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welcome to msnbc's special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. i'll ali velshi. we've got a full slate of experts standing by to break down all the days developments. but first here are where things stand right now. at least 281 are dead across the united states. 23,000 are infected. more than 80 million americans being told to stay home. today new jersey became the latest state to issue a stay at home order to its residents following similar directives in california, illinois and where i am here in new york. as medical professionals across the country continue to voice concerns over a lack of lifesaving supplies president

trump continues to try to shift the blame. >> given this is one of the wealthiest most powerful countries in the world should this be happening? shouldn't this have been resolved weeks ago? >> i'll tell you the way i look at it. many administrations preceded me. for the most part they did very little in terms of what you're talking about. this is unprecedented. you can speak to tony, to anybody. this is unprecedented just about unprecedented. as time goes by we're seeing it's really at a level nobody would have believed, nobody would have thought possible that this could happen. and we are making much of this stuff now, and much of it's being delivered now. we've also gotten tremendous reviews from a lot of people who can't believe how fast it's coming. >> who are the reviews, who are these tremendous reviews coming from? what should the federal government we doing and what are they doing to help protect the men and women who protect this country? to answer that i'm joined by dr.

ven gupta, a pulmonologist. she and i were talking earlier. she's an air force veteran who's been trying for weeks now to get a test for covid-19 after exhibiting a number of symptoms. and dr. david shulkin who has been with us regularly, he's the former secretary of veteran affairs under president trump. thanks for joining us the three of you. sarah, i want to start with you because we had an audio problem earlier. we couldn't get your full story. you are a military veteran, you fall under the care of the administration. you have been trying to get a test since the beginning of the month. what's your situation, how are you feeling and what has happened to you since trying to get a test? >> hey, ali. i started feeling sick in the beginning of the month and it came on kind of slow and all of a sudden it hit me pretty hard.

i had a lot of chest problems, fever, my throat was hurting a lot. and then i realized i couldn't really do much but lay on my couch for a few days. after probably 8 to 10 days i decided to call the va and was told not to come there, that if i were to come in to talk to my doctor that they wouldn't let me through the gate because of the symptoms i had. and i was trying hard to see if i could just see my doctor to see if i had to flu or something else going on, not even necessarily thinking it was that. but they wouldn't even let me see my doctor for that, they wouldn't give me a flu test, they wouldn't give me a test for covid. and after calling in several times i have about two hours logged here in west palm, they wouldn't let me come in. every time i called back and they told me over and over again do not come here and randomly

overnighted me amoxacillin and an inhaler in the mail without diagnosing me for anything. and after calling back the next weekend found out my doctor was on vacation for two weeks. and they told me if i feel worse in a few days to call back again. and by this time most of my symptoms had started to clear on their own. i ended up going at the advice of a telehealth person a few days ago to the emergency room for a respiratory issues lingering. all of my other symptoms are pretty much gone by now, but there's still a lot of pressure on my chest and hurts when i breathe still and they basically told me it doesn't matter what my symptoms were, you can't get a test unless you're over 65 years old, been to china or been in contact with a person lucky enough to get a test. >> dr. gupta, this is an area of your specialty. so there's several things i want

to unpack. you and i discussed this last night. he does not know anybody in america who needs a test who can't get a test. let's put that aside for a second. what should sarah be doing? >> first of all, i want to say i'm sorry, sarah, that was your journey. that should be no patients journey in the united states for any condition, certainly for covid and all the fear around it, so i'm sorry that happened. what i would say, ali, is clearly testing is aspirational at this point for the entire country. we know that people who need it don't have access to it. i will say that i think hope is on the horizon there and we're going to have relief coming up very shortly in terms of drive-thru testing being scaled, home sent in swabs and infrastructure being put in place in major cities across the country. so there is going to be relief,

