change things around. >> the worst case scenario is a very realistic picture if we keep going down the road which is a hospital that's now resource poor. let care professionals are sick and that patient mildly sick and those that are dying are coming in overwhelming the resources and we have to make decisions about who we can help. >> donald trump at the white house and an e.r. doctor on the front lines in new york guy. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." friday, march 27th. jonathan lemire is joining us and nbc news correspond heidi przybyla and vice pro voes from the university of pennsylvania dr. ezekiel emanuel.

and author of "soul of america" and from vanderbilt university, jon meacham is here. he's an nbc and msnbc contributor. all along with willie and me and joe is back on monday. we're going to begin this monday with another unfortunate milestone as the u.s. overtakes china as the country with the most number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus. the u.s. has more than 85,000 cases with more than 17,000 reported in the last 24 hours. as the country sets records for new cases just about every day. president trump continues his push for guidelines on self-distancing to be relaxed. the administration is planning to identify certain counties by risk level, high, medium or low. hoping that some parts of the country can get back to work sooner than others. meanwhile, members of the house are racing back to washington

right now to vote on that massive economic rescue package today. leaders had hoped to pass it by voice vote but feared at least one member kentucky republican thomas massey would demand a recorded vote. if he or any other member forces a roll call the house would need a majority of the chamber present to proceed with the vote. if at least 216 members don't show up the vote will be delayed until a quorum is met. as for the urgency of the matter, look no further than that this morning's "new york times" with the record number of jobless claims sprawled across the entire front page. it's getting really bad and in some cases, that's an extraordinary image on the front page of "the new york times" which underlines the fact that the previous monthly record was in october of 1982, 695,000 jobless claims. yesterday nearly 3.3 weekly

jobless claims. meanwhile the death toll in new york continues to take a turn for the worse with the state reporting nearly 50 new deaths overnight for a total of more than 430. meanwhile, coronavirus infections have sharply spiked, 40% in the single day. edging close to 40,000 cases. in new york city alone, 365 people have died. by contrast the number of people murdered in the city last year was 319. governor andrew cuomo said the surge in coronavirus deaths is due in part to older patients spending weeks on ventilators before dying. a custodian from the police force died. and the deputy county terrorism commissioner john miller tested positive.

new york city was flooded with an excess of nearly 6,000 911 calls yesterday. it's caused a strain on first responders who cautions the residents to only call in case of an emergency. there's a push to limit the number of coronavirus cases governor cuomo says doctors and nurses have enough protective gear for an immediate need but not beyond that. >> we have called the individual hospitals. that's no doubt that in the past few days, you know, there's maybe the distribution is a little start and stop. but we have enough ppe and the new york city officials say they have enough ppe for the new york city hospitals. we have enough ppe in stock for the immediate need. not past the immediate need.

>> nurses at mt. sinai west in manhattan were wearing trash bags at work. but the hospital has since responded saying that the photo in question actually shows the nurses wearing proper protective gear beneath the bags. mt. sinai west is the same hospital where a nurse kious kelly died this week. according to "the new york times" some of his colleagues have complained on social media about a lack of protective gear. one nurse told "the times" that they had offered one plastic protective go up for an entire shift though normal protocol called for a change of gowns between interactions with patients. and two patients also share the same ventilator and one more headline from the wall street

journal. new york is telling nursing homes they will be required to accept coronavirus patients who have been discharged from hospitals but may still be recovering. that news is expected to draw push back from nursing home officials who warn that could change endanger residents and we have reports of nursing homes around the country that are swamped with coronavirus cases. wiped out to an extend. zeke, we'll start with you. i want to ask about the county by county plan, but first, dr. birx seemed to play down a bit what hospitals were confronting. talk about what to do with end of life situations and changing what their oath is and what their guidelines are given the fact that they have to ration materials and they have so many patients. we have situations in georgia and michigan where hospitals are under siege. boston has 100 health care workers at least who are testing positive with coronavirus.

100 in three separate hospitals. in new york city, they are building a makeshift morgue outside bellevue hospital who is right, dr. birx or those on the front lines and the images we see with our eyes? >> i think the front lines actually tell you what's happening at the front lines and politicians and people in washington don't want the country to panic. i mean, i think our republican administration would have -- what you're seeing is major rationing in the country. rationing is a word that they have used to beat up democrats but the fact is we are seeing rationing in parts of the country and you have mentioned some of them. primarily in new york. but it's not going to be exclusively new york. this is not a virus that is just going to stay confined to new york. i would mention, mika, right now if you look at the numbers we probably have a million covid-19 cases in the country. and if this is doubling every

three to four days, that means that we'll have 1 hundred hundred million people who have covid-19 in about four weeks. that's a frightening thought i think. >> it is. and you have societal breakdown issues. for example, prison systems around the country desperately asking for help. there's no social distancing in prisons and for example at rikers last count i saw at least 40 inmates have it. it's an outbreak. you have reports from around the country of garbage workers not wanting to pick up garbage because they don't have protection and yet the president is talking about a county by county ranking in terms of how bad coronavirus is. how is that possible that that could even work remotely? >> well, it could only work if we had sufficient testing so we could actually very reliably identify those counties with low levels and those counties have the ability to test and to

contact trace cases. remember, china didn't lock down the whole country. you had large numbers who could do contact tracing, south korea has done contact tracing. it can only work if we have the extensive testing in those counties and contact tracing and isolation of anyone who turns out positive. now, many of those counties probably don't have that capacity. so you have to have a willie? >> heidi przybyla, you have done a lot of reporting on what's happening inside the hospitals, what personal protective equipment they have or don't have. last night the president questioned certain cities needs, a gut feeling he had that they don't need them. is it true as governor cuomo

said it's gotten better, i can report that out from the several new york hospitals but they still have to share ventilators between patients in some cases. >> ventilators are by far the number one and most dire need, willie. that is true of a number of states. this is not just in new york. you see the governor of michigan begging for federal assistance. the president kind of criticizing her last night. but just this morning, there's now reporting out of the "detroit free press" about a memo that went around to henry ford health care systems where they do talk about decisions that they're going to have to make between patients who have the best chance of surviving and those who don't. here's quoting from the memo. patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority. patients will be evaluated with the best plan of care and dying patients will be provided comfort care. this is causing a lot of fear in states like michigan, but what i can report to you is that it's

not just the ventilator situation even though that is the most pressing, willie. i spoke in an exclusive interview last night with william jay quist, the representative for 38,000 emergency medicine doctors around the country and he spoke after governor cuomo said that supplies were adequate. he said this is true, however, that is only true because standards have so lowered in the united states for what is adequate. that is assuming that doctors are willing to reuse masks and bleach them four or five times. that is adequate if you're wearing the same gowns that you wear in a traditional hospital setting, traditional surgical masks and gowns which are inadequate in this situation. look at the difference between how our doctors look and how the doctors in south korea look, they're covered head to toe in

the tie back gowns. dupont creates them here, but they're sent to asia and they're manufactured. doctors are begging for these, willie. i talked to a doctor in south florida who picked up a phone himself and tried to get a supply line to china going because he has the cleveland clinic and other major institutions begging for this type of protective gear. this is why we're starting to see in part so many hospital workers infected in places like boston. >> yeah. by the way, in south florida the first doctor medical professional to be killed by coronavirus yesterday is 67-year-old from margate, florida. as heidi mentioned in an interview on fox news last night, president trump went after three democratic governors who have been critical of the federal government's response to the coronavirus outbreak in the

u.s. new york's andrew cuomo, michigan's gretchen whitmire and jay inslee. he questioned cuomo's statement about how many ventilators new york needs. >> new york is a bigger deal but it's going to go also. but i have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be. i don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. you know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they have two ventilators and now all of a sudden they're saying can we order 30,000 ventilators. your governor of michigan, she's not stepping up i don't know if she knows what's going on. we sent her a lot and now she wants a declaration of emergency and we have to make a decision on that. but michigan is a very important state. i love the people of michigan. what they do. i'm the one -- you know, i'm

bringing back many, many car factories into michigan and she's a new governor and it's not been pleasant. we have people like governor inslee, he should be doing more. he shouldn't be relying on the federal government, governor inslee, that's the state of washington. he was a failed presidential candidate and, you know, he's always complaining. >> so putting aside the fact that it is incredible that this president is lashing out at governors and criticizing them and mocking them at this time, jonathan lemire, his refusal to use the production act and to stream line the production of supplies to get them to the states, only he has the power to do that and president trump is choosing not to help states deal with this crisis in the most quick and effective way. let me say it again. president trump is making the choice to not help the states in the most quick and effective

way. he's making that choice and leaving this to them and now i fear, jonathan lemire, i wonder if you agree with this, what you see happening is the next phase of this. this county by county plan which looks like total chaos basically leaving it to the counties to figure out how to separate themselves from, you know from worst to best. this is insanity and i wonder what the governors' reactions must have been when they got the letter yesterday with this ridiculous plan. >> so governors, mika, are at the front line of this pandemic and they have been from the beginning and there's a debate about how best to approach the federal government. do you try to fight or flatter trump? they know they need federal response so they're trying to deal with a unique situation. a president who pays unprecedented amount of

attention to in particular media coverage and how the governors treat him. that's what we're seeing in the last couple of days. my colleague and i, we reported on this just yesterday before news of the presidential phone call with governors, including cuomo who told aides a week ago that he was deeply frustrated with the federal response. but he figured the best way to motivate the president to do more would be to go on tv and flatter him. even though at that moment, cuomo felt, the president hadn't done anything to warrant that praise. but he did. and he did it again later in a private phone call to the president. the president told people around him, andrew called and said really nice things about me and then changed his rhetoric to the governor. now it's changed back, it's been hot and cold. yesterday in the interview with fox news reflects what happened earlier in the day in a phone call that the president had with the governors in which jay inslee urged him to step up because the president had said to them, this is the message we are getting over and over, that

the states should play the primary role and the federal government even though it has the larger resources will be their backup and jay inslee said in the call, we don't need a backup, we need tom brady, meaning we need a starting star quarterback to lead the way, we need a president to take the helm here and president irritated with the call and we heard him from last night is looking for the states to step up and that's why with the production act he keeps the onus on the states rather than the federal government's mobilization if things take a turn for the worse. >> so really quickly, zeke emanuel and i know we want to get to jon meacham, but every day when the president sort of throws out the bombs that he's deflecting from are total incompetence because there's no mass testing. how far away are we from real testing across the board? not some testing for some, some

testing for others. testing that doesn't match. how far away are we from being out of the dark? >> honestly, mika, i don't know because we had so many mistakes with the testing. i do think we have a massively improved the testing but it's nowhere near adequate. we have 400,000 or 500,000 testing in this country and it gives you a sense of how far behind and we have to do smart testing. we need to know what the prevalence in the community is. we need to have some good surveys and we need to also begin testing people who aren't asymptomatic. the threshold for testing still remains way too high and getting the results is too long. i got an email yesterday from a professor out in california. nine days they have been waiting for the result. that's totally unacceptable. this is time we wasted between

