in some states, all the way closed in other states, schools kind of with different kind of closure things. what i will say is i think they're all moving in the right direction. i wish it was more coordinated, more consistent, but i praise the governors for stepping up and doing what they're doing. >> we did have, not necessarily a commitment, but a discussion, a positive sound today from president trump on the issue of whether or not the army corps of engineers may be mobilized to help build not excess, but overflow hospital capacity. this is something the governor of the hardest hit state of new york is asking for directly. governor cuomo told us last hour, in fact, tomorrow he has a meeting to talk with the army corps of engineers about starting to do that kind of work. can you tell us when you worked on ebola, how far done the line is that in terms of what the federal government actually can do when they have to do the maximum possible?

>> well, i think it should be near the top of the line, rachel. unfortunate, this should have happened two or three weeks ago. the first time i came on your show a couple weeks ago, we talked about the fact that where this was really going to start to hit in our society was not so much in the grocery stores, but in the hospitals. as the numbers of cases escalate, and we are really just days away from seeing that. i want to emphasize that. this isn't like a weeks from now problem, this is a days from now problem in places like chicago, parts of california. it is great that finally governor cuomo is getting his request for a meeting answered tomorrow. what we really need are people with hammers and shovels and tools and wrenches building these hospitals tonight in new york, tonight in chicago, tonight in the major cities because this tidal wave of patients is coming and it's coming soon. we don't know exactly where, we don't know exactly what numbers because the testing thing has been such a mess. we don't really know. the clock is ticking loudly and

it's not just the hospitals, rachel. it's also the equipment that our doctors and nurses need. we're starting to see health care workers get sick. part of that is we're starting to run out of face masks, protective gear, all that stuff needs to be on its way to hospitals now to deal with the influx of patients we're seeing now. >> hey, ron, just because on the grocery story it's all dependent on people's ability and willingness to go to the grocery store. and so the following question, is there any historic parallel for there being any one american in charge of as much of the supply chain as jeff bezos is going to be in charge of by the end of this crisis and starting soon? >> if there is a parallel, brian, i don't know it. maybe back in the 1800s or something like that. but certainly we are very dependent on amazon. which means, by the way, we

should remember as we're saying stay at home and social distance and whatnot, we need to remember there are a lot of people out there right now who can't stay at home to enable the rest of us to stay at home. that's obviously doctors, nurse es, military, first responders. it's your amazon delivery person, the people who work at the electric company and the water company and the phone company and all these places. so in yeour earlier segment, th doctor said we have to get used to the new normal. those who social distance and stay home need to do that because some people can't. the supply chain is the pau of that. if we have to go to the grocery store, it's because someone is making stuff and bringing it to the grocery store. we need to think about those peop people, too, and how we can keep them safe minimizing social interaction. >> ron, one of the experts in this field we think about often and talk to just about as often. ron, we appreciate it as always. >> thanks, brian. >> who would have thought that

u.p.s. driver would suddenly be considered mission critical for life in america, as critical as power station workers, as critical as first responders, medical professionals. >> there was the announcement within the last 36 hours from amazon that they are looking to hire 100,000 new people instantly to deal with coronavirus-driven demand. and as we see the economy crater, we do see some places in which the new -- where old industries are newly critical in terms of the national response. things are just going to change a lot. and i do think that it is going to be -- it's going to surprise us the way that our economy and the way ways of work have changed permanently when this is all over. but in the short run, i feel like the only constant is we need to be incredibly nimble and open to new information and able to adapt at all times because this isn't something that we've done before. it is helpful to have ron's advice from his experience working on this with ebola, but

ebola isn't coronavirus. coronavirus in the united states is not the same as coronavirus in china in terms of what we can do and how early we started hitting it. this is just a time when we need really, really good leadership and a well informed population that's making smart decisions leadership and a well informed populations making smart decisions. this is also a primary night in the time of a pandemic. when we come back, steve kornacki at the board, a big outstanding race where the polls have closed in the state of illinois where we have the race officially too early to call. we know a lot more about turnout tonight when we come back. ♪ work now, play later. pay your dues. climb the ladder. all your life, you've been told, "business first, fun later." but why not live your dream, now? ♪ the mercedes-benz spring event is here with four models starting under $37,000.

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polls have been closed in illinois for almost an hour now. we still is are the race as too early to call, though a big percentage of the vote return in. steve kornacki at the big board in the land of lincoln. >> yeah, i can tell you our decision desk characterizes joe biden as leading illinois. you see 8% of the vote and it's a 24 point margin for biden. this is one of the collar counties outside chicago. this is a big one, mchenry county. we've got just about all the vote in here. this is a big reversal from 2016 for bernie sanders. sanders won this by 23 points. tonight he's losing by nearly

20, again with almost all of the vote in. that's the kind of reversal we've been seeing in counties like this across the midwest really. we saw it in michigan, minnesota, elsewhere. here we go, the pattern seems to be repeating. illinois does not have as extensive early voting as we were talking about in florida. so, there's this question about how the coronavirus is going to affect turnout and while we're seeing it in mchenry county, there are some more votes you can see here to come in. but not a lot. this point in mchenry county, there's a total turnout of 17,998. first of all, that is down almost 8,000 from the number this county four years ago. remember the pattern we just took you through in florida and a bunch of other states, it's up in a lot of of places. first of all it is down here in mchenry county. i say 17,998. the number of early votes that were cast in this county,

12,996. that is very, very light same-day traffic. and i know there are two coronavirus cases in mchenry county. >> steve, in terms of the illinois overall vote do, we have any sense statewide of how the overall vote turnout is shaping up and how it would compare to 2016 at this point with the proviso there isn't that much early voting. >> yeah, that's the thing. we saw the early vote was about 30% of the total. we're looking for counties that get in close to 100%. that's why mchenry jumped out at me. it's a biggie. it's close to 100% and you're seeing a lot more early vote there and same day vote. that is a departure from the pattern we've seen in the past where the same-day dwarves the early. >> shaq brewster covering the bernie sanders campaign is in washington tonight because the senator is in washington because of the coronavirus bill. shaq, let's be honest, anybody

in the campaign expecting to win any of the three states up for grabs tonight? >> well, brian, they weren't coming into this with big sense of hope, but we just learned -- this is new tonight. we just heard from the sanders campaign that he will not be addressing the results tonight. we will not hear from senator sanders anymore tonight. i say the anymore because it was about an hour ago where we heard from senator sanders addressing not the results or even the primary election tonight, but instead addressing the coronavirus crisis which is why he's in d.c. he laid out his proposal and what he's going to be fighting for in the senate including a $2,000 a month check during this emergency period. but this is a campaign i do not expect to do all that well tonight, and you're looking at the results now. they're not getting those results. >> shaquille brooser in washington, d.c. sanders lost these three states last time around. we're coming up on the top of another hour. when we do, we're going to check

in way bunch of big city mayors. they are clearly on the front lines of this. they, along with governors, have been forced into some absolutely unique actions still going on tonight. that and more when we come right back.

welcome back. top of the 9:00 hour here on the east coast as we cover these twin stories tonight. a primary night, yet another one across america in the midst of a pandemic. as you know if you've been following the news t bay area is under a virtual lockdown, 7 million americans being told that kind of post-9/11 euphemism to shelter in place. it's a fancy way of saying stay home. stay where you are.

a lot of folks are experiencing just their first 24 hours of life under lockdown in the bay area. indeed, nbc news technology correspondent jake ward is under that shelter in place order in oakland. jake, what was day one like? >> reporter: you know, i would say, brian, it was a test for all of us. my wife and i went into this thinking to ourselves what are our goals for this aside from just obviously staying healthy? mine was sort of loose. i thought, well, we'll just kind of hang out and do things. my wife said no, we need to set up a structure and create a semblance of normalcy and she was right. we've been trying to do the things that all parents are going to have to do which is home school your children, work a full-time job so that money continues to come in and take these inventories of your food, of your emergency supplies, all the things that we've been told in the past we needed to do but

haven't done before now. i will say as someone who was in new york on 9/11, it brings back a lot of those feelings. you listen out for things like garbage trucks. when they came through today i was relieved to discover there are some essential services still happening here but there's the spooky feeling that life has come to this strange stand still as we all stay inside under orders from county officials. >> and jake, everyone's free to have an opinion on whether it is overkill or not, whether it would hurt anyone if you ventured out. how are you going to get food in your house, for example? >> you know, it really is such an important point to be making, brian. because there is over and over again going to be the sensation of are we overhyping this. in the weeks leading up to this as i was interviewing health officials here in california where they were taking it seriously, i kept asking them

are we overhyping this? are we overreacting in some way? they kept saying no, this is a serious situation and we need you to help us get people to take it seriously. that is very much the vibe of being here now. this feels like what they were talking about suddenly taking place in our life. and so suddenly my wife and i have to strategize in ways we haven't thought about before. you go to the grocery store, you don't both go. only one of you goes so you do not extend your risk to a second person. and when you arrive at the grocery stores today, they were staggering out the line so that no more than ten people could be in a grocery at a time. you had long lines of people in safety masks, in respirators snaking through the parking lot. we have food for two weeks we think but we're going to have to go out again. what i think about is the incredible fortune i have to be in this wonderful house with my beautiful children. i can't imagine what it's going to be like for the rest of america.

>> indeed. just after 6:00 p.m., oakland, california, the first of what i'm afraid are going to be many weird dinner hours across that region. jake, thank you very much for taking time from your home life to talk to us. >> let's go a little bit south from oakland, california to the city of san jose. among those roughly 7 million americans under the shelter and place order right now is everybody in the city of san jose. the mayor of that city is sam liccardo. he says, quote, history will not forgive us for waiting an hour more. joining us now is the san jose mayor sam liccardo. mr. mayor, thank you so much for being here. we appreciate you taking the time. >> good to be with you, rachel. thanks. >> so, this is a pioneering thing that is happening in the bay area. tell us about the decision-making process, how you were involved in it, and how hard the decision was.

>> well, the county health authorities make the formal decision, but i've certainly been pushing for some time that we take it very seriously and be as aggressive as we have to be. it's just a matter of days before our hospital are going to be beyond capacity. by that, i mean we see where this curve is going in terms of the number of patients and who's going to need help. and like every city, we have a limited amount of capacity for ventilators, hospital beds. and we know where this is going. so, simply we have no choice. we need to shut it down in order to enable our health system to be able to catch up. >> in terms of what you're asking people to do and how you're asking people to change their lives, how have you talked about the issue of enforcement. if people broadly start flouting the advice, start disregarding the advice not only about

congregating but about being out among other people, what are the plans for how to make sure that basically people obey these restrictions? >> well, so far we've been fortunate. we've got a community that gets this and everybody understands for the most part that this is about supreme importance for public health and public safety. i don't expect we're going to need a heavy hand. for the most part. the police officers are going to be out there reminding folks they need to follow the rules. except for the most egregious examples, maybe st. patrick's day party with a thousand people that i'm not invited to, we may need to break it up with law enforcement. the police understand that as well. and we're also trying to make sure that people understand the rules, understand the law because there are some essential functions that are going to continue to happen and people are still going to go to work at grocery stores.

and make sure people do what's important. >> major sam liccardo, thank you. i know this is a trying time. thanks for helping us understand. >> thank you, rachel. >> almost have to remind ourselves this is st. patrick's day, usually a huge holiday as we need not remind you in the city of boston. thousands of people normally gather downtown for the annual parade and let's call it the post-game after the parade. but this year the parade was cancelled, the mayor of boston calling for social distancing. >> social distancing is not a vague, wishful strategy. it's backed by science and data. what we do in our city over the next week or two will make big impacts on the local trajectory of this outbreak and our hospitals' ability to handle it. it will save lives. >> matty walsh is the mayor of

boston, mass. he's joined us tonight. mr. mayor, how did people comply today? how weird does it feel in boston in effect without a st. patty's day? >> it was very strange obviously. and i think the whole country is going through the the same thing. we just cancelled the parade last week. and for about five minutes, there was controversy around it, and then it's forgotten. today all of our barrooms and restaurants are shut down in the city of boston except for take out. over the weekend we had kids and young people gathering which forced us to make decisions on sunday and monday. but it's really strange time right now. and the mayor that was on before and your guests before listening to him, this is something we've never lived through. and i think as the days go on and the weeks go on, we're adapting and we have to continue to lead and continue to show people that we're moving forward here. >> boston is the home of some of

the great hospitals in the united states. among them mass general. they reported a shortage of some medical equipment. what can you tell our viewers about boston hospitals specifically being ready? >> certainly we have some of the greatest hospitals in the world in boston, mass general being the greatest. and other hospitals that follow right behind them. i've been in constant contact with the doctors and the president of mass general making sure that in the case that we have to make spaces to be able to take care of people, we're working on places now, we're finding places in the city of boston that when we see these tests come in here in large scale that we can open up testing areas and assisting the state and assisting the hospital. this is an all hands on deck. this is something that hopefully no one will ever have to experience in our lifetime again. and i think we have to do everything we can as a city and a city government to be in assistance and be on call for whatever's needed.

>> in normal times the lead story in the city of boston would be tom brady leaving the patriots, but tonight here we are. and this is what we're talking about. matty walsh, the mayor of the great city of boston. thank you very much for being with me. steve kornacki at the big board with mr. biden's delegate count. steve. >> here you go. you can see we've added a bunch here from florida, from illinois. there are more to come. there's no official nbc news projection for illinois. let me show you florida though where most of the vote is in. this biden margin area is 61 to 23 over bernie sanders. and remember in those individual congressional districts -- and there's a bunch of them in florida, you've got to be hitting 15% in those to get delegates. when you're at 23, there might be districts where that's an issue. i say that because take a look at the delegate picture right now in florida, biden so far taking 133 out of florida.

sanders, just 23. and again there are a bunch more here still to be allocated. when all is said and done out of florida, this might be the kind of margin biden is looking at. maybe more than 100 over bernie sanders out of florida. we've been talking about this for weeks. the problem for sanders is not that he's losing states. it's that he's losing states big. when you lose a big state by a landslide margin, this is what happens in the delegate vector. if the only way to make that up is to win big states and find big states of your own and win those. you look at illinois, we don't know yet. decision desk hasn't projected it yet. these are encouraging numbers for biden. just based on seeing those numbers, you can see what the delegate picture right now with biden leading with a lot more to be allocated. so far joe biden has added nearly 120 delegates to his national lead over bernie sanders. again, he can get more out of florida tonight, much more.

arizona is still to come. when you look to tend of the night, if arizona looks good for biden, we will see. this number could be approaching 300. and in a one on one race to make up a 300-delegate gap, if you're own florida. you've got to find five of them and you've got to win them, three, four, or five of them. sanders has not been able to find big states he can win those kinds of landslides in. >> thank you, but i diddy. >> thank you. i will say this is the place these two stories come together. we're talking about this primary. we're talking about the coronavirus disaster and america's handling of it. one of the things that is really serious public health consideration is what is going to happen with these primaries around the country. and if one of the two remaining candidates in the race has what amounts to a defacto insurmountable lead, the -- if the race is going to continue all the way to the convention because the guy who's never

going to catch up just wants to stay in the race because he's got his reasons of his own, it has a different weight now. it has a different cost now to make that sort of decision than it would in any other year because these primaries are only going to continue to happen because senator sanders is going to stay in the race even if he does have a defacto insurmountable lead. so, it will be his decision that forces these very difficult public health decisions if had all of these states in terms of whether or not to go ahead with these primaries if there is no hope of him really seriously challenging for the nomination. >> you're so right to say that. >> and it's a terrible thing to say. >> yeah, i know. >> but it's also the reality that we're living this right now. and talking to all these governors and mayors tonight about the hard decisions they've had to make and the hard decisions they're making going forward about what to put at risk, it's just stakes like we've never seen before. >> absolutely.