sarah and ali, directly around the corner. what i would say directly to sarah about what do you do now, your story is the story i've heard from many of my patients and family members seeking reassurance, really wanting to know are they posing a threat potentially to the health of loved ones and that's really challenging, almost the psychological toll outweighs the physical toll of the virus in some cases. and so i'm glad you're feeling better. i think at this point continuing to do what you're doing, which is televisits, trying to engage in a way that doesn't require an in-person visit makes the most sense, and i'm glad you're feeling better. >> secretary shulkin, you are a medical doctor as well and not only did you run the va, but you ran a major hospital group across the river in new jersey. so a couple of things. you and i have spoken several times the last few weeks about the one good thing, that the va has the capacity to be able to

do this. the idea sarah couldn't get the necessary testing through the va, what do you make of that? >> well, it's really painful when you hear stories like sarah and i couldn't agree more that thankfully you seem to be doing well and you have been seen and that's what's most important. our veterans deserve the best care our country can give and this clearly was not good example of that. i know the men and women who work in the va and they're some of the best health care professionals in the world. but as a physician i agree with dr. gupta, this was not good care. especially our veterans shouldn't have to go through this type of red tape to be seen and to be tested. and frankly, we can do a lot better than this and sarah deserved better than this. fortunately i hope she didn't take the antibiotics that were given to her because she wasn't seen and evaluated and chances are this wasn't a bacteria. but hopefully she's on the path to getting better now and we certainly want to see better than that in the future.

>> this is little tricky, dr. gupta, because the president has again tweeted today it's the second time now he's said this in a row and dr. anthony fauci has contradicted it. he's discussing a set of treatments that involve a malaria treatment and antibiotic. and there are a lot of people saying this is basic medicine stuff people like me don't necessarily know, but coronavirus is a virus does not react to antibiotics. >> what's being posed -- thanks, ali, for the question. what's being thrown around really on social media is studies that -- very, very small studies out of france and china that suggest an old anti-malaria drug chloroquine and another derivative called

hydroxychloroquine used to treat lupus and other inflammatory disease states, that those drugs are showing some degree of effectiveness of limiting what the virus does in the body. that sounds vague because it is. we have no evidence that there's therapeutic effectiveness. in other words, that it's actually saving peoples lives or it's keeping them out of the hospital for a longer period of time or getting them discharged in a shorter period of time. we have no evidence. you need randomized control trials for that. so dr. fauci is advocating let's put the brakes on this, let's get some studies done, let's talk about this through evidence and maybe there is something to all this potential promise coming out of france and china here. but let's put the brakes on. so that's why he's saying that and he's 100% correct. >> go ahead. yeah? >> i was just going to add because you had asked about the second drug which is an

antibiotic and dr. gupta is right it was a case study of 20 patients so that certainly isn't large enough. but this particular antibiotic also treats what we calls atypicals which potentially could be helpful when additive to the plaquenil. and this is too early for us to know but that combination is something to keep an eye on. >> but for those americans getting information from donald trump's twitter feed it says go forward. secretary shulkin, i do want to ask you, you ran a hospital group. earlier on the show i had general russell honore on, and he's the second person who's said to me we need to get a whole bunch of people who have basic training or in the middle of their training as doctors and nurses out into the field

immediately. hospitals are suffering from a staff shortage not just from people who may have infection and need to protect themselves but all the other people that help medical facilities run who are not there, and there's a call to get doctors in training out into the field, get nurses in training out into the field. tell me about how you think about this from a staffing perspective of our health care system, which is now we're starting to get up to the top of the capacity of it? >> yeah, i think that as we begin to see the demand on our hospitals clearly the shortage that is going to be most concerning are the staff shortages. when you look at experiences in past pandemics up to 35% to 40% of staff will not be able to come to work because they themselves may be ill or they're caring for family members at home. and so dealing and preparing the staff shortage is critical. when i first came to the va to take care of the health care system we were facing an

incredible demand on our facilities. we couldn't care for all the veterans who needed to be helped, and one of the first things i did was i granted our event practice nurses the ability to practice. and that really helped free up our demand, and that is something i think should be looked at again because we're going to need all the help we can get should the worse of these scenarios become a reality. >> sarah, where are you in your situation right now? are you free of symptoms? >> excuse me. i -- all of my symptoms have dissipated. the only thing that's remaining is i have a lot of chest discomfort and i get winded really easy. but, again, when i went to the er the other day i tried to ask them when did they start testing because the doctor came in and hand me a piece of paper that had the qualifications of what you needed to do or be before they give you a test, and he said they've been doing it for weeks, and i told him -- i