january and now, not getting things arranged and having multiple mistakes along the way to get testing out and the last thing i would say we need to pull that testing out of hospitals. you don't need health professionals risking getting sick and having lots of people who might have coronavirus right near hospitals. we have to get it all out of the hospitals and health care system into these mobile drive-thru walk-up places. that's just as important because we need to keep those people who might be positive away from a hospital emergency room where there may be people who aren't positive. >> jon meacham, it's fascinating to watch as jonathan lemire reported out what the world leaders have learned, is that flattering might end up getting you what you need in the crisis, getting the ventilators and the ppe. andrew cuomo clearly knows this and he has known this for a long

time. so they sort of had to tap dance around the personality that's in the oval office governor cuomo i don't know why we haven't invoked the production act and they have learned that flattery will get you what you need from this president. >> it's fundamentally american. one of the reasons we fought the american revolution was to avoid having our fates be subject to the whims of the king. at least in the popular imagination that was a central force behind the creation of the republic. america was supposed to put reason at the center of the national enterprise. al and i can't imagine another situation which is more designed, better for the centrality of data and the dictates of science. and the fact that this sounds partisan is heart breaking, but we're living in a polarized

pandemic. it's incredible. we have managed now to take everything including a life and death, invisible and totally chaos inducing disease and turn it into a red/blue issue. my heart sank last night when i was looking at the map of the outbreaks and realized how closely it seems to track the red/blue county by county map. i'd urge folks to look at that because i think tragically there's going to be some reflection of people -- there's clearly a reflection of how people view the virus with their political views. and one of the things we have to figure out a way to do in the midst of the fear and in the midst of the anxiety is can we follow the data? can we follow the doctors and can the doctors to go to your

point resist that monarchal pressure to make the king happy. seems to me that's a central obligation of the medical professionals and of the citizens. you know, let's -- if there's any way at all let's not fall into this ambient tribalization, you know? you can disagree with the president on everything and still think maybe he has a point on this or that. you can be for the president on just about everything and think you know what i think he's got that wrong. that's called reason. right? that's called america. you know, you follow the data. and at this point, it's a matter of life and death. >> yeah. i mean -- >> right -- sorry, mika, if you dare raise hell because literally the life of your citizens depends on it, he calls in to sean hannity's show and

rips you as a failed presidential candidate. that's what the governors are looking at. >> but the lesson is no matter what you do he won't be there for you when you need him and will turn on you. maybe that approach puts off the inevitable. but we'll stick to facts here because i do agree with jon meacham as you watch this pandemic sort of play out, it is so polarized at this time given where we are -- we were before it broke out. but look at this fact. in palm beach county, florida, okay, where there are many, many senior citizens, where mar-a-lago sits, population of 1.4 million floridians. here's how many tests have been given. 1,166. that's 0.1% of the third largest county in the state and also an area that is supposed to be the next hot spot. we are way behind and the folks on the front lines who are

predicting a horror show in places like new york i'm not sure how they turn it around at this point. still ahead on "morning joe" from our nbc affiliate in boston, surging coronavirus cases in new york prompt serious measures in new england. we'll talk to marty walsh about his city's fight against the pandemic straight ahead. but first, as dr. emanuel writes trump's not a doctor he's only playing one on tv. and the president was at it again last night. "morning joe" is back in a moment. too many after parties? not drinking water? we've all committed skin sins! new neutrogena® bright boost... kick-starts dull, tired skin with neoglucosamine... a gentle, non-acid amino sugar exfoliant that works within the surface and boosts cell turnover by 10x. for brighter, wide-awake skin. bright boost.

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28 past the hour, president trump continues to tout hydroxychloroquine, a common anti-malaria drug as a potential treatment for coronavirus.

speaking on fox news last night, trump said there was no risk in using drugs that have already been approved for different purposes. >> i think there's some incredibly positive things. you know, affecting the immune system and lots of other elements are at work. and, you know these are game changers, this solves the problem. getting the vaccine is important but if we can do something -- like as an example if we had something therapeutically that one of the numerous items that we're testing right now -- i mean, testing it right now, if any of this worked this is a game changer. you know, there's no risk when it's already out there in a different form for a different purpose. so we're doing to see how it all comes out and we're very -- we just started so you will probably know before me, because owe know all of these things but you have some of the other things. aside from that, you have seen

some incredible potential for other medicines. >> zeke, the president said they're testing it right now and he says it works. what's the truth? >> well, i noticed there he said this is a game changer. if you were a scientist and if you were rigorous about this, you would say potential game changer. we have been filled in medicine with lots of things that we think do work or work in animals that are promising the biological mechanism makes sense and they don't work in people. i'm an oncologist and we have seen this over and over again. we have had a number of cases actually already of some things that have been tried in coronavirus that don't work. the new england journal a few weeks ago had a paper about a couple of the drugs. we have to do rigorous studies. hopes, promises those are not good enough because these drugs

do have side effects. and people need to be aware of that and we don't know whether they might actually cause problems with the disease. actually make it worse. sometimes you give drugs, thinking they should work and they actually exasperate a problem. you know, there is no way of getting effective treatments to people unless you determine they're safe and effective and that can only be done through randomized clinical trials. fortunately that's what's going on and i would not pronounce before we have the data. it just doesn't make any sense to say it's going to be a game changer and inevitably we'll get something. that might not happen and raising hopes for people like a man i think in arizona who went out and ate his wife's fish chloroquine and died from it, that's a terrible, terrible outcome and that was -- to the wife directly tied to the president promoting this drug and the guy didn't even have coronavirus. it's just a terrible situation. we need research and only

research can determine whether it's safe and effective and that will take time. we're impatient. we have a humanitarian interest in trying to save the most lives but the only way to do that is to prove whether the drugs work or not. >> yeah. that man who died drank fish tank cleaner that contained that ingredient that from emanuel is talking about. yesterday, dr. birx talked about a couple of hot spots where she's concerned, cook county, chicago, wayne county, michigan, which is detroit and the surrounding areas. you started to read portions of a letter that really sheds light on what doctors in detroit, doctors in michigan are feeling right now and some of the desperation they have and some of the choices that they may have to make inside those hospitals. >> yeah, willie, i have to tell you i'm a wayne county native and a good friend of mine ron foreignier he said he was so upset he couldn't sleep and he flagged me on the memo which now

has been confirmed by henry ford health care system that was circulating around the doctors. because of short ams we need to be careful with resources. patients will be evaluated for the best plan of care and dying patients will be provided comfort care. people didn't believe that this was real. there was a lot of upset and finally last night henry ford health system had to respond around 11:30 p.m. last night saying that this was in fact accurate and they said, look, quote, with the pandemic we must be prepared for the worst case with collective wisdom and from our industry we crafted a policy to provide guidance for making difficult patient care decisions. we hope never to have to apply them. we will always utilize every resource to care for our patients. but look, i have been looking at the reports out of detroit and cases are spiking there. hospitals are filling up.

if this isn't a case study for why the dpa, the defense production act, needs to be activated i don't know what is. the governor is begging, she is becoming the new new york in her state. where ventilators -- she's concerned about the ventilators being in short supply, about hospital capacity and asking the federal government to please step in. and look, this is not just the governors. based on our reporting, this is the american medical association, these are the emergency room doctors. we had a union yesterday find 39 million n95 masks. the question by these experts is why isn't this the federal government doing that? >> and jonathan lemire, these are conversations -- this is one we can see in the letter, a memo, conversations are happening privately and in meetings in hospitals across the country about choices that doctors may have to make about life and death. which as a back drop then i

would ask you about the president's proposal last night, made in the interview with sean hannity about reopening in phases portions of the economy. i think he called them quadrants. the states we look at a snapshot of one day there are a lower number of cases that could get back to work, perhaps even by the easter deadline he's talked about. but as you listen to that information out of wayne county, michigan, and different hot spots around the country do you have any sense for how this plan might work? how will he decide which states, which cities are ready to go back to work? >> it's still being determined and it should be noted that people around the president are really trying to encourage him to look at easter as more of an aspirational date, not a concrete, restarting day for the u.s. economy. but he's forging forward. we heard him say yesterday that he'd listen to health experts and listen to doctors. we'll see. but we know that this is something that he really wants and there are some governors who are urging to do so.

in that call yesterday there were some republican governors from states who have not been that deeply affected, including the one from south carolina said we need to get back to work. but again, to exceed the control at the local authorities and this is where we point out that the lockdowns and shutdowns have been done by mayors and not by federal edict. if he says, hey, new york should get back to business, cuomo would say no. that's a snapshot for today. things could look different in a few weeks for easter. for instance, the surge of cases we're seeing now as mentioned this detroit, there's a surge in chicago, there's a surge of cases in florida and particularly troubling one innew orleans where it spread they think during the mardi gras a few week ago, but it's going to

travel to areas less affected. and particularly in the rural states that don't -- they do have necessarily the health care facilities that some of the big cities do. and therefore, while the numbers might not be as big, because the density is less there, the outcomes could be as tragic. >> zeke, before you go, looking at the severity of this across the country without testing and with such pitiful testing at this point, this country is far behind others in terms of being able to end this, to flatten the curve. but i want to get into new york and how we are not a slow motion train wreck in new york city that is not even close to being slowed down. you have people doing testing still in the hospitals. as you pointed out earlier if you get the testing out of the hospital you get the potential coronavirus spread away from the hospital, the hospitals are huge clusters right now.

there are also people like police officers, ambulance workers, health care workers who are going home to their families with potential exposure. are we using all of the resources in new york, hotels and other spaces where people can isolate themselves? because it seems like we're not even close to being able to understand how to contain this in new york city. >> i think your desperation in your voice is the right response. we do have a major crisis in new york. we have to use every empty resource. we do need that hospital ship. we need makeshift facilities in new york. and around the country. i think as was said by jonathan, you know, this is going to break out in places we don't anticipate and new york is just the leading edge. it's by no means going to be alone in this. i do think also we need to be aware that social distancing has to be enforced much more

rigorously. and the unfortunate effect is it's going to talk about four weeks to get to the top of the peak if we had effective social distancing and that's nothing but short of hell for the first responders and as i think you correctly pointed out, you know, first line responders like policemen go home if they've got coronavirus they'll spread it to the family. those people need to be isolated so that they don't spread it to other people. and that's the only way we'll be able to keep a handle, you know, clamp this down sufficiently. between now and then, it is going to get worse. we are not at the top of the curve yet. and that means a lot more people are going to be infected and we'll face more shortages. we had a paper in the new england journal about how to deal with the rationing situations. one of the most important things for doctors and nurses and everyone involved it creates

burnout which we cannot have at this moment. so hospitals have to step in with other groups and front line doctors making those decisions and they need clear priorities for that. and i think, you know, we're going through a very, very traumatic situation for everyone. we should remember there are people with other diseases. the other diseases, heart disease, cancer, didn't go away. we're not adequately caring for those people and they do need care too. >> people on the front lines need a place to stay. airbnb is stepping up working with the hosts but really there's not a plan to separate theme. jonathan lemire, heidi przybyla, dr. emanuel, thank you. coming up, our next guest doesn't just treat infectious disease himself but teaches others to do it too. what's his advice to health care workers on the front lines? that conversation is just ahead on "morning joe." just ahead on "morning joe. r sanctuary. that's why lincoln offers complimentary pickup and delivery servicing.

