deaths, 203, have grown. but the icu numbers and the hospitalization numbers, while they're growing, are not growing as significantly as you're seeing in other parts of the country. >> do you have a message for the other governors who have not taken these strong measures, these extreme measures? should everyone be issuing these stay at home orders? >> message is this, what are you waiting for? what more evidence do you need? if you think it is not going to happen to you, you'll never regret overcompensating at the moment so you're preparing people for meeting this moment in the responsible way. there's no better intervention. period, full stop, none, than physical distancing. we talk about social distancing, but it is physical distancing. stay connected, but you have to be physically apart. foundationally and fundamentally, we know, can bend the curve, save lives, and ultimately get people back to work and get society back to some semblance of normalcy

faster than anything else we can do. >> some positive news from california governor gavin newsom yesterday. two weeks ago, he announced the first statewide stay at home order in the united states. it appears to be paying off. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, april 3rd. joe will be back on monday. along with willie and me, we have editor in chief of the "atlantic" magazine, jeffrey goldberg, former treasury official, and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattner. and historian and author of "the sole of america and roger's profession eal of the presidenc jon meacham. we'll dive into the latest numbers. the cases of coronavirus across the globe have now topped 1 million. the u.s. added almost 30,000 new cases yesterday, with the death toll now approaching 6,000. new york state added more than 9,000 cases yesterday, totaling

more than 92,000. more than half are in new york city. the death toll there increased by 188 last night to more than 1,500 total. hospitals are stretched so thin that city paramedics have been told adult patients who are in cardiac arrest and can't be revived in the field should not be taken to the emergency room. if you can imagine that. new york governor andrew cuomo said last night that he has enough ventilators to last about six more days. here he is on msnbc last night, driving home a proposed solution that he's been pushing for some time now. >> the one silver lining here is not every place in this country gets hit at the same time. right? there's going to be a different curve for the disease in different areas, depending on when it started. those curves will have a lag.

why don't we devise a national strategy that moves with that rolling apex, if you will? i need roughly 30,000 ventilators, which i can't get. but i only need 30,000 ventilators for two or three weeks. at the top of my curve. let's be smart. let's go help this place when that town goes over its curve, then we'll go to the next, then we'll go to the next. otherwise, you're saying to every state, every locality, you must be prepared on your own to handle this. where we are now, 50 states all trying to buy the same equipment from china, and then the federal government comes in with fema, trying to purchase the same equipment. this is not the way to do it. and the simplicity is what makes it so tragic, frankly. because we don't have a piece of equipment, someone is going to die? because we don't have staff,

someone is going to die? how did we get to this place, in this country? >> one other somber note, funeral homes are also struggling to keep up. a brooklyn owner tells the "associated press" that his company is equipped to handle up to 60 cases at a time, but he's now handling 185, saying, quote, this is a state of emergency. we need help. willie? >> meanwhile, a senior administration official is telling nbc news the white house is expected to announce a new advisory, a national advisory, that americans living in coronavirus hot spots should wear cloth face masks. officials say the expected move is aimed at reducing the risk that the virus could be spread by people who are infected but do not show any symptoms. initial cdc guidelines advised americans against wearing masks unless they were health care workers or if they were already infected. during yesterday's white house

briefing, president trump said the advisory would not be mandatory. >> i think they're going to be coming out with regulations on that. if people want to abide by them, frankly, i don't think they'll be mandatory, because some people don't want to do that. but if people want -- as an example, if people wanted to wear them, they can. if people wanted to use scarves, which they have, many people have them, they can. in many cases, the scarf is better. it's thicker. i mean, gedepending on the material, it's thicker. they could do that if they want. recommendation is coming out. we'll see what that recommendation is. but i will say this, they can pretty much decide for themselves right now. >> is the guidance coming out, and when? >> yes. >> when, sir? >> in the days ahead. we're currently working through the task force, seeking consultation advice from the cdc, our top health experts. we'll be bringing forward the

guidance from the cdc the next several days. >> just remember, it's not a substitute for everything that we're asking people to do. the most important thing is the social distancing and washing your hands. we don't want people to get an artificial sense of protection because they're behind a mask. because if they're touching things, remember, your eyes are not in the mask. if you're touching things and then touching your eyes, you're exposing yourself in the same way. >> new york city mayor bill de blasio yesterday, by the way, announced he was recommending, and his government was recommending, that new yorkers do wear a mask, as well, following the lead of los angeles, which made the recommendation a couple days prior. president trump announced he is expanding the defense production act to push companies to make protective masks and ventilators needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak. the order authorizes the head of fema to acquire as many n-95

masks from the company 3m as deemed necessary. the act is expected to also help six manufacturers, like ge and medtronic, secure supplies needed to make the life-saving machines. in a white house statement, president trump says the order, quote, will save lives by removing obstacles in the supply chain that threaten the rapid production of ventilators. mika? there are new questions as to how the white house arrived at its projection this week. that up to 240,000 americans could die from the coronavirus. according to the "washington post," while leading disease forecasters, whose research the administration used to reach its conclusion, said they don't challenge the number's validity, white house officials refused to explain how they generated the figure. and they have not provided the underlying data so others can assess its reliability or provide long-term strategies that lower the death count. three white house officials tell the "post" that some of

president trump's top advisers expressed doubts about the estimate. there have been fierce debates inside the white house about its accuracy. the "post" reports that a task force meeting this week, dr. anthony fauci told others that there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable. saying, quote, i've looked at the models. i've spent a lot of time on the models. they don't tell you anything. you can't really rely upon models. the cdc director and the vice president's office have reportedly also voiced doubts about the projection's accuracy. while a columbia university epidemiologist, whose models were cited by the white house, tells the "post" that his own work on the pandemic doesn't go far enough into the future to make predictions akin to white house fatality forecasts. jeffrey goldberg, a couple of things. as we're, as everybody is looking for answers and trying

to get numbers on masks and supplies getting to hospitals and hot spots around the country, and gauge how many cases, the bottom line here is that the one thing that works is the one thing that's being put upon the american people. that is this physical distancing, social distancing. it is being proven to have worked in california. the governor of california clearly listened to top scientists. we know for a fact he was on the phone with top health policy experts and decided to shut down the state and certain cities the earlie earliest, and the numbers are bearing that out. we have hot spots in these horrific situations in places like new york city right now. the only solution right now, the only solution that we have on the horizon is social distancing. isn't the issue right now, as the economy crumbles and america is being brought to its knees, what is the timeline for real testing across the board, and

what is the time liline for a vaccine? those are the two things that could lead us out of this, and we have absolutely no answers so many weeks into this crisis. >> well, you know, it is interesting. underlying the call for social distancing, underlying the call for hand washing and everything else, is a deep desire and need for leadership. stable leadership. it doesn't have to be genius leadership. it has to be stable leadership. you have to get a sense from the top that they have a plan, that they understand the needs across america, not state by state, but across america, and that they are executing. what we're missing right now, a couple of things. one is a feeling that we're getting it straight from the white house, getting straight information. even if it is bad, unpleasant information, that they're talking straight. the other is a sense of a unified plan. if you listen to governor cuomo at the top of the show, and

listen to president trump, i think you can see -- i think this is a fair conclusion -- that they project confidence and leadership and stability in very different ways. ultimately, this is -- i mean, if it is true that this is a war, as donald trump argues, and that he is a wartime president, we have to have -- nobody is going to be able to predict the end of this, but you have to be able to tell the american people, look, this is what we're doing on ventilators. this is what we're doing on surging material to hospitals. this is what we're doing, x, y, and z. we just whipsaw all day long, from different conclusion to different conclusion, with strange sort of things on whether the president is popular on facebook. und under everything is the leadership question. >> i want to ask you, jon

meach meacham, about the state of tennessee, where you live. there is a stay at home order for tennessee, following slowly the states of florida, georgia, and mississippi, which came online yesterday with those policies. what is your view and the snapshot of what it looks like in tennessee right now? these are places i think, perhaps, over the past couple months thought this was maybe a new york story and it might not visit nashville and memphis and east tennessee. what does it look like right now there? >> yeah. i think it mattered enormously that dolly parton got involved, honestly. >> yeah. >> she gave $1 million to vanderbilt. i mean, she's the real governor. that helps. honestly, it sends a signal that this is serious. our friend tim mcgraw is doing, you nknow, daily songs from his living room. people who have cultural influence are taking it seriously. i think that begins to help a climate of opinion that, to go

to jeffrey's point, you know, we're in the midst -- i remember thinking at the beginning of this, i hope i don't have to say this but, in fact, i do. we have a partisan pandemic. it depends on where you live and what channels you watch, whether you trust certain facts and data. to a large extent, and this sounds overly grand, i know, but i think it has the virtue of being true, as henry kissinger used to say, enlightenment is on trial here. the facts and data that shape human decisions, because they are objectively true, that is something that is now very much under assault. i think it absolutely begins at the top. the other thing i hoped at the beginning of this is this would not become a per accepetual or referendum on this particular president. see the previous point. it is simply a fact that he is