>> and to that end, let's talk about the great state of michigan. it's been about a week since michigan reported its first two cases of coronavirus. the state's governor declared a state of emergency right away as those first cases were reported actually the night that the michigan primary happened in the democratic presidential contest. well, now, all k-12 schools in michigan are closed, bars and restaurants are closed, gatherings of more than 50 people are banned as is price gouging. as of right now there's 65 cases of coronavirus in michigan. there may be more restrictions ahead as the state tries to stop the spread of the virus. joining us from lansing is gretchen whitmore. thank you for being here tonight. >> glad to be with you. >> we have seen these two stories come together in your state when we had michigan vote totals coming in and the michigan results coming in, very important for the democratic primary, at the same time you

were discovering the first cases in your state. obviously these are two very different things, but you've been contended with both of them as governor as they've evolved on the same time frame. >> it's hard to believe it's only been a week to be honest. i feel like it's been at least a month we've been working overtime to try to be as aggressive as we can to flatten the curve on the coronavirus spread. we knew it was going to come to michigan at some point, and that's why i ginned up the state emergency operations center back at the end of february. while it hasn't been here yet, we knew it was coming. we started task forces and declared state of emergency immediately. i know how important it is that we are aggressive. where there's been a vacuum of leadership, i think it's important all of these governors across the country and mayors are taking the bold action we need to protect the public. >> you've gone from two cases the first night when you declared the state of emergency just a week ago to 65 confirmed

cases now. what's the situation in michigan with testing right now with both your current status in terms of how testing is, how confident you are in your case numbers because of it, and how quick you're going to be -- how quickly you'll be able ramp up? >> great questions. and we're not like the other -- we're fiat had any different than other states. i've been talking with my counterparts, republican and democratic, across the country. we don't have enough tests and we don't have enough resources to make sure that we're able to process the tests as quickly as we need to. and because of that, we are not confident that we have a real handle on how many people are actually carrying the coronavirus in michigan and where they are and how we can track down the genesis. and that is dangerous. and that's why these aggressive actions that we've taken like states like ohio, my friend mike dewine, republican, we've been on the phone talking to one another to make sure we are using best practices, making decisions based on the best

findings and facts, and always centered around what is in the best interest of the public health. and i'm grateful i've got fellow governors who wished to talk and strategize because it is so important that we are aggressive on this front end. but we need help out of the federal government. >> the president took some shots at you and has been attacking you personally even as each of you is trying to weather the state and the federal divide in terms of coming up with response to this. do you feel like you are able to have a constructive working relationship with the federal government? does the president attacking you affect how well michigan is able to respond to what's happening in your state? >> you know what, i can't get distracted by that. it's ironic that my point i was making as i was being attacked was that they're not serious. they're watching tv and attacking via twitter. that's not going to help anything. the only thing that helps us manage a crisis is having clear and swift information, having

personal protection equipment ensuring we've got the tests that we need and the resource that is necessary. 10 million people in the state of michigan who are counting on me to be able to deliver, and i need a federal government that's got our back and helping us through that. >> one last question for you. we've seen -- you mentioned governor mike dewine in ohio, republican governor, who has been really aggressive in his state. that resulted in other controversial things, cancellation of the ohio primary which we expected to be talking about at this time in this place. but one of the things he's done is he's ordered the cancellation of elective surgeries across the state simply as awe w way to frp hospital capacity for what is expected to be this crusting wave of respiratory illness and people who need intensive care. is that something you're considering in michigan and is na the state's roll? >> yeah, we are considering it. we've had a lot of ongoing

conversation. i could name a lot of different governors with whom i'm talking regularly. we know that to flatten the curve we have to be aggressive. anyone who doesn't need to be in a health care facility should probably not be because we want to mitigate this community spread. and that is another way of doing that. and i think that he's done a lot of aggressive things. we have as well. and i think that's why people are looking to the nation's governors to show the kind of leadership we need. >> michigan governor, greten whitmore, good luck to you and your state. appreciate your time tonight. >> thank you. >> thank you, governor. as we head to a break, we still have a major race in illinois. too early to call for us. we'll be going to chicago. we'll also keep talking to these elected officials like the governor of michigan on the front lines of a galloping health crisis. ♪ all around the wind blows ♪ we would only hold on to let go ♪

♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ we need someone to lean on ♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ all we needed somebody to lean on ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ all we need is someone to lean on ♪

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right now we're going to do something that anyone can do, and i promise it helps. let's just take a pause. let's just take a deep breath together. it costs nothing. it helps. i'm looking at steve kornacki at the big board. i'm looking at our call thus far in illinois. biden leading a race that is too early to call. and i'm looking at 1/5 of all total vote in. >> there is no call from the decision desk, but you can tell you by looking at these counties everything i was saying a week ago tonight about the vote pat

person in michigan and how different it was from 2016 it all applies almost the same here in illinois. i'll give you one example. college counties. counties where sanders did really well and ran up the score in 2016, this is where northern illinois university is. you see in 2016, this was sanders country. he won this thing by a 2-1 margin. getting crushed here. still more vote to come in. that's the pattern we're seeing everywhere. this was sanders country in 2016, won it by 20 points, now losing by 35 points. this was basically sanders best county in the state in 2016. university of illinois is here. >> can i interrupt you. you'll want to hear what we have to say. nbc news is projecting there is your winner in illinois. joe biden will take that state when all the votes are counted as steve kornacki was busy trying to do. >> whenever you see steve

kornacki say there isn't a projection, but i can tell you, then you should know they're warming up the tympani for these sort of things. >> i don't want to rush him. it's very important work. but i was wondering when that was coming. >> biden is going to get a big win out of illinois. again, talk aid and abet reverse. this is what the state looked like four years ago. this was bernie sanders. basically what saved hillary clinton four years ago was the city of chicago, huge part, and east st. louis, a few counties here in western illinois. otherwise this was sanders country in 2016 and he nearly got a win in illinois. when i say this is like michigan, that's what we saw in michigan last week. he went from a state bernie sanders was getting blow out wins in rural counties, winning big in big college counties, competitive in the suburbs and it's just a complete reversal. i think let's see what happens here. i think what we saw in michigan

last week, right now we might see all biden blue in illinois again. let's see. that's a little early to say. that's what i'm keeping an eye out for here. just the vote patterns here. we talked about the blue collar white voter swinging dramatically away from bernie sanders compared to four years ago. it's not the same recipe that was there for him in places like illinois and michigan. you're going to get not just a biden win here. i think it looks like a big biden win. >> the thought of anyone winning all the counties in the state is so rare politically. the fact it's happened several times this primary cycle even more stunning. garrett haake is our man in chicago tonight. garrett, because when you speak i listen, i heard you report that at one polling place there today there was one bottle -- i'll be it a gallon bottle -- of hand sanitizer for everybody and every machine. how did that work out? >> yeah, brian. that's exactly right. and placed at the end of the process. so, only after you'd come

through the room did you get rewarded with your hand sanitizer at the end here. look, the city board of elections here in chicago, the spokesperson said today that reporters they tried to convince the governor not to hold in person voting in the city today because they knew there would be problems. turnout was very low early in the morning. a lot of folks went to their polling places to find they were closed because election judges hadn't shown up. or their senior center which was not allowing people in. or private business which did not want to run a risk of having people come in and out in the midst of a global pandemic. there were problems especially early today. it seemed like it got straightened out across the day. we saw turnout numbers going up, up, up across the city all day long. but the preparations to do with the pandemic were spartan. hand sanitizers and wipes for places that had machine-based voting. but the judges got no real

screening on this, no real opportunity to implement things like social distancing in the line. it was all very ad hoc. but the feeling from the state level was they wanted to get this done today because if not today, then when? when in the near to mid-term future would it be safe enough to hold a primary here? to that end, brian, one other thought. ten days ago, i was standing in this park for bernie sanders rally with 15,000 of my closest friends. and now we are where we are, where you couldn't have 15 people gather in a park like this without having somebody stop you and ask you what you were doing here. that's just how fast this has been moving and the challenge for election officials in states all across the country tonight. >> indeed. garrett haake in chicago tonight. chicago mayor lori lightfoot is live from there tonight. mayor light foot, we're happy to have you on the broadcast. i understand the state of illinois had 55 new cases just today. places like l.a. county had 15 new cases just today.

first off how are you doing and how do you feel the city got through a day at the polls? >> well, i think we're doing as best as we can under the circumstances. and we're going to see these numbers continue to go up in part because we've significantly expanded the amount of testing that's going on, both hospital-based testing but also private labs are also coming online. so, it's not going to be surprising to see the numbers because we know that the virus is amongst us. what we've seen in the city of chicago is about 2/3 of the reported cases are related to travel or people who had contact with people who travelled. 12% are related to community spread. that's unknown origin but here in the city. and then we're still investigating the remaining percentages. but we anticipated this. we're prepared for it. and we're just trying to emphasize to the public the things they can do to keep themselves safe, most importantly if you're sick, stay at home.

>> i know you're such a big and sprawling city, i have to ask how the first responders are doing in chicago? i'm aware they're both -- i watch both shows, "chicago p.d." and "chicago fire" but how are they hanging in there? >> our folks are tough and resilient and they understand they're on the front lines. we're getting them the training and support, making sure they've got the equipment they need to handle the circumstances. i think they're rising to the occasion based on what we've seen so far. but we need to continue supporting all of our first responders as well as our health care workers. >> and mayor, because you're a big city mayor and because you see what has happened in the bay area, you hear the talk from new york, i know you've envisioned it. how would chicago hold up under a so-called shelter in place order, what's also known as a lockdown? >> well, look, we're pretty

close to that now with the things that we put in place really starting from friday shutting down the schools, closing restaurants and bars. and really emphasizing people working from home. if you go down and walk down in the city of chicago, like today like i did, very few people on the street. a lot of our high-rise office buildings are at 25% occupancy or lower. so, we need to take those steps, we will. but if tn the city i want to gi people time to absorb the new normal they're facing as a result of the other closures we've put in place. >> home of the bulls and bears which it has in combination with wall street. mayor, thank you very much. we're thinking of you guys during all this as we are all our friends in cities and towns across the countries. when we come back, how hospitals are getting ready. hospitals are getting ready. out here

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nbc news has learned tonight that president trump is going to be meeting tomorrow with representatives from about a dozen nursing organizations. this comes amid growing concerns about the safety of medical workers. nurses, doctors, emts, other health care workers who are the first line of defense in this outbreak and whose continued health and continued ability to work is going to be key to the nation's ability to handle what

is coming. joining us now is chris hayes, host of "all in" on msnbc. thanks for being here, my friend. >> great to be here. >> you have been talking about this from the beginning and i know you have been talking with health professionals, not just epidemiologists, but also doctors, front line, health workers throughout who have been expecting that health workers themselves were going to be front line. >> one of the things we've seen in wuhan and limitation of motion barty. there's doctors and urs ins who end up contracting the virus. that's bad for two reasons. one it's bad to get the virus. and two it takes them out of ability to provide care. in lombardi, 12 kt approximate of the cases were health care workers. you've got situation in which the spread of the infection itself kexacerbates the hospita.

you need to set up a ward in the hospital so you are not contaminating parts of the hospital and other parts whether the patients are health care workers. >> you have people with respiratory illness coming in a different door. >> go to a different part of the hospital that was set up crucially -- and this is the big concern i've heard with er docks and nurses -- personal protective equipment. there is not enough. it is being rationed. there are not enough here in new york city. these include masks, include the full gear that people use. there simply is insufficient supply at this point. that's crucial because of the fears that these folks have they'll be contaminated and their health be put at risk but also because you cannot take people offline when you're deal being the influx we're going to see in new york city hospitals. >> we saw today the announcement from the secretary of defense that the defense department is going to dip into their strateg strategic supply of medical equipment among other things to provide a million masks to the

department of health and human services for use in a civilian capacity. on the one hand, that's great because that means there is a secret special reserve, we have these things, but the fact we're tapping it now means it won't be there in the future when we need it more aggressively. >> and one issue clear from the beginning is coordination and distribution. an announcement at the top means one thing. that's announcement. is it in the hands of er docs in new york city in the next three days before they start to see the real capacity issue that they are all president examing. every er doc i talk ois expecting it right now. >> let's bring into the conversation, dr. zeke emanuel. he's a former obama health adviser. he's got a new op-ed out today in the "new york times" along with two coauthors. i want to read you a little piece of it because i think it's actually very helpful. their op-ed says in part, quote, no one knows for sure how long

social distancing will have to last to reduce the spread to near zero, but if south korea and china are appropriated exemplars will need to stay apart for eight weeks and maybe more. we're going to talk with dr. zeke emanuel about his work in just a moment. but we are going to hit pause on that for a second because i do believe that vice president joe biden is making remarks and we want to go to those live. >> help neighbors. and all those children that are home from school that are worried and don't know quite why, doctors, nurses, emts, and public health officials as well as the firefighters and dedicated folks working to keep shelves stocked in the grocery stores. tackling this pandemic is a national emergency. it's going to require leadership and cooperation from every level of government. it's going to require us to move thoughtfully and decisively to quickly address both the public health crisis as well as the economic crisis.

it's going to require us to pay attention to the medical and scientific and health experts. and it's going to require each of us to do our part. yes, this is a moment where we need our leaders to lead. but it's also a moment where the choices and decisions we make as individuals are going to collectively impact what happens. make a big difference in the severity of this outbreak and the ability of our medical and hospital systems to handle it. you know, i know we as a people are up to this challenge. we always have been. i know the answer to this moment of crisis with the best they'll find in all of us because that's what americans always have done and what we do. that's who we are. ordinary people doing extraordinary things when the need arises. and today, we are moving quickly to adapt our routines to meet this challenge. americans in three states went to the polls today. i want to thank all the public officials and the poll workers

who worked closely with the public health authorities to ensure safe opportunities ofor voting, to clean and disinfect voting booths, and to make sure voters could cast their ballots. it's important for us to get through this crisis protecting both the public health and our democracy. today, it looks like once again, in florida and illinois, we're still awaiting to hear from arizona, our campaign has had a very good night. we move closer to securing the democratic party's nomination for president. and we're doing it by building a broad coalition and we need to win in november with strong support from the african-american community, latino community, high school educated people are the folks i grew up with in my own neighborhood, labor, teachers, suburban women, veterans, firefighters and so many more. and we're doing it with a common vision. senator sanders and i may

disagree on tactics, but we share a common vision. for the need to provide affordable health ca affordable health care for all americans, reduce income inequity that has risen to drastically, to tackling the existential threat of our time, climate change. senator sander plus and his supporters have brought a remarkable passion and tenacity to all of these issues. together they have shifted the fundamental conversation in this country. let me say especially to the young voter who is have been inspired by senator sanders, i hear you. i know what to say. i know what we have to do. our goal as a campaign and by goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party and then to unify the nation. it's moments like these we realize we need to put politics aside and work together as americans. the coronavirus doesn't care if you're a democrat or republican. it will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender, or your zip code. it will touch people in

positions of power as well as most vulnerable people in our society. we're all in this together. this is for each of us to see and believe the best in every one of us, to look out for our neighbor, to understand the fear and stress that so many are feeling, to care for the elderly, the elderly couple down the street, to thank the health care worker, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists, the grocery store cashier, and the people restocking the shelves to believe in one another because i assure you when we do that, when we see the best in each of us, we lift this nation up and we'll get through this together. that's how we've always done it. god bless you all. and my special prayer for those of you in the front lines of the crisis, doctors, nurses, health care workers caring for the virus victims and their families, my prayers are going out for everyone. my hopes are high because i

believe in times of crisis americans have always stepped up. we have to step up and care for one another. thank you all and thank you all for listening. >> vice president joe biden on a night that his campaign has, in his words had a very good night. nbc news has projected tonight that vice president biden will win both florida and illinois. there was supposed to be an ohio primary tonight as well, but that was called off in terms of in-person voting today at the very last moment after an extraordinary intervention by ohio's governor mike dewine and an order from that state's health office to shut it down on account of public health emergency. let's continue our conversation now. just before vice president biden started speaking, we had introduced dr. zeke emanuel. chris hayes is here with us as well as well as brian williams. dr. emanuel, thanks for being

with us. let me just ask you. you just heard vice president biden's remark along with the rest of us. is he saying the right things, the kinds of things you want to hear from a national leader in the context of this pandemic? >> it was good to be upaestaged by a guy who's showing leadership and being presidential. he is saying the right things. i do think that we can come through this. we lost a lot of time in introducing things like social distancing and the measures we need to put in place to prevent widespread dissemination of the virus when the population lacks immunity. we, i think, you know, can get it in place. we need it across the country, not just in the focal areas that are showing leadership like ohio or california or new york. and i think that's -- you know, that's the major challenge at the moment, to get all the states working in the same direction. it's still too much of a

checkerboard out there in terms of these policies. and i would also say to your viewers, one of the important things to remember that the numbers you're seeing today, the the roughly 100 dead people who unfortunately have died because of this virus, more than 5,000 americans who have been infected, those are reflecting where we were 15 days ago, that the testing is slightly out of date in terms of giving you a picture of what's happening today. and this virus is going to continue to spread and has already spread from those numbers. and those numbers suggest that we have something like 80,000 cases in the country that we know of. but it's gone beyond that. >> your op-ed today with your coauthors in the "new york times" makes a detailed factor of an argument about why americans should not only obey the social distancing orders and recommendations, but we should be prepared to do so for a long

time. we should not think of this as something that is a short-term intervention but something that is going to take a couple of months at least and we need to get our heads around that now. if, as you say, these things should be happening not in a checkerboard but nationwide, do you think we can sustain that kind of distancing nationwide for a couple of months minimum in the way that you're projecting? >> well, it's going to be a couple of months minimum. then we're going to ease them up and the virus is definitely going to come back. and we're already beginning to see that in places like taiwan. so, we would call it a roller coaster that you're going to flatten the curve. you're going to ease up. it's then going to go up and you're going to have to put in social distancing again. that's what we have to get our heads around. that's what is going to be the reality until we get a good vaccine out there that can establish herd immunity in 50% or 60% or 70% of the population. i don't think most of the public has thought that through.