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>> amid growing concerning about the spread of the coronavirus. to prioritize granting home confinement in inmates convicted of low level crimes have shown good conduct behind bars and th deadly virus dr. dave, it seems to me though that there are outbreaks in prisons right now. i have been reading from around the country, alabama, rikers has

at least 40 cases. this could be chaotic. >> mika, there are prisons and jails across the world and the idea of leaving prisoners and inmates in prisons is a recipe for having this coronavirus spread like wildfire, but there are safety concerns for releasing people into the community that either aren't healthy or shouldn't be left to their own resources in the so it's a horrible dilemma that we face, but at the end of the t day, prisons and facilities where there are incarcerated people arehe like petri dishes d anything that can be done, if nothing else to protect the guards, but the prisoners and the inmates, the incarcerated people, also have families at home. they have problems of their own

that we have to take into consideration. >> yeah, there are reports, dr. dave, that at major prison facilities there are no masks. there's no protective gear and the prison workers are getting really, really scared. dr. dave campbell, thank you very much. willie? meanwhile, mika, major hospitals in boston are seeing a big spike in infected health care workers with the number doubling to more than 160,000 just in the past two days. the boston globe is reporting the rise in infections among staff are raising alarms about the ability of health care systems to handle the large influx of potential covid-19 patients. infections are multiplying at an alarming rate with the number of cases at massachusetts general quadrupling from just earlier this week. boston's major health care systems are reporting the infections are not clustered to one area of the hospital. and some infections include nonclinical workers. leading officials to believe community spread was involved as opposed to direct contact with

infected patients. when staff members are infected it causes a ripple effect across the hospital forcing quarantining and a heavier work load for thend remaining worker putting those staff members at risk.er let's bring in an assistant director of medicine and an infectious disease specialist in boston. you obviously up in boston have a collection of some of the very best hospitals in the world. just give us a snapshot, we gave a little bit of the information there of what it looks like in those emergency rooms. what it looks like in the icus up in boston as it relates to coronavirus. >> so it's -- they're crowded. the people are -- there's -- i would say that there's not necessarily chaos. i want to nurses and doctors an

entire staff are doing an amazing job at projecting that calm,in at remaining calm, and sort of implementing what they've learned to do over years of training. that said, there's a constant influx of patients. i'm onf the phone constantly wh the discharge planners trying to figure out when someone can be discharged, where they can be discharged erto, if it's safe t be discharged. this is a total team effort and taking a lot of human resource right now as well as tangible resources. >> we've heard specifically in new york city butrd across the country about the desperate need in health departments for ppe, personal protective equipment, masks, gowns, gloves, bootys, things like that. where does it stand in your hospital. how desperate is the need there? >>ee this is an ongoing discussn everyg day in our section. and i know across the hospital.

currently we have a mask policy inma place here at boston medic center which is consistent with what'sco happening at mass genel across town where we're giving workers a mask to use for the day. we currently have a supply that is adequate for the time being but looking at projections we really have to think about where we're headed, and it doesn't necessarily look good. as manylo of your guests have alreadygu said the supply chain are difficult. i was watching governor baker give a press conference and it was clear his, his frustration with the supply chain and i'm certainly not speaking for the governor, it was just as a situation -- it was actually somewhat reassuring to know that we were atto least all in this together here in massachusetts. >> doctor, i was struck by

something youto posted on socia media where you said, as you prepare to leave your wife and kids for y a while and go into these icus and emergency rooms you say i am scared but my community needs me which is what i've w heard from doctors acros the country and why you are rightfully being called heroes for what you're doing. you have right now an audience, president trump is tangling with governors, butan he does seem t listen toto doctors, people in e fight directly. what would you say not just to the president but the federal government. what do you need at your hospital and how soon do you need it? >> so, we're thinking of things in three terms. space. staff. and stuff. so right now our governor is working and our mayor is working to, to find space for all the health care workers that may needrk to be quarantined and al all ofin our vulnerable populations here in massachusetts. people who are experiencing

homelessness andnc making sure they have a safe place to go. with regard to staff, we are -- we need the president and the federal government to, to be in line with this idea that we're not anywhere ahead of this yet. we're still on the upslope of the curve. so we need to make sure that the community and the public knows that thee best thing they can tog protect the staff is to stay-at-home, to wash their hands, to practice social distancing, all of those things we've been saying for weeks. and then finally we need stuff. the supply chains are, i know, a difficult thing. we have a group of b.u., medical students and.u residents who ar collecting masks r and n-95s fr the community. i've seen this across the country. and ath i really think that rig

now unless there's a big shift in how we, we get masks and other ppe to our health care workers, we're going to have problems withoi the other two s the other two staff and stuff -- the staff and the space. >> doctor, i know people of boston are grateful andle the country isl grateful for peopl like you. we appreciate you taking some time. i know how busy it is for you right now. thanks for being here and thanks for all you're doing. >> my pleasure. >> john meacham, i wanted to kind of touch on what this doctor just put on the table here in the massachusetts, boston area. 160 health care workers testing positive. comparing that to the rate of testing, this is going to multiple.o and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, especially because the government, the president, his team is asking americans on

the front lines like those health cares workers so social distance ands they can't. they have nowhere to go. where are they supposed to go after they leave their shifts. they will go s home to their families and expose their families. given that one strain of this cantr you talk about how would u assess how our government is functioning right now, and what is the potential for parts of our society to start to collapse under this. >> i think there's a mismatch, there's m a gap between the rhetoric of concern and the reality of the response. that's a fair point. now that will sound like a partisan criticism. it's not. it goes's exactly to the data problem, the practical problem you just lied out. testing is essential. i mean, i know what everybody else knows this.el

i'm a layman. but i read a great deal about it and it's prettyab clear from th experiencer of other countries that we need to test. we need to distance. and we need to prepare for this tsunami that is already beginning to hit new york and washington state and california and which is going to come every where. that'sve what a virus does. it doesn't respect a wall. it doesn't respect a county line. it doesn't respect a state line. and this is the worst possible situationwo you can imagine for government that is run by someone who does not have a great deal -- i'm being as generous as possible -- doesn't have a great deal of patience or fondness for detail. and, again, i don't mean to make ame partisan point, it's not th. americans by nature are not

particularly patient, so one of the reasons we've been a great country. like huck finn we're lighting out for territories. so the best thing we can do for each other, the doctors, nurses and ourselves is listen to the experts. >> all right. john meacham, thank you very much. coming up david remnick puts it bluntly. better to be lucky than good. trump is not good. we must hope he'll be lucky. david discusses that and how yearsnd of disinformation pushe by the president impacts the national crisists today. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. y. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. chicago! ok so, magnificent mile for me... i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. until i realized something was missing... me. you ok, sis? my symptoms were keeping me from really being there

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we're meeting with our colleagues in new york, there are still icu beds remaining and

still significant, over 1,000 or 2,000 ventilators that have not been utilized yet. please for the reassurance for people around the world to wake up this morning and look at people talking about creating dnr situations, do not resuscitate for patients. there's no situation right now that warrants that kind of discussion. can you think about it in a hospital. certainly many hospitals talk about this on a daily basis. but to say that to the american people, to make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it won't be there or when they need that ventilator it won't be there. we don't have evidence of that. >> we could potentially get to a point where there has to be a rationing of ventilators. at the rate that this virus is

exponentially transmitting transmission at this stage i go home every night and think about what if we had to decide between two patients. >> i have to question why dr. birx chose to say that during the press conference yesterday. you're hearing from the front lines across the country they are in dire need of equipment and supplies and have people overrunning the hospital. here's "the washington post," as cases mount amid a national shortage of personal protective equipment or ppe, hospitals are beginning to implement emergency measures that will either minimize, modify or completely stop the use of certain procedures on patients with covid-19. they are down by oath to do everything they can but they don't have the ability to do everything they can because they don't have the supplies and they are overrun. explain to me, dr. birx, if i may, because i'm very concerned at the pressure, top scientists

at the white house are being put under by president trump. i want to understand why bellevue hospital has a makeshift morgue. why the "new york times" was able to get er, video of an er patient after patient just lying there dying with covid-19. the front lines are telling a very different story. i really hope scientists at the top don't get bullied by the president because we need you. with us this hour we have professor at princeton university, the editor of the "new yorker" magazine david remnick along with willie and me we got those guests and joe will be back on monday. let's dive right in. the u.s. is the country with most cases of coronavirus anywhere in the world. the u.s. has more than 85,000 cases with more than 17,000 reported in the last 24 hours. as the country sets records for

new cases, just about every day president trump continues his push for guidelines on self-distancing to be relaxed. he wants to open the country up by easter. the administration plans to issue new guidelines that would identify certain counties by risk level, high, medium or low. hoping that some parts of the country can get back to work sooner than others. meanwhile members of the house are racing back to washington right now to vote on that massive economic rescue-package today. as for the urgency of the matter look no further than this morning's "new york times" with a chart of yesterday's record number of jobless claims sprawled across the entire front page. willie? >> the death toll in new york continues to take a turn for the worse with the state now reporting nearly 50 new deaths overnight for a total of 430. coronavirus infections have

sharply speck up 40% in a single day edging closer to 40,000 cases now. in new york city alone 365 people have died. more than 350 nypd employees have tested positive for coronavirus including the deputy counterterrorism commissioner john miller. the city was flooded with an excess of nearly 6,000 911 calls yesterday. the deluge caused serious strain on first responders who are cautioning residents to call only in an emergency. so, david remnick, i know you're writing about presidential leadership and we want to get into that part of the story but let's start with new york city where you lived and worked for so much of your life and the scenes we're seeing coming out of the hospitals where many of our children were born and where we've taken ourselves for various procedures over the years now turned into these "m.as.h." unit, triage units to

treat this coronavirus. what your seeing and hearing? >> late last night i talked to an emergency doctor at methodist hospital in brooklyn. she said what you're hearing from washington is just not the case. i don't know what she was talking about from the podium of the white house and it's a sin. you know, originally the most important commodities we have, the most important resources we have were time and forminformat. time and truth. the president of the united states was not looking truth in the face. he could not. he refused to. he didn't that have capacity to. he didn't have the empathy to. so those commodities, those resources were squandered and it continues to this day and as a result there's a lack of ventilators by the thousands and thousands, there's a lack of surgery gowns and masks and all these things to keep our health workers safe. this is a dereliction of duty of

the highest degree and all of donald trump's character flaws, his lack of empathy, lack of intellectual capacity, his ability to see truth square in the face, all of these are coming back to haunt us in ways that we never ever imagined. susan glacier this morning in the new york ears website has a piece comparing these briefings to the briefings that general westmoreland gave in vietnam called the 5 follies. he would go out lie and lie and lie and it's a sin. >> so more on the trump administration crafting guidelines to categorize counties across the country as being at high, medium or low risk of covid-19. according to "wall street journal" the intent of the guidelines is to assist local leaders in deciding what level of movement restriction that their county warrants. in a letter to governors

president trump wrote the country's growing testing can establish criteria for classifying counties by risk in hopes that some parts of the country may be able to return to work sooner than others. >> they have to go back to work. our country has to go back. our country is baked on that. and i think it's going to happen pretty quickly. i think it's going to happen pretty quickly. a lot of progress has been made but we have to go back to work. we may take sections of our country, we may take large sections of our country that aren't so seriously affected and may do it that way. but we're going start the process pretty soon. >> the "journal" reports a major hurdle for the administration in relaxing social distancing according to county it's ability to conduct enough testing to track the virus' path. the administration declined when