not communicating coherently and universally truthfully about what we face. it is very curious. he's become this anti-federalist figure from the 18th century, right? suddenly, state's rights. he loves, you know, the idea of, somehow or other, the border between my state and kentucky and mississippi and georgia and alabama, somehow or another, the virus will see a border and go, other, it's a republican governor, i won't go there. it doesn't work that way. so i think that people are hungry for direction. i think they're hungry for coherent information. you can find it. god bless the first amendment. "the atlantic" has been doing a fantastic job. you know, the institutions that so many of us trust have been

doing a great job. but in a crisis like this, you shouldn't have to freelance health information. >> right. >> you shouldn't outsource that to the citizens. so my sense is that anything that dr. birx or dr. fauci or the vice president, anything that anyone can do to give a stream of fact amid the per s t perpetual reminders about what he did with china will, i think, serve the national interest best. >> well, let's talk about facts as it pertains to leadership. jeffrey goldberg, i'll throw this one at you. we had a former obama official on the show yesterday, seth harris, who said the president should resign, that this is failed leadership that has put us in a catastrophic position. pretty harsh statement. but i'll ask that you debunk that.

we have a government that ordered up 100,000 body bags at this point. they won't streamline. the president will not streamline the dpa to focus on masks and ventilators getting directly to the people who need them. he's leaving it to the governors. you have california that's doing pretty well in leadership. started early, and the numbers are going down. then you have places like georgia, where the governor just figured out this week that there are asymptomatic carriers. i mean, the stupidity level on the highest levels of leadership in states is showing itself during this crisis. and you have the governor of florida just shutting down the state late last night, just late last night, while we are considered to be in florida, in miami especially, to be the next hot spot, to have overrun hospitals and deaths, staggering numbers through the roof. the question is, how is that comment not true? what facts has this president put out during his nightly,

weekly briefings that give us some sense of hope, that there is leadership from the top that is going to lead us out of this? >> well, let me just be a glass half full kind of guy for a minute, uncharacteristically, and just say the following. it is true that the governor of georgia doesn't have a deep science background. it is true that the governor of florida has, it seems, been negligent in response. but there has been extraordinary leadership shown by governors across the country over the past couple of weeks especially. and that has come about, a, because many of them are very, very good at leadership and, b, it's come out because there's a vacuum. there's a vacuum of leadership. i'm not going to comment on whether president trump should resign or not. i mean, this is not our -- this is not a surprising experience

for us vis-a-vis this president. we've been through three years of crises. the difference between those crises and this crisis is those were mainly self-inflected. those are things that trump did to himself and did to the country. this is a virus that doesn't care about poll ratings or facebook likes or whatever. but this is not revelatory about this president. the instability caused by a shift, a change in american power right now, would be something that one would have to consider in thinking through that. all i'm saying is that we still have, on the federal level, excellent public servants. you have in governors and mayors people, even some who have been a little late, are now fully seized by this. so, you know, all is not lost in the sense of leadership across the country. but jon is exactly right, this

is about states now. it's about localities. it's about city states. it's quite odd that we're back to the articles of confederation in a period of american history, but that's where we're at. >> something to think about. >> as we talk about listening to the doctors and -- >> willie? >> yeah? >> just to follow up on what was just said, something to think about is maybe taking the governors' press conferences, across the board, live, and listening to what's actually happening in the states. i know we're working on exactly how to cover these presidential news conferences. we're dipping in and out, like when the president's son-in-law gets up there, or the president starts riffing, we dip out. trying to get facts about this is really tough at the highest level. i've been watching the governors' news conferences all day long. i just pull them up live from state to state, and there are a lot of governors who are doing a great job, who have real facts, real numbers, and are really connecting with people in an empathetic way, and it does give

us some hope, willie. >> yeah. of course, new york governor andrew cuomo has been given those addresses effectively, the q&a sessions and updates every day, that a lot of the national networks are taking because the story is most acute in the state of new york. as we talk about listening to the doctors, i'll say again, dr. anthony fauci yesterday, starting at 7:00 in the morning with an interview on the "today" show and ending at 10:00 last night on cnn, said effectively that we should have a national shutdown. the stay at home order should apply to the country. he said, i can't say that. that's not my job. i understand that there are questions about state's rights and federalism and everything else. if you're asking me what would be the smartest thing to do, stay at home across the country. but that's up to the president. that's listening to the doctors, as you say. let's talk about the financial side about this that's taking an incredible human toll. staggering jobless claims number crossing as we reported yesterday.

6.65 million people claiming unemployment just last week. the week before that, the labor department announced 3.28 million claims, bringing the month of march total to more than 10 million jobless claims. in fact, the past two weeks all but eliminated the jobs created in the past five years. steve, you have a chart on where the unemployment rate is likely headed from here. how bad do you see it getting? >> sure, willie. we can talk about that. you know, look, in me meacham's honor, let me say, we're at the beginning of the beginning here. you're seeing the leading edge of what is going to happen. there will be unemployment numbers tomorrow, but they'll be relatively benign because they're gathered burg tduring t middle of march, before most of this hit. ahe ahead, you can see where we're going from here, which is essentially into double digit unemployment. the left side of the chart, we've been sitting at 3.5%. first quarter will be around

3.7%, for the reasons i said. then we're just going to go up like a rocket ship. these are goldman sachs' projections. if you look at most other mainstream economists, you'll see something very much like this. the second quarter of this year, which just started yesterday, the day before. we go to 13.2%. the third quarter over the summer, they're projecting we'll hit 14.7%. just for reference, you can see the dotted red line across the middle. that's our 2009 peak at 10%. we're talking about an unemployment rate 50% higher than where we got to during the great financial crisis. many people say to themselves, well, this is going to be a v-shape recovery. we'll bounce back as fast as we bounced down because people will go back to work. if you look at what the projections show, that's not what we're looking at. we're looking at a long, slow recovery in jobs, unemployment rate going to 9.5% at the end of this year. then you can see quarter by quarter. end of next year, 6.3%, still

very high in 2020. 5.2%. we don't get back to anything like where we are today until 2023, which is a very long time from now. then just one little political footnote, donald trump will probably be facing double digit unemployment on election day this fall. we can all debate the consequences of that. >> steve, a lot of those jobs, obviously, fall in small businesses that may have to shut their doors through this. they don't have the money to keep running through this crisis. let's talk a little bit about the ppp, which is the paycheck protection program. that's the small business loans. 350 billion dollars in the $2.2 trillion stimulus package. they're supposed to go out today. we heard from big banks there's chaos. they don't know the rules or how to implement this program. i heard from the head of a mid-sized bank in the south. very concerned. they want to get the money to their customers, but they have no guidance at all from treasury. what are you hearing about how

they program is going to roll out? >> it's rolling out slowly, as you implied. look, i would say, and a little as jeffrey was saying, to be two-handed about this, these are new programs. they're very complicated and hard to implement. that said, it is rolling out very, very slowly. there's enormous confusion among the small business community as to how to access this and getting not a lot of response when they make phone calls, sending emails, things like that. i'd point out there are $375 billion for that program in the legislation. most people think that number is way too small. before this is over, we're going to need something like $1 trillion. even then, many small businesses are not going to know how to use this. it is not going to be enough. they're not going to want to access it. so you're going to see -- this is part of what i was saying before -- you'll see many, many businesses simply shut down and not be able to reopen. that is an enormous amount of destruction to the economy. it'll be hard to untangle. >> so, steve, just also trying to map this out, don't you need

two important factors as you look into the future as to how bad this -- can i use the word depression -- will look like? without really consistent, complete testing across the board, where you have rapid testing for the coronavirus, as well as the antibody testing, to know if somebody has had it before. if you don't have that, along with a vaccine, how can you see into the future, too far into it, to see how bad this is going to get? how important are those two factors? >> critically important. first, to go back a step, i think someone said this was not self-inflicted. that's absolutely true. the virus was not self-inflicted. if we had moved faster and more aggressively toward the social distancing, all the policies that are slowly and haltingly, as we were talking about the last 15 minutes, come into place, if we had moved faster,

as china ultimately did, we would have seen, i think, better numbers on jobs than what we're looking at here, better numbers on the economy. we would have been able to get people back to work. yes, from an economic point of view, what you have to be able to know, and we don't know, but you have to be able to have a view about is how quickly people are going to get back to work. that, in turn, may revolve, to some degree, around how soon there are vaccines available, antibody testing, when people feel comfortable going back to work. no economist would profess special insight into that. public health people do. as you know, and as we listen to them, nobody really knows for sure. so we're all dependent on the public health side of this thing working for the economy to work. if we can't solve the public health side, get people to a place where they're comfortable going back to work, the numbers i showed you could be worse. it could be even worse. >> steve rattner, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio, is our

guest. plus, we'll swing over to london for the very latest on the overseas battle against the virus and how it compares to here at home. first, the navy just relieved a captain who raised alarms about a coronavirus outbreak on an aircraft carrier. nbc's courtney kube has that reporting next. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ in nearly 100 years serving the military community, we've seen you go through tough times and every time, you've shown us, you're much tougher your heart, courage and commitment has always inspired us and now it's no different so, we're here with financial strength, stability and experience you can depend on and the online tools you need because you have always set the highest standard and reaching that standard is what we're made for ♪ and reaching that standard this is my body of proof. ♪