you see stores closing for two weeks, schools out for two weeks. it's not going to be two weeks. i do think governors and mayors who said the rest of the term is going to be cancelled and we're going to go to online, they're being much more realistic. and i have to say if you're thinking about the fall, you've got to think of contingency plans for the fall, for schools, my university the same. i don't think this is going to be one social distancing episode and we're done. and so that is going to put a lot of stress on the economy and especially those small service businesses where if they can't do it, how do you expect a restaurant to stay operative for this social distancing on and off over the course of the year, year and a half until we get a vaccine? >> you know, we're in uncharted territory here, dr. emanuel. and partly we don't have a good look of what a society roughly now against ours looks like on the other side of the curve.

the places that have tackled this like china obviously using authoritarian means, south korea which is quite differently through mass testing and contact tracing. so, i guess i ask you. is the south korean model essentially a possibility here? south korea has not had to resort to sort of mass wuhan style shutdowns like in lombardi and the bay area because of the thoroughness of the testing and also a bunch of other measures in terms of people with protective equipment and contact tracing and temperature checks at the front of every office building. is that a future you can imagine here? >> i would say we don't know for sure, chris, and it's a maybe. remember they also have the one distinction in that it was a very isolated group -- >> correct. >> -- that brought in a lot of it. and we know now that this is the united states. the president earlier today was talking about west virginia.

west virginia had no cases. of course just to prove him wrong, it had a case. we all knew there would be a case there. it was just a matter of testing. i'm not sure we can get to south korea. some of my have a few cases pop and we can do more containment-type public health interventions. i guess i'm a little skeptical of that and i'm a little skeptical in part because we travel a lot, because we have 325 million people as opposed to, you know, even 50 million people in south korea. so i guess i'm a little less convinced that we can do what south korea did and, you know, you are right, they took a different approach and it did work successfully. but i guess i'm holding my breath because i do think that now that china is going back to work, wuhan is going to begin waking up, you're going to see resurgence and recrudesence.

i'm not sure how we do that. on and off, maybe the only example we have in history, chris, is the black plague which hung around for three centuries. and you did have this, you know, suspension on, suspension off kind of situation. that's hard to have an advance industrial economy. >> yeah, it is. it's not the greatest precedent. >> i hear them excited as the appropriat appropriate allegory. >> god willing, all of us will be so creative and so productive, you know, think new thoughts. >> the mother of all silver linings. thank you, dr. zeke emmanuel.

it's good to have you. a former obama white house policy advisor. now global initiatives at penn. >> our evening continues careening against these two major stories. we're going to take a break. when we come back, we're going to get a report from the biden campaign because we are eight minutes away from polls closing in the state of arizona. biden said he didn't yet know how he was going to do there. we have that in common. we don't either. we'll see what happens when polls close out west when we come back.

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you've gotta try the dish soap. five minutes before the top of the hour, breaking news, and it's the kind we don't like. it's a new number threshold having to do with coronavirus. the united states has in the last few minutes gone over the 6,000 case mark. the new official number, 6,010 active cases that have been confirmed by testing. remember, the best guess among public health professionals is this is nowhere near the number of americans walking around positive. we have lost 104 souls thus far as a country, 6,010 active cases, 104 deaths, that we know of. we're joined by dr. kavita patel. she served as senior aid to the

white house. happens to be a practicing primary care internist at johns hopkins. and, doc, i know you heard dr. emanuel. i'm curious, do you agree with his model? we're watching deaths, yes, increase by different factors now. do you think everything we're seeing today is as a mathematical property 15 days behind, and then what will availability of testing do to the numbers? >> absolutely. i think that's a minimum, brian, that's 15 days behind. as you mentioned, the testing has delayed so much that not only do we have now kind of a ramp up on testing, but realize that it's not like all of a sudden we now have a test for anyone who wants it. so the numbers that zeke quoted i think are really kind of the floor and i think we're still trying to understand what the ceiling is going to be.

>> your understanding of it as a public health issue, if i landed from a different planet and said to you, doctor, how many -- surely it's just a matter of days until americans can have what our president promised us from cdc headquarters days ago, testing on demand, in effect, what's your best guess? what's the best thing you could tell me along those lines? >> right. so, i think that the best guess unfortunately is not days. it's probably several weeks. we have -- and keep in mind, brian, you have universities and hospitals all around the country that have been working. they had researchers internally working on tests and had been waiting not only for federal officials to, really for the president to finally get his act together, but also now we're starting to get shortages on the tests themselves. you talked earlier about the grocery supply chain. the tests themselves have their own supply chain and we're

talking everything from the chemical reagents which ironically are coming from france and italy where we have shortages and problems receiving goods from those countries, also all the way to those q-tips we're using to test people's noses and throats. unfortunate, i think we're still weeks away from understanding what the true impact is, which is why we're not talking about 14 days. we're talking about weeks that we're going to have to change our lives. >> doctor, it's an incredible, incredible set of affairs we have to report on here night after night. we're looking forward to talking to you more as time goes on. thank you very much for your patience and for hanging out to talk with us tonight. we remind our viewers there is a nurses association asking people who may be hoarding masks, who may be buying them on the internet to turn them back in unopened to medical professionals. the vice-president is asking people who may have yuks masks,

same properties as medical masks, most of them, if they can turn them in to medical professionals. kind of an unbelievable series of events. forgive me. the hour has arrived. 10:00 eastern, 7:00 out west. we have polls closed in arizona. you heard from vice-president biden. it was too early as he saw it. well, officially, indeed, the official call from nbc news elections is this race, indeed, is too early to call. let's review. florida, we called that not long after the polls closed tonight for joe biden. what's going to be a serious win for him. illinois, joe biden, another state on the pile. let's take a look at the delegates awarded thus far tonight. it's an imprecise science at this hour. and the delegates awarded that

we know of thus far this primary season, it's quite a lead for joe biden. steve kornacki at the big board. steve. >> all right. arizona polls closing right now. two things i can tell you. first, we expect to get a lot of that vote pretty quickly in arizona. remember, heavy early voting there so a lot of it was in before election day. counted up, and i think ready to get at pretty quickly. new remember last week with washington state how we got a big bunch in the state in the first 20 minutes, we might be getting something similar here. while we wait for that i can take you through here. two big groups of voters in the arizona exit poll. white voters and latino voters together, that's going to make up the vast majority of the electorate in arizona. among white voters in arizona -- i keep saying exit poll. if i said it, this is a primary poll. it's a little bit different than we're used to doing. we don't have in-person interviews. we're making phone calls. joe biden 51, bernie sanders 32

among white voters. if you look among latino voters -- remember, sanders has been showing strength in latino voters. it's basically a dead heat. 45% for biden, 44% for sanders. so that is what we're seeing in this phone poll. the question now obviously becomes is that going to match up with these results? and again, i'm going to take a look here. we expect to get a pretty good chunk pretty quickly. so we're going to keep an eye on this one. again, the test out here in arizona, you saw in nevada and colorado and california, states with large hispanic populations. that's where bernie sanders has had his greatest strengths as a candidate in time around. it's one of the reasons his campaign was optimistic about arizona. we'll see. exit polls show strength for biden. >> steve, if there are geographic places in arizona where senator sanders is going to turn in his best showing, where are those places? do we know anything anecdotally how turnout was affected in

terms of same day vote today? >> we have report from vaughn hillyard saying maricopa county -- i'm going to say maricopa is the important county. maricopa is like two-thirds of the state. the population here, phoenix and the phoenix area, this is it. you go down to pima county where tucson is, you'll pickup a little vote there. the ball game really is maricopa county, phoenix and the suburbs. it's surprising what vaughn hillyard is reporting saying you have an increase in same-day turnout there in maricopa county. i'd be curious to find out more about that and see what happens when that comes in. that would certainly go against what our expectations are. arizona is heavy mail-in early vote state. we've seen that before. >> especially in maricopa, that's one of the places they announced the closure of polling places because of coronavirus. if indeed we did see a spike or increase in same-day vote, that's going to be fascinating to watch. thank you, steve. >> and sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

we've had vaughn hillyard in maricopa county invoked. look who we've got. that would be vaughn hillyard in maricopa county. vaughn, what have you witnessed there, same-day vote wise in the phoenix area? >> reporter: brian, rachel, you guys said it with steve here. i just got off the phone with the maricopa county official who said that the number of voters who came to take part in the election day here at these polling places today surpassed the number that came out for the 2016 democratic presidential primary. that is significant because even before today started, based off of early voting, mail-in voting, the number of voters, democratic voters who took part in in process, it already surpassed the 2016 total. that was before today. and over this weekend, maricopa county, you said it, rachel. they had announced last minute that they closed one-third of their polling locations and there is a frantic scramble to

send text messages to let people know polling places had changed. while there was chaos in other states that voted today, here across the state of arizona, there were no major concerns of social distancing. there was no concerns over lines, no concerns over crowding. we met an 82-year-old, sharon maxwell earlier who said she was coming out today with her cane and her mask and all. she voted in every election since she was 18 years old. i met sally who came out to vote. i met sarah boon, a younger woman, employee of a local apple store who said she came out to vote for bernie sanders because she understood how critical it was at this moment. if you're democrats, we should note also to take part in the democratic primary, rachel and brian, you had to be a registered democrat. so republicans would have to be independents if they wanted to be registered democrats. >> vaughn hillyard in phoenix 7:00 p.m. local time. vaughn, thanks.

10:00 p.m. local time in wilmington, delaware, that's where mike memoli is covering the traveling biden campaign. mike, we haven't really caught up with this since we aired it live, a kind of grainy disjointed web video against a black backdrop with american flags joined at the last second by dr. jill biden. but this is campaigning and victory speeches in the age of a pandemic, i guess. talk to me about what tonight does for the biden race and how they keep saying they want to pivot to the general. it's made tougher by a leading candidate still in the race. >> >> reporter: that's for sure, brian. make no mistake about it, if not for the fact that we are in this national emergency right now dealing with the coronavirus, you would be hearing i think tonight from the former vice-president from his campaign publicly what i'm hearing privately from his campaign tonight, which is that they have essentially view this race now

as over. over the last three weeks we've seen him take and then build on a delegate lead they now view as insurmountable. with no primaries now on the horizon at least for the next few weeks, we're seeing that biden campaign pivot very seriously into a general election mode. that pivot begins with a very important job, which is reaching out to and carefully managing this relationship with bernie sanders and with his supporters. that's why you've seen lines of communication open between the biden and the sanders campaign. initially over things like this weekend's debate and the logistics of that, but also potentially on a way forward. you heard the former vice-president tonight in his remarks saying that while he and bernie sanders disagree on tactics, they share a common vision. as you've seen him over the past few weeks with some of his former rivals, reaching out seriously and aggressively to his still in the race rival bernie sanders. you've seen him on a policy basis move on bernie sanders

like college affordability. at this point, brian, a note about the optics, aside from the saint patrick's day theme tie from the former vice-president, you saw him addressing the country not about a ball room in ohio, but his home in wilmington. we should add under the careful watchful eye under the secret service after a three-year hiatus. this is a biden campaign he spent the day talking to aides on the phone. if he was not able to campaign traditionally as we saw it, we're going to see biden act like a president if not campaign for it. >> mike memoli, with the biden campaign headquarters. thanks. i have the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio. mr. mayor, thank you, on a bitz busy night for coming by. i'd like to ask you about the best known number of active cases in the city of new york.

>> brian, i'm sorry to tell you this. the number has gone up. literally over 100 cases in the day. we're at 923 cases at this hour tonight, with ten people who passed away. >> 923 cases in the city? >> in the city alone, in the city alone, rachel. it's unbelievable how rapidly this crisis is growing right now. >> you made some headlines today with your comments that new york city may see a shelter-in-place order along the lines of what is being now instituted in the san francisco bay area. the governor later said that's not an option being currently considered. we asked him about it tonight. he said it is being talked about. what's the status there? >> look, this is something as i said today at a press conference, could only be done in conjunction with the state of new york. what i'm trying to say to people is look at this movement we're seeing. it's tragic, rachel. i didn't even know by the time i got to your show it would be 100 more people. what i said earlier today is this is moving very fast. we should all be concerned how we find a way to slow down the

trajectory of this virus. the idea of shelter-in-place has to be considered now. it has to be done between in our case city and state working together, respecting the state's role. what i would say to new yorkers this is the reality we're facing. get ready for the possibility because it's not so distant an idea at this point. even a week ago i would have said, no, that's impossible. but not any more. >> we saw the mta, the new york transit system today saying they are going to need some sort of bail-out with ridership having plummeted. they're in financial distress obviously. we're seeing businesses around the city shutdown. we're seeing the economic pain already in individual new yorkers' lives. when you think about something as serious as a potential shelter-in-place order, how long do you think the city can sustain that? where is the economic breaking point and the social dislocation breaking point in terms of how long people can plan to do something that is that big a change?

>> so, rachel, this is the essential question. to me, i am so worried about those negatives and those problems that would emerge. and i have to be clear with you. i think things are even worse than we realize in terms of the dislocation people have already experienced let alone what it will be. the loss of income already for everyday people. the fact that we don't know what the future of our supply chain will look like. i mean, you're talking about people who in any scenario kofrm no money to spend on food, on medicine, the basic. so my concern right now is if we don't see a federal intervention -- and i literally think the only example is the depression and the new deal to guide us. if we don't see an intensive federal intervention to provide income replacement, not just $1,000 check one time, or unemployment insurance, but a serious effort to keep people whole as possible. you will see family household budgets collapse.

and what i worry about when we think about shelter-in-place is, we're going to have to anticipate the possibility of a lot of people are going to need food brought to them, blot rougo their neighborhoods, not just soup kitchens, but mass feeding operations. i don't say that to be apocalyptic. i say it to be practical. as we anticipate what it will take to address the virus, we have to address the mass dislocation. local government cannot possibly do that on our own. >> i know it was with great reluctance you shutdown bars and restaurants. we saw what today was on the calendar. how can any city absorb taking every seating host or hostess, every waiter or waitress, every bus person, every cook, everyone in just that industry, taking them out of the economy and reducing their income to zero. it's just remarkable. >> brian, it was the second most

painful decision of that day after closing school for over a million kids, and knowing it very well will not come back for the entire school year. we're in a time i cannot even describe to you in terms of how different it is than where we were even a few weeks ago. but to that question, look, at this hour we're still allowing deliveries of food and take-out. so a certain number of people will be employed, thank god. this is a big industry in the city. but we are now entering a phase. over 100 cases in the day. we're so far from business as usual i'm feeling the employment and economic issues obviously now are secondary to how we try somehow to slow down this disease. >> your relationship with the governor has been horrendous and i'm being kind. can you -- >> i wouldn't go that far, but go on. >> can you guys either hug it out or appear in public? because to your point, your decisions are going to necessarily be jointed together. >> brian, we've had differences, but i want to be very clear.

when this crisis began, we sat together in front of the public and the media and we announced a whole host of measures together. every step i've said along the way i think the governor has done the right thing for new york state and new york city. we've agreed. we talked, our teams have tacked. there hasn't been a single policy decision of any size i've disagreed with. today i said something to my people because bluntly they need real talk. they don't need government officials to sugar coat what's going on. i need people to get ready for the moblt of something about to change. but i also said this has to be done with the state. it's the only way it works. if it happens, it's going to be because the state believes it's the right thing to do. >> when i say hug it out, figurative in a social distancing environment. >> far away, a social distance hug. >> bow it out. let me ask you a question that i honestly don't know your answer to, but i'm bothered by it. i'm bothered by the situation. we saw in ohio the governor say no elective surgeries. spoke with the governor of michigan she said it's under

consideration here. nationwide there is concern about new york city hospitals and the prospect of new york city health workers getting sick. they are already not being enough protective equipment. needing to call in the freaking military to help build facilities to add to hospital capacity here. >> yes, indeed. >> meanwhile new york hospitals as of today are doing elective surgeries, have not called them off. every time you're putting somebody in surgery for something they don't necessarily need to be doing, you're using that capacity and using that equipment and putting those health professionals in contact with patients and each other. what is going on? >> which is why yesterday under my emergency powers i signed executive order to end elective surgeries. they'll be ended by the end of the week. to be fair, a lot of them were things -- look, elective surgeries are still serious things in many cases. we did say if a doctor believes something might have bigger profound health ramifications, they can figure that out this week. but we want them cleared out. exactly what you said, not only to free up the equipment, we

need the beds, we need the medical personal to be 100% focused on what will be a torrent of coronavirus cases. i gave that order. here's the problem. the equipment and the supplies as you said, unless the federal government does something really immediately -- and i think the military is the only piece of the federal government that probably would act quickly enough. we have a finite supply of everything from surgical masks to gowns, surgical gowns to ventilators. this requires a type of mobilization of production that bluntly used to be something americans were used to in a war dynamic or obviously in the context of economic challenges. we have to go back to that. the only way we'll have enough produced, every factory can produce a ventilator right now should be doing it on a 24/7 basis and distribute it where the need is greatest. if the military is to be necessary be part of the logistics, bring in the military. right now the military is on the

side lines. you've got -- you've still got military officers at the border building a wall in the middle of a pandemic. every single one of them should be working on addressing coronavirus right now. >> if the federal government doesn't step up to do that, is that something that new york state, as a big relatively well off, well integrated state despite the regular conflict that comes among different leaders at different levels, is that something new york state could do? we've seen the state try to do stuff the federal government hasn't stepped up to do, even though you would think it would be a federal responsibility. >> you're right. the city and state are doing things that would have normally been the responsibility of the federal government. we're finding supplies where ever we can find them. not only in the and i or state, but beyond. anywhere in the country we can get them. we are mobilizing personnel right now. we're saying retired medical personnel, come in. we need you at the front. we're saying people have other types of credentials. we can convert them to medical service. we need you. we're doing the mobilization our nation used to do.

rachel, i've told my team do not assume any federal support. act like we are alone, just the city and state doing their best, because at this moment that's how it feels. >> to our north, governor of connecticut today begging retired nurses to come back into the health care system because they are needed. >> that's right. >> we're sorry for what you're dealing with. we're sorry for what we're all dealing with. handed to us and a colossal burden on the part of the city of new york. >> we'll keep fighting. we have no choice and we can't wait for a cavalry that might not be coming. >> thank you for spending time with us. when we come back, we're going to the pacific northwest, what has been the urban epicenter of this disease and that is seattle, washington. chantix is proven to help you quit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting. chantix reduces the urge so when the day arrives, you'll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye.