to say they have he they may have enough county specific data to lift stay-at-home orders or enforce different levels of restrictions within a state. this is a ridiculous idea at this point. joining us from the white house, nbc news correspondent hans nichols. i say that because without testing on a mass level you can't do any of this. we're still flying blind. there are no answers as to when we'll have that. we don't even have, in some areas, tests where you can get answers in a day or two or three or four. some people are waiting up to ten days. also, we have a group of more than 100 former national security officials writing a letter to president trump urging him, urging him to support companies making supplies critical combatting the coronavirus outbreak, to put to the full extent the defense mobilization and to not do so is

a great mistake. they are asking the president to use his power to help this country get through it and he chooses not to. how is anyone at this point going to take him seriously and who in the world with any sense of responsibility and semblance of knowledge has to how science works want to put this county by county plan into action? >> reporter: that's the big question. if you're going to go county by county you need visibility, standardization on tests and when you talk to public health experts they want to see some community assessment. basically a survey. dr. birx by her own admission they don't understand one of the factors here whether it's the transmission rate or mortality rate. to use her analogy they are talking about an iceberg and they don't know whether or not what they are looking at right now and limited testing up to 550,000. they don't know if you can telescope to the tip of the iceberg or if there's much more

below. by their own admission they have a lot of unknowns. when you ask them and we pressed them yesterday at that briefing if they might do a county survey the assistance ans is we'nswer about it. the president said we'll have a finger prick test on monday. that's when people can get a finger prick test, have a result returned to them within minutes if not hours. they are simply not there yet in terms of working with the pharmaceuticals and cdc in having these tests deployed. what they seem to be saying is we don't need those just yet. but when you listen to birx and if you ch-- fauci, particularly fauci he has a hunger for more information. others family the president wants to make a guess which way this will go. some of these life and death

critical calls. mika? >> nbc's hans nichols. thank you. willie? >> so, addedy, jonathan lameer put out the easter deadline that the president arbitrarily picked out was something more aspirational and people around him and scientists like dr. fauci and dr. birx might prevail on him to say you can't set deadlines. dr. fauci said a couple of times the disease sets the deadline. we can't say two sundays from now we open up. the president obviously, with political concerns in mind and thinking about small business owners and employees and companies getting back to work would like top this company back up. i guess what we're looking at is the power of his personality over the science presented to him by doctors fauci and birx. >> what we're looking at who he values. seems to me when -- there's a

sense what matters most is money. what matters most is the market. what we need to be concerned about right now are human beings. when you talk about the death toll, you need to talk about the human toll. talk about people dying all alone because their loved ones can't be there. think about the sister who died, saying he was sick. part of what we need to do is pump the brakes and understand that what we have to do, so we can get control of the virus. we have to expand testing as you guys have bern saying all along. this push to kind of get the economy going again, right? i think in some ways it reveals, willie, a kind of lack of imagination. "new york times" editorial board yesterday published a very interesting, an editorial asking why is america choosing mass

unemployment. why can't we be more creative in how we respond to the economic effects of this pandemic, how we're giving paramount attention to the human toll here. >> there's the argument, of course, you open up the economy too soon it only compounds the problem makes later economic problems even worse. more now on yesterday's record high jobless numbers to continue our conversation. 3.28 million americans, 3.28 million americans applying for unemployment last week making at any time the largest one week number in united states history. these new numbers are nearly 3 million person jump from the week before when 282,000 people applied for unemployment. the special record set in october of 1982, when 695,000 claims were made in a single week. yesterday treasury secretary steve mnuchkin attempted to downplay those staggering new numbers. >> i just think these numbers

right now are not relevant and whether they are bigger or smaller in the short term, you know, i mean obviously there are people who have jobless claims and, again, the good thing about this bill is the president is protecting those people. so, now with these plans, small businesses hopefully will be able to hire back a lot of those people. >> let's bring in senior fellow at university of virginia miller center chris liu he served as deputy secretary of labor in the obama administration. let me put that quote to you from secretary mnuchkin, these numbers right now aren't relevant. what do you make of that? >> yeah, that tells you a lot about the priority of this administration that we have 3 million people who are going their unemployment offices or applying online. they are going to get on average about $385 a week. that will go up under the stimulus. then they will try to figure out how to stretch that out to pay

their rent and buy groceries and so when you say that's not relevant, that, in my opinion, shows the mistake in priority for this administration that they are probably frankly more concern how the cruise industry is doing than how american workers are doing. what's important to understand as staggering as those numbers were yesterday they probably even understate the reality of how bad the situation is right now because we know a lot of the shelter-in-place rules didn't go into place until after this data was collected. we know a lot of people didn't apply for unemployment. gig workers don't qualify for unemployment. these numbers will go up significantly in the next couple of weeks and there will be a lot of heartache associated with that not with standing whatever gets passed by the house today. >> all right. david remnick, i just have to ask in terms of, you looking at presidential leadership and it's hard not to -- it's hard not to

sound extreme here. but the president has factually based lied repeatedly about being prepared for this, about knowing it was coming. the only explanation that one could maybe think of is that he's trying to cover up the botched initial response that will continue to reign hell. going after governor, going after reporters, getting into fights with people, distracting. is anybody telling him that these realities that we're reporting on now, that we're seeing with our own eyes from makeshift wards in new york city to prison outbreaks which is just a frightening concept, to boston, 1 he 60 health care workers testing positive. this could take down the hospital system.

massachusetts yesterday, massachusetts may be very extreme, first state to do so, decision to graduate fourth year medical students and put them out into the medical population for fear they will run out of doctors. this virus isn't going to listen to his branding exercise. it's not going to take kindly to a stupid, county by county plan. and it's not going to let him re-open by easter. we're going to have people dying. we're going to have people filling up the makeshift morgue at bellevue hospital. we're going to have too many bodies for the morgues. and these reports are here. and they are now. so what explains his behavior? >> what explains his behavior is this is who donald trump was. this is what he always was, was a real estate flim flam man in new york. the price wasn't very high. we watched him on his reality

show, saw him on magazine covers in the '80s and '90s and he's a source of amusement. not very amusing any more. this country elected donald trump president and he was who he is now. except now he's not in charge of a reality television show. he's in charge of human lives by the millions. and the federal government for which he has nothing but disdain -- remember he calls expertise the administration with disdain. the federal government which has all the power to help human beings he call it the deep state with disdain. and right now, you know, you're seeing the epicenter of this in new york city and this is the city that it love. and my money is on people who tell the truth whether it's tony fauci or the medical professionals that i talk to or journalists who are doing their work. all of these people, countless

people, but that can't substitute for leadership at the very top and the price will be paid in human lives in emergency rooms, in housing project, in nursing homes, not just be paid in new york city, scott gottlieb fired and let go by donald trump tweeted last night that if you think this is limited to new york you're wrong. it will hit new orleans, detroit, dallas, miami, chicago, philadelphia and it will hit it no less hard. unless the country has the discipline to do what it needs to do, and values human life before the investment bank and private equity people whisper in donald trump's work we better get back to work in easter, this fantasy of easter then we're in trouble. >> david remnick, thank you very

much. willie? >> christopher liu, i want to follow up with you and ask about what happened yesterday because it was tale of two economic numbers. in the morning we learned that 3.28 million americans filed for unemployment. that's the initial claims. then later in the afternoon the dow was up 1300 points, a three day rally for the markets there. how do you explain that? what does that mean to the average working people? obviously the president of the united states likes to focus on the dow, not so much when it goes down but when it goes up he likes to trump that number. how do you square those two numbers? >> we often see a disconnect between economic numbers and what the stock market is doing. i can't remember a more stark contrast than yesterday where the dow is up 6% and 3 million people are out looking for work. i think it speaks more to the broader issue which is the stock market is not a reflection of our economy. it reflects parts it but it

reflects a forward projection of what investors think and the problem is that when you have a president who is making important life and death health decisions based on a stock market gain, who frankly based most of his decisions in the last three years on his perception of what the market will perceive that's not in the public interest. not just economists, it's health experts, government officials that say this desire to open earl is disastrous from a public health perspective as well as long term health of this economy. >> so, i have breaking news. the president has said, you know, this will be a miracle, it will clear up. he really was quite a denier to an extent on the coronavirus. breaking news right now from the uk, boris johnson has just tweeted that he has tested positive for the virus. this is just coming out right now. i believe he is the first world

leader to be diagnosed to test positive. we know prince charles had tested positive. and in the bbc, of course, reporting that the deaths are rising in the uk by more than 100 a day. but now testing positive, boris johnson who locked down his country a few days ago, weeks after really not taking this seriously, not thinking that it was going to rise to the level of a lockdown, he changed course and did a pretty dramatic address to the country selling them to stay home. and stay away from this virus. the united states is not completely locked down. this is going state by state, city by city and the president hopes county by county. but day-by-day, this pandemic seems to rise above partisan

politics and the left and the right and whatever your point of view might be about president trump, it may inspire partisan anger. but the president has to look in the face of this virus at this point. he has to look at his counter point across the pond who has just tested positive. and you wonder about trump's, i don't know, members of sort of his cult following, if i may put it that way in quotes in the white house, in congress, and on fox, who are amplifying this president's message, his lies and deflections. because at this point, we are at a state where in the united states millions of people could die and more and more people are being tested positive with this virus. so, just a message to our president, you're lack of expertise on every level in your administration, the lack of experts you have, the fact you

cleared out the pandemic office, your choice to try and brand your way out of this is not going to work. this virus doesn't respond to lies, it doesn't respond to deadlines, it doesn't respond to branding, and it will not let you open up american companies until we have gotten beyond this. let's go live to kier simmons with more out of the uk, boris johnson the prime minister testing positive for the virus. kier? >> reporter: that's right. we just heard this news. boris johnson himself actually tweeting the news on a video message that it almost looks a bit like a kind of a selfie video. i imagine that's because he would have been immediately self-isolating, of course. it appears from that video that he's in downing street sitting in a leather chair describing himself as having tested positive for coronavirus, but that he has mild symptoms.

if the british prime minister was sicker than that then the british foreign secretary would take over leadership of the country. for now, though, the prime minister saying that he intends to continue his work leading the country, albeit by video conference. so trying to assure people while letting people he has tested positive but, of course, even while europe is looking like it's managing to control infections, for here in the uk this news will come as something as a blow, mika. >> it's willie. it was just monday that the prime minister issued the three week lockdown of the country where you're standing right now. i know it's early and we just learned this news that boris johnson tested positive for the coronavirus. is there any sense among your sources, people you talked to that his own tests or his own suspicion he may have, in fact,

contracted the coronavirus impacted that decision? >> reporter: i don't think that is likely. if he just tested, we know, for example, from what happened with prince charles that he began to get symptoms and was test eed pretty quickly, the day after pretty much and got the results back a day later. we don't know the details right now of how the prime minister's case played out but because he's the prime minister you can imagine as soon as he felt sick in a certain way he's likely to have mentioned to it his advisors, that he would have been tested very quickly because, of course, one of the issues in governments around the world as soon as a member of the leadership of that country, in this case in the uk, the british cabinet, is infected, steps have to be taken in order to ensure others don't get infected because that would be really

damaging to the leadership. of a country. so, i don't think it will have impacted that decision, but we do know, of course, that boris johnson has taken an approach here in the uk. you can see behind me now the streets are locked down. people mostly are not out in the streets. the uk took its time to get to that point, not wanting to impose on people a longer lockdown that seemed necessary judging that it was going to be difficult for people to maintain this kind of a lockdown and now we hear the british prime minister himself has been infected. so, again, a blow, obviously, while at the same time he's trying to reassure people. >> so while storms, looking at his age, i guess he's in his mid-50s. do we know if he has any he pre-existing conditions? also, you know, even from just coverage do we know who he has been exposed to? >> reporter: it's too early to know that.