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u.s. navy announced it's relieved the captain that sounded the alarm about an outbreak of coronavirus aboard the uss theodore roosevelt, an aircraft carrier with a crew of 5,000. captain crozier raised the alarm this week, sending a strongly worded letter to navy leadership, detailing his concerns about the spread of the virus on the carrier. joining us now with her latest reporting, nbc news national security and military

correspondent, courtney kube. good morning. i know you've been reporting out this story overnight. what was the justification for relieving this commander of his post? >> reporter: well, willie, it was the letter that you mentioned. it was the fact that captain crozier wrote that letter. it wasn't so much just that he expressed his extreme and deep, heartfelt concern about the welfare of his crew, of the uss aircraft carrier uss theodore roosevelt, but it was the manner in which he distributed that letter that ultimately got him relieved of his command. so he sent that email, really, a memo, far and wide. we don't know exactly who to. we know he sent it to his direct chain of command, but he also sent it on an unclassified server to, apparently, dozens of other people. ultimately, when the senior navy leadership briefed us on their decision to relieve captain crozier late yesterday afternoon, they explained that that was really what the reason

was they decided to relieve him of this post. they lost trust and confidence in his judgment, in his decision to send that on an unclassified server. now, it did have a little bit of information about the readiness of the ship. that is generally a classified piece of information. but it wasn't just the fact that there may have been information on there that could be sensitive and the u.s. navy wouldn't necessarily want in the hands of an adversary. it was the fact that the information got out to the media, and the fact that he made such a public plea. navy leaders said, well, that broke trust and confidence with the sailors on the ship, and it caused undue harm and alarm among their families. we actually heard in a relatively rare way, we don't usually hear from navy leaderships about their decisions to relieve someone, a captain of a ship, but we heard from the acting secretary of the navy, thomas modly, in the briefing room yesterday, where he explained exactly why it is he decided to relieve captain

crozier. >> this decision is not one of retribution. it is about confidence. it is not an indictment of character but, rather, of judgment. by not sending the letter to and through his chain of command, and to people outside his chain of command, by not protecting the sensitive nature of the information contained within the letter appropriately, and, lastly, by not reaching out to me directly to voice his concerns, after that avenue had been clearly provided to him through my team. that was unacceptable to me. >> reporter: so the reality, willie, this feels very political in the timing of it. and there are a lot of questions now about why do this when there are sailors who are still being taken off that ship. they don't know if they have coronavirus or not. they're worried about the fate of their fellow sailors. is this the correct time to take away their beloved captain, willie? >> courtney, are there signals

that captain crozier had alerted authorities, alerted to his bosses previously that there was a problem on the ship? this sounded like, when you release it to a newspaper, an act of desperation, like i've got to get this out to the public, so maybe there will be pressure to help us with coronavirus on the ship. in other words, was this the first time he'd spoken up about it, or perhaps the last time? >> reporter: so it wasn't the first time. he had a direct line of communication with the navy secretary's office. we know he had spoken with his chief of staff before he released this letter, this memo, and told them about the severity of the issue. but we don't have a good sense of exactly what kind of response he got. they weren't actively moving to move the sailors off that ship. that was the real point of contention here. his concern was that with more than 4,800 sailors on that ship, they needed to start getting them off in mass and quarantine

them on shore so the virus wouldn't continue to spread and affect more and more sailors. it is very tight quarters. if you're anywhere near one another, the outbreak is going to multiply, and it is going to multiply quickly. that was his big concern. the acting secretary, thomas modly, said that he had spoken with him about his concerns, and he wasn't raising alarm bells as strongly and as emotionally as he did in that letter, willie. >> all right. nbc's courtney kube covering the pentagon for us. thanks so much, as always. we appreciate it. mika? coming up, one of the top medical centers in the world says it has enough supplies for now, but not in a worst-case scenar scenario. the president and ceo of the cleveland clinic joins us next on "morning joe." only pay for what you need? given my unique lifestyle, that'd be perfect! let me grab a pen and some paper. know what? i'm gonna switch now. just need my desk...

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the states should know how many ventilators are in their states. some governors or senators don't know what's in their state. some governors know how many ventilators there are in their state. don't ask us for things when you don't know what you have in your own state, just because you're scared. you ask your medical professionals and they don't know. you have to take inventory of what you have in your state, and you have to know there is a real need. >> jared kushner, not that i'm looking here, no medical experience, no experience in government, except for that job, and no public health experience,

but he is apparently questioning some states', quote, real need for life-saving ventilators. great. cleveland, ohio, is preparing for a surge of covid-19 patients by converting a local university's health campus into a temporary hospital. joining us now, ceo and president of the cleveland clinic, dr. tom mihaljevic. doctor, thank you so much for being on. i want to start with the preparation at the cleveland clinic itself. you guys have been planning for several months to prepare for this. what prompted the early sort of ordering of supplies and getting everything in place? >> good morning. thank you for having me. yes, we here at the cleveland clinic have started our preparations in the beginning of january, as we started noticing the -- the pandemic spread from china. we started to model and predict

what would be the absolute largest number of patients that would be requiring our care here at the cleveland clinic. in accordance with the model and predicted modeling we have helped develop, we started to plan the allocation of all of our resources. people, space, and technology. >> dr. mihaljevic, back in january, i think the president was still sort of paralleling this to the flu, called it a hoax. what prompted you? what information did you have that he didn't have that had you getting so very well prepared? >> well, it just came to our radar the beginning of the pandemic in china, in the way they were handling. it became clear that if this were to come into the united states, that the large health care systems like ours have to start to think about how they would react to the pandemic.

>> willie? >> doctor, it is willie geist. thank you for coming on. can you talk a little bit about testing and why it is critical, just to know how big the problem is, to understand the scope of the problem before you can begin to treat the problem? >> well, i have to say, to develop large-scale testing that will serve all americans in a relatively short period of time, from the beginning of the pandemic until now, is a formidable challenge on the best of circumstances. what we have done here at the cleveland clinic, we have developed an ability to test in-house. by doing so, we have been able to provide our patients with timely information about whether they are infected or not. our turnaround time is eight hours. although i have to say, our ability to test is finite, just are like everything else. currently, we're doing about

1,300 tests a adday at the cleveland clinic. it is certainly -- >> you're doing 1,300 -- >> please go ahead. >> so i understand what you're doing at your hospital. you're doing what you can there. on a national level though, because there has been so much talk that, you know, the numbers that are put out every day in terms of cases are exponentially higher than we actually know because we don't have enough testing to understand the scope of the problem and, therefore, how to treat it, what we need, how long it'll last, and everything that follows from that. how do we scale up, i guess, a program like yours so we can have enough testing in this country to understand the problem? >> there's several components to it. first of all, we have to allow all of the large health care organizations capable of doing this testing to scale up their own ability. that is the way that we'll be able to multiply the testing to a number of different sites, so that we can serve our patients in real time.

then we have to have a strategic, strategic approach through the necessary components of testing. meaning, the technology and the reagents, the chemicals that we need in order to do the test. >> sir, dr. jeffrey goldberg from the "atlantic" as a question. >> thank you, mika. doctor, i'm curious. you're a leader in american medicine. i would love to get your honest, blunt assessment of the american government response to date, and the response of ohio leaders. can you give us that? >> yeah. yes, i think our federal government has obviously started to be more and more responsive with time. i visited with several health care leaders, white house, several weeks ago. i have to say the response from cms and fda has been very, very good, as they've listened to us and they have taken our suggestions into account.