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washington which went first with the outbreak starting with the first confirmed coronavirus case, announced january 21st. they had the nation's first death as we reported earlier this evening. the country is up over 100 deaths and 6000 cases. washington has more experience with this than anyone, and no one in washington more so than the city of seattle. thank you very much for making time for us tonight. >> glad to be here. thank you for speaking with my mayor friends. >> we've spoken with mayors from

new york city to chicago to california, where the mayor has coronavirus in miami. as you see mayors in san francisco and san jose, south of you in california, starting to issue these very broad orders that people have to shelter-in-place, we're seeing the economies really shutdown and contract hard all around the country as the measures get more draconian. i wonder if there is a leadership lesson there from seattle in terms of the measures you had to put in place and the kinds of economic impacts you saw as a result. >> rachel, the economic impacts can't be overstated. today we got an analysis by an outside consultant who estimates that just in the two-month period that we're thinking this may last, there will be over 950,000 jobs that we could lose. >> wow. >> and half of those are by people who have not enough of a safety net, and probably 1.$3

billion in income that will vanish in a two-month period. so, the numbers are staggering. the health care numbers are just as staggering. so we've been really working hard to say, how do we protect the most vulnerable. in the health care system that's our first responders and health care workers. we have to get them the equipment they need and we have to bring down the number of virus. that's why we're taking the actions. as you know, there is no cure. there's no vaccination. the only weapon we have is to keep the distance from people who may be infected. it's the only thing that will make this sustainable for our health care system and the economic. we're using every tool we have. we had a great partnership with one of the store chains out here, safeway. we were able to put $800 in the pockets of families for food, and trying to build that resilience, because we know this is going to be a long, tough event for people. and we'll get through it, but

it's going to be so hard on so many people and so the more we can do up front to protect people, the better off all of us will be. >> as we see things like grocery stores and pharmacies obviously needing to stay open, needing to serve populations in an ongoing daily, even 24-hour way, even as so much else shuts down, i wonder what you think about the sort of new deal comments that mayor bill de blasio was making just moments ago, saying that the economic crunch here may have one allegory in u.s. history which is the great depression and the policy response may have one allegory, which is the kind of mobilization that we sought, among other things, to give people work and work to do that served the national interest in that time of intense and prolonged economic contraction. do you anticipate that people will be put to work doing things like delivering food, doing things like delivering prescriptions, doing things like public service work that may not

have been their field in the past before they got laid off, but that the city, the state, the country may now need in order to keep as many people alive as possible during this crush? >> i think absolutely. and i think we're going to have to convert workers during this period. the ones that can go out safely. but i think as city after city comes out of this and we see the drastic impacts of this, we are going to have to have a national effort that puts people to work. and we know how to do it. we need infrastructure that has to be built, but we have to have an economic recovery plan that is every bit as audacious as this disease is. we are going to be weathering this, and the nation is going to go through it at different times which is going to be so hard on the national psyche. so i think that the government is the only one that can scale it back, the federal government. i listened to brian talk about how people are trying to find protective masks. in our country, that's

ridiculous, but yet our hospitals are in desperate need right now today for protective equipment and our firefighters and police. we have to do better than that, and so as we come out of this, we need to plan. how do we rebuild as a nation and how do we build more equity in our system. >> talking about the need for protective equipment in your hospitals, obviously your health care workers on the front line there, your hospitals on the front line there, you have been tested before the rest of the country. i wonder if, again, there are lessons learned from the seattle and the washington state experience about keeping health care workers safe, about protecting hospital capacity so that you've got bed space and you've got intensive care bed space for the people who are most going to need it. are there things that you've thought through or that you're living through right now that you feel like the rest of the country needs to wake up to before it hits them the way it's hit you? >> absolutely. seattle, we pride ourselves, we love to be first in a lot of

things. this is one we would rather not have. i think the national government will get its act together better, but i will say to every mayor again and every governor, if you don't have the virus, if you don't think you do, you have it in your community. and if you think you just have a handful of cases, it's much bigger than that. i mean, we estimate -- our numbers right now as i told you before, is just 500, a little over 500 in our county region. but that's because we still don't have enough testing. our scientists believe that we have over 2000 just in our region. and so the extent of this is, i say if you think you may have to act in a week, act today, because for us, italy is just 11 days ahead of seattle and we've seen how quickly they've had to turn their dial. and so i would just urge as hard as it is -- and you know the impacts of these things -- hit the families who have the hardest times first and the workers who have the hardest times first. but at the same time, you've got

to bend that curve down because otherwise our hospital systems could collapse if that curve isn't brought down. and we've seen how that works in other countries and it's not -- that's what we have to avoid. so there are no good choices here. there's only good decisions. >> jenny durken of seattle. thanks for being with us. >> thank you, rachel. >> the point the mayor was just making, we are in epidemiological terms, what's happening in the united states is following less than two weeks behind what happened in italy. the reason that we keep talking about that with relation to keeping health workers safe and keeping doctors alive is because as chris hayes was noting earlier this hour, in italy where they have had hospitals overwhelmed, in some cases they've got 11 and 12% of the cases they're dealing with are health care workers themselves. and that means that the expansion of the epidemic coincides with and causes the crunch in medical resources that the epidemic is exacerbating.

those two things happening together is a terrible spiral. and we need to use the 10, 11 advance days notice of what italy is going through to prevent that from happening here. that's why you're literally seeing mayors and governors in the hardest hit parts of the country calling for the mobilization of the u.s. military to build up u.s. hospital capacity in order to keep our hospitals open and to keep them from being overwhelmed. all right. we have much more to come here tonight including one of the medical reporters who was at the forefront of reporting on the coronavirus, my colleague lawrence o'donnell is going to be joining us. stay with us. you can't claim that as a dependent!

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$primary night in america. as of right now, nbc news projects that the democratic presidential primary contest in arizona is too early to call. we have, however, had projections from nbc news about the other two states that voted tonight. both florida and illinois. nbc news is projecting will be won by former vice-president joe biden. there's the results thus far in illinois, with 65% of the vote in. we'll be watching arizona results as they continue to come in. florida almost all in, 93% of the vote. florida and illinois projected for vice-president joe biden tonight. let's bring into the conversation laurie garrett. she won the pulitzer prize for

her coverage of the ebola outbreak and what is the democratic republic of congo in the 90s. laurie garrett was one of the first to raise the alarm in january about how unprepared this white house was for the coming pandemic we are now living through. laurie garrett, thank you so much for being here tonight. it's good to have you here. >> hi, rachel. >> i know you've been able to watch some of our coverage, split screen coverage of the politics and the epidemic. i want to ask if anything you've seen is in the wrong direction or -- >> no, no, i think the coverage has been excellent. >> in terms of the united states' reaction at this point, obviously we had a very slow start and it's a slow start that has been hampered technically and up deepidemiological, we ha tests. you are starting to see serious

measures instituted around the country in terms of how to contain t. how would you judge the nation's response now? >> well, first of all, i would say to all your viewers, you only have a very short amount of time to decide where you want to hunker down and spend the duration of this epidemic. in some cities that time has already passed. such as in the bay area of northern california. here in new york city it could be within the next 48 to 72 hours. but there will be orders put down, travel will become more and more difficult, then eventually impossible. so people need to make choices. who do you want to hunker down with, and where, for the duration. >> and why would travel be restricted between states or in and out of cities or in and out of specific regions? >> it takes no imagination to see what will happen. you'll see suburbs thinking, we can wall ourselves off against the big city epidemic by blocking the main highway, the bridge, whatever, that connects our suburban community to the

urban community. you'll see that sort of decision tree going on along down the chain all over the country. we're already seeing in europe the sort of european federation falling apart as country after country suddenly erects border checks over what is supposed to be a common union. this sort of thing is going to escalate. i think the main message, rachel, is everything now in the united states is going to go very fast. you're going to wake up every morning to a different nation. and it's going to go this way day after day after day. it's going to be exhausting and relentless, way up into june. >> when we are in a pandemic situation, right, and the difference between that word and an epidemic is that it's meant to imply it's everywhere and you can't wall yourself off from it and there are no geographic sidelines. when you are in the environment that we're in as of just tonight where you've got epidemic -- excuse me, where you've got

confirmed cases in all 50 states, where even the states that were sitting pretty and feeling like it wasn't here yet, it's there now. it's all 50 states including alaska, including hawaii. when you're in this situation where it isn't just one place, where it is everywhere, would it be wrong headed for american regions, cities, states to try to use geographic isolation to save themselves or to flatten their ultimate -- >> it won't work. it won't work. and the price they will pay for such things as transporting food and transporting essential goods and supplies will be very severe. but people will do it anyway. there will be political reasons it happens. there will be wrong-headed epidemiology that will guide people. i mean, look at how long it's taken for the united kingdom to realize under boris johnson that the idea of just sort of riding the epidemic out with the minimum interventions and awaiting some miraculous arrival

of herd immunity, they stuck to this idiotic notion for an incredibly long time. it wasn't until yesterday when the imperial college report came out that showed, you know, thousands of people will die because of this that they finally turned their policy around. i think if science alone guided the reasoning of mayors, governors, presidents, prime ministers, legislators, we would have been way ahead of this long ago and, in fact, would have jumped hard on wuhan back in early january. but politics is in the driver's seat, not science. >> but let's say you, laurie garrett, can waive a magic wand. with all your expertise and everything you've reported, you could dictate science is going to guide the american response. >> woo-hoo. >> congratulations, madam dictator. >> anointed by rachel. >> in this hypothetical, if you

could do it, what would be the rules as of tonight? >> as of tonight, i would have coherent surveillance net in place so that i had a strategic idea of what kind of surveillance would guide policy wisest. so, for example, i would say in my community, if i had -- if i were running the city of new york, i would say, these six hospitals will be my sentinel hospitals. i order immediate testing of everyone in those hospitals dying notioned with pneumonia. i want to know if any of those unbeknownst to us is actually a covid case. while we're at it, let's go through some past samples from the past six weeks from patients that had pneumonia of unknown cause and see if any of that was hidden covid. >> because that will tell you the real prevalence in the population as opposed to this tip of the iceberg stuff we're getting from testing now. >> while you're at it, test the health care workers who have

been on those wards, exposed to those patients. if we find some positive, let's work our way through the chain, to their family memorandum brerz and their coworkers. >> i want to bring into the conversation now dr. michael osterholm, we spoke with earlier at the university of minnesota. doctor, let me ask you to respond a little bit to this conversation that we're having and any of the other conversations we had, particularly with the mayor of new york tonight, about what's possible and about what will have the greatest efficacy in terms of public policy and interventions here on out. >> i think it really is two things we need to look at, and i agree with laurie garrett very much. we need good surveillance. what we need to do is find out right when that curve is about to start to jump up. when that happens, you put the pedal to the metal. you help your community understand why these things are important. it is going to be a rolling set of outbreaks across the country.

it isn't going to be new york or seattle or san francisco at the same time, everywhere else. we want to make sure we have a national response, not one driven by just the first cities. they're critical, but they are only part of the entire national picture. >> let me put this question both to you, doctor, and to you, laurie, about testing. one of the things that i've been trying to understand is whether we should be doing antibody testing. obviously antibody testing doesn't test for the presence of the virus itself. it tests for the body's response to the virus. obviously the body takes a little bit of time to produce an antibody you have to test. you have to worry about that lag time. antibody test, as far as i understand it, are cheaper, have a quicker turn around time, but also might give you some sort of window into whether or not people were out there and among us who had been exposed, who had developed antibodies and are cleared in terms of being infected themselves. >> you're right. we would be using sir ology to

guide us. since no human being saw this before november, no human being should have specific antibodies against it. so anyone who does have antibodies was exposed in this recent time period on planet earth. so you're right, if we had antibody tests, we could get an idea how many human beings in wuhan were actually e posed over the last eight, nine weeks. >> who survived it and is now clear of it even though they never got tested. >> exactly. what's our baseline. and we could walk into seattle and figure out a baseline. the problem is show me the antibody tests. >> doctor, what's your reaction to that? >> i agree. i'm coming from a state of of minnesota, we are restricted to testing people who are hospitalized because we have so few tests. so i mean, this is really a very, very unfortunate situation. each week we keep being promised we're going to see more testing. it hasn't materialized.

we can't test because it isn't here yet. >> i've known you a long time. there are two tests we want to think about. the diagnostic test that has to be very accurate because you're going to guide treatment choice based on it. there is the idea of a surveillance test, it can be quick and dirty, meant to guide in the sense of what's your baseline. no one is working on a surveillance test. all we are talking about is a strict diagnostic test, am i right? >> right, there would be a series of tests, like with sirology. it will guide us in our policy areas, we don't have that test right now. >> dr. michael osterholm and laurie garrett. thank you. >> thank you. >> you asking i have to ask a thing, that was a manna from

heaven for me as a broadcaster. that's what i need to you do. thank you. let's bring somebody into the conversation who is in quarantine. dr. natalie azar joining us by skype. she's self-quarantined after a staffer on nbc's today show tested positive. she's a frequent contributor. i appreciate you taking the time. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> what's quarantine like? what's your advice for lots of americans around the country who have been told to self-isolate for two weeks santa ? >> i know, i'm not going to lie. i thought it would be more challenging. it's only the second day or the third day. so, yeah, you know, the kids are already home. they started online schooling on monday. my husband, who has never worked at day at home in his life in the 25 years i've known him, has been home a week-and-a-half. we're all here sort of staking out our areas where we're trying to get our work done during the day and moving kind much zombie

like around each other during the day. but, you know, we're going outside, we're taking the dog for a walk. you know, we're making the best out of it as you can imagine. >> so quarantine vet does or self-isolation does allow you to go outside to walk the dog. what are the rules that you're operating under either set by yourself or set by advice -- >> right. >> -- in terms of who you have contact with and where you go? >> right. well, yeah, and i had to look into this also just because, you know, i'm advising other people on it. i'm doing it myself. essentially, if you are a suspected case in your home, then you are in isolation in your home and you are to have a designated area in your home where you are and ideally one other household member is the designated one, if you will, to take care of you. and you have to just stay away from everybody, use your own

utensils and everything. if you -- so then there are these two terms that are either quarantine versus self-monitoring. they're kind of like a little bit the same idea, but different ends of the spectrum. self-monitoring is if you were, for example, in the same room with somebody, but really didn't have direct contact with them. examples of self-monitoring are vp pence. he's getting his temperature checked because he was in the same room with the individual who tested positive i think we heard about. i think the same room as the president was. neither of them went into quarantine. they had very little contact, so they were self-monitoring. and in quarantine, you're kind of -- you want to limit the amount of interaction with other people, but the other people in your household aren't in quarantine. for example, my family can go out to the grocery store and bring things home to me. and in terms of going outside, you know, where there is nobody around, and if there were

someone i'd cross the street, you would stay within more than 6 feet of other folks. i'm not supposed to be around other people. i'm around my family. i'm keeping my distance from my mom. she's 87. she lives with us. that's a concern of mine that one of us could bring it home to her. and i'm hugging my dog a lot. he's my best buddy because i know that i can't give it to him. and i know that he can't give it to me. >> and even if you could, try telling your dog to stay 6 feet away. >> exactly. he's like, everyone noknows i pt medical media journalism and pictures of my dog. that's my entire zbranl. >> that's my entire instagram. >> thank you so much and for helping us understand what it's like. we appreciate it. >> thanks, rachel. >> we have much more to come tonight. we are waiting results in the arizona primary.