clearly people will be going through his appointments and his engagements to see and to talk to those people. i'll say one thing, of course, quite unusual for a british prime minister. he has a partner, a young woman and she's pregnant. so there will be, of course, concern about her and her interaction with him, of course, and whether or not it will have an impact on her. but, you know, we are just hearing this news and what i don't want to do, of course, is get ahead of it because as i say right now the prime minister being clear that his symptoms are mild and effectively trying to say i'm okay, i'm still working. >> thank you very much. again the breaking news, british prime minister boris johnson tweeting out moments ago that he has tested positive for the coronavirus. still ahead on "morning joe" instead of calling out the governor michigan, the president

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the white house task force has now identified the detroit and chicago areas as potential new hot spots. cases in illinois have nearly doubled in the last three days. now at more than 2,500. 75% of the state's cases are from cook county, 45% from chicago alone. meanwhile michigan, the number of reported cases have quadrupled since monday to 2800 with nearly half coming from wayne county. 30% from detroit alone. yet while michigan braces itself for a deluge of cases, there is a harrowing report regarding the life and death guidelines to be used at a hospital network there during this pandemic. the "detroit free press" reports

that the henry ford health system officially confirmed the accuracy of a detailed letter being circulated by doctors and others on social media which outlines how doctors would make decisions at the michigan hospital network about who gets treated during the covid-19 crisis with limited resource. the letter reportedly reads in part, patients who have the best chance of guesting better are our first priority. patients will be evaluated for the best plan of care and dying patients will be provided comfort care. some patients will be extremely sick and very unlikely to survive their illness even with critical treatment. treating these patients would take away resources for patients who might survive. patients who are not eligible for icu or ventilator care will receive treatment for pain control and comfort measures. some conditions that are likely

to make you not eligible include severe heart, lung, kidney or liver failure, terminal cancers or severe trauma or burns. it continues. patients who are treated with a ventilator or icu care may have these treatments stopped if they do not improve over time. if they do not improve this means that the patient has a poor chance of surviving the illness even if the care was continued. this decision will be based on medical condition and likelihood of getting better. in response the health care network explained that, explaining the letter as part of a larger policy document developed for an absolute worse case scenario, and it's not an active policy but part of emergency response planning. but we have a lot of different states and hospital systems around the country that are dealing with similar isyou know care workers across at least

three hospitals have coronavirus. they are going to have an outbreak among their health care community and these health care workers once again there's no plan in these cities to put them any, where to isolate when they go home to their families so they are becoming spreaders and there are asymptomattic caric c. the government is asking 15 days to self-isolate whatever to containt. health care workers have nowhere to go. it's not possible in these major cities. it's actually a joke what they are trying to ask these people on front lines to do. and we have a little bit more here, ed here. at hospitals in new york city, chicago, they don't have supplies to help these people. doctors are being put in a horrible position where they have to decide who lives or

dies. what's the way out of this? >> you know, john meacham said a reason. we've been talking about it since we've discussed coronavirus. governor cuomo said we would get here. you think about not only what's happening in new york or chicago and detroit, but think about new orleans. think about the deep south. think about florida and alabama and louisiana and mississippi and arkansas and west virginia. we have the governor of mississippi, for example, opening up that state. overruling mayors in my own hometown, putting my mother and father in danger. what we see here is the grimness, grim reality of the moment we're in. and we need not small minded people, not selfish folk but folk that have a sense of the

actual understanding of the circumstance. right now we need to be as large -- >> willie, to add to the scenario in boston which is really developing before our eyes rapidly into a crisis, a full blown crisis, massachusetts, now the head of the massachusetts state hospital medical education system, they seem to see what's coming. i'm not sure why the president doesn't, but massachusetts has become the first state to graduate all fourth year medical students to try and expand the capacity of the medical population. they know that they are going to run out of doctors at the rate they are going. they can see it. why can't washington? >> yeah. there's a rush not just in massachusetts --

>> across the country to get doctors and chris liu, this is what we're looking at. we just lost willie's audio. when you have health care workers exposed and you have these numbers and, again, we have just limited testing. we don't know what we're looking at. let's back up to where we are and in terms of washington's reaction from the get go, we're still in the dark today in terms of testing. we still don't exactly know where we stand. but the numbers we're getting show medical workers, health care workers and those on the front line, police departments have dozens, sometimes hundreds of cops out. the front line workers need to be isolated. if the government wants americans to social distance, why wouldn't they set up situations where they open up all hotels and all empty properties right now and step up

like airbnb is, companies are, and try to help people separate. you have these congested areas with people on the front line who have no way of social distancing. >> mika, everything needs on the table right now whether it's using hotels that have closed for isolation. whether it's far more protective standard for front line health care workers. i want speaks more broadly to the flaws of this plan that the president wants to use, to open up county by county. because if you do that in a world in which you don't have broad surveillance, the counties opening up quicker will be rural counties. those rural counties don't have search capacity, don't have sophisticated equipment. you'll see a greater flood on the problem with the health care, particularly in those rural areas. >> willie? >> bringing now the mayor of city of boston. mr. mayor, thank you for joining us this morning. i know it's a busy time for you. we've been talking to physicians

from boston, from across your city this morning but also the last couple of days about the circumstance inside those hospitals. let's talk about from your seat there in the mayor's office what do you need? what's state of play in boston? what more can the federal government be doing help you? >> i think we need some more consistency across the country. as i watch the different shows and hear the different talks ever what's going on. one state is doing this, one city is doing that. we need consistency in shutting everything down. right now we have emergency orders in some place. in massachusetts we have a stay-at-home advisory. hospitals will end up getting frustrated because there's not enough supplies. there's a wedge in getting things from washington, d.c. right now quite honestly and i haven't been. critical of anyone and i haven't been critical it's not about democrats or republicans but it's about take this seriously. united states the number one country for case of coronavirus and we kind of, i think, a lot

of us got ahead of it. in boston we've been shutting things down for the last two weeks. numbers continue to grow. i think for people in boston, what i want to see in my hospitals, i want to see medical supplies for my first responders and i think we have to be more consistent across the board. i'll give you one example. in boston i shut construction down. construction is essential around the country in so many places. i don't understand that. we're shutting office buildings down. yet we're keeping construction sites open. not emergency construction sites. that's a different story. we need to get more consistent here. >> so, mr. mayor, you've resisted the full shelter-in-place call that some cities have done, san francisco for example. do you see yourself moving towards that now? it sounds like there are some concerns that people aren't adhearing to what you all have suggested. are you looking to making that an order? >> we're working on how we carry that out here in boston. what we've done, i supported the

governor announced a stay-at-home advisory earlier this week and i've been talking about that at every press conference saying it's incumbent upon us as individuals to do your part. if we adhere to that go out for shopping for groceries or prescriptions or go for walk. don't social gather we can get ahead of this virus. we won't know yet in boston or massachusetts how well that has impacted the numbers until quite honestly. we're seeing a surge right now in numbers. part of that surge is because of lack of testing. as we get into the weekend and next week we'll see what our numbers look like. at some point if the numbers continue to grow at the rapid pace they are and if you look at that map around the country, yes the east coast and west coast but that map starts to trickle into middle america we'll have serious problems. so the answer to your question is if we have to do that we

will. we need to make sure -- we're putting this together to make sure we have precautions in place to get food the poor, take care of the elderly, get medicines to people that are sheltering. >> mayor, i'm curious, do you have testing that's taking place at hospitals? do you have any hospitals that separate in separate buildings, new hospitals, makeshift hospital s to separate coronavirus patient from other patients. what can you do to people at the front lines so they can isolate and they don't go home and infect their families. >> we have -- we're opening up tomorrow a testing facility for first responders only in boston. that's something that we don't have yet. we're setting it up. that's online tomorrow. we have a couple of hospitals in boston, one in particular that has a unit, an isolated unit,

segregated unit just for coronavirus patients. in other hospitals are creating that opportunity. we're looking at -- i think the army corps of engineers is working with the state looking at where do we set up a separate hospital. for our homeless population that's what we're doing. a couple of areas will have medical staff as people have symptoms or test positive for the coronavirus if they are not hospitalized working with an organization called health care for the homeless which is doctors and nurses creating a space in the building for those folks that will be isolated, keeping everyone in that space that test positive for the coronavirus. that's something we're doing here. when it comes to first responders, for our nurses and hospital, dock, to what we've done we've worked with the hospitals and hospitals are working with hotels to set up spaces for first responders. on the city side that option is available. quite honestly you just asked me that question i have a meeting

at 8:00. it will be the first topic. we do the same thing for our first responders, emts, firefighters and police to give them that option if they want it. >> i mean is there any thought right now to separating out the population, giving these people on the front lines a place to live that is separate from their homes? >> i don't know if you caught that. what i'm going to do, we have it -- the hospital system is work on that right now and on the public safety side we don't have it in place. fact you asked me that question the this morning i have a meeting in a few minutes and i'll go in and talk about it. >> mr. mayor, i think a lot of mayors, governors are grappling with this idea how to eventually somehow get people back to work. i know you're hearing from the president of the united states he would like some places to open by easter. i'll leave you out of that conversation and just ask you about your city because it's on a lot of people's minds. how will they know when it's

safe to go back in the water. not just to go outside but all these people you know, friend ever yours, your citizens, residents that have to suffer and close their small businesses and fire employees because of what we're seeing hour looking at that balance of we want to keep the public healthy but we're losing jobs by the millions, by the week and also people are losing their livelihoods. how are you viewing that? >> i think when we go back to work as a city or state, as a country it won't be what we, what happened. not what we experienced four weeks ago. i think medical supplies and i think about medical supplies for first responders and front line workers right now, i think about how important that is. i see a society some point down the road, three, four, five months we'll be wearing masks and gloves. we'll be cautious. at that time the coronavirus won't have a vaccine for it and will probably have hopefully some medicine that we can take if somebody gets coronavirus.

we still have to be very cautious because at some point we have to reach out to the economy and go back there. when we do that, you know, the virus will still be here. people will still be testing positive for coronavirus and can't have that surge. at some point we have to start shifting to what does life look like in america and what does life look like here in boston when we return back and i think over time we'll get back to normal and get back to a place where we were but i think it will take some time for that. >> mayor, thank you very much. and we're going to get more on boston's fight against coronavirus when we speak with the president of massachusetts general hospital. that's coming up on "morning joe". plus more on the breaking news from just moments ago, prime minister of the united kingdom, boris johnson testing positive for the coronavirus. "morning joe" will be right back. od and platelet donations and asks all healthy donors to schedule an appointment to give.