they've implemented in short order. here in ohio, we have started very, very early. our governor has been very proactive. the measures of the social distancing were implemented early. what i can share with you, at least over the last four or five days, as you know, as you can imagine, we measure the number of patients who are infected and track it on a daily basis. we are seeing some encouraging signs. meaning that the number of patients who are infected here in ohio seems to be relatively stable or it is growing at a relatively slow pace. we certainly hope that this trend will continue, but it is still too early to tell. we'll need another week or so to see whether we're flattening the curve effectively or not. >> doctor, before you go, given that you run this renowned hospital, and you all saw this coming in january and began preparing, i'd like to ask you a little bit about the guidance

that we're getting from the top level of the government. the 15 days to slow the spread has been moved to 30 days to slow the spread. is that realistic, given what you know about this virus? >> well, the answer to that is it really depends about how effective our measures of social distancing are going to be. that will be, on one side, dependent upon when are they imaccomplishmei impleme implemented, and the big unknown is how far was virus spreading before social distancing was put in place? so the timeline is really challenging. our modeling predictions are telling us that if we are able to flatten the curve, to some extent, we are expecting the peak of this disease, at least here in our home state of ohio, to occur sometime between mid-may and mid-june, with a gradual decline in the number of

cases towards mid to late july. >> wow. >> this is the best-case scenario. >> best-case scenario, mid-july. ceo and president of the cleveland clinic, dr. tom mihaljevic. thank you so much for being on the show this morning. let's turn now to "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. dr. dave, where are we? let's go down the list. where are we with the shortage of ventilators? what have you found? >> well, the united states, of all, has enough ventilators today, but the big concern is in the next few weeks, developing a need that cannot be septembkept with. this week, the president has again invoked the defense production act as it relates to ventilators, and the admiral came on and told us some of the timeline for that. they're anticipating 100,000 ventilators being produced. but in the next -- this month,

in april, it will be several thousands. in may, it'll be several thousands. then there's going to be a big number that start to get produced by june. and whether that is quickly implemented or how they're spread out, i guess we will see soon. >> so if they have a shortage, what do hospitals plan to do? i would assume this is hard to gauge. >> it is. mika, the rolling wave of need, governor cuomo pointed this out very well this week. as hot spots cool back off, and their need for ventilators, which is still ramping up in new york city. they're not at the apex yet. ventilators, once used, tend to be several weeks. once a patient goes on a ventilator, they're off and on for several weeks. so the tailing off of the need for ventilators is a little hard to predict.

so let's take miami as the example. they have a lot of ventilators right now, and they have scaled down the use of the hospital for elective procedures. they're ready for this wave to hit them. the question will be, as that wave tapers back away, and other parts of the country need ventilators, can they be repurposed for areas like new yo york? maybe they'll be tapering later this spring and the summer. that's the hope for everybody. >> dr. dave campbell, thank you very much. we'll see you again on monday. still ahead, it is a striking coverhe new repurepu republic." how presidents trump and xi set the stage for the pandemic. that's ahead on "morning joe."

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as we wrap up this hour, jon meacham, before you go, final thoughts here. looking at a perhaps cynical election connection here.

>> cynical but clinical. and part of it is because the president talks about the state so much. if you look at the number of new cases, that chart, you begin to see, you see louisiana, you see pennsylvania, you see michigan, you see florida. michigan, florida, and pennsylvania are essential to the president's re-election. georgia, which is teetering purple state, the president may not have such a positive view of the governor of georgia's medical knowledge, if that becomes more of a hot spot. this is not, let me underscore, this is not a hope or a partisan point about the spread of this deadly virus. it is a reaction to a vernacular that the president has put in place about praising certain governors and not praising others. and i just think that, because the president's tone is so changeable, that as states that are essential to his re-election

potentially become more affected, it'll be fascinating to watch how his tone and the substance of what he does may change. >> jeffrey goldberg, you all at the "atlantic" are writing about the spread of coronavirus, as now there is some focus moving south. as jon said, the governors in many of those states, whose populations may have voted for president trump, listen to president trump. when president trump made that call to ron desantis in florida, the state stay at home order in florida was put in place. georgia quickly followed. mississippi followed, as i said earlier. tennessee followed yesterday. what are you all looking at specifically as the potential for what could happen down in the south? >> right. well, we have a very interesting story up on our site at the "atlantic" by one of our staff writers about, a, coronavirus moving more aggressively into the south, and also some of the unique vulnerabilities of states in the deep south.

what we're finding, what van has found is that young people are generally more vulnerable in the south than that are in other parts of the country. some of the southern states have some underlying health issues that are more serious than in other parts of the country. young people, greater chance of lung disease, heart disease, obesity, issues like that that can accelerate both the spread and the seriousness of the disease. you know, we're focused, as we should be, so much on new york as the epicenter, but it is very, very important, i think, for journalists to try to look. what's coming next, and where is this moving? the south seems fairly uniquely vulnerable. >> jeffrey goldberg and jon meacham, thank you, both, for joining us on this friday. coming up, new york city mayor bill de blasio is standing by. he joins us for an important

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i did take a test. it just came out. this is from the white house physician. you may have it. i just took it this morning, and i took it. it took me literally a minute to take it. it took me, i guess it was, 14 or 15 minutes. i went to work. i didn't wait for it, but he said it took 14 minutes or something to come up with the conclusion. it said the president tested negative for covid-19. >> all right. president trump has again tested negative for the virus. according to a statement released by the white house, touting that the sample collection took just one minute, and the results came back in 15 minutes. welcome back to "morning joe." it is friday, april 3rd. new york city mayor bill de blasio joins us in just a

moment. let's give you though the latest news. cases of coronavirus across the globe have now toppled 1 millio. the u.s. added almost 30,000 new cases questioned alone, with the death toll now approaching 6,000. 6,000 deaths. new york state added more than $9,000 n 9,000 new cases. we don't have uniform testing across the board. the numbers are difficult to be accurate on. more than half are in new york city. the death toll there increased by 188 last night, to more than 1 rksz 1,500. hospitals are stretched so thin that city paramedics have been told that adult patients who are in cardiac arrest and can't be revived in the field should not be taken to the emergency room. joining us now, the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio. mayor de blasio, that is a pretty extreme decision that has

to be made, given the shortages of doctors, for the most part. i want to start there. you've called for a national enlistment of medical personnel. from what we're hearing from the front lines, we have doctors that are in crisis. also, a mental health crisis, given the fact that their fellow doctors and nurses are falling ill, right beside them. are we going to have enough doctors to get through this? >> mika, the truth is, unless there is a national effort to enlist doctors, nurses, hospital workers of all kind, and get them where they are needed most in the country in time, unless that happens, i don't see, honestly, how we're going to have the professionals we need to get through this crisis. look at the skyrocketing number of cases. look at how many of these patients need icu care. that takes a lot of medical personnel. that takes ventilators. this country is not, actually this moment, this is the sad

truth, mika, this country is not in position to deal with this crisis going forward. whatever we've seen up till now, i'm guaranteeing you that next week is going to be a lot tougher. i say that with no joy. i'm saying it to try to jolt our national leaders into understanding that next week in new york city is going to be very tough. next week in new york state, in detroit, new orleans, and a lot of other places. unless the military is fully mobilized, and we create something we've never had before, which is some kind of national enlistment of medical personnel moved to the most urgent needs in the country constantly, if we don't have that, we're going to see a hospital simply unable to handle so many people who could be saved. this is what gets me so angry. i've been talking to the leaders of this nation for weeks now, saying we are running out of time. i think we have literally days to create something that's never existed before, for a crisis

this country has never seen before. we have days to set up a structure to truly mobilize the medical community of this nation, to truly mobilize our military. if that is not done in the coming days, you're going to see people die who did not need to die. not just in new york but in many parts of this country. >> so we're hearing from doctors on the front lines, especially from the ers, that there's people waiting in stretchers up to five hours. and that people are dying unnecessarily. what does that tell us about what next week is going to look like, and do you need the military to step in, and how? >> mika, i have asked repeatedly for the military to be fully mobilized. i've asked the president. i've spoken to the defense secretary, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. i've said to all of them, just do the math. there's no way the civilian sector alone can handle this crisis at this point.

you're right, that hospitals are being stressed in ways they never have before. what next week is going to look like is we're going to see a surge in the number of cases. we're going to see, easily could be at this point, 5,000 or more people in new york city who need to be intubated, who need to be in icus with ventilators. we have enough ventilators just to get to sunday/monday. we don't have enough yet for next week. we certainly, when it comes to the personnel, you can't run an icu without people. you can't have a ventilator save a life without a doctor or a nurse who is there constantly monitoring it and adjusting it. we're not going to be able to do that for too much longer, for every single patient, if we don't get reinforcements. i asked the white house, i asked the pentagon, to send 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory doctors. i asked for it by sunday. i put in the request more than ten days ago.