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we continue to cover two big stories tonight, the ongoing democratic presidential primary where there were three primaries conducted today in florida, which nbc news projects will be won by vice president joe biden. in illinois, same deal. nbc projects it will be won by joe biden. and in arizona, where nbc news currently projects the race is too close to call.

joining me now here on set is my beloved colleague, lawrence o'donnell, host of "the last word." lawrence, i have a lot to talk to you about. we're going to bring michael beschloss into this conversation in a moment. let me get your reaction to what appear to be two big wins by vice president biden tonight in illinois and florida. >> it's two weeks in a row of devastating results for bernie sanders, and we've seen the same thing happen on both of these tuesday nights. and that is bernie sanders has nothing to say. he does -- he's not going to make a statement tonight. >> that's true. >> joe biden did make a statement, and it's the 21st century pandemic version of a victory night statement. he streamed it seemingly alone in a room in his house in delaware, and only at the very end of it did his wife enter the frame. none of that rousing hotel ballroom stuff. that's all over. >> mm-hmm. >> i don't know when we'll see that again. but bernie sanders is sending a very clear signal tonight and last tuesday night. he knows that there is not a way

through the primary process for him to win enough delegates or to have -- or to win the most delegates of the two candidates. he knows that. he knows that the quest for the most delegates is over and it's gone to joe biden. and he's doing, i think, already the slow ramp down to closing up this campaign. and i thought he did it actually very gracefully last time. i know a lot of people claimed about how long he hung in there against hillary clinton. but what i thought he was doing was letting his followers ramp down emotionally to the point where they could face what the reality was here. and so many of bernie sanders' voters last time and this time are voting for the first time in their lives. they're 18 years old. they're 21 years old. and that ramp down from your first loss on something that's as emotional as this, is something that the entire democratic party has to be careful of because you want those voters. you want all of those voters to

come out for the nominee in the fall. so the numbers for bernie sanders aren't there. you can't get -- you can't book a guest from the bernie sanders campaign to come on and tell you here's how we can do it. if we win 85% of the vote in the following states and 95 -- they won't even attempt to do it. >> the sanders campaign and senator sanders making this decision in the context of this pandemic and the public health concerns about ongoing primaries. to help try to put this in a little bit of perspective, including that decision by that candidate, i warrant nt to brin michael beschloss, presidential historian. it's great to see you. >> thank you. >> i know there is no historical parallel to the kinds of decisions that presidential candidates are making in the context of this pandemic, but i'm going to ask you for one anyway. >> really are not. i mean 1918, the horrible flu epidemic of 1918 under woodrow wilson, that was a time there was some discussion of

suspending the midterm elections. it didn't happen, but those elections went very much against woodrow wilson because he was a horrendous president to take us through a crisis like that. >> michael beschloss, it's lawrence o'donnell here. i want to ask you about something we saw today in ohio. that is a governor basically canceling an election day in ohio after courts telling him he can't do that and don't do that. i'm not sure where this leaves us and what the precedent is for this. this is, after all, a country that carried out a successful presidential election in 1864 during the civil war. >> absolutely. yeah, and many people said that lincoln should not run that year or some even said suspend the election and let abraham lincoln serve even longer. and i think, you know, yes, elections are held at the state level, but there's a pretty dangerous precedent when you begin to have governors on their own suspending elections for

whatever reason, especially given the tenuous state our democracy is in tonight. >> and, michael, but with that precedent literally i can't believe i'm saying this, but with the civil war precedent and with the constitutional explicitness in terms of how our national elections are set, it's literally impossible under our constitution for the november election to be called off for any purpose by any individual person. >> that is absolutely true, but if you're going to let your mind begin to wander, you know, what if there should be a national emergency with martial law, god forbid, things like this? people will suggest this. it would be very much against the constitution, should not happen. >> michael beschloss, nbc news presidential historian. sometimes we go to you on good days. those are rare days. >> please, please. >> thank you. >> great to hear your voice. stay well. >> and lawrence o'donnell, thank you as well. our msnbc coverage continues of this split-screen night. our national response to the coronavirus crisis unfolding

alongside primaries in what was supposed to be four, is now three states. we've got an nbc news projection for joe biden in both florida and in illinois, but we are still watching arizona, where it is too early to call. stay with us. ♪ ("rocket man" instrumental) if you looked at america like a bird and that was all you knew, would you really understand it with just that point of view? we've got a different way to look at it, from right here on the ground. we don't just see united states we see united towns. from where we sit, just down the street, near the post office, by the park, when we stop and look around, what we see are sparks.

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they grew their first tomatoes right here. and when it snows, the kids go sledding right there. the frels family runs with us on a john deere 1 series tractor. because this is more than just land, it's home. search "john deere 1 series" for more. well, good evening once again. we're covering these dual stories at this hour. both of them will change life in our country, though in different ways. while covering a spreading pandemic, we are also tonight covering three state primaries in arizona, illinois, and florida. first to the urgent health crisis. we have now entered a new stage in this nation's battle against coronavirus. the virus has spread now to all 50 states and the district of columbia. death toll has crossed north of 100. tonight there are over 6,000

confirmed cases in these united states. there's now the possibility that new york city, the largest urban center in our country, may soon see more severe measures to contain this virus. >> this is moving very fast. we should all be very concerned about how we find a way to slow down the trajectory of this virus. the idea of shelter in place has to be considered now. it has to be done between, in our case, the city and state working together, respecting the state's role. but what i was trying to say to new yorkers is this is the reality we're facing now. get ready for the possibility because it's not so distant an idea at this point. even a week ago i would have said, no, that's impossible, but not anymore. >> what a series of events. that was mayor de blasio here in this studio not long ago. also tonight let's look to the west. the governor of kansas has announced all public schools will be shut for the remainder of the school year. the governor of california warns most schools in that state will likely face that same fate.

in washington, the trump white house grappling with the economic fallout from -- think about it this way -- a nation forced to shut down to fight a pandemic. the government may start by giving money directly to americans. >> we'll tell you what we've heard from many people and the president said we can consider this. the payroll tax holiday would get people money over the next six to eight months. we're looking at sending checks to americans immediately. and what we've heard from hardworking americans, many companies have now shut down whether it's bars or restaurants. americans need cash now, and the president wants to get cash now. and i mean now in the next two weeks. >> and the following made people snap to attention tonight. nbc news has confirmed that same man, the treasury secretary, told republican senators on the hill, unemployment could reach 20% if congress fails to enact the stimulus measures.

we already know we are looking at a huge hit to gdp. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says his chamber won't leave washington until it passes a coronavirus aid bill that was already passed by the house, even if some of his republican colleagues are not fully on board. >> a number of my members think there were considerable shortcomings in the house bill. my counsel to them is to gag and vote for it anyway even if they think it has some shortcomings. >> news of potential federal intervention did help stocks recover some of the ground lost after monday's brutal sell-off. even so, there is still a lot of uncertainty tonight about how long we'll be in this new kind of normal. somebody there? let's instead turn to the results in the three races of this night. arizona, too early to call.

illinois, joe biden the projected winner. and in florida, joe biden the projected winner. steve kornacki over at the big board. and, steve, as you've been pointing out all evening long, part of the story here is how the delegate math changes in a rather dramatic way. >> yeah. i mean it's a huge night for joe biden in terms of the delegates just based on that massive landslide he had in florida, he will net, get more than 100 delegates more than bernie sanders, it looks like, out of florida. so just on that one alone. illinois he's going to win by, you know, probably a couple dozen there. then we're waiting on arizona. i keep looking back. if i look like i'm nervously darting my eyes here, it's because what we're seeing happen in arizona right now is that all of the counties around the state, their polls closed an hour ago. there is a state law that prevents them from reporting any results for an hour after polls close. that hour just passed. they're filling in right now. here we go. this is what i was waiting for. this is the ball game.

this is maricopa county, and just right now, three-quarters of the vote for maricopa county, which is well over half the state -- this is phoenix and the suburbs just all reported in, and joe biden is leading this by double digits, you see. this is biden, 42%. sanders 30%. >> hey, steve? something that often happens. i have to interrupt you, and that is for this. >> that's why. >> election alert from nbc news. we are projecting that when all the votes are counted in the state steve was just walking us through, in arizona, joe biden will indeed make it a clean sweep, 3 for 0 tonight and be declared the winner of the arizona democratic primary. steve kornacki, as you were saying. >> well, that was it. the decision desk was waiting on exactly what i was waiting on here. it was just a question of maricopa county. this is about 60% of the vote in the state of arizona. it is phoenix.

it is the phoenix suburbs. it is population dense, massive, sprawling, all these things. and what happened is you've got weeks here of mail-in voting coming in, early voting in arizona. the bulk of the vote, like three-quarters of the vote in arizona was cast before election day. so what happens is they're getting it in. they're tallying it. they're getting it ready to release as soon as the polls close. but i say as soon as the polls close, they have to wait an hour. so the polls closed at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 p.m. local, and the state law in arizona says, okay, you've got to wait an hour now to release it. so basically all these counties around the state have the vast majority of their vote tabulated and ready to go, and they're just looking at their clocks waiting for that one hour. so that's what happened there. about 62 minutes after polls closed, you saw maricopa county came in, a double-digit lead here with still a little bit more to come in for biden. if you're winning double digits in maricopa county, you're going

to be winning the state of arizona. again, this was sanders and his campaign, this was their best shot today. this was their best shot demographically. this is a state where you have a large hispanic population, where sanders has done well with hispanic voters in other states. our phone poll tonight shows sanders and biden basically tying with hispanic voters. that's good for sanders, but he needed better than that among hispanic voters. bide erwining the white vote by double digits. this is another biden win. the delegate haul tonight is probably going to push him to an advantage. let's see where it sits at. it's sitting at over 300 right now. the national delegate race, joe biden has gone over 1,100. that is a lead of more than 300 over bernie sanders. you pick youragektive. that is daunting if you're bernie sanders to try to overcome something like that. and tonight just showing you different demographic patterns, different geographic patterns, but the common thread there, biden's winning them all. >> and, steve, a potentially

unfair question from me. i'll accept ballpark. i'll accept top of your head. how many of those blue biden states did he win every county in? >> you know, the number -- >> i knew this was going to be hard. >> mississippi, alabama -- i'll tell you what. illinois we're waiting on. this is the one county in the state where sanders has got a shot, and it's -- it's 100% now. sanders is going to win a county in illinois. 48-45. this is where the university of illinois, urbana-champaign. this was sanders by 32. it's going to be sanders by 3. he got shut out in michigan, missouri, alabama, mississippi, all those states, but not in illinois. >> steve, thanks. claire mccaskill, former democratic senator from the great state of missouri, happens to be in the great state of missouri tonight. such is the nature of social distancing. claire, what i'd like to do with you is because we're taking part in this coverage during a national emergency, which is the

fault of a pandemic, can we just take a second and talk about the scope of the turnaround in the campaign and the fortunes of joe biden? >> yeah. there are so many things that have contributed to this. one is a lot of the candidates getting out of the race and coalescing behind joe biden. certainly jim clyburn and what happened with the african-american vote in south carolina will be looked at as a pivotal moment. but tonight i was reminded how presidents are supposed to act in a crisis. we have a president right now who lies, then hits the micro fine and lies again, and then hits the twitter thing and lies again. and when you're in a crisis, americans want to be reassured, and it's hard to get reassurance from a liar. joe biden tonight was calm. he was presidential.

he was reassuring. i thought it was his best speech of his campaign, and that is because of the times we find ourselves in. and i think you're going to see opening up bigger and bigger margins. if bernie decides to stay in the race, and i think you're going to see polling, really more separation between him and the liar in chief that is in the oval office right now as this crisis rolls along and americans want clear direction and clear information and the facts. >> claire, the president today -- and he said this with a straight face. he said, i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic as if none of his campaign of diminishment had ever happened. >> yeah, and it's so unbelievably sick because it's like he thinks none of us notice that he's lying.

like he thinks we're all too stupid to know that when he says stuff like this, we're going, no, no. you're lying. and i just want to mention briefly, brian, what's going on in the senate tonight. i've been talking to some of my former colleagues, and rand paul is up to his tricks again. the house passed what was the first, i think, of several measures to try to help americans at this time, and it came over from the house. they passed it last week. and, you know, mitch didn't get around to calling the senate into session, and monday passed, and now tuesday has passed because rand paul wants to vote on ending the war in afghanistan. it is so outrageous that rand paul is being allowed to hijack the senate tonight and the bill that will include more testing, which we've all talked about all night as being so important, is going to languish for another day to try to get rand paul to

behave like a grown-up. it is not a good night for the united states senate, and it will be interesting to see how the stimulus package is being talked about, is handled in the senate because they can't even do this much less the giant package that mnuchin rolled out today. >> and, claire, one more thing. i just have to ask. i keep thinking of all the hourly, the service employees, the people in the city where you are, places like la cleed's landing in st. louis where it's kind of a smaller-scale new orleans with food and music, and that's what life is about there. it's the backbone of the economy in more than one st. louis neighborhood. what happens when all those incomes are stopped, cut off? >> you know, i feel personally about this. i worked my way through college and law school as a waitress. i spent years waiting tables, and i understand what this means

to millions of americans just in the restaurant and bar industry to say nothing of all the other small businesses that are travel-related, tourist-related, that are going to shrivel up if we do not get help to them first. you know, let's focus on the workers, not focus on big corporations that have squandered their tax cut on stock buybacks. but let's focus on the workers and get them help and tell rand paul to sit down so we can get to it. >> senator claire mccaskill in st. louis, the gateway to the west. and let's change our focus all the way to the west. more cities are taking these unprecedented steps to try to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. monterey county, california's shelter in place order goes into effect tonight at midnight. further north, san francisco, as you know, became the first and largest city to propose such a

mandate early this morning. almost 7 million people are now under orders to stay home. for at least the next three weeks, people are prohibited from leaving unless for essential needs. essential government services including transit, police, fire, along with health care services, grocery stores, pharmacies, bank, gas stations, they will remain open. people can leave their homes to go on walks, to exercise, or take a pet outside, but they must maintain what's now become common, this six feet of buffer area in social distancing. nbc correspondent jake ward lives in the bay area's restricted area. he's with us once again tonight from his home. jake, it's almost dark disney movie creepy to have to report that you're allowed to go outside. you're allowed to take the family dog for necessary relief. but while outside, at least

maintain the spacing called for. >> reporter: that's right. i mean, brian, there's a sort of an awkward social dynamic that's unfolding here where you talk to people from a great distance. you don't congregate. you certainly don't hug anybody. all of that is there. you know, there's a sort of an inconvenience that comes with all of that, but when i think about how other countries have had to take steps to lock off national borders, in the case of china, shut down whole cities not just in the way we're experiencing now, this inconvenience of staying home, but shutting down highways, bringing out military rule to shut off any kind of transit among people, it is amazing to imagine, wow, that stuff is just starting to begin to trickle into our lives here in the united states. at this point this is an inconvenience, but really not that much more than that when i think back across all the examples we've seen from across the world in terms of dealing with the need to really lock life down in order to slow down this pandemic. >> i know you're the parent of

little ones. we talked about it earlier this evening, and on social media i keep coming across various ideas to help parents with this new notion of homeschooling. somebody in the last couple hours asked if pbs wouldn't be perfect for this kind of role, and i'm guessing there would be an hour per grade going on through the day. but of course no two classrooms even in the same grade, no two schools, no two school districts are going to be on the same lesson plan. but to prevent slide in learning, which normally happens just in summertime, happens disproportionately to low-income kids, to prevent that slide, i suppose any assist would be welcome by parents. >> reporter: i think that's right, brian. i mean for us, right, our children just want to bet moments ago in the room next to where i'm standing here. so they're thrilled. they're out of school. they get to hang with us. but it's suddenly on us to try

to keep their minds moving, right, to keep it all happening. but for me the greater concern, i think, is the conversation i had earlier today with one of the big outreach programs in san francisco that deals with homelessness there, a program called glide. and they were pointing out that the hundreds if not thousands f of -- that makes this situation inconvenient for a family like mine. but the need to get food and shelter and the rest of it. >> as a fellow parent, i just realized you should probably keep it down if you're trying to get those two little ones down for the night. jake, thank you very much for being so accommodating and welcoming in the confines of your home starting tonight for a good long while. we appreciate it. we are very fortunate to be joined now by the mayor of the city of san francisco, london breed. and, mayor breed, i watched your announcement, and i watched you come to a critical part of it

when you asked people, you warned people not to panic. and i'm so curious tonight to get your assessment of compliance, what is in effect the end of day one. >> well, it looks like so many people have rosen to the occasion and are complying with the order. you see people walking around a lot more, but they are exercising social distancing. there are still challenges in our grocery stores and in other places, but for the most part, the streets were pretty empty other than people walking around, walking their dogs, riding their bikes, on buses. our buses were fairly empty, so i think for the most part people are complying. they realize the importance of this, how significant it is, and we are adjusting. >> there's reporting that it took the aides around the president to kind of make him

concentrate on a worst-case scenario loss of life in a study to get him to take this more seriously. for you as the mayor of an important and large and sprawling city and financial center, was there a moment, was there a presentation where you left the room and said, we've got to do this? >> well, back in february, february 25th to be exact, when my team came to me with some of the information they had, because we had already operated our emergency operations center back in january to prepare for this. and so we were getting daily updates. we were provided with information, and when i declared a state of emergency on february 25th, i knew then we were in for a major challenge. and people were wondering, well, what are you doing? we don't even have a case yet in san francisco. the fact is we knew that it was only a matter of time, and if we didn't alert the public, provide

the most accurate, scientific data necessary to make sure people were prepared, then we were going to be in for a real challenge with our public health system here in the city. and so everything that we've done has been in collaboration with our public health officers, some of the best in the country, to try and prevent the spread. we have taken steps that i know are unprecedented, but they are necessary. and i think it's important for other cities throughout this country because this is not just san francisco. it's not just the bay area. it's not just california. we need to take drastic steps now in order to avoid, you know, the increase in the number of people who end up with the coronavirus. and that's what this is about. we want to slow the spread. we don't want it to get out of control where we can't handle the capacity in our hospitals. >> how often every day do you talk to the governor? >> the governor and i

communicate somewhat on a regular basis, but i probably talk to my public health director more throughout the day than anybody else. >> mayor london breed, thanks for being patient with us, and we wish you the very best with the enormous challenge you've been handed. and please stay well. >> thank you. we're going to take a break in our coverage. when we come back, we're going to talk about other aspects of this crisis we're covering, other aspects of tonight's political ramifications following the primary vote in three cities. the dire warnings in this country about hospital shortfalls. what we need and by how much will it fall short of what we've got. ♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan.