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we may well be in a recession, but, again, i would point to the difference between this and a normal recession. this isn't -- there's nothing fundamentally wrong with our economy. quite the contrary. the economy performed very well right through february. we've got 50-year low in unemployment for the last couple of years. so we start in a very strong position. this isn't something that's wrong with the economy. >> federal reserve chairman jerome powell yesterday on the "today" show. chris liu, over 3 million jobless claims yesterday. where does the economy stand in where does it look like it is going? >> well, so here is the problem with chairman powell's statement. there are parts of the economy that were doing well, but we know well the statistics. we know 40% of americans didn't have $400 in emergency savings. we know one-third of americans run out of money between paychecks. so while the economy was doing well from the low unemployment standpoint and from a stock market standpoint, there were far too many people living on the edge who didn't have paid sick leave, who don't have

affordable child care, who don't have a sufficient nest egg because their wages are too low. so there were many people in this country that were ripe for falling off that economic evenly if they lost a paycheck or two, and the same goes for small businesses. the average restaurant has only about 16 days of cash buffer. when they can't -- if they don't earn money they could stay in business. the problem we have in the country is we're going to try to pump money in, but our ability to get it this is challenged by the technology. how do you get money to people that don't have banking accounts? how are we actually going to update 50 state unemployment systems to try to pump money into that as well? and so the -- where the economy is is really a function of how quickly we solve the public health issue, and that's what we should be focusing, not how to mitigate the economic daniel at this point. >> chris liu, thank you very much. still ahead, when it comes to the handling of this pandemic, president trump

offers, quote, much respect to china which, of course, tried to cover up this deadly disease. so the question is why? we'll go live to london as well where uk prime minister boris johnson tested positive for the coronavirus. we're back in three minutes. listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath. never settle for 25%. always go for 100. bring out the bold™

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mime minister prime minister of the united kingdom boris johnson testing positive for the coronavirus. in a tweet he said he has developed mild symptoms and will be self-isolating. he ended the tweet with a message. together we will beat this. stay home, save lives. he, of course, locked down the country a week ago and weeks before was not as serious about the spread of this virus. joining us live from london, nbc news bureau chief ali arizzi. who else may have the virus at high levels in the british government? >> reporter: hi, mika. at this stage we don't no else he has been exposed to. of course, the government has been doing a lot of the business by video link, but he has been out and about a lot up until now. as you just mentioned they shut down the country much later than everybody else, so he was at a lot of public gatherings before they had shut down the country.

so it is unclear where he may have contracted the virus. he was last seen last night as he clapped outside number 10 as part of a nationwide gesture to thank the national health staff for all of the efforts they've been making here. he was standing next to the chancellor of exchequer but he had given him a fairly wide berth. they certainly weren't standing stholder shoulder to shoulder. it is unclear if he knew about his condition last night. as you also mentioned, he said he would be self-isolating from now on, but he is going to continue the coronavirus crisis and lead the crisis from self-isolation while doing video links. that seems to be the new way of doing politics everywhere these days. but, you know, this country is continuing to grapple with the coronavirus. it is getting more serious day by day, the numbers jumped by

more than 100 in a day for the first time. the death toll has risen to 578 with 11,500 confirmed cases. hospitals have seen a massive influx of cases, a senior medical official referring to it as not a wave but a tsunami, putting the national health service under enormous strain. they're running out of intensive care centers and turning convention centers into hospital. now not only in this country does the heir to the thrown, prince charles, have the coronavirus but so does the prime minister. >> ali, it is willie. to answer partially mika's question about who else prime minister johnson has been exposed to, as you know well he has been doing in-person media briefings with the treasury minister and health minister as well. we know at least he has been exposed to them. they obviously will be tested as well. he said he just developed those symptoms in the last 24 hours

and, as you point out, joining prince charles there as leaders in the country who have come down with coronavirus. i want to ask you and you began to touch on it, how this national shutdown in the uk that was implemented just on monday by prime minister johnson is working, if they're seeing any implications, if they're seeing any benefits from that? because, of course, in the united states there's a debate about whether or not we ought to shut everything down nationally at least at the state level as some have done. what have been the implications of the shutdown over the last five days? >> reporter: well, as we mentioned earlier, it came very late here so it is probably a little too early to see exactly what effect that is having across the country. but yesterday the chief -- the deputy chief medical officer at one of those video conferences says that the curve here isn't as high as other countries, which has given a little bit of good news here. they say, you know, that they've seen the cases triple in other

countries, and they certainly haven't seen as steep a curve in the uk but they are taking it very seriously, possibly a little bit late in the game i mean this country is completely closed right now. i mean no shops are open except pharmacies, and not all food shops are open. there are police all over the city asking people what they're doing outside, and if they don't have a reason to be out they're sent home. there have also been sweeping new measures passed through parliament to give the government a lot more powers to enforce all of these new measures. you know, you can be -- they can shut down businesses without any prior notice. they can close events. they can arrest and fine people, and if you are seen to be out knowingly having coronavirus, that's a criminal conviction in this country. so they've certainly taken a much different approach to their

initial step-by-step approach and talking about herd immunity. so we have to see if that will pay off, but there has been a big spike in cases and deaths in this country, willie. >> all right. ali arouzi , thank you very much. as ali said, the boris johnson news comes as the uk has recorded more than 100 deaths in a day. for the first time as the total death toll rose to 578. worldwide more than half a million people are now infected. as deaths climb and more nations impose lockdowns to slow the spread of coronavirus. china, where authorities resorted to some of the strictest measures to tame the outbreak, has halted most international flights into the country, barring all foreigners including those with chinese residency or visas in an effort to prevent a second wave of infections. south africa begins a three-week lockdown today where all but essential movement is restricted and army and police have been

deployed to enforce the measure. france has converted a high-speed train to evacuate critically ill coronavirus patients to an area in the country where there are more hospital beds. french authorities reported just over 230 dealths in one day wit the total death toll passed 1,300. cases continue to rise in italy, particularly in the country's northern region of lombardy as the number of new cases jumped to over 6,150 compared to just over 5,200 the day earlier. italy's death toll, the highest in the world, now stands at just over 8,200 as more than 700 people died in the past 24 hours. spain extended its lockdown as the country's budget minister said that it was fighting a real war to get medical supplies. spain has the world's second highest death toll at 4,089.

in the americas, brazil's president exempted churches from lockdown orders, classifying religious activity as an essential service, and mexico's president has urged mexicans living in the u.s. to avoid visiting mexico. willie. but, mika, the u.s. has now overtaken china as the country with the highest number of confirmed cases of coronavirus. the u.s. now has more than 85,000 confirmed cases with more than 17,000 of those reported just in the last 24 hours. as the country sets records for new cases just about every day, president trump continues to push for guidelines on self-distancing to be relaxed, at least in some places. the administration now planning to issue new guidelines that would identify certain counties by risk level, high, medium or low, hoping some parts of the country can get back to work sooner than others. unclear exactly how that would

be rolled out. back with us now, we have former white house adviser for health policy, professor and vice provost for global initiatives at the university of pennsylvania, dr. ezekiel emanuel. dr. emanuel, welcome back. i will let you take a crack at the president's proposed idea of sort of these quadrants and going county by county in a moment. but that litany of countries mika just read from china west across the world, what can the united states learn from that? we heard so long we're ten days or two weeks behind italy taltz. what should we be looking at this morning as we look at the statistics across the world combined with what we're seeing in hospitals here? >> well, you want to look at italy, spain and not do what they're doing, which was too little too late. you want to look at china and mainly south korea and taiwan, which, you know, have a better response. you know, a shelter in place, lockdown, quarantine, whatever

we're going to call it, has to go in place. you have to have physical distancing and you have to keep that up probably for eight weeks. after four weeks you kind of get to the peak and then it begins to come down. that's what you would like to see before -- you need to see it come down before you relax. that is critical. now, italy did it late. they're only a few weeks into it. you will see. you have to hold on. part of the problem is people get -- you know, it is very hard to stay inside and only do essential travel and people get anxious and break this physical distancing. if we don't hold on for -- to it for long enough you won't really get the full effect from a public health standpoint in terms of slowing the coronavirus. we have to remember, everyone in the united states, that this virus, you know, doubles in terms of the number of people infected every three to four days. we probably have a million people already in the united states infected, and if we don't do anything, in less than four

weeks we will have 100 million people infected. >> zeke, we are hearing from the front lines that hospitals are making very difficult decisions based on a shortage of supplies, specifically ventilators and other supplies to help save lives. i hate to put you in this position but we need facts for our viewers, facts that they can depend on. >> yes. >> i'm concerned what is happening at the top on the part of the president's team. here is dr. deborah birx talking about whether or not hospitals are in bad positions right now, those people on the front lines. take a look. >> we are reassured and meeting with our colleagues in new york that there are still icu beds remaining and there's still significant -- over 1,000 or 2,000 ventilators that have not been utilized yet. please, for the reassurance of people around the world, to wake up this morning and look at people talking about creating

dnr situations, do not resuscitate situations for patients, there is no situation in the united states right now that warrants that kind of discussion. you can be thinking about it in a hospital, certainly many hospitals talk about this on a daily basis, but to say that to the american people, to make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it is not going to be there or when they need that ventilator it is not going to be there, we don't have any evidence of that right now. >> so, actually, we are hearing evidence of that from front line health care works every day. andrew cuomo has said it as well. i want to read to you a letter from columbia surgery, the head of -- the chief -- head of the cardiac division for pediatrics. his name, dr. emile baca. it is to his colleagues. he says new york city is the

epicenter. this has led to a complete change for every single health care worker here, professionally and personally. specific to pediatric cardiac surgery, we have had to make decisions that i personally have never had to contemplate before. we have had to ration care and make decisions about who is considered an urgent or emergent case. these boundaries are fluid in our specialty. we have only one o.r. team. we have yet to decide what to do about endless other cases such as shunt-dependent infants, teenagers with bad valves and so on. all families in need are looking for our help. the most recent guidelines from the hospital is that only truly life-threatening problems are allowed. the problem is that we don't really know when we can get these patients back on the schedule, and so the anxiety of

the parents is extreme. we have initiated transfers to other centers, but they have their issues as well. i sincerely hope that we will be the only ones faced with these decisions. i don't mean to depress anybody, but that's the reality now for us. it is not just the health care workers on the front lines, in the ers dealing with the covid-19 patients, zeke, it is all across the hospitals where they're dealing with having to ration their surgeries. >> yes. we've -- look, the health care system was busy before covid-19 and now you add on covid-19, and that is a huge stress to the system which we weren't prepared to do and we hadn't had a surge plan. i think i was on your show probably three or four weeks ago talking about the need to address surge and to think about it now before it became serious, and i don't think there was much thinking in washington about that. the idea that we're not having

shortages, at least in new york and some other cities, detroit, california, and san francisco and seattle, i think is belied by the interviews you have, that you have just quoted. "the new york times" ran a very moving video of a frontline doctor in new york, in queens. >> yes. >> these are real decisions, and the idea that we have a surplus of ventilators in the country, there may be parts of the country that don't have a big demand at the moment. maybe it is nebraska, and we should be getting those ventilators and shipping them to new york where there is clearly an overload of demand. the idea that the president dismissed, you know, the need for 20,000 or 30,000 ventilators, i think that is just wrong. if you just do the math, there is -- that kind of need is if not present absolutely today will certainly be present within the week in new york city. the head i think of virginia mason in seattle said april 8th