i talked to fema and haven't gotten a firm answer to the request. i told all of them, literally, it is coming down day to day. somehow, in washington, there is an assumption that there's bea s weeks to prepare. it's not weeks anymore. it is days before new york and other places are going to run out of doctors and nurses, run out of equipment. why on earth? this country is acting like, somehow, we're still in peacetime. this is a warme. it is a very different enemy. it's an enemy you can't see, but look at the death toll for god's sakes. look how many people are in danger. this is just as bad as if a foreign invader had landed on our shores. yet, our military are at their bases. i know they don't want to be, but they are still. it doesn't make any sense. >> mayor de blasio, what could the military do specifically that the civilian force right now cannot accommodate? president trump watches. he responds in his tweets that shows he is watching. speak directly to the it be. what could he do to help new

york city right now? >> mika, here's what i'd say to the president. the military has well over 10,000 doctors, from my understanding. the military has doctors and nurses not only on regular duty but in the reserves. a lot of those doctors and nurses are in places where they're doing important work, but not the same as fighting at the front to save thousands of lives. all of them should be mobilized immediately. the military has the finest logistical and operational kp a capacity of any organization on earth. our military. they should be organizing a civilian enlistment of medical personnel. if you think about a doctor somewhere in america's heartland, who right now is going about business as usual, doing good work, but we need that doctor at the front, where they could be saving lives. we're going to lose lives that could have been saved. it's as simple as that. so we need the military, with their incredible logistical and

organizational capacity, command and control ability, to look at this entire nation and say, okay, here are the places we must surge medical personnel. use as much of their medical personnel as possible, and bring in a civilian enlisted program. they could get a doctor who, right now, is doing good work, you know, in iowa or utah. they could have them in new york city at the front in hours. that's how good our military are. but they have not been given that order, and time is running out. if they were given the order, we could create something in our time that could rival the incredible work of that greatest generation of world war ii, where they created, from nothing. remember? our military was almost non-existent at the time of pearl harbor. it had to be created almost from scratch to fight world war ii. our nation did that. we have to create something we've never had before. we have to create the ability to take the incredible medical talent around this country and put it on a war footing, put our

military on war footing. get the resources to the front, and then move them, mika, the second new york city turns the corner. move them. take the doctors and ventilators where they're needed next. nothing like that is being done, mika. it's the blunt truth. i had the conversation, with all due respect, to the president and the leaders of the nation. i warned them where this is going. i've had the conversation repeatedly, and no such order has been given. >> mayor de blasio, it is willie geist. i want to ask specific questions about what's happening in new york. you, yesterday, recommended that new yorkers, when they go outside, wear some kind of a face covering over their nose and mouth. what was the medical basis? what information did you get to make that public recommendation yesterday? >> willie, simply a set of studies that come in, just in the last few days. most especially was one from singapore, which was a place that handled this crisis well. for the first time, our medical leadership here in the city

increasingly sees evidence that there could be that asymptomatic transmission. there's not been real evidence, in their view, of that before. so this is in an abundance of caution move. could be a scarf, bandana, anything. people are thinking, well, this means i personally can't contract this did. that's not the idea. the idea is to help make sure that all of us don't accidentally spread it to someone else. because we might have it, be asymptomatic, and not even know. this is an abundance of caution move, to make sure people are not spreading it to other people. it's only pertinent when you might be close to people. if you're socially distanced, you don't need it. if you're among the people you live under the same roof with, you don't need it. if you're in close proximity, you may use it. this does not mean take the sush surgical masks or n-95 masks away from the health care. that's sacred.

they are protecting all of us. anyone can make a covering at home, scarf, bandana, anything like that will do. >> we're expecting the white house to make a similar recommendation today. the usns comfort sailed into new york harbor and up the hudson river a couple days ago, past the statue of liberty. it was supposed to give relief to the hospitals, to take non-covid-19 patients and provide 1,000 hospital beds. we learned yesterday, so far, only 20 patients aboard that ship. why is that number so low? do you expect to see that pick up soon? >> yeah. i've talked to our colleagues in the navy. i don't have a number in my mind that number is going to change very rapidly. the usns comfort was an extraordinary -- the appearance, the arrival meant so much to new yorkers. it was like the greatest sign of hope we'd received in weeks. i'm sure that ship will be very full soon.

they have to be smart about the cases they take and create a protocol that's going to work. it is going to get very busy, very quickly, next week. so i'm convinced that, over the next few days, they'll be prepared and they'll be filling up. next week is what worries me. that's when things really jump off. we're going to need the comfort, and every other place in the city that we can get hospital beds up and running. we're expecting a huge surge just in the next few days. >> also, the jacob javits convention center providing an additional 2,500 beds to provide relief, as well. we've had you on a bunch the last couple months, mayor de blasio, talking about this. you've been gracious to come on a bunch and update us and the country about the state of the problem. obviously, the set of facts we have today are a lot different than they were two months ago. but you try to calm people on these morning interviews, where you'd say, i'm not going to close the schools. i'm not going to close the playgrounds. i think you can still go out and live your lives.

knowing what you know now, do you wish you'd closed the schools earlier? do you wish you'd closed the restaurants and bars a little bit earlier, just to stop the spread and maybe save some lives? >> you know, willie, we're all trying to make sense of something we've never dealt with before. every single day. look, this city, i gave the order to close the restaurants and bars. obviously, that was -- we were one of the first places to do it. i called for shelter in place right after san francisco did it. i give them great credit. mayor brie did something important there. i called for it immediately after. we were one of the first places in the country to do that. there's always going to be questions about, you know, did we get all the information we needed? did we act on it? i did my best. i think all decision-makers are doing their best. this isn't the issue now. the issue is we're about to go into the hard part, and this is where we really have the opportunity to save lives. think about it this way, willie, and i've had this conversation

with our health care leadership. they can project, right now, the number of cases that we're expecting next week. they could project, right now, how many ventilators we need, how many doctors, how many nurses. and we know we don't have all of that for next week, despite constant pleas to washington. everyone knows we're the epicenter. quarter of the cases in the entire country. so, willie, i'm obsessed. i had this conversation with the president yesterday and all the top leadership of his administration. i'm obsessed with getting us through next week and saving every life, every life we can save. and i want our national government to see it that way. to recognize that there are lives, there are people who will be alive and will live full lives if we act now. if we don't, first, it will be hundreds, willie, then it'll be thousands who will lose. americans will lose who did not need to die. that's how urgent it is. that's where all our focus should be right now as a

national. when the smoke clears, when this crisis is over, and thank god we know it, the day will come when this is over, then we can figure out what we need to learn from it. but right now, how could we not be on a war footing? you can feel it. the nation is not on a war footing and, yet, we're fighting a war. >> well, let's try and message some facts to our leaders here. let's talk, mayor de blasio, as tough as it is, about the rate of deaths in new york city, and accommodating the bodies. the government put in an order for 100,000 body bags. what is the rate of death right now in new york city? what do you expect it to be next week? what does that look like? and are you able to accommodate that? >> mika, i think it is so important for people to hear the truth. you have doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, emts, paramedics, all doing their job in a heroic fashion.

they are fighting to save every life. i have absolute faith in them. what i don't have faith in is that they will have the equipment they need, certainly, especially the ventilators, and they'll have the reinforcements they need. here's the problem, so many of our health care workers and first respond e they've gotten sick themselves. most of them come back after seven days, ten days. but we've got to recognize, we're not even -- we don't have our full complement we'd normally have of these crucial, crucial, these life-saving folks because a lot of them got sick themselves. on top of that, the demand keeps surging. that's why we need those reinforcements. now, mika, again, i say to the president of the united states, i say to the pentagon over a week ago, 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory therapists, for the nation's largest city. 8.6 million people. you'd think in a country this big, this strong, that would be an easy request to fill.

i'm still waiting. so those reinforcements have to come or our health care professionals will just be swamped. 1,500 deaths already, and we have not even gotten to the hard part of this. >> mayor bill de blasio, thank you very much. we will hopefully be talking to you again soon. trying to see our way through this. still ahead, by one measure, if the u.s. was carrying out 1 million tests a day, it'd take roughly six months to test about half the population. nbc's keir simmons joins us with his reporting, next. and as we go to break, we have this inspiring story out of ohio. one doctor there self-diagnosed and sick with coronavirus provided medical advice to over 100 patients online and over the phone last weekend. telling the "wall street journal," you still just go on, because patients need you.

dr. mary kreps is the only doctor at a clinic for low-income patients. as fears of the coronavirus were ramping up in march, she tried to find an n-95 mask. everywhere was completely out of them, and she was running low on surgical masks. krebs tried to guess who had the virus and use the mask on riskier ones. one of the patients she treated was positive for the virus, and not long after, she started feeling symptoms, as well. this did not stop her from doing her job. she took on more than 130 calls over the weekend from concerned patients. krebs said she never had even received 60 calls on one weekend before. she told the "wall street journal," i'm hopeful that if we can get through this and save lives, i'm hopeful. we'll be right back. o you, it's our policy that your pizza is never touched once it comes out of the oven. and we're taking extra steps,