called on the 11th and was told you weren't able to do testing. and he said, oh, we hadn't yet ordered the test at that point. but that was just a week ago, so i'm not really sure what exactly that means. i have another friend who works at the va who's a veteran who is sick with symptoms, and he was told they're probably not going to get tests until next week. so you don't really know who to believe when they're saying anyone can get a test but at the er they're saying we've been doing it for weeks but we haven't ordered them. i'm pretty sure the only way to stop the spread of this is to know who has it. and you can't know who has it if you're not even testing the severe symptomatic people. it doesn't make any sense. >> ven gupta, when we talk about -- we've been dropping singapore and hong kong and japan and south korea and how they managed to flatten the curve and in some cases it really put a lid on this thing. and it was the idea that people

who are suffering from particular symptoms, particularly respiratory symptoms and other things that look like a flu did get tested and they can get a complete picture what's going on. if doesn't matter if you're an economist or doctor i think we need to full information we can get and we have not been working on the full basis of that information. we're now two weeks out of the president saying i don't want people getting off that ship because it will double our numbers. we're now above 23,000 people infected in the united states. again, i'm not a doctor but it sounds to me sarah falls into the category of people who should be tested. >> sarah absolutely falls into that category, ali. i couldn't agree more, and in spirit, sarah, i'm there with you. you deserved an early test and the system failed you. and i'm sorry for that. what i will say is unlike south korea, unlike singapore and japan the countries that you cited, ali, we're well past that point. they were effective at containment with early testing. and yes, in that case you want

to test people who are symptomatic, quarantine them and try to minimize transmission. here we are under a situation where we need to move towards a national lock down. we are well past that point. some states -- 20% of the u.s. population is effectively shelter in place. what's the 80% -- what are the other 80% doing? we're recommending that they stay sheltered in place. this lack of unanimity in policy at the federal level is causing a lot of confusion. some people think they have their freedom to do as they please, others don't. the end result here is we're going to have a crisis when it comes to continued transmission because we're pursuing a middle of the road approach. with middle of the road approaches you're going to get middle of the road outcomes. >> thank you to the three of you for joining me. dr. ven gupta, i appreciate the time you're taking. he's a pulmonologist and professor. sarah is an air force veteran

having remarkable difficulty getting tested despite displaying symptoms that would suggest she would. dr. david shulkin, the former secretary of veteran affairs under president trump and ran a major hospital system. thank you to the three of you. we've got breaking news out of the trump administration. vice president mike pence and his wife karen have tested negative for coronavirus. the vice president's press secretary tweeted out the results minutes ago. vice president pence announced in today's press conference he would take the test after a staffer in his office tested positive. neither the vice president nor his wife had come in a close contact with the staffer and they have shown no symptoms of covid-19. up next, education comes to a halt. over 43 million students around the united states are staying home from school as the country takes on the threat of coronavirus. billions of mouths.

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as the coronavirus pandemic continues here in the united states 39 states have closed public schools, over 43 million children are at home. some of them will be at home for the rest of the year.

this year standardized testing has been canceled as teachers, parents and students struggle to adjust to this new normal. joining me now, jeffrey canada, the president of -- jeff, this is a tough one. it's 2020. we in theory have all the equipment and ways to, you know, broadcast from where you are. i'm here in my home, and it looks like a tv set. but for millions of parents and children, they are not equipped to home school. whether it's the physical equipment, the discipline necessary, the supervision of those parents. are you worried what the effect of this could be with a whole lot of kids, some might be enjoying staying home, but they may not be getting the education they need. >> ali, first of all thank you for focusing on children.