is their day to run out of ventilators. so this is a gripping problem that i know every head of every major hospital in the country is trying to address rapidly. you know, i think debbie birx is saying this in part -- i made this point -- that, you know, the government, especially the republican administration, does not like to admit that rationing of health care is happening under its watch. they use rationing as a cudgel to attack democrats or government-run programs that ration. here we have real rationing in this country by doctors because we don't have enough services and we have an overload of patients to the system. again, it is not just coronavirus patients, as you quoted, patients with other condition whether it is pediatric heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, other things, are going to suffer because of this virus. we have to address all patients equally. they all need our care. >> and as you know, dr. emanuel,

entire operating rooms, floors of operating rooms in hospitals are being turned into icus to process the coronavirus patients, surgeons called in from their specialties to work on coronavirus. you talked about president trump questioning the need for 30,000 or 40,000 ventilators. he also worried about the price. he said you wouldn't believe how much these cost. in that same interview on "fox news" last night the president went after three democratic governors who have been critical of the federal government's response to the coronavirus outbreak in the united states. new york's andrew cuomo, michigan's gretchen whitmer and washington state's jay ensley. most notably as dr. emanuel noted, president trump questioned governor cuomo's statement about how many ventilators new york actually needs. >> new york is a bigger deal, but it is going to go also, but i have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be. i don't believe you need 40,000

or 30,000 ventilators. you know, you go into major hospitals, sometimes they'll have two ventilators and now all of a sudden they're saying can we order 30,000 ventilators. your governor of michigan, i mean she is not stepping up. i don't know if she knows what is going on, but all she does is sit there and blame the federal government. she doesn't get her done and we send her a lot. now she wants a declaration of emergency. michigan is a very important state. i love the people of michigan, what they do. i'm the one -- you know, i'm bringing back many, many car factories into michigan, and she is a new governor and it has not been pleasant. we have people like governor ensley, he should be doing more. he shouldn't be relying on the federal government. governor ensley, that's the state of washington. he was a failed presidential candidate and, you know, he is always complaining. >> governor of the state of washington where entire nursing homes are being wiped out by

coronavirus. joining us now from the white house, nbc news correspondent hans nichols. back with us, historian, author of "the soul of america" john meachem. let me start with you at the white house. i don't know where the president is getting the numbers on what the states need. we know there was a report gm was up and ready to go, they were going to retrofit some of their plants to make 80,000 ventilators at a cost of about a billion dollars and fema balked at the price. just in context, we're about to get a new law today signed for $2.2 trillion spent to support government -- excuse me, to support business and corporations. where is the president getting his information about who needs what and questioning specific governors? >> reporter: well, that is always an open question of which information feeds get into the president and which one he -- which ones he actually absorbs. we know he is meeting with his current advisory task force. we know he has been in discussion with andrew cuomo and

that he and cuomo seemed to patch up their differences yesterday, right. when the president gave that "fox news" town hall he read the "new york post" op-ed, criticizing cuomo for not buying ventilators in 2015. when that started happening i thought it could be interesting, there could be a real conflict or petty name calling from the president towards the governor of one of the states hit the hardest. he seems to have patched things up with cuomo and they're saying positive things about each other. in terms of the number of ventilators, mike pence have said 4,000 have been shipped from fema, in the process of being shipped. now, whether or not the 30,000 number was a number the white house balked at or whether it was a formal request to fema from the state of new york, we don't know that. one thing the president really hasn't been clear on is that he says he wants the states to sort of be the lead on this and the federal government shouldn't be the shipping company on this and he wants to remove the federal

government as a middle man. what he hasn't clarified is what happens when states get into bidding wars with each other, because as the current policy stands that is what is happening. you have states fighting amongst each other on who has the greater need instead of having fema or someone impartial coming down and saying, actually, in this case the state of new york has a greater need than, say, michigan, say washington state. >> right. >> we will see whether or not they have any adjudication on that issue and crucially whether or not the president continues his feud with ensley who he suggested yesterday was a wise guy. he didn't name him by name. now the governor of michigan. remember, it was on march 6th that he told his vice president after pence had gone out to the state of washington to meet with ensley and talk about the response, he called him a snake, president trump did, when he was visiting the cdc in atlanta so clearly bad blood there. guys. >> hans, on the question of the defense production act. >> reporter: yes. >> there has been some question

again in the briefing room about why the president hasn't used the full power of that act to get the masks and ventilators produced. just as a practical question, why isn't he using that in a way that might help governor cuomo or help governor ensley or help governors across the country get into hospitals the equipment that they need? >> reporter: i think there are two answers to that. one is that -- and what the president is saying is that he likes the threat of it and he likes the threat of maybe potentially using it better than actually implementing it. they say they haven't had the need to actually full-on implement it. they've invoked it but they haven't implemented it. the other side of this is there's times when the president says these are really complicated things and he doesn't want the united states government inserting itself into the supply chain, that the united states government might not fully understand. so those are the two answers the president -- that we get from the president. in his mind -- and i stress sort of in his mind -- he's already using the defense production act because he's raised it and he

has threatened it. i think the discrepancy is coming from those who actually want to see him seize means of production, take over certain industry, certain factories and say for the sake of national security, for the betterment of the country, you need to do this. the president has been reluctant to do so. >> all right. hans nichols at the white house. hans, thanks so much as always. we appreciate your reporting. john meachem, you have written so much about leadership in times of crisis, whether it is fdr or churchill or jefferson. we could go down the line with your books. it is interesting though when you talk to emergency room and icu nurses and doctors across this country, and the ones that i have been in constant contact with, they just don't have time to worry about the briefing or the insult that president trump threw at jay ensley or whatever is going on outside of their room. they just need the equipment. they're not interested in the fight on tv or the fight that's coming out of the white house. they just need what they need to

help these people and help themselves, and there is a real disconnect from what we hear up at the podium, that things are going to be okay, that we're moving in the right direction and that we're going to open by easter and what is happening on the ground in these hospitals. >> yeah. i mean the fundamental task of leadership, particularly in a democracy, is to give people the facts, tell them the truth. churchill had a great line about -- because he was always being very clear with the british people. you know, we think of him as the absolute model of defiance and that's true. that was usually the beginning of the great speech and the end of it, but the meat in the sandwich of churchill's war leadership was this is going to be incredibly difficult. it is going to be long and hard. it is blood, toil, tears and sweat. it is not, we're going to beat the nazis by easter. he didn't say that. >> yes. >> one of the things, particularly great line he had was that the british people or the american people can face any

m misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy as long as they're convinced those in charge of their affairs are not deceiving them, they're not lying to us, or they're not dwelling in a fool's paradise. we want to make sure they're not lying to us or to themselves and it is an open question right now about where the american leadership stands in that. on that point, can i ask dr. emanuel a question? it may be uncomfortable, but our quarantined lives have now reached this point where a central part of the day is watching a briefing in which usually four people speak, the president, the vice president, dr. birx and dr. fauci. who do you trust? who would you listen to? give us a bit of guidance here as we move through this. who do we listen to and credit what they say? >> well, i think tony fauci, i've known him for 25 years.

i worked at the nih with him. he never says anything he doesn't believe and he can't stand behind, and so i listen to him very, very carefully, and i think you can trust everything he says. i think debbie birx is also -- has been a career government official. she's very good. i think she is feeling a lot of political pressure if i look at some of the things she's been saying to get, you know, on the team, but i think you have to be careful, but a lot of what she says can be trusted. and i notice that vice president pence often defers on any key question to those people, and i think he recognizes that he's partially out of his league. but, you know, the president has the president's views, and as i think hans said clearly, they

don't always correspond to the reality and the facts on the ground that we know. i think it is hard to understand, other than his urge to -- this is just an anomaly, let's just forget about it, to go forward. this is not an anomaly. this is, you know, occupying every leader's 24/7, nothing else matters at the moment. the tension between addressing the public health issue, the economy and the lives of hundreds of millions of people in this country are really at stake. and i appreciate your comments on leadership because unless we have leadership we are really not going to be able to address this problem. it has to come from the federal government so we don't have those conflicts between the states and so we can fairly allocate the scarce resources we have. >> dr. zeke emanuel, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thanks for coming back. still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest is

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i've developed mild symptoms of the coronavirus, that's to say a temperature and a persistent cough, and on the advice of the chief medical officer i have taken a test. that has come out positive, so i am working from home. i am self-isolating, and that's entirely the right thing to do. >> the breaking news earlier this morning that british prime minister boris johnson has tested positive for the coronavirus and is now self-isolating. now this. a spokesperson for angela merkel says the german chancellor is scheduled to undergo a coronavirus test once again at the beginning of the week. last weekend the german leader

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one of the nation's top hospitals has been forced to dig into its emergency stockpile of crucial supplies that were designed to last through the worst two weeks of this crisis which have yet to come. as the number of health care staffers infected has quadrupled since earlier this week, joining us now the president of massachusetts general hospital, dr. peter slaven. doctor, thank you very much for joining us. first, we would like to know -- we know there's a lot of health care workers across boston, the boston area that have tested positive. how do you keep your doctors safe as they are treating patients during this crisis? >> yes, we have -- we have over

40 of our staff at the hospital that have tested positive. we are trying to provide them with all of the protective equipment that we can. those who are treating patients with covid or suspected covid are wearing not only surgical masks but gowns, face shields, et cetera, and we have issued masks to everybody who is working in any of our clinical buildings to protect them as well. right now we think our supplies of masks and other needed equipment is in reasonable shape, but if this -- if we expect this to be a marathon, not a sprint, and so we worry over the long-term as this continues to build whether those supplies will be there. >> if you continue at this rate where do you suspect you will be in the coming weeks? and also do your doctors and do your health care workers have a place to isolate when they leave the hospital? >> we are monitoring our data

very carefully, trying to compare it to trends in various cities within italy to get a sense as to what curve we might be on, and i think it is too soon to know. we certainly have our fingers crossed that we won't be overwhelmed with cases, but only time will tell. i think the psychology of the health care worker, of course, is very fragile at the moment. people on the one hand are determined, committed, energized to fight this national crisis, but at the same time they're worried about their own health, the health of their families, their economic futures. as john meachem said in the last segment, i think it is important we be honest, up front with our workforce, that we hear what is on their mind, we don't dismiss their concerns, we tell them that we will be with them every step of the way. we are doing everything we can to get the supplies they need. it would be tragic if they were caring for patients without the necessary equipment. it would be like sending soldiers to battle without helmets or body armor. >> massachusetts has made the

decision to graduate all fourth year med students early and try to step up the capacity of the medical workforce. what are they foreseeing ahead? >> well, if, indeed, our workforce shrinks because people are out due to illness or being quarantined, it would be very helpful to have other health care workers come in to replace them. medical students typically would be graduating in a year -- in a month and would be eligible for licensing, and i think our states and medical schools are interested in accelerating it by a month so a graduating medical student could be available to help with this unprecedented crisis. >> dr. slaven, it is willie geist. their for all that you and your staff are doing around the coronavirus. it is interesting to hear you say you have to raid the emergency stockpile at this point. i think it is worth for our viewers to stop and understand

how procurement happens normally, how you would get the masks and equipment you need because it would tell us something about how hospitals get these things. we're hearing from the governors pushing the federal government to say we need all of this stuff, we have to get it into the hospitals. from where you sit, can you push? do you have levers? can you go direct to companies? how do you get that equipment to your hospital faster? >> well, first of all i think it is a big lesson for the hospital industry in our country. up until recently the mantra within hospital procurement of supplies was make the supply chain as efficient and effective as possible. again, have just-in-time inventory of supplies, and i think in retrospect, particularly in light of this crisis it was the wrong approach. we would be in a much better position if we all had large inventories on hand. we are pursuing supplies through a number of different angles, buying from our existing vendors, trying to identify other vendors, but we're also calling for people across the

country to use their innovative skills to develop these supplies in new ways through things like 3d printing, for example. we are also looking at repurposing similar supplies in other industries like from the construction industry whose masks are probably useful and suitable for health care use, and we're also looking carefully at how we can reuse some of our equipment. we are looking at the use of radiation, ozone and ultraviolet light as possible ways to resterilize our personal protective equipment and reuse it. so we have a team of people that is examining those and other opportunity. >> doctor, i know mass general is one of the hospitals doing clinical trials on a drug that has shown some promise with coronavirus patients from a company called gilead laboratories. can you tell us more about that drug and how promising it has been in some of your patients? i think a lot of hospitals would be interested to know if it is working where you are how they could get it themselves.