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precursor for the united states. the total number of cases there now has passed 33,000 in great britain. nearly 3,000 have died from the virus. 24% jump from the previous day. the nhs opened the morning, two more nightingale hospitals to provide up to 1 rk,500 beds for covid-19 patients. prince charles, who tested positive for the virus, you'll remember, opened london's nightingale hospital today over video link. there is rising anger in the uk over the lack of testing, particularly for health care workers, as it emerged 2,000 national health service staff have been tested. the country's health secretary has set a target of 100,000 covid-19 tests to be conducted per day by the end of the month. let's bring in now nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons. good morning. what more can you tell us about the state of testing where you are in the uk? >> reporter: willie, you, joe, and mika have been talking for

days about the importance of testing, and you've been absolutely right. while you've been talking about that, it's been headline news here in the uk. the crisis over testing. what we had, as you mentioned, was a stunning laying out by the british health minister here yesterday, of just how much of a crisis it is. that target of 100,000 tests by the end of the month, he is saying that his target is to be able to test all health workers by the end of the month. i mean, we know how fast this virus is moving. you're about to hear a senior professor from yale talk about the kind of target america should have. right now, america is testing about 100,000 a day. he says that it should be more like a million a day. we've been looking in depth at testing. it is really worth understanding. take a listen. the coronavirus pandemic has stormed across the globe, an

unrelenting and invisible army, leaving many countries ill-equipped to test for the virus. in hard-hit spain, stacey is a med student from ohio, caring for patients with coronavirus. how long have you been waiting for tests? >> a week. [ sirens ]. >> reporter: in new york, more than two months after america's first positive coronavirus case, the sick have been lining up for tests. too late to stop the spread. >> without testing, it is like an airplane flying without visibility. we have no idea of what is actually going on on the ground. >> reporter: it didn't have to be like this. in january, south korea began aggressively testing and isolating suspected coronavirus carriers. it now has only around 100 new cases a day. if america had done the same -- >> we would have avoided having lockdowns of the level we have now. we have to work from where we are right now, and that still

requires massive testing. >> reporter: what does massive testing mean? >> probably means over a million tests a day. >> reporter: complicating the picture, there are multiple types of tests. the most effective called pcr. looks for traces of the virus, but results can take hours. the tests themselves in short supply. on monday, president trump displaying a new, quicker pcr test, fast approved by the fda. from tomorrow, thousands of these tests will be available in america. while in the uk, this oxford university team is showing us how they are making the process even simpler. >> the pink is negative. the yellow is positive. >> reporter: another type of test now fda approved looks for the antibodies that fight the virus. a simple good sample in a cassette, like a pregnancy test. antibodies to the virus appear days after infection, showing who has had coronavirus. but they might help governments

calculate when and how to safely lift the lockdowns. and for the world to get back to business, technology is playing its part. governments and companies around the world are increasingly expressing interest in legally accessing location data from unsuspecting cell phone users, to track changes to their movements. while the data is gathered anonymously to map how effective self-distancing measures are, it has raised privacy concerns. researchers designing an app that alerts people who have been in contact with you if you test positive. >> this is not about surveillance. this is about contributing to control of the epidemic. >> reporter: coronavirus is testing our communities and our trust in governments. but without effective testing, the world is fighting an enemy it cannot see. and a vaccine or cure are months, maybe years away. just think about this, you heard from the yale school of

medicine, saying america needs more than a million tests a day. just almost 330 million people in america, so that would mean it'd take six months to test half of the population. willie, this is an economic issue. this is about getting people back into their jobs. because if you can test people and really figure out where the virus is, that's how you potentially begin to lift the lockdown. that's how crucial it is. it is about saving here in the uk and there in the u.s. or economy. >> you can map the cases in a way we just can't right now. similar problem there as here. we have incredible doctors, great scientists, and extraordinary labs. we just can't scale the testing. keir simmons, fascinating piece in london for us. thanks so much. mika? still ahead, our next guest wrote the book on what we're living through right now. the author of "the coming plague," newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. she joins us next on "morning joe."

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welcome back. 32 past the hour. democrats are pushing for more funding to support mail-in voting this year, due to the coronavirus. house speaker nancy pelosi says that she wants to increase the funding for mail-in and absentee voting in the next stimulus package, saying that an additional 2 billion to $4 billion is needed to democratize america's election system. last week's $2.2 trillion

stimulus bill provided $400 million to state and local election officials to address complications caused by the coronavirus. however, congressional republicans are not on board. house minority leader kevin mccarthy described the push for funding as a distraction. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said earlier this week it is too early to determine what should be included in the next stimulus bill. joining us now, msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus" and editor in chief, john heilemann. why would republicans not want to make sure all people have a chance to vote come november? >> mika, this is one of the enduring questions in our democratic system. you know, whenever there are issues around trying to allow it to be easier for people to vote, allow it to be easier for more people to vote, in all those

circumstances, whenever those are on ballot initiatives in states around the country, it tends to be republicans who are against the measures, and democrats who are for them. i honestly don't think that there's any actual reason in principle for why republicans are in this position, other than a traditional set of arguments they make about states being in charge of these things and running their own elections. that is the way the system works here, and they don't like the notion of federal mandates going down. in this moment, it seems to me that we are looking at an unprecedented circumstance. we do not know whether any of the primaries and caucuses that are left on the democratic side are going to be able to be conducted. we have one on tuesday that's going to be going forward now in wisconsin. there are many others. we're not sure if they're going to happen. depending on the duration of the coronavirus crisis, we could be looking at a situation where many millions of people are afraid to go to the polls in november. i think it is essential for not just the money to be made

available to the states who need the transition to vote by mail, but for all 50 states to look hard at what that transition would look like. because we must make sure that, a, the presidential election happens on the date specified, and that it is an election everyone can believe in is conducted in a legitimate and fair way. i think that'll require a whole lot of effort starting right about now in a well-funded effort, too. >> if the election were held today, for some, it'd be life-threatening to go out and vote. >> yes. >> i do think that this reality has to be prepared for. conventions, the republican and democratic convention, some of them are being moved. the democrats moved theirs to, i believe, late august. what was the thinking behind that? and do we foresee conventions that don't have -- i mean, how do we socially distance a national convention? >> right. i think, mika, it is another very good question. the conventions previously were supposed to be a month apart.

democrats would be july, and republicans would be the end of august. it became pretty clear to democrats that there was a very little chance that -- you might be able to hold the convention in july in milwaukee, but whether they could hold it in a way that would make people feel comfortable, whether people would be at the point where they were ready to gather in a room with 19,000 or 18,000 or 17,000 of their fellow democrats was a larger question. the democrats took the opportunity to push theirs back. that was the news yesterday. they're now going to go the week before the republicans at the end of august. i think it's the case that both parties are still aware of the fact that there may not be conventions, even though they currently have the dates held. there's a chance those conventions won't be practical, if this thing lasts for longer than we hope it does. there's also -- so that means, essentially, both parties are starting already to plan on what it would mean to have a real convention or actual co vengnve, and a virtual convention of some kind.

you're asking the right question, will public behavior, even if there are no shelter in place laws in north carolina where republicans are holding their convention, and in mississip wisconsin where democrats are holding theirs. if there is no regulatory hurtle by august, will people feel comfortable being in a large room, sweaty, tight quarter? is that something people will keep ready to do at that point? i think both parties are starting to continemplate wheth they can get the work of the convention done without the physical element playing out like it always has. >> it's willie. good to see you, bud. joe biden has been doing his best to run a presidential campaign unlike, obviously, any that has been run, from his living room. he's doing a ton of press. trying to run a parallel presidency, speaking as if he were the president, how he'd address this crisis. when you speak to people close to vice president biden, people inside his campaign, how do they feel this is impacting the way

they're trying to continue a presidential campaign but remain respectful of what everyone is going through right now? >> frustration levels are super high there, willie. the reality is that the vice president, former vice president, is in a terrible position. in the sense that he doesn't have a platform. he doesn't have real standing in this crisis. so you look at, obviously, donald trump, who has the ability to dominate, for good or bad, has the ability to dominate coverage. he's in the middle of the entire thing and will have this big platform and megaphone, bigger than ever. you also have governors, office holders, who are dealing with this on the front lines. someone like andrew cuomo, who has a daily television show now, and has become, in ways, the sha shadow president. he is the leader of the democratic party, in some sense, because he is on the front lines of the most severely affected state, and has been doing a tremendous job, most people would agree. you have people in the house and senate with platforms because