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i'm really sorry to tell you this because the number has gone up literally over 100 cases in the course of the day. we're at 923 cases at this hour tonight with 10 people who have passed away. >> 923 cases in the city? >> in the city alone. >> wow. >> in the city alone, rachel. it's unbelievable how rapidly this crisis is growing right now. >> as coronavirus cases surge in new york state, new york city, across the country, there's growing concern over the availability of hospital beds and medical equipment. tonight "the washington post" reporting the defense department offering health and human

services up to 5 million single-use face masks, 2,000 ventilators, and 14 testing labs. with us for more, dr. kavita patel. she served as a senior aide to valerie jarrett in the obama white house, advising on health reform and economic recovery. also happens to be a practicing primary care doc at johns hopkins. and dr. natalie azar, nbc news medical contributor who is with us via skype because she is currently self-quarantining at her home and social distancing as we all must. dr. pa at the titel, i'd like t with you with a very simple reminder, and this is often unpleasant to hear. for the folks watching, it's coming up on 11:30 eastern time, 8:30 out west. what's life going to look like in our country? let's give it two to three weeks from now. where are these numbers that seem astronomical? new york city has fully

one-sixth of all the known cases in this country. where are these numbers going to be? >> brian, these numbers are going to elevate at least twentyfold. we're talking -- you've already heard the governor of new york try to give people a stark reminder. 18 million new yorkers, anywhere from 40% to 60%. remember, a lot of those people will be completely asymptomatic, so these people should not all end up in the hospital. but we're talking just in the state of new york alone, potentially 9 million people. so these numbers are absolutely going to go up unless a lot of the measures that many of the governors and mayors who truly are the heroes out of this story are taking right now to shelter in place and to do that kind of proverbial flatten the curve. >> dr. patel, we're starting to hear the term "herd immunity." we're starting to hear arguments, well, if everybody

gets it, that's the only way we can arrest its growth. can you explain this term to a lay audience, including me? >> sure. it's certainly not something that even for many medical professionals is kind of easy to get. but for public health professionals and people with that background, herd immunity, just to be very simplistic about it, is the concept almost like the flu or like the common cold, brian, that the more people that get it, then the more people who have either through a vaccine or actually having the disease can actually spread kind of person to person immunity. and so that's the concept of herd immunity. and really this happens through having kind of passive -- it's something that we see with infectious diseases, and it's something that you saw the uk, up until recently, was advocating for by keeping schools open. i think the real issue is that we don't know enough about this virus to make that prediction. you've had guests that talked about that.

the second thing is that we actually are not sure what the fatality rate is, and it's way too early to think about how we could potentially, without a vaccine, without any sort of treatments, safely and responsibly encourage herd immunity. and we also do think -- i think you've had guests in the last two hours that have talked about the fast-changing nature of this virus. the virus we see today is not going to be the virus that we see in six months, and that's because it's a very different type of organism. >> and, dr. azar, you know because you've been experiencing it for the last couple of days what the front lines are like here in new york, working in a big company in new york city, in a building known around the planet, which markets itself as a magnet to tourists. we keep a skating rink out back in the winter. and that makes us kind of a

target within a target in the city of new york. are you confident that your charges, the folks you've been advising inside this network, this company, have done all they can to arrest the spread and fortify themselves? >> you mean here at nbc? >> yeah. >> yeah. i think -- i think they really, really, really acted appropriately. i mean we used the term "out of an abundance of caution". >> mm-hmm. >> a lot. but i really believe that they did in this case. as far as we know, the exposure that we all had was truly minimal, and i had, you know, conversations with my hospital colleagues about whether or not my exposure at nbc would have qualified for quarantine as a medical professional. and, in fact, it probably wouldn't have.

so i theoretically could have, you know, gone and worked this week and seen my patients based on the level of exposure that i had, which i think is interesting. so i think that nbc, again -- i think nbc was very, you know, very quick to say, you know what? we're reporting on how to do this. we have to do this right. and, yeah, so, you know, you can never be too careful with something like this. you know, there's no monday morning quarterbacking. we know just how contagious this virus is. we're learning more and more just how contagious it is in the asymptomatic period. so, yeah, i mean i think they did everything right. and, you know, i'll be back in both offices hopefully next week. you know, interesting you bring that up, brian, because we're making adjustments on the hospital side too every single day. we're trying to get our telemedicine, our virtual care up and running by thursday, which is kind of unprecedented because most of us don't have that already, you know, implemented in our practices.

some of the younger, newer practices do. we didn't. you know, so everything is being modified literally on a daily basis as much as we're hearing the news changing on a daily basis. >> doctors, i want to thank you very much, first of all, for staying up late with us after a long day and for helping us understand this and pass it along to our audience. dr. kavita patel, dr. natalie azar, we greatly appreciate it. when we come back, we're going to switch over to our political coverage, talk about what happened tonight in three of our 50 states. the dramatic come-around of the campaign of joe biden and voter turnout, what we've learned. guys, figuring out who counts

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welcome back, and let's speak candidly, shall we? a funny thing happened to this guy on super tuesday. he started winning and he has never looked back since. in florida, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in illinois, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in arizona, in the desert southwest, nbc news projecting joe biden, making it 3-0. not a bad tuesday night. the unknown, of course, was supposed to be our fourth state. that's ohio. we won't find out there until june, but steve kornacki already

knows a lot at the big board. hey, steve. >> hey, brian. yeah, a couple things we can tell you here. first on the delegate count, the national delegate count, you see that lead for biden there. still adding them all up tonight, but over 300 now. 315 the margin. if you look at this same combination of states, this same point in the race, in the pledged delegate count in 2016, biden -- excuse me -- sanders running against hillary clinton, hillary clinton did not get a lead like this in the pledged delegate count over bernie sanders. he never got ahead of her, but he didn't fall this far behind in the pledged delegate count. so i think that's significant, the distance biden is starting to open up here. the other thing we've been keeping in mind is the question of trountd. the coronavirus. was that going to affect it? the answer here is yes but in an interesting way. let's start in arizona where again we just got a bunch of the vote in, the early vote out there. that's the key to this. how much early voting there is in the state of arizona.

so two-thirds of the vote is now counted. this adds up to about 471,000 votes that have been cast so far, counted so far, with more to be tallied. look at this. that is significantly ahead of the 2016 primary turnout in arizona. they're at 471 now. they're still counting them. that number is probably going to be north of 500,000. you look, it was barely 400,000 in 2016, so they're going to be up, and they're going to be up significantly in arizona. i said, remember, that's a heave mail-in voting state, a heavy early voting state. take a look at florida. florida is also a pretty heavy early mail-in voting state. you can see with 93% in here, it's a little over 1.7 million. it is now past the 2016 level. it's going to rise a little bit more. it's going to be a modest increase in florida over the 2016 level. if you can remember, a couple hours earlier when we were starting to look at the florida results, our decision desk had a higher estimate for what the total turnout was going to be in

florida. what happened was that early vote, that mail-in vote was a very big number. the same-day vote there in florida, comparatively microscopic. so you're not going to see more than 2 million. you're going to see an increase because of the early and the mail-in voting, but it's going to be a modest increase. then you get to the third state tonight, and that is illinois. illinois is not the heavy early, mail-in state that these other two are. we're up to 84% of the vote here in illinois. right now, that adds up to about 1.2 million votes that have been counted. look at what it was in 2016. it was over 2 million. so that number, about 1.2 million, is going to rise. it's not going to rise a ton because what we're seeing here is what we saw in florida in a lot of these counties. that same-day vote today, it was a trickle in terms of people going out to the polls. you're just seeing here across the state of illinois for different reasons, if you look down here in little egypt,

southern illinois, you're seeing 40% reductions in turnout. some of that is rural voters who just aren't interested in the democratic party anymore. but even in these suburbs, these densely populated suburbs outside chicago where you saw huge democratic surges in 2018, you're seeing here turnout actually down from 2016 in places like that, in these college counties where of course school has been canceled for the last week or so because of the coronavirus, you're seeing turnout reductions as well. so illinois, unlike arizona and unlike florida, when they count these all up, you're going to see a pretty significant decline, probably like 20% in the turnout in illinois, and that is a coronavirus effect. there's no question about it. >> steve, a nonpartisan question about process. tell me why all 50 secretaries of state in all 50 states shouldn't begin a martial plan as of now to move their elections to a lock cinch even

if people are not allowed out, not allowed to congregate. >> i got to think for the general election, just in this climate we're in right now, that's where the conversation is going to move rapidly, at least for states to put the option on the table so that if you get to the summer, if you get to the fall and it looks like we're going to be in any situation like we are right now, that they have the option to go to some kind of mail-in. i suspect the conversation is going to be moving there rapidly and a lot of people are going to point to exactly what we're seeing tonight in terms of these turnout patterns as the reason why. >> all right. steve kornacki, as always worth his weight in gold. thank you so much. joy reid is back with us, host of a.m. joy, well known around here, as is former obama campaign manager david plouffe, who happens to be in the bay area tonight of all places, probably made up the excuse of walking the dog as a way of making it to a television studio and looking essential. joy reid, i'd like to start with you. we have a front-runner, joy. i think you've seen the map.

i think by now you know the shade of biden blue i'm talking about. two-part question. what do you think should happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? what do you think will happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? >> well, you know, i hate to tell the party what to do, but i think what is going to happen, what you're going to start to see are democrats start to move on from the primary. i think that the biden campaign, what they must do is find a way to bring down the bernie sanders, you know, supporters, his hard core supporters are going to be heartbroken. i worked an election where we lost. it is very difficult to walk away. and in the case of what we were doing in '04, it wasn't that the people i was working with had some great attachment to john kerry. it was a great attachment to ending the war in iraq and to defeating george w. bush. and when we lost, i can remember

that election night having an older woman sort of crying into my arms, you know. she couldn't believe that it wasn't possible to defeat a president who in the minds of the people in that room had lied us into a war in which a lot of people died, you know, in a lot of people's minds for something that didn't make any sense. so, you know, it isn't easy. and the sanders supporters are going to have a difficult walk now. and i think for the biden team, they've got to think about are there issues and ideas that sanders has put forward that he can adopt in a way that might bring some of those -- at least some of them or most of them in, and can he with the pick of his vice presidential running mate bring them in and excite some of those younger voters? a lot of them are younger voters of color. they're people who are excited, you know, as lawrence said earlier, some of them are first-time voters. so he has to think about that. i don't expect bernie sanders to necessarily walk away from the campaign in the near future.

but, you know, i wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot less active campaigning. but if i could just say, you know, just on a kind of a bigger picture sense, brian, i think a lot of voters today and just people i've been talking to and really spent a lot of time talking to people in florida. people are really coming to grips with the incredible cost of having elected a man like donald trump to be president. i think what's helping and what's driving this biden surge is that people are reckoning with that cost. you know, people sort of felt with barack obama as the backdrop, that they sort of had all of these options, you know, that you could sort of make all these choices about going to icon claz many or do you really want hillary? i don't think she's good enough for me. and people made those choices with obama as the backdrop. with trump here, this was like hiring william shatner to be an airline pilot because he was james t. kirk and he piloted the enterprise. this man has no capacity to lead

this country. he fired the pandemic office and then lied and said he didn't. now the video is out showing, yes, he did. he doesn't understand government. he's got a guy working for him like steve mnuchin, who thinks you can do a payroll tax cut. folks i'm talking to in the restaurant industry, they're going to have to lay their people off. if you aren't getting a paycheck, a payroll tax cut does absolutely nothing for you. what's the poinlt of that? i think the republican party has to start to rethink. if you don't believe in government, you cannot govern. and someone like donald trump as president is absurd in this sort of situation. i think biden is benefiting from the fact that he is a man of government. he is a man who understands and respects government. and so i think that, you know, he is on his way to getting that nomination. he just has to figure out a way to sort of soothe the bernie supporters in a way that can bring as many of them in as he can. >> okay, david plouffe, as joy just plainly put it, joe biden is widely seen as a guy on his

way to claiming the nomination. talk about the downside of the optics of starting tomorrow morning, after a 3-0 victory by biden, the optics of a sanders campaign continuing, lumbering along, and the backdrop couldn't be more serious. it's a national emergency. >> right. well, joe biden is the democratic nominee. the general election is set. it's joe biden versus donald trump. so bernie sanders may continue to campaign. i think joe biden needs to be incredibly respectful of that. to joy's point, they're going to have to work as hard as they'll work on anything to bring the sanders folks in. the but the general election is in 7 1/2 months. it's one of the most consequential elections in american history if not the most. it was already the case before the coronavirus. when joe biden -- he can't spend in his campaign, can't spend a minute or a dime in wisconsin, in season, in ohio, which polls

suggest could be competitive. that's not focused on the general election. there's building the campaign. there's deciding which battleground states you're going to target. there's obviously being the one voice, narrating trump's mishandling of this crisis. but the american people are also going to focus on once we get past the immediate health crisis, this is going to be an economic catastrophe, one of the worst this country may have ever faced. so joe biden's going to have to provide answers for people, not just about how he's going to triage the moment, but how we're going to rebuild our economy. so it's irresponsible not to begin focusing on the general election. you can do it in a respectful way. that work has to happen right now because what's clear over the last few weeks is if you give donald trump a second term, my goodness, we literally may not survive it. >> people also need in that party -- i keep hearing -- to come together. society owes a debt to jim clyburn for giving us a new term of art. there's every other political endorsement, and then there's getting a clyburn, the most

emotional and sincere endorsement most of us have ever seen in modern politics. where do you think, if it's inevitable that bernie will be saying some form of "i support joe biden, you should too" -- where do you think that's going to fall on the clyburn spectrum? >> well, right. the clyburn, we'll be talking about that as long as we talk about politics. but, listen, it's important. i mean i think first of all, i think bernie sanders and joe biden have real affection for each other. bernie sanders has talked so powerfully about the stakes of this election, and we can't have a second donald trump. so i don't think this will just be words. i don't think this will just be going through the motions. i think on day one and the rest of the campaign be out there doing everything he can. it's important. i think the question is timing. if i was the biden campaign, you can't push sanders out. he's going to decide when is the right time to do this. we do have primaries in late april. who knows if those will occur? so i think part of this is when

is the next time there's going to be a vote. so if the pennsylvania primary does happen -- and i have big doubts whether it will -- what you don't want is joe biden spending a lot of money or time in that primary. we need to start building in pennsylvania to win back those 20 electoral votes. it will be a big moment when it happens and there's no doubt that the biden campaign needs not just that moment. they need to learn from the sanders campaign. sanders' campaign is super savvy digitally. they've shown the ability to reach young people, not just people in their 20s, people 45 and below. if i was the biden campaign, there's a lot of talent in the sanders campaign, and i would look to restock my chain with some of the folks there and then have bernie all over the country. >> we should emphasize bernie sanders and his supporters have earned their role, their place in the conversation. we should also emphasize we realize this is a painful conversation during the heat of battle in the political business. to our friends, joy reid and

david plouffe, thank you, gang, for staying up late with us. we greatly appreciate it. when we come back, a man who knows his history. we'll ask him if we've ever seen anything like this before. efore. but, i just don't think you need a separate private plane. but i, but i want it! hey, buddy. what's the damage? i bought it! the waterfall? nope! a new volkswagen. a volkswagen?! i think we're having a breakthrough here. welcome to caesar's palace. thank you. so w>>i'm searching for info on options trading, and look, it feels like i'm just wasting time. wasted time is wasted opportunity. >>exactly. that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. see, you just >>oh, this is easy. yeah, and that's >>oh, just what i need. courses on options trading,