i don't think we spend enough time really thinking about the unprecedented situation we have in this country. millions of children suddenly and dramatically sent hom in some threat they can't see, don't understand into homes where parents are losing their jobs. they're desperate. they don't know what to do, and suddenly we're going to act like these kids are going to be able to function normally. i think that we've got to really spend time talking with parents, helping them figure out how to create a learning situation for their children that's going to protect and nurture them under these really dramatic and difficult circumstances. >> yeah, you and i for years have been talking about the distinctions between private schools and charter schools and public schools and magnet schools and the distinctions in the way professional paid teachers and principals deal with students. and now we've got a situation where so many of my colleagues, some of whom are responsible for this show being on the air right now are at home with children in a circumstance -- parents are

fantastic at raising their children. i think you and i know that. but parents under financial stress who have to do their jobs from home and educate their children at the same time, that is not an expertise we have developed. >> it's not an expertise, and i would like to say to parents you all will have to work with us. we haven't figured out really how to do this, and we're trying. and there are going to be lots of mistakes, but just trust that all of us are trying to figure out how to keep you and your children safe while educating them all at the same time. and it's going to be difficult because we're sending a message these kids have to stay inside. and a lot of places there's no room that they're multigenerations. we have to protect the elderly sometimes because we don't know whether or not we're passing on coronavirus. these are very complicated situations, and quite honestly

we need to be giving parents and children more help than we're doing right now. >> you do a lot of your work in harlem. there are a lot of children in harlem who a microcosm of children across the country, students who get 1 to 2 meals a day at school. in some cases it may be the most nutritious meal they get. hungry children can't study. we know that. it stunts their growth. tell me about what you think is happening and should be happening to the degree that schools are in addition to places where children get an education in america, many public schools are the places in which children eat their food. >> well, you know here in new york city they came up with a really good plan that we're supporting, which is to prepare lunches and breakfasts for children where they can come pick them up and leave and not congregate where we're worried about children passing the virus among one another.

there are designated schools in new york city which students can get this food. but we also know that every parent is not going to be able to figure out how to do this, and so we've got to think more deeply about how we make sure food is getting to children who really need it, and maybe they can't come out to go and pick the food up. but right now i think we're doing the best we can, but we've got to spend more time and energy really reaching out to families making sure they're getting what they need. >> thank you for joining me. you and i spoke a few weeks ago and i was hoping we'd get a chance to talk about education. and we've had that chance. i'm going to ask you come back and talk to us a lot about this because these children and their parents, this problem is not going away for them any time soon, and we need to make this as good an experience for the students who are suffering from this as we can. >> i would say one thing, which is that don't despair. help is coming. we know that you're worried about paying your rent, making

sure you have food. we're trying to organize help at every level of government. don't give up, we're coming. help is on the way. >> all right, from a guy who actually has gone and looked at what seemed to be intractable problems and solved them we'll take that positive note. thank you, sir. coming up we've been discussing how the united states is dealing with this pandemic, but what about the rest of the world? we're going to take a look across the globe when we come back. across the globe when we come back mmercial. mmercial. 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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we are telling cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants to close tonight as soon as they reasonably can and not to open tomorrow. >> that was prime minister boris johnson of the united kingdom yesterday telling all essential businesses -- i'm sorry, all nonessential businesses in the u.k. to close up shop. meanwhile today italy reported

793 new deaths, eclipsing yesterday's record of the largest single death toll. in spain the number of cases soared above 25,000. very similar here to the number in the united states. sirens wailed in jordan at the start of the country's nationwide curfew. any violation of the curfew in jordan which limits movement beyond emergency services is punishable by a year in prison. and tonight the palestinian health ministry announcing its two first cases of the virus in the heavily populated gaza strip. this news from gaza is remarkably alarming because as you know the gaza strip is one of the most densely populated places on the face of the earth with very limited medical services as a result of a blockade around them. so that could become a whole new center for this disease. >> yeah, that could become a

real nightmare. there is also no airport in the gaza strip. as you said it has been under a blockade for some time. at least two cases according to the palestinian health ministry in gaza worrying for exactly the reasons you're saying. these are very enclosed spaces in gaza. this is the most densely populated place in the world. here in the united kingdom as around the world people are looking in italy and spain and france and looking at the dates of which these countries went into lock down as an indication hopefully what is to come in the rest of these countries. we have that death toll in italy now over 4,800. in spain today we saw an uptick, a 30% of deaths in spain over one day in just 24 hour. and france has also seen its icus being overwhelmed. some patients in france are