they are shaping the stimulus response or other legislative responses to the crisis. what joe biden doesn't have is any real traction in this. i think everyone recognizes that he has to continue to have a voice and try to find ways to be part of the conversation. but those ways are not available to him in any natural way. he has no natural standing to be in the conversation. people around him find it frustrating. they know there's nothing nay can do about it, and eventually, they know it'll end. the level of frustration is high. a lot of uncertainty about how the democratic side of this going to get itself wrapped up. how does joe biden claim the democratic nomination? that is a big question, because he's probably never going to be able to do what is stipulated in the democratic rules in terms of getting to the required number of delegates, if we don't ultimately have a lot of the primaries and caucuses still left on the calendar. >> mika, senator sanders, bernie

sanders, is still there. he told seth meyers two nights ago he still sees a path to the nomination. >> okay. you know, we'll follow up on that, and john heilemann, i personally think we should be covering these governors' news conferences daily on a national level, to get a sense of what's going on in the states. generalisticly, i want to ask about that, opposed to covering the president's daily briefings that he's really turned into something else, much of the time during them. let's turn right now to pulitzer prize-winning health and science writer laurie garrett. she's the author of the book "the coming plague, newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance." wrote the cover story for the may issue of "the new republic," entitled "contagion." first of all, your book, timely. and your article, absolutely on point, laurie. my question to you is, let's back up. given your expertise, let's look at what the guidelines are that

the president is giving, what the information that the president is giving. number one, is there any way out of this without national, uniform testing? and have you heard any type of timeline as to when that's happening? then down to the brass tornadi s -- tacks of it, is 30 days to slow the spread enough? >> i think we have to be realistic. we're in this for a very long haul. i think it is more conceivable that we'll be looking at this problem in 36 months than in six weeks. we're going to see this virus cycle around the world multiple times. it is pushing into the southern hemisphere. as it disappears slowly in the northern hemisphere, not because of temperature or miracles, not because of magic, but because of a combination of the stay at home orders that we're executing here, and with warmer weather, people open their windows. people go outside. they decrease the level of random exposure in tight-knit

spaces. all of that will happen, but it'll move to the southern hemisphere. we'll see explosion across sub africa, new zealand, the islands, then it'll come back to us with cold weather again and people are indoors again. it could be right around the same time as our national election. >> latest grim reaper, how trump and xi set the stage for the coronavirus pandemic. you look at how two deeply flawed leaders did the same thing, which was, try to down play downplay it. try to cover it up. try to repress information. is it fair to say there are direct parallels to how trump began his leadership, leading us through this crisis, and the leader of china? >> there's no way we get out of this mess unless the two most powerful men on planet earth decide to start working together somehow. they bury some hatchets and

solve the problem. the world doesn't have enough money without china and the united states, and the leadership doesn't have enough military clout without those two. we have two very flawed men, with really delicate egos. both of them ruling -- accustomed to ruling by saying, do this, and all their underlings should follow. both of them need sycophantic, adorable staff around them. both of them prefer to pretend the problem didn't exist until it was blowing up in their faces. and then now both blame the other, and claim the other was responsible. in china, they're claiming, oh, it might have come from an american military laboratory. we were being beaten down as we were fighting in wuhan. where was america? the americans are saying, oh, they lied to us. they didn't tell us how bad it was. we lost precious time to protect america. both of those narratives are

untrue. >> hey, laurie, it is willie geist. as you say, we should point out the conspiracy theories are untrue. as someone who literally wrote this book, in 1994, 25 years ago, the kind of presage, while everything is happening right now. how are we so unprepared? i know it is a huge question. let's put the world to the side for a minute and just look at the united states. i think there's some assumption in the back of americans' minds that the government is ready for this kind of thing. there's a stockpile somewhere. we can get the equipment and the ventilators and the military will move quickly to get hospitals what they need. how did we get to a place where we are so flat footed on this? >> what you have to understand is that there's been this small group of scientists and public health people screaming from the rafters since the 1980s, when a meeting took place at the national scientists. all over the world, people said, we're noticing that suddenly viruses are surging.

in different circumstances, affecting human beings or our livestock. what's going on? by the '90s, it was very clear to everybody that the damage we had done to planet earth, and the way we were living on this planet, with rapid movement, airplanes, and people moving their goods, services, and each other, all over the place, were allowing our viral hitchhikers to go with us all over the entire world. very, very obscure viruses that hadn't affected our humanity ever before were suddenly coming out of hidden reserves. you know, a key one was bats. we've had ebola, lisa, nepa, mers, sars, and now covid. these are all bat viruses that have jumped from bats to another animal and then to humans. now, we've had warnings all these years. every single president since bill clinton has tried to put in place some kind of preparedness,

some kind of thinking. a flu plan. a human security plan. some sort of meetings at the g-7 and the g-20. but they've all followed this roller coaster pattern. when there was an epidemic, there was concern, politics, and money. when an epidemic went away, so did the money, the concern, and pretty soon, it twidwindled to nothing. we've seen this pattern play out over and over and over again. >> to your point, in terms of the -- where these all began, on monday, we'll be taking a look at the wet markets in wuhan, china, and other parts of china, and look into that. pulitzer prize-winning health and science winner, laurie garrett. thank you so much. her piece is in the new issue of "the new republic." coming up, the march jobs report comes out in just about an hour. economists say it could be the worst in a decade. stephanie ruhle and former department labor secretary will join us to break down the

numbers and what they mean for wall street. that's ahead on "morning joe." as we go to break, know your value is highlighting the pictures and stories of health care workers on the front lines of this pandemic from around the country. it's our way of honoring all those emts, technicians, doctors, nurses, the people who clean the hospitals, the people who keep these medical facilities running. the images you've been sharing with us are truly inspiring and powerful. thank you. send us more. email them to know your value @nbcuni.com. know your value @nbcuni.com. stay strong. we thank you on behalf of "morning joe." we'll be right back. my patients

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j nbc news senior correspondent tom brokaw has covered his share of crises in his storied career and says the coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge he has ever seen. here is tom's thoughts on how we defeat it with an eye on the future. >> i used to work with a wise, old journalist that said that journalism is a two cycle engine, now and next. obviously we are dealing with the now, frantically trying to bring it under control, but we

must begin to think about the next as well. i have a thought about that. why don't we get bill and melinda gates, who are better equipped to do this than anyone i know, to create a new agency and to bring the best minds in america and from around the world for that matter to ask how did this happen. what did we learn about it? how do we bring it under control? that can be a six-month experiment, and then convert that into an agency for the united states because this issue is not going to go away. it is our future. this is the world that we have inherited with so many more people. so much of our biology is totally out of control. there are so few ways to get it under control and allow the kind of life that we all want to have. so this is the biggest test of my lifetime, quite honestly, how we deal with this. and if we don't measure up to that, it is a terrible commentary on all that we have been given as a country, as a nation of laws, as a country

really of immigrants from all over the world who come to america because it is their best hope, and they're in the laboratories right now working to sustain this country and the life they want to have and they want all of us to have. so this is the greatest challenge you can possibly imagine, but it is not beyond our capacity to deal with it if we are willing to set aside petty differences and find ways to find common ground, which means everybody at some point is going to have to give some as well as take some. those have been the lessons in my lifetime in journalism all over the world. i'm now at a stage when i'm looking back with an enormous sense of pride on what in country is all about and how i have been privileged to be a part of it and to be a witness to it. finally, let me say to the young people, life is not just a day on the beach.

you've got to remember that this is your country, your world that is being preserved. this is what you will inherit, and my advice to you is get off the beach. get going. do something right now, because this is the life that you will be given, and then the question is what will you do with it. >> commentary from nbc's tom brokaw. let's bring in professor at princeton university eddie claude jr. and john halman is still with us as well. eddy, i will start with you. what are you looking at and what is standing out to you as we are watching this catastrophe unfold? >> well, you know, mika, i'm trying to grapple with how we're going to deal with death. people are having to grieve in private. what does it mean to sit shiva? what does it mean not to have the second line? i'm thinking about marsalis's

father, ed marsalis. we have our public rituals around death, and people are having to die alone and people are having to grieve alone. for 18 years we had a policy where we would not photograph the military fatalities coming home with flags draped over the coffins because we wanted to hide death, but we're not going to be able to hide it now. so we're going to have to develop public rituals so that we can grief appropriately. because those of us locked away from our loved ones and those loved ones who have to die alone require something more of us. had is more than simply a war. it has something to do with the soul of the country, and part of that work, mika, i really believe has to do with how are we going to deal with a death immediately on our horizon. how are we going to grieve together since we can't be together in a certain sort of way in this is what i am