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glory: reflections on the last word of jesus christ from the cross." jon, we don't anything quite that lofty tonight bauut i was thinking about you today because if we're not careful, people are going to start reading history books. people are issuing kind of vague exhortations about all this company has been able to do and pull off over the years, most of it in the name of warfare. and i was thinking about willow run, which was once an auto assembly line, but once it was converted, you can make an argument it helped us win the second world war by producing a new b-24 every hour. talk about that part of the american spirit that we haven't tapped into to make a single train in the last 40 years. >> that's exactly right. you know, franklin roosevelt would pick those numbers off the top of his head. he would say, we're going to make 10,000 planes a week, and i

think it was sam rosenman, his speechwriter said, where did you get that number, sir? he said, i made it up. but we did it. and we're in a situation, i think it's a little bit more like britain in world war ii in that we are all truly in this, and we're actually combatants. you know, the luft wa sa was coming after the brits. this virus is coming after us. it's a full mobilization. it's a civilian struggle. really we would have had this in the cold war if things had gone in a tragic direction. and the great news is when we actually put our minds to something, we've nearly always done it. and i think a part of it is the spirit as you say. i think part of it is the idea that we are -- that the government itself, america is

about us. it's about we, the people. and the great sense, it seems to me, the great hope here is that if you give us a challenge and if you're straight with us, you know, give us to it straight, we'll do what it takes. that was the lesson of franklin roosevelt. it was the lesson of the cold war. warfare, you're right, that is the analogy we fall back on because that's the fullest mobilization. and here we're all in this. we have a direct stake. >> but here's the asterisk. everything today is through a political filter. and as i said earlier, the president spoke these words with a straight face today. "i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." jon, did we just not live through the last couple weeks? >> well, he has his own reality field, and you and i have talked before. to some extent, we have to put

the president to the side here and hope that the government as it's constituted can in fact deliver what we need. at this point, the last couple of days have felt better in that regard. the presidency, as franklin roosevelt once said, is not an engineering job. it is preeminently a place of moral leadership. i think the great lesson tonight of the primaries is that america wants a president who reminds them of other presidents. and there was a novelty factor with the incumbent. but the show, which was always going to wear thin, is now wearing thin at a moment where he treats this as reality tv, but this is reality for the rest of us. >> jon meacham, thank you. be well. what we're saying to everybody. our coverage continues right after this. iwhat we're saying t.

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hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. it is midnight here on the east coast and what appears to be the end of a long day and a seeming rout for joe biden in those three states that voted today. as we wrap up what i think is fair to say the strangest election day in recent memory, there is of course the global coronavirus pandemic. we as a country currently attempting to slow the rate of infection, to flatten the curve in order to save lives and save the health care system. we are doing that with things like social distancing, closures of schools, dine-ins, restaurants, gyms, bars and in

some places like the bay area a shut down of everything except essential goods and services. here on the set tonight, we'll be going to people remotely. amidst all this, today is supposed to be the day in four states where voters went to the polls in the democratic primary. ohio governor mike dewine thought it was too dangerous given the pandemic. yesterday he sued to delay the election. a judge denied his request. then the ohio director of health, dr. amy acton, ordered the polls closed anyway, saying she made the decision in order to, quote, avoid the imminent threat with a high probability of widespread exposure to coronavirus with a significant risk of substance harm to a large number of people in the general population. so we will not have results from ohio tonight. they've extended their deadline till june. we do have, however, arizona, illinois, and florida all plu e plunging ahead with in person voting although it was not without issues which we will talk about. we don't have exit polling

tonight due to the social distancing policies in place since exit polls require in-person interviews. we do have results and a sense of turnout, which is obviously a particularly big issue. going to these latest contests, joe biden led the presidential democratic race with 871 delegates. bernie sanders was in second place with 719. tonight as polls closed in florida, nbc news projected that joe biden will win the democratic primary there by quite a margin. nbc news also projecting biden will win the primary in illinois, and nbc projecting just an hour ago that biden will also win arizona. all three states a clean sweep. and this is how things look at this hour. biden with a total of 1,132 delegates. sanders with 817. take us through what happened in these latest states i'm joined by msnbc political correspondent steve kornacki at the big board. so what do we have tonight, steve? >> yeah, a couple of headlines here. just in terms of the delegates, the story here, ground zero for that is florida.

this massive biden landslide. we certainly expected this was going to happen. this was a terrible state for sanders four years ago. it's an even worse state for him tonight. closed primary, no independents voting here. that hurts him a little bit. heavy senior citizen population. he got destroyed with voters over 65. look at the delegate picture from florida. look at that, 148 for biden. just 33 for sanders. that's where biden's huge delegate haul comes from tonight, from the state of florida. by the way, turnout in florida is up a little bit compared to 2016. and the reason it's up at all is the early voting, the mail-in voting. the same-day there was very sparse today. arizona, the turnout here is up significantly over 2016 already. they're still counting the votes. they're already over the 2016 level. here again, this is a heavy mail-in voting, early voting state. you see joe biden with a double-digit lead. the sanders campaign says

arizona was their best bet today because they'd been doing well with hispanic voters. the hispanic vote was basically a tie. then there's illinois. the turnout is way down in illinois. this is not a heavy early voting state, not a heavy mail-in state. there's some of that but not a lot. and the same-day vote here was very, very thin. so it's going to be down probably 20% statewide. but biden does win this by 20-plus points. this was basically a two-point state in 2016. it continues to trend. i think this is the most notable trend big picture that i've seen in the primaries here. i'm circling ohio. we didn't get numbers from ohio today. but these are the kinds of states demographically where the general election in 2016 was decided, where donald trump got that margin, that critical margin with non-college white voters that allowed him to beat hillary clinton in the electoral college. and you see that demographic is particularly pronounced in these states. and what you saw tonight in illinois is what we saw in missouri, in minnesota, and in

michigan earlier. massive, i'm talking 30 to 40-point swings here among white voters without college degrees. blue collar white voters here who in 2016 lined up with sanders by double digits, and now tonight biden in illinois won them by 32 points. that, to me, demographically is the single biggest change from '16. we'll see if that translates to something in the general election. but if you're the biden campaign looking to a general election at all, that's got to be the most encouraging demographic finding you've got. >> steve kornacki, thank you. for more on what this means to the two candidates and their delegate counts going forward, i want to bring in david plouffe, campaign manager for the 2008 obama presidential campaign. the architect behind the obama strategy to win that democratic presidential primary. we have checked in with each other numerouses times through the arc of this primary including before the votes were cast in new hampshire and way back when, you said once you get

a delegate lead for proportional representation, it's hard to give it up. we now have a very large, substantial delegate lead for joe biden. what's the math look like tonight? >> well, chris, joe biden's the democratic nominee. i mean the delegates he got out of florida tonight was bigger than our lead in the entire primary at this time in '08. he's got a much bigger lead in pledged delegates than hillary clinton. i think it would be an impossibility for the lead to be diminished at all. it doesn't mean bernie sanders isn't going to take some time. do these primaries in april happen? i'm dubious about that. we'll see. but joe biden now, you know, came back from maybe his last political life to be the democratic nominee, so that's great. they deserve congratulations. but we have a general election in 7 1/2 months, which is one of the most consequential elections in american history. so they have to -- every ounce of thought, every dollar, every

moment has to be to building a general election campaign that can beat trump. i think it's not just delivering what we need to do now to get ourselves through this crisis. what's pretty clear, chris is we're going to be facing an economic catastrophe, and what the american people are going to be looking for, if you're the next president, what are you going to do about that? not just the acute crisis of the moment but how are we going to dig out of this hole? he doesn't have a second to lose. >> how do you think you navigate that? you just made an important point. this is a larger lead out of florida than you had back in '08 in a primary you won. and i think also there is a definitiveness here that wasn't quite the case on any one given night outside the south in the hillary clinton/bernie sanders race. i mean partly because of that demographic shift that kornacki is talking about. how do you navigate that if you're the biden camp. >> well, yeah, because the truth

is when you're down to a two-person race, i think you can be a little more confident in making assumptions. there might not be another state bernie sanders wins, but if he does, he's not going to get north of 55. the fact of the matter is if we execute the rest of the primaries and they ran hard campaigns, he's probably going to add to his delegate lead. so i think you need to say, listen, i'll respect bernie sanders' decision, continue to reach out to his supporters. i'd certainly begin to do a lot of work with younger voters with an eye towards the general election, certainly latino voters where i think biden did better tonight in arizona and florida certainly than he did previously. and say, listen, if we're going to have primaries, i'd like to get support, but i need to beat donald trump. this is a burden joe biden and his campaign have right now. they have to beat donald trump. we cannot fool around with this. the general election will be here, assuming we have it, and we've got to make sure we do and we have vote by mile in plaail.

they have to get at this right away. they can do it in a respectful way, and that's going to be important. i'm not suggesting that you don't work overtime to earn the support of bernie sanders supporters, hire some of his staff. bernie sanders when he's ready i think will be a powerful, powerful surrogate out there. i thought the way he talked about what we needed to do right now to cushion the blow for people today was enormously powerful. so he'll be a big asset, i think. but my point is it's here. we know who the two candidates are, and there's not a second to lose. >> all right. david plouffe, as always, thank you so much. >> thanks, chris. ohio republican governor mike dewine has been very proactive in his state's handling of the coronavirus. shutting down a number of things including the election earlier than many others. but the confusion and strangeness of it is causing some deep questions for the elections taking place now, primaries going forward and crucially the election in november. here to talk about that, ashley

aliso alison, pushing for elections not to be canceled. ashley, let me start with that question. i find myself persuaded by arguments on both sides. you don't want to get into the business of canceling elections. you don't want to do it by fiat on one hand. on the other hand, there was no way to conduct voting today that adhered to the cdc's guidelines. we saw pictures of people standing near each other. we know there was exposure that was happening. why did your group come down on the side of going ahead today? >> well, thanks for having me and thanks to all the voters who did participate either by early voting or absentee ballot or voting by mail or in person today. we weren't telling states how to conduct their election, but what we were saying to election administrators, governors and secretaries of state is that however the -- if the primaries took place today, if they're taking place next week, if they're one of the 25 or so primaries that are going to happen over the next few months,

that they need to make sure a couple of things take place. one, that they do follow the cdc guidance. they have hand sanitizer, they're able to sanitize machines, they keep voters standing a significant distance apart as guided by the cdc. but, two, that they also create more access for voters to vote, whether it be early voting, extending hours, increasing more days, whether it be vote by mail, ensuring that as many voters as possible can have a ballot via mail, or absentee ballot. states can make their own decisions, but whether the primary took place today, the future, or even for the general election, we want to make sure that administrators are putting these procedures in place and informing voters in a reasonable time. >> do you think we should have mandatory universal no excuse absentee balloting, essentially vote by mail everywhere? >> i think vote by mail is an important step. it's not the whole journey to

make sure that all voters have access to vote. vote by mail is a good option, but we also know that usually black and brown voters, those ballots are rejected when they do vote by mail, and black and brown voters usually like to vote in person whether it be early voting or on the day of the election. same with the disability community, making sure that they have access to ballots. vote by mail is not always the most friendly procedure for them to vote by as well as native americans because of the whole p.o. box issue. so vote by mail is a great option. it's not the only option that administrators should take, which includes, we believe, early voting, same-day voting, and extending hours to vote. >> so do you think -- i mean let's fast forward. let's imagine a universe in which we have similar conditions pertaining in november. god, i hope that's not the case, but lord knows what is coming for us. >> me too. >> yes. it makes me slightly nauseous even to pursue the thought experiment, but were that the case, i mean today when we saw

like turnout quite far down in a state like illinois, i just -- it seems like we need something more innovative than what we had today in terms of replicaability in we're going to have a high stakes election in november under these possible conditions. >> that's right. november is several months away, so there is time to take the necessary actions. the first thing is that congress needs to fund the states to actually be able to implement these procedures. >> right. >> it is very expensive to have online voter registration, one, be set up in states, and, two, make sure that it works, that it doesn't crash. we've seen that happen in states before. first up, congress needs to fund the states to do these steps. then the states need to start acting tomorrow. the first time they go into the office they need to learn from the mistakes or the experience that voters had today and make the steps necessary for their primaries and for the general election. we definitely hope that we are not in this state of pandemic when it comes to november, but if we are, there are steps that

the secretaries of state, governors, and local election administrators can do today to ensure that every voter, every eligible voter who wants to vote can vote and that their vote is actually counted. >> ashley alison, thank you so much for your time. joining me now, maya wiley, bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. i wish you were all here sitting next to me, but it's great to have you here virtually. sam, i saw reporter from "the new york times" saying fundamentalally when it comes down to what happened to the sanders campaign, particularly in that trajectory between nevada, south carolina, super tuesday and now tonight, was that there's a theory of the politics of this of changing the electorate that fundamentally did not bear out, that he never made inroads with older voters particularly and he just kept making too big a share of the electorate. when you put that math together, you end up with the kind of

margins you're seeing. >> yeah. i mean i think that may have been the case. but i think fundamentally the real answer in my mind to the election is that you see it in the exit polling when people are looking for a candidate almost -- 65% in many states were saying i'm just looking for the person who can win. i think for a long time, the electorate did not have an idea who could win. and i think when all of the candidates essentially that were running in the race ended up coalescing around biden, i think that provided a signal to people. i mean obviously clyburn started it in south carolina, but i think absent buttigieg and klobuchar and starting to create that signifier for the voters, i'm not sure we would be in the same place right now. >> karine, where do you think we are right now in this democratic primary? david plouffe said the math here is essentially insurmountable.

it certainly looks like that to me although i will give this caution. the world as it exists now was unthinkable six weeks ago. i feel so tentative about offering any predictions about what is or is not insurmountable. >> yeah. we're kind of in this black hole, in a space that we've never, ever seen before with no historical context. that's the reality of where we are. but the problem is the math is the math, and this race seems to look to be all but over. and i think one of the reasons i think folks really feel that way is when are we going to have another primary? >> right. >> when is that going to actually happen? and so, you know, we can -- you know, we can ask people to vote, but then there is the -- how do you ask people to vote when you can't be around more than, like, ten people on a line? i mean that is -- it is very difficult to do. so bernie sanders is going to have to make some really difficult decisions. look, i've worked for many campaigns. i've worked for winning campaigns and losing campaigns.

and running is incredibly difficult. and i do believe that we have to give bernie sanders the space to do this. but i do want to touch a little bit on what sam said, which is, look, these are different times. this is a moment in time that we have not seen before. and you saw in exit polling that sanders was actually -- had better favorabilities in polling more than other candidates. he was actually very liked, and his ideas, medicare for all, were very, very popular. this is a time where voters want to beat donald trump, and now you have the coronavirus and they're even more so looking at that contrast, looking for a leader. when you think about joe biden, he's been in the oval office. he's been in the white house. he was obama's number two. so that really resonated with voters, and i do think that played a really big part of this. and i think so in the moment that we're in right now with coronavirus, people are just -- you know, politics are going to

have to take a back seat, and this is not what folks are going to be thinking about is these primaries and how this is going to move forward. >> we should note this is -- i mean there was a primary upset tonight where a challenger -- >> yes, marie newman. >> beat probably the most conservative, i think it's fair to say or one of the most conservative democrats in the caucus, in the chicago suburbs, a son of a congressman, a sort of old product of that southside chicago mean, pro life as well or anti-abortion, and he was defeated. she ran against him in 2018. she won tonight. so the reason i'm saying that is when you talk about, karine, you know there's not going to be a lot of headspace for primaries, like primaries don't exist just for the presidential election. >> yeah. >> there's all sorts of elections around the country. >> that's so true. good point. >> all up and down, right? there are challengers all over the place. there's a democracy we're running and solving that problem remains -- although i'll say

this, maya, and i'd like to get your feedback. my big fear heading into today with the messy muddiness of ohio, right? very uncharted waters. i was compelled by the argument made by mike dewine and the state public health director. i was compelled by not liking the precedent of canceling the election. the worry for me was a kind of legitimacy problem. -- you don't have that same kind of legitimacy worry. >> i think that's true although it's interesting because, you know, one of the things that bernie sanders has is a very committed base of voters who are completely loyal to him because of his positions on important issues like universal health care, like free college. and so for them, they're still raising some concerns particularly about illinois. but i think you are right that the reality is that in this

primary in general, including before today, what we were seeing was record turnout numbers. i mean really important states for democrats like north carolina and virginia, we were seeing 200,000 to 500,000 more voters voting than in 2016. and those aren't the only states, but they're just really good examples. and it's going to be a turnout race in that general election assuming we have an election. but it's critically important to be thinking about that enthusiasm factor, about showing up. it's not just that people want someone who can beat trump. it's that they're very committed to showing up and voting in order to beat trump. and i think that's a very important fact for us all to remember. >> maya, karine, sam, you guys are going to stay with me remotely. coming up, the house passed a coronavirus aid package last week. so why hasn't the senate voted on it? what mitch mcconnell has been up