actually being transferred into germany and being treated there. it was actually a threat made by the french prime minister to the united kingdom that forced these lock downs that you're now talking about of restaurants, of pubs. here in london it was sort of a threat france could close that border that pushed the prime minister in the united kingdom to finally shut schools and to really restrict travel. a lot of people wondering if that will be too late. when you look at italy, italy was a place that went into semilock down on the 9th and 12 days ago went into further lock down on the 11th. you can expect the u.k. to hit its worst peak in the next week or so. we've already had a hospital here in the u.k. declare an emergency state having been overwhelmed by patients, ali. >> let me ask you quickly. boris johnson has given a little bit of bombast from time to time. he does hold some views sort of

at one end of the political spectrum, but his briefings are very different from donald trump's briefings in the united states. >> yes, and so like so many people around the world i'm spending my time in doors recently and i'm watching both the briefings in the united states with president trump and the prime minister giving a daily briefing. he's flanked on either side by his top medical advisers and it's an entirely different briefing. putting aside the fact no one is congratulating anyone or thanking anyone, there seems to be respect for the media, the prime minister calling on the media by name. as you said this is man who's been known for hijinx for a lack of a better word for media. it's possible and we will unfortunately find out if the u.k. has acted too late in restricting movement. but the way the u.k. government is communicating with its citizens, and look, we saw this in italy tonight. the prime minister of italy gave

a speech tonight at 11:30 at night local time. we keep talking about this as though it is wartime. i think that's a fair assessment because governments in europe are discussing this with their citizens in ways that we simply have not seen since world war ii, ali. >> cal, stay safe. good to see you, my friend. cal perry in london for us. coming up americans staying home from work and businesses shutdown. how's the economy doing and just how bad could things get? when we come back. e come back. give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ncan it one up spaghetti night? cleaning power of liquid. it sure can. really? can it one up breakfast in bed?

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care crisis in the united states there's also an economic crisis unfolding. as "the new york times" puts it, quote, economists say there's little doubt the nation is headed into a recession because of the coronavirus pandemic. with businesses shutting down and americans being shut-in. but it is harder to foresee the bottom and how long it will take to climb back. joining me now executive vice president alliance partner. she is the former director of the u.s. treasury's troubled asset relief purchase program created in the 2008 economic crisis. and bethany mcclain, the author of several books including "all the devils are here." and bethany, i would have thought you and i covered the financial crisis together -- i would have thought we learned lessons that could help us now, but this one is so different than the last time. the last time there was a uniquely financial problem that had to do with mortgages and loans and it reselling and

reinsurance of those loans that clogged up the financial system that was fixed a certain way. now we've got a different problem altogether that could lead to an week wale serious if not more serious result. what does it make you think about? >> i think it's more serious and harder to fix. i think the financial crisis was a transmission from the financial sector out to the real economy. and so you can argue whether we should have fixed it and whether we did. but you can pump money into the banks and therefore prevent the spread from happening to the real economy. this is the problem that's beginning in the real economy, and it's much harder to figure out how to fix it. and the transmission mechanism is much more dangerous because if you look at small businesses which are being hit the most profoundly by this and which employ some 50% of the private work force in this country my friend who's on the front lines of this we were talking last night and the ripple effects is much greater because small businesses also employ so many people. and getting the money out to them is much more complicated than pumping money into the banking system.