>> yes, the drug is called remdesivir. it is an rna inhibitor. since the virus is dependent on that enzyme to replicate its rna you would expect it to be effective. it was initially developed for ebola but in clinical trials it was not effective in ebola. there's a clinical trial gilead is sponsoring in countries around the world to see if it works for this virus. it seems to be active in the test tube against this virus, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will be effective in patients. so we don't have a sense at this point as to how patients are doing with it. it is a randomized control trial, so patients are randomized to receive either the drug or a placebo, and i'm hopeful in the coming months or sooner that gilead will have some results that will enable it to be used or not used more

broadly. >> doctor, you mentioned john meachem. he is here with us and he has a question. john. >> doctor, i'm wondering, you are on the front lines of this and in the thick of combat. looking both at what you are seeing and what you have learned from around the world, do you have any estimate on what you would like to see in terms of a continued social distance lockdown in the way much of the country is at the moment? >> well, first of all i don't like to refer to it as social distancing. i prefer the term physical distancing. it seems like we need more social connections now than ever before. but i think it is way too soon to be thinking about when we are going to take our foot off that brake. the numbers of cases here in massachusetts and in most parts of the country continue to go up. until i think we reach the peak and are some distance passed it, we need to do everything we can to try to minimize the

transmission. that is the strongest weapon we have in our arsenal to lower the curve, lower the peak and make sure that our health care system is not overwhelmed and that fewer people become infected in the long term. >> this physical distancing though that you are talking about, dr. slavin, in new york, in boston, in other major congested area, it is -- it is impossible. i mean you are asking people to stay in their apartments and in their small apartments for long periods of times, but even more these health care workers who are going to your hospital, exposing themselves on a daily basis, they're going home to their families. this is not physical distancing. it is not happening if you look at that reality. is there any way that can change? >> well, even in congested cities like new york or boston, i mean people can stay in their apartments, stay in their homes, do as much take-out, grocery delivery as possible and only go out when absolutely necessary. you're right, we do rely on a

certain sub set of our society like health care workers to fight this virus in a way that's not necessarily consistent with -- with physical distancing. our health care workforce is determined to fight this virus. i think they're in the vast majority of cases personally willing to take that risk. i think we just all need to stand behind them with whatever support we can to make sure that they have all of the tools necessary to do the best job possible. >> the president of massachusetts general hospital, dr. peter slavin. thank you very much for coming on this morning. >> thank you. and up next, just like -- have been disrupted in ways we couldn't even imagine. just weeks ago. but for many people they're needed now more than ever, so we're going to tackle that next

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i feel incredibly sad because so many patients die without having someone by their side. we have strict visitor requirements. so often a patient will be on their death bed dying alone, and it has been incredibly painful to see the suffering of family members who i call from the icu, hearing their tears, crying with them on the phone. >> a new york doctor not only fighting to save lives but also comforting those most affected by this crisis. it is a role our next guests know very well. joining us now, pastor at trinity grace church tribeca in new york city, pastor michael ruzina, and reverend it's good to have you both. reverend barber, i will start

with you. this is so unprecedented, these challenges, these times. we cannot touch. we cannot reach some of the most vulnerable during this crisis. so if you could factor in faith as we move through this crisis, really unable to be together in traditional ways. >> as a pastor, these are very serious times. we have a senior citizen complex we've had to secure. we've had to open up our preschool for health workers and people who are saying they are willing to take that risk to make sure that health workers, that children have child care, and we've gone virtual when it comes to our service. but the church also has another role. and that's to challenge the society to do right by the least of these. scripture says -- we have to say if we can find all of this money for --

who doesn't have a permanent address, who will not get any of the benefits from the last deal, who does not make enough for unemployment insurance, you know, we have to say we cannot leave undocumented workers out -- just a little bit for child care. we need about $50 billion for child care. we have to say we -- >> reverend barber -- >> living wages but we have to talk about them as right and wrong in life and death. >> that's perfect whatever you did with your microphone. willie geist, take over. we want to make sure your microphone is clear and open and close to the top of your shirt. you work on that. willie geist, take it. >> pastor, let me go to you here in new york city and just ask you about how you're filling this gap. obviously, the irony and the

great dilemma is that at a time when people need to sort of be together, need to practice their faith and need to congregate in your church, for example, they physically can't. so how are you overcoming that, and how are you filling that void in people's lives right now? >> well, this is an unprecedented set of circumstances for faith communities. the essence of our operation of our mission is to connect people and to build a sense of community. right now we know the most loving thing we can do is social distance and stay at home. so that presents challenges. and it's challenges that expose something about the human condition that church leaders and faith communities need to be attending to. right now i live in new york, and i'm -- my experience with our congregation is there's like two poles of experience. on the one hand, you have an isolating effect. and on the other a suffocating effect. i'm married. i have four children. and we are cramped in a two-bedroom apartment in lower manhattan right now. what you are witnessing behind me is a minor miracle of

serenity. and what we're seeing is we need to sort of -- we need to attend to the human psyche right now. of course, as reverend barber mentioned, we have justice issues that need to be addressed from a faith perspective, but we also need to care for people. people who are suffocating right now are awakening to some of the great practices in our tradition like silence and stillness and solitude and the church can step in and fill a vacuum and a much -- a great need there. for those who are isolated, i think we're looking for creative ways to create connections where people can be vulnerable and process how they're doing and feel a sense of support so we can show up for each other in this time. >> pastor, the church, obviously, plays such an important part for the poor in this country and the poor around the world in making their lives better. we think about the homeless at a time like this. we think about soup kitchens that are struggling because the volunteers can't come and be in the physical space. what can the church do in a time when people are being told the

best thing to do is to stay inside, about helping those vulnerable people? >> so our church, like many other churches and faith communities across the country, have partners. partners like the bowery mission or house on beakman in the bronx who are work with the homeless and taking care of people. we've been in high communication with them, not only for funding. we started a corona relief fund. and that's also, you know, one of the great beauties of the faith community. we step into a moment now. we're doing digital gatherings so people can feel connected and in a chaotic moment, center themselves in rituals that matter and stories and symbols that give them meaning and stability. we started a thing called digital church.nyc so people could worship with their community and connect. we're doing a thing on zoom called the eights. i heard zoom is worth more than marriott which is fascinating. but 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., we have people who are connecting

and fielding needs and making sure we're taking care of each other. it's like the government needs to be doing stuff but our medium sized communities can step into a space that really matters. our health care workers are exhausted, and this is not a race. this is not a sprint. this is a marathon and we need to be preparing for ongoing care, not only for our medical professionals who are exhausted, but also for our parishioners who face the anxiety of this moment. >> i think we've got the connection fixed with reverend barber and jon meacham has a question. >> reverend, the church i come out of, the anglican worngs has a great tradition of morning prayer, evening prayer, where c.s. lewis enjoined us to say the words even if we don't feel it because at some point you might. i'm wondering what you -- are there any scriptural passages, any spiritual practice that you would recommend to folks?

>> well, certainly the church always has to be pastoral and prophetic. and so while we engage our traditions, our pastoral traditions of calling people to prayer, one of the most important things the church can do in this moment to give people hope is to be prophetic. to honor what jesus said about telling nations that how you treat the least of these is how a nation is delivered. . so we should be challenging the government. we should be saying, listen, you can't forget the poor. the 140 million poor. like leola. three children. she won't get any of this benefit. you have to say go back and include lola. include the undocumented workers. put enough money in there for child care, for the -- for all of those who need it. be reminded that $1200 is not

enough for poor people. it's too little, too late. we have to do better. we have to remind this country that 700 people were dying a day already from poverty before this happened. now is that the church's role? yes, because this is lent. this is the season of repentance. the bible gives us a clear way out of this. if my people who are called by my name would humble themselves. that means you can't be a narcissist, and will turn from their evil ways. the bible suggests not caring for poor people and the least of these is evil. turn from that. turn from not just the corporations and then god will heal the land. the land will be healed -- and the church has a role. yes, to take care of the sick, yes, to feed people, but also -- >> okay. reverend, thank you very much

william barber and pastor michael rusina. thank you both very much. one last story before we close. as it applies to the shortage of critical medical supplies and that shortfall grows nationwide, "the washington post" reports nearly 1.5 million n95 masks are sitting unused in a u.s. government warehouse in indiana according to multiple sources. the emergency stockpile is being held by the u.s. customs and border protection and has not been used because they are past their expiration date. this comes despite the cdc's guidelines that has been issued that states it is, in fact, safe to use the expired masks during this outbreak. the post reports dhs officials decided to offer the respirator masks to the tsa whose workforce has been clamoring for more protective equipment and has no plans to offer the masks to hard-hit hospitals or hand them over to fema. we have a huge situation, willie, with the hospitals.

so final thoughts from willie geist and jon meacham? in light of our last segment, i'm praying for the president. i'm praying for his team, the reality from the front lines is bad. the data from johns hopkins shows america is faring badly and the testing is not even close to where it should be. so i'm praying that they all get on the same page. willie? >> and i would just say briefly, jon meacham, that the confirmation this morning from prime minister boris johnson that he, in farkct, has tested positive for coronavirus shows you how quickly this moves, how quickly things change. a couple of weeks ago he was, let's say, less than concerned about it in his country and now he has contracted coronavirus. >> jon meacham? >> and the american -- look, america benefits from the fact that we're the fullest manifestation of the enlightenment and of reason and of fact and let's follow reason and fact, not ideology.

>> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is friday, march 27th. and here's what's happening today. as of this morning, the united states now has the highest number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus across the entire world. that number is roughly 86,000, surpassing the number of cases in china and italy. the united states death toll is now over 1200. but that is not the highest. china, italy, france, spain and iran have all seen more deaths from this pandemic. and we learned this morning that