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there are a million ideas flying around washington about how to deal with what is looking more and more like an unprecedented crisis. but as i speak to you now, the house bill passed late friday that senate republican leader mitch mcconnell ignored and sent the senate home for a long three-day weekend -- that bill, the senate still has not passed. the bill the house passed includes things like free coronavirus testing, paid sick

leave for some workers, paid family leave, increased food assistance, strengthen unemployment insurance among its many provisions. the senate will reportedly vote on the bill tomorrow finally. leader mcconnell said today he's advised republican members who have objections to, quote, and this is an all timer, gag and vote for it anyway. more on that and what congress plans to do next. i'm joined by congresswoman karen bass who just completed a teletown hall with her constituents focused on the coronavirus. is it your expectation and the expectation of the leadership that the senate will indeed pass this tomorrow? >> yes, it is. it's shameful. it should have been passed on sunday. >> let me show you -- you bring that up. i just thought this picture was quite remarkable. mitch mcconnell let the senate go after you guys stayed, and he went to louisville on friday for an investiture ceremony for a

form former kavanaugh clerk. and that was part of the reason they got a three-day weekend and they sat on it for more than 72 hours. do you think that was a good choice by the senate majority leader? >> no. i mean i think one of the reasons why there's so much chaos and confusion and anxiety is because we have not had leadership. we haven't had leadership from the white house. we have watched him lie for 3 1/2 years, and so now how can we really take him seriously, especially because he downplayed this? and i think mcconnell, he abdicated his leadership a long time ago. so what you really have in the country right now is you have speaker pelosi leading the country because the other ones are absent without leave. but i think that now they're beginning to come around. but they should have stayed in session. the minute we passed that bill saturday morning, they should have been there ready to receive it, go through their process so they could have passed it on sunday. that sends the wrong message to the american people. >> you said speaker pelosi is

leading the country. >> that's right. >> you said she was proactive on this. but is the scale of what you all in the house are doing up to the crisis? here's an example. originally i think the draft of the bill had essential universal paid sick leave. that was negotiated down by steve mnuchin. the paid sick leave is starting to like look a disturbingly small piece of the puzzle here, especially when we're talking about giving people 14 days. the much greater problem is there's going to be no work demand for millions and millions of service workers with perhaps months to come. are you thinking big enough? >> oh, no. well, i don't think we thought big enough in that package. but, believe me, we knew that we were preparing another package right on the heels of it. what was most important about the last package was that we got the testing done. that was absolutely critical. but the house is busy at work on the third package, and i do believe that that will be much

bigger. but we should prepare because a point of contention is going to be that the republicans don't want to have paid sick leave at all, and there are many jobs where you don't have sick leave. we don't want people to go into work. we're telling them to stay at home, and then they have no income. so we absolutely need to do this. now, i'm worried that where the president is coming from is that he's going to want to bail out the industries, and some of those industries do need to be bailed out. but if you're going to bail out the airlines, you need to think about the flight attendants, the people that clean the planes, the people that work in the restaurants in the airport as well. so we have to make sure that the next package that we do extends benefits to as wide of a population as possible. >> all right. congresswoman karen bass, thanks for staying up for us. i appreciate it. >> thank you. when we come back, what the future of the presidential election looks like as the global pandemic grows. where we are after this. an inv. to be our guest. the invitation to lexus sales event now through march 31st. lease the 2020 rx350 for $409 a month for 36 months

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from the bay area's number one lender. the good news is many of us are living much longer but you know what that means our retirement savings are being stretched over more time that's where your home's equity can help. call now aag is working to make your retirement better. going into tonight, joe biden had just over a 150 delegate lead over bernie sanders. as of right now with tonight's gains, biden has doubled that lead in delegates. over 300 delegates. those are where the numbers stand. it is of course an extremely strange time to be conducting a national election amidst the coronavirus pandemic, everything in flux. to talk about where things go from here, i want to bring back to the conversation maya wiley, bill de blasio, karine

jean-pierre, and sam seder. both of the candidates, senator bernie sanders and joe biden gave addresses although again in the strange, surreal world we find ourselves in, not the classic rally in front of a bunch of people. sanders gave an address focused almost exclusively on a coronavirus rescue package. biden too largely on that. take a listen to what they had to say. >> in the midst of this crisis, what i believe we must do is empower medicare to cover all medical bills during this emergency. now, this is not medicare for all. we can't pass that right now. but what this does say is that if you're uninsured, if you are underinsured, if you have high deductibles, if you have high co-payments, if you have out-of-pocket expenses, medicare will cover those expenses. >> it's moments like these we realize we need to put politics aside and work together as americans. the coronavirus doesn't care if you're a democrat or republican.

it will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender, or your zip code. it will touch people in positions of power as well as the most vulnerable people in our society. we're all in this together. >> you know, part of what's so strange, maya, about this moment among many things is we had a long campaign, a lot of issues people were talking about. we find ourselves in this moment in which the possible future that's spread out before us, a campaign that was going to basically be on this terrain, donald trump is unliked by a big chunk of the population who think he's unfit and terrible, but the economy is pretty good. that was -- that was a year plus of what the campaign was going to be. everyone knew it. high growth and low unemployment. we're in a totally different world politically. what do you think about the messages you're hearing from biden and sanders?

>> what's interesting to me is it's been one of the differences between bernie sanders and joe biden for much of the primary, which is bernie sanders is the person who comes forward with a way to get americans health care. >> right. >> that has been central to who he is as an elected leader for decades, and it's been central to his campaign in 2016, and it's still central. and so he's constantly focused on that. he's passionate about it. it's significant to him. and he's constantly thinking about how is that going to get done, how is health care factoring in in this moment. i think what joe biden is doing is he's running a unity campaign. in other words, he's really thinking of this as we're a country deeply divided. we have seen extreme partisanship. we have hate on the rise. we have a president who has stoked it, and i'm the one who's going to be able to bring us together. and i think that has constantly been a distinction in their

messages. i also think that joe biden may be focused on this as a general election, meaning when you start to look at a general election as opposed to a primary, you're not battling as much in the first instance on policy. and americans aren't thinking about policy right now. they're thinking very much about literally how they're going to get through tomorrow. >> right, although that connects to policy, right? >> it does. >> in a weird way, it's like people aren't thinking right now about policy as like i want to look at the policy part of your website. they're thinking about policy in the most urgent, visceral, brutal way, which is can i pay my rent, and can i watch after my kid, and can i do everything in life right now, which is going to be dependent upon government policy? >> it's interesting. in a way, if bernie sanders had started talking about eviction moratorium, that might have been a little bit more relevant, and i don't mean that the health care coverage is of course extremely relevant, and that's why congress was looking at paid

sick days. it's that, you know, right now we're facing a crisis in hospital beds, in ventilators. you know, that's so much of what people are starting to see is, yes, can i even get the test? but if i need a bed or if my loved one needs a bed, are they going to get kicked out of their bed because we have such limited space in icus? we're really in a very, very deep hole right now, and i think people are looking at this. yes, you're right about policy, but they're looking at tomorrow. they're looking at it in a very practical sense. and, you know, i think joe biden is going to have to step up to that moment, and i absolutely agree that bernie sanders was speaking to it in a substantive way. >> sam, everything has changed now, and i think that, you know, i agree with what maya said and i think there's real returns politically to the unity message and the back to normal message and away from this aberrant thing. it's a different world now. the biden campaign for instance

needs to release what their rescue plan is. >> yeah. >> and sanders came out today and said $2 trillion and $2,000 per household and the biden people will do that and work with the democrats. but this stuff is very important sudd suddenly. >> i mean first off, i can't even begin to fathom where we're going to be in a week, never mind seven, eight months from now. but i think, you know, look, there is obviously -- and i think the assessments that we've heard about biden are correct in terms of what the voters are looking for. but no one who is watching us right now is for a moment not going to be enthused about voting against donald trump. and what i worry about is that there is a segment of the population, the same segment that stayed home in 2016 and saw no consequence, and as horrible as this is, and i think it's hard for us to imagine that people could see it that way, but i think there are still some people who perceive there to be

no consequence as to who the president is, that they're going to lose out regardless. and i think joe biden has an opportunity or really -- you know, i was surprised frankly because in the last debate, bernie sanders said, here are the keys. i'm giving you the questions. i'm giving you the answers. you know, come to -- come to us essentially, you know, because this is not about bernie sanders. this is about the people who have been supporting bernie sanders. and i'm not sure that bernie sanders can simply just say, you know, none of the stuff that we've been talking about, we're going to see it all. but we should still support joe biden. i don't know if that works. and i think joe biden has to sort of like head in that direction. i think the unity message is effective, but i think those people were already planning to come out and vote against donald trump. >> right. maya, karine, sam, i want you to stand by. we're going to have a little update coming up. the coronavirus is now in all 50 states. testing here in the u.s. is still, still lagging. i'll talk to someone who started developing a test for covid-19 weeks ago after this. >> tech: don't wait for a chip like this to crack your whole windshield.

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shut down the entire country for much of the past week. while our own testing capacity is finally beginning to scale up, it's still the case we are lagging far, far behind. here to talk more about that, someone who started working on his own test in late february, dr. alex greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology lab at the university of washington medical center. it's great to have you here. thank you for the work you're doing. how are we doing? >> thanks for having me, chris. so we're doing better. i mean a few things have happened in the last couple days. so both roche and halogic got an emergency use -- the state public health labs are hitting about 4,000 tests a day. between all that capacity, it does take a little bit of time for those kits to get shipped, for you to verify the performance of those tests and bring them online. but we're doing much better.

here in seattle we're still testing about 1,800 specimens a day, unfortunately making about 150 detections a day of the virus. it's still very pervasive here. >> what is your sense -- in cable news, we tend to be number obsessed, so it's like a metric. here's the delegates. i'm as obsessed with anyone. but realistically, we know that's a lagging indicator. when we look at that curve, when you look at that curve which tracks so close to italy, are we seeing a real thing there? are we seeing an actual signal, or are we seeing a measurement issue? >> i think we're seeing both. i think that, you know, one of the problems with this virus is that when you detect a case, it itself is a lagging indicator. it as a long incubation time. it has a long time between when you develop symptoms and between when you seek medical care. so you're detecting transmissions that occurred maybe 2, 2 1/2 weeks ago. so it in itself is a lagging

indicator. certainly measurement is a big aspect. you're seeing a lot of cases where new york state and city, a labs are doing a lot of testing. we're seeing a lot of cases here where we're able to perform a lot of tests as well. i think there's definitely a measurement aspect to this. i think as we continue to have these tests come online in the next coming days, we'll see more and more cases. one of the problems is as you noted, like the exponential growth, no one's supply chain doubles every five to six days. so actually providing these tests is a challenge with the supply chain. >> that's a great point. i saw the chair, i think, of the new york city council health committee today talking about testing being fighting the last war. i sort of get this from the point of care perspective. like if you're the medical system in new york or in seattle or in sort of greater metro seattle, you're worried more about caring for sick people, identifying people, and getting them icu beds and ventilators. but is that true? like how important is testing to

the actual fighting of the epidemic? >> testing is very important from the standpoint it allows us to identify people who have this virus and isolate them, prevent onward transmission of the virus. it allows us to determine, you know, icu beds and ventilators. those are mostly determined symptomatically. but it allows us to protect our health care workers, our first responders. right now for instance when you send a test, you have to wear personal protective equipment around that patient until we've cleared them of that virus. the speed we get that test back is very important to conserve personal protective equipment. so it's really -- you know, it touches on many, many aspects. but i do agree what's most important is access to supportive care, questions about bed, ventilators, and protecting our health care labor supply so we continue to provide health care ask that can protect and save lives. >> thank you so much for the work you're doing and thank you for making some time for us. >> thank you. stick around. more on what congress is doing

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back for our final time tonight with maya wiley, mayor bill de blasio, karine jean-pier jean-pierre, and sam seder. just about an hour ago, "the new york times" published a remarkable story, a sort of behind the scenes look. it has a very sort of understated headline. trump slowly enlisting more agencies in the whole of government response to the virus. the details are jaw dropping. there's an on the record quote from the army corps of engineers

that says, we stand ready to help but we have not been given a mission yet. that is after governor andrew cuomo has explicitly asked for their help. there are stories for governors asking for masks and not getting a response, getting one-third of the masks they asked for and all the masks were expired. karine, one of the things about the transformation of where we are substantively, policy-wise, politically and the election is i just think it cannot be overstated the degree to which the federal response in the last two months has been an abject failure as bad as anything i've seen in the time i've covered politics. that includes the financial crisis and katrina and the iraq war. this is on a level of incompetence and malfeasance from the president of the united states and the people that he handpicked all the way down, and i feel it is incredibly important, incredibly important that that be a strong message from every democrat up and down the ticket. >> i agree with you wholeheartedly, chris. look, this is the moment that we

all have been saying was going to come. and let's be clear. donald trump has had a lot of failures. they've been his own policymaking. when you think about the migrants at the border, the young kids being separated from their parents, and many other things that have been devastating, this one, this one is just one of those things where he just ignored it for eight weeks. he just ignored it. he didn't care. he had no kind of plan. he disbanded the pandemic, the white house office that dealt with pandemic that was started under obama -- and it is really just abhorrent. and here's the thing. in this moment, voters really -- americans really need consistentsy, and he has not provided that. one week it's a hoax. another week it's a crisis. then we talk about how somber he is, and then five hours later, he is on twitter attacking democrats, talking about hillary clinton, and talking about tv ratings. so this is something that needs

to be called out. and then there's another underlying thing too which is incredibly important, which is the racism and the xenophobia, the type of language that he uses when he says foreign virus, when he talks about -- >> the chinese virus. >> a chinese virus. that is also problematic. this is the thing that democrats need to make sure they talk about and show the contrast of how much he is not a leader and how much trouble that he's going to get americans in and how much they're going to suffer in the next couple of months because of this virus and this moment that we're in. >> and that's -- you know, sam, you said this before. maya, i want to get your reaction to it, which is everything's changed now. things are changing by the minute. who knows what the election looks like when november comes. but two things to me seem clear. competence and management now as an urgent task for an opposition party to hold accountability for things to happen better, and laying out an ideological vision of how we all take care of each other so this does not descend into a situation in which the

people in the bottom of the social peer myramid are ground absolute dust while the people who have privilege and money and access to capital are able to sort of hunker down and get through it. >> absolutely. look, we don't want to be italy. that's what we're measuring o ourselves against and right now we're going in the wrong direction because what we're seeing is a jump in cases. we now for the first time have every state in this country has a case of infection. and the startling thing about that article is that you have the mayor of seattle begging for tents. you have governors who are begging, begging for creating more access to hospital services because what we know now just from looking at italy is that we don't have enough icu beds. we don't have enough equipment, and we may not have enough personnel if it goes in that

direction. and all of that says that donald trump will have blood on his hands if he does not do what he has told the nation he will, which is step up. >> and we have watched him now, sam, and i was going back through my favorite books on the great depression actually, and i was reading back about hoover. and hoover of course has gone down in history as a failure. he's a fascinating guy who actually delivered this incredible humanitarian response in world war i, and was very active from 29 onward. he just thought if he met with enough ceos and he jostled enough american business people, they could solve the problem. and the problem was you needed state capacity, which is what fdr understood. and i've watched donald trump meet with ceos now for two weeks while we get this story that the state capacity we have is not being used. >> yeah. i mean i don't think it's analogous because i think what donald trump has perceived this from the beginning was simply like, you know, poor optics.

>> yes. >> and frankly, you know, i also want to be clear -- and, i know, i think you and i have had a similar conversation like this over the past three or four years. the entire republican party lined up for him. >> absolutely. >> mitch mcconnell took a couple of -- you know, took a day to go to a brett kavanaugh, you know, some type of celebration about one of his judges getting passed, i mean in the midst of trying to pass and deal with this. you had rush limbaugh, who was given the medal of honor, three weeks ago saying this was a hoax. >> yep. >> the president did too. >> they were all on board. thank you all so much. that does it for me. i'm chris hayes. you can finally tomorrow night -- i guess it's technically tonight in my normal 8:00 p.m. hour. msnbc's coverage continues after this. new tide power pods one up the cleaning power of liquid.

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well, good evening once again we're covering these dual stories at this hour. both of them will change life in our country, though in different ways. while covering a spreading pandemic we are also tonight covering three state primaries in arizona, illinois and florida. first to the urgent health crisis. we have now entered a new stage in this nation's battle against coronavirus. the virus has spread now to all 50 states and the district of columbia. death toll has crossed north of 100. tonight there are over