so i think the reverberations are much greater and it's much harder to figure out the mechanisms to fix it, to address it. >> even during that time back then there was sort of a lack of patience and endearment on the behalf of the public for the fact that banks and some industries were getting help from the government. it turned out actually to be beneficial to the taxpayer in the end, but nobody likes the idea of these bail outs. we're about to see more of them. the airline industry needs a bail out, boeing needs a bail out. boeing is the largest exporter in america, and it's a defense contractor. it's not something we can afford to go out of business. but lots of industries are looking to the government to say save us. how do we think about it because the airline industry employs 10 million people. if it doesn't get saved, those people are going to get government assistance one way or the other. >> it's true. and i think in an ideal world

you could go and look at the past and explain how the american taxpayer made money through a number of the programs. when you look back at the previous financial crisis even though it felt like it all happened so quickly you actually had more time coming into it. you had different indicators, a chance to develop great scenarios and here you don't have time for that. it's not even a question of weeks rights now. it feels like it's a question of days. so i think you don't necessarily have time for the policy discussion and debates you might want to get public buy in, but you have to do something to stop the bleeding now and address what appears to be an enormous spike in unemployment we're going to see in the next few weeks. >> bethany, there is because of what you described, the fact it is small businesses in some cases people who don't have salary jobs, people who don't pay unemployment insurance who are going to be affected by this, we have to think about a distribution mechanism to get the money to those people who are not, by the way, going to go out and spend it at movie

theaters and restaurants to stimulate the economy. they're going to use it to pay rent and buy groceries while they're holed up at home. our financial system isn't exactly built for that. it's not built for getting money right to people. it's built for getting money to banks that then loan it out to people. there are whole lot of people in trouble today who won't qualify for a loan. >> i think it's really, really difficult. i think we're going to have to rely on the small business administration to figure out how to get money to small businesses and people are going to have to be really flexible because there's no mechanism for doing this. and you could almost guarantee from what happened in tarp which was much simpler and efforts to try to rescue home owners which were terribly botched and this is 10,000 times more complicated. you can almost guarantee the first things we try aren't going to work that well, and so people have to be willing to experiment and keep trying to figure out a way to get our system to do something it wasn't built to do. >> you are as driven by data as

i am. what are you looking at? what are you worried about right now? we've heard the federal government have told states not to release anything other than general information so as not to spook anybody, but the fact is success will only come from knowing all the information about this infection and all the information about the economy. what are you most looking for that you're either -- that's going to inform you as to what we should do? >> i think the next round of unemployment figures when they come out, you know, you sort of have heard a range of scenarios ranging from horrible to, you know, absolutely catastrophic and seeing where those come in is going to be key to understanding, but also quite frankly in the number of anecdotes starting to come from banks we're speaking all the

time what they're seeing in the small businesses in their communities. and it's a little bit harder to quantify what's happening to the small businesses. there isn't a perfect metric there, but it's hard not to hear these stories coming from every place in the country and realize to bethany's point this is something that needs to be solved, solved immediately and it's not going to be easy. so whatever policy is developed, execution is going to be key and i agree there is no magic bullet here. >> thank you to you both. bethany mcclain contributor to vanity fair and someone whose books you should pull out again. because they become strangely and sadly relevant again. thanks to both of you. we'll be relying on you in the coming days and weeks. coming up a check to my colleague reverend al sharpton who sent this tweet to the president amid the coronavirus. he'll explain what happened next. ned next that's why i've got the power of 1, 2, 3 medicines with trelegy. the only fda-approved once-daily 3-in-1 copd treatment. ♪ trelegy ♪ the power of 1,2,3 ♪ trelegy ♪ 1,2,3 ♪ trelegy woman: with trelegy and the power of 1, 2, 3, i'm breathing better. trelegy works three ways

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this is an interesting story. this week, my friend reverend al sharpton issued a plea to the white house. consider the homeless and incarcerated amid this coronavirus pandemic. to reverend sharpton's surprise, president trump called him to discuss it.

joining me now is al sharpton. host of "politics nation" here on msnbc and look let's not all get crazy about how surprising this is. this is al sharpton. al, you did run for president yourself. you are a national figure. you are a media figure. and you do have a relationship that goes back i think more than 20 years with trump but you are a trump critic more often than not. >> and he has been very critical of me. we have had a contentious relationship. but i think in these times, what i want to do is make a moral appeal to the white house, as well as the senate and the congress, to not forget people that are most vulnerable in underserved communities, as well as the homeless and the incarcerated. so many of us have been working with other leaders of national civil rights organizations. the urban league and derrick johnson of the naacp and we collectively put out this plea. i decided on friday to put a call to the white house and

surprisingly the president called me back. and he made no promises but he heard me out. and i said that this is a real moral issue. on the fact that we have homeless people that are not being tested. they're not even being discussed to be tested. and we have those that are incarcerated. there's no mechanism for. how do you tell homeless people to stay home when they don't have homes? many of them not in shelters. how do you tell incarcerated people to have social distancing when they're in a 6 by 12 cell. how do they stay 6 feet away from each other? >> but here's the thing, al. we got half a million people homeless in this country. we have 40 million people who are food insecure. we have a whole lot of people who earn 7, 8, 9, $10 an hour. we've got more incarcerated people than anywhere else in the world. these are structural issues and it's very hard to solve them. we actually did some work on social justice in the last year,

but generally speaking they're hard to solve and they cost a lot of money. although, frankly, fixing homelessness and incarceration would cost us less money. we are now in a crisis where we're going to have to spend a lot of money and do hard things. why not fix some of these basic injustices and underlying inequities in society? >> i think if we rise to the occasion, we should and we must because one of the things i think this pandemic is doing is showing us the structural problems. and the inequality that is structured in that we're facing, which is why you're having so many people saying yes this is a real problem. i think the other problem that you face here is that even if you don't deal with the moral appeal that all of us are making. reverend jesse jackson's written a letter to the president and others. if you don't want to deal with the moral issue, the fact is that if you have homeless people laying in the streets that are infected, they can infect others. that even if you pull some of the population out of it, they can be reinfected.

you have people coming home from jail infected. they can infect others. so even if you do it for a selfish reason, you can't ignore those that are marginalized and have not been part of this discussion. >> so, reverend, you have, for decades, brought your voice into the conversation. and, in some ways, through protest. you actually ran for president, which is a big way to do it. but here's the thing. this last week, all those meetings that go on in the white house. all the round tables and business round tables and the tech round tables and the medical industry round tables. the poor are not at the round tables. the homeless are not at the round tables. the advocates for the incarcerated are not at the round tables. >> that's exactly right. and unless you have some that are representing us like congresswoman karen bass has really been championing this along with us. she chairs the congressional black caucus. they're not even heard. and those of us that are not at the round table but that represents groups of people that

have been marginalized, we must rise our voice like this and we must get their attention. just taking the risk of calling the president, not knowing if he'd respond since i've been very critical of him and will remain that way. i'm not looking to become buddy, buddy. i'm not going to the white house to do photo ops. i'm talking about taking the risk to raise the issue along helps to impact what goes on at the table. we talked with senator schumer today. we are going to stay in this. we're going to keep raising this because people that can't speak for themselves need people like us to speak for them. >> you got a show. i got a show. and we will do it in this moment, on national television, acknowledge the fact that the president did respond to your call for help. for the least among us, and you did have a conversation with him. and kudos to donald trump. you and i have lots of reason, a lot of times, to be critical. but in this moment, partisan politics aside, everybody needs to come together. so congratulations for doing

that and for the president calling you back. reverend, good to see you as always. reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network. he is of course a host here at msnbc. you can catch him tomorrow on "politics nation." at 5:00 p.m. eastern. that does it for me tonight. i will be back with you tomorrow morning from 8 to 10 eastern for velshi. as we go into the break we have been talking about the fear people have been experiencing right now. you cannot forget hope and community. here are images of people looking out for their neighbors across the country because as reverend al said, we are in this together. we can and we will take care of each other. i'm ali velshi. good night. cologuard: colon cancer screening for people 45 plus at average risk. i took your advice and asked my doctor to order cologuard, that noninvasive colon cancer screening test. the delivery guy just dropped it off. our doctor says it uses advanced science. it's actually stool dna technology

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breaking tonight. the new identified deadly virus from china which has killed at least two people and sickened dozens more. >> the cdc says it's a variation of coronavirus. a family that includes the common cold and sars. >> the virus can spread from person to person. raising broader fears of a pandemic. >> people are taking any precaution they can to keep safe. >> this morning, the chinese city at the