thinking about these days. >> that's beautifully said, as always, eddie. john, tom makes an important point underlined by doctor after doctor, scientist after scientist, which is that this is going to be with us for a while. it may ebb and flow, but we talk about dr. fauci has said he expects it to return into the fall now. this is not something we're going to get through quickly as a country. it is something that we've going to live with in one way or the other. >> right. and i think that there are three complements of what tom is talking about, willie, that are all super important and that he we still very much need to focus on and demand and expect from the president. one of them is embodied in tom's proposal is a respect for scientific expertise and professionalism and for the voices of people who have actually expertise about questions related to science and medicine. that's the first thing. the second thing is kind of -- underlying it is this notion of common national unity, bringing

the country together to defeat an enemy, and not just this enemy but future enemies we will be confronting down the line. so a call to national unity and purpose. thirdly, it is a new agency that tom is talking about, and i think, you know, most people outside the context of this crisis, the notion that government is already big enough and government needs to know its limits, those are the core precepts we live by. but right now we recognize with the size of the stimulus and emergency packages that the government has to do more. the government has to be at the center of our response here. all three of the elements, whether you proceed down with the tangible proposal tom is putting forward or not, they have to be core at the way donald trump looks at this if we're going to have a chance minimizing at this point the kind of damage that lies ahead. the damage will be terrible in the next few weeks. donald trump and the people around them need to get their

hands around all of those element it and try to proceed with a competence of expertise with a unifying and consistent message and one that recognizes that there's a bump of stuff that need to happen and that only the federal government can do. it is not sufficient to blame governors to say that the states can handle these matters, they can't. this is a job only the federal government is equipped to take on. >> john heilemann, eddie claude jr., thank you both. new guidelines on who should be wearing mask is expected today from the trump administration. plus, the navy relieves a captain who raised alarm about coronavirus on board an aircraft carrier. we have will that new reporting straight ahead on "morning joe." we are back in two minutes. are. now this is what i'm talking about. focus on what matters to you with thinkorswim. ♪

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certainly are growing, and tragically, yes, the number of deaths -- 203 -- have grown. but the icu numbers and the hospitalization numbers, while they're growing, are not growing as significantly as you're seeing in other parts of the country. do you have a message for the other governors who have not taken these strong measures, these extreme measures? should everyone be issuing these stay-at-home orders? >> my message is this, what more do you need? if you think it will never happen to you, you will not regret overcompensating and meeting this moment in the responsible way. there's nothing, full stop, but physical distancing. you can say socially connected but you need to be physically apart. that foundationally and fundamentally we know can bend the curve, can save lives, and ultimately can get people back to work and get society back to

some semblance of normalcy, faster than anything else we can do some positive news from california governor gavin newsom yesterday. two weeks ago he announced the first statewide stay-at-home order in the united states. it appears to be paying off. joe will be back on monday along with willie and me. we have editor-in-chief of "the atlantic" magazine jeffrey goldberg. and "morning joe" economic analyst steve ratner. historian and author of "the soul of america" and rogers professor of the presidency at vanderbilt, john meachem. he is an msnbc contributor. we are going to dive into the latest of numbers. the cases across the globe

topped 1 million. new york state added more than 9,000 cases yesterday, totaling more than 92,000. more than half are in new york city. the death toll there increased by 188 last night to more than 1,500 total. hospitals are stretched so thin that city paramedics have been told that adult patients who are in cardiac arrest and can't be revived in the field should not be taken to the emergency room, if you can imagine that. new york governor andrew cuomo said last night that he has enough ventilators to last about six more days. here he is on msnbc last night driving home a proposed solution that he's been pushing for sometime now. >> the one silver lining here is not every place in this country gets hit at the same time, right. there's going to be a different curve for the disease in different areas, depending on when it started.

those curves will have a lag. why don't we devise a national strategy that moves with that rolling apex, if you will. i need roughly 30,000 ventilators, which i can't get, but i only need 30,000 ventilators for two or three weeks at the top of my curve. let's be smart. let's go help this place. when that town goes over its curve, then we will go to the next, then we go to the next, then we will go to the next. otherwise you are saying to every state and locality, you must be prepared on your own to handle this. where we are now, 50 states all trying to buy the same equipment from china and then the federal government comes in with fema which is trying to purchase the same equipment. this is not the way to do it. the simplicity is what makes it so tragic, frankly, because we don't have a piece of equipment

someone is going to die. because we don't have staff someone is going to die? how did we get to this place in this country? >> one other somber note. funeral homes are also struggling to keep up. a brooklyn owner tells the associated press that his company is equipped to handle up to 60 cases at time but he's now handling 185 saying, quote, this is a state of emergency. we need help. willie. >> meanwhile, a senior administration official is telling nbc news the white house is expected to announce a new advisory, a national advisory that americans living in coronavirus hot spots should wear cloth face masks. officials say the expected move is aimed at reducing the risk that the virus could be spread by people who are infected but do not show any symptoms. initial cdc guidelines advised

americans against wearing masks unless they were health care workers or they were infected. during yesterday's briefing the president said the advisory would not be mandatory. >> i think they will be coming out with regulations on that, and if people want to abide by them -- i don't think they will be mandatory because some people don't want to do that. as an example on the masks, if people wanted to wear them, they can. if people wanted to use scarves, by of which they have, people have them, they can. in many cases the scarf is better, it is thicker, depending on the material it is thicker. they could do that if they want. a recommendation is coming out. we will see what the recommendation is, but -- but i will say this, they can pretty much decide for themselves right now. >> is the guidance coming out and when? >> yes, yes. >> and when, sir? >> in the days ahead. we're currently working through the task force, taking consultation, advice, cdc, our

top health experts and we will be bringing forward guidance from the cdc in the next several days. >> just remember, it is not a substitute for everything we're asking people to do. the most important thing is social distancing and washing your hands. we don't want people to get an artificial sense of protection because they're behind the mask. remember, your eyes are not in the mask. if you are touching things and then touching your eyes, you are exposing yourself in the same way. >> new york city mayor bill de blasio yesterday by the way announced that he was recommending and his government was recommending that new yorkers do wear a mask as well, following the lead of los angeles which made that recommendation a couple of days prior. meanwhile, president trump announced he is expanding the defense protection act to push companies to make protective masks and ventilators needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak. the order authorizes the head of

fema to require as many n95 masks from the company 3m as is deemed necessary. the act is expected to help six manufacturers like ge and medtronics secure supplies needed to make the lifesaving machines. in a white house statement president trump says the order, quote, will save lives by removing obstacles in the supply chain that threaten the rapid production of ventilators. mika. there are questions how the white house arrived at its projection this week, that up to 240,000 americans could die of the coronavirus. according to "the washington post" while leading disease forecasters whose research the administration used to reach its conclusion said they don't challenge the number's validity, white house officials refused to explain how they generated the figure and they have not provided the underlying data so others can assess its liability

or prolong-term strategies that lower the death count. it is said that some of the top advisers expressed doubt about the estimate with fierce debates in the white house about its accuracy. at a meeting this week dr. anthony fauci told others there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the model reliable saying, i looked at the models, i spent a lot of time on the models. they don't tell you anything. you can't really rely upon models. the cdc director and the vice president's office reportedly also voiced doubts about the projection's accuracy while a columbia university epidemiologist whose models were cited by the white house tells the post that his own work on the pandemic doesn't go far enough into the future to make predictions predictions

predictions akin to white house forecast. as everybody is trying to get hands on masks and supplies getting to hospitals around the country and gauge how many cases, the bottom line here is that the one thing that works is the one thing being put upon the american people and that is social distancing. it has been proven to work in california. the governor of california listened to top scientists. we know for a fact he was on the phone with top policy experts and decided to shut down the state and certainly city the earliest, and the numbers are bearing that out. we have these hot spots and these horrific situations in places like new york city right now, and the only solution right now, the only solution that we have on the horizon is social distancing. isn't the issue right now as the economy crumbles and america is being brought to its knee, what

is the timeline for real advertising across the board and what is the timeline for a vaccine? because those are the two things that could lead us out of this, and we have absolutely no answers so many weeks into this crisis. >> well, you know, it is interest in. underlying the call for social distancing, underlying the call for hand washing and everything else is a deep desire and need for leadership. stable leadership. it doesn't have to be genius leadership, it has to be stable leadership. you are to get a sense from the top that they have a plan, that they understand the needs across america -- not state by stay, but across america, and they're executing. what we're missing right now are a couple of things. one is a feeling that we're getting it straight from the white house, getting straight information, even if it is bad, unpleasant information, that they're talking straight. the other is a sense of a

unified plan. if you just listen to governor cuomo at the top of the show and you can listen to president trump, i think you can see -- i think this is a fair conclusion that they project confidence and leadership instability in very different ways. so ultimately this is -- i mean if it is true that this is a war, as donald trump argues, and that he is a wartime president, we have to have -- nobody will be able to predict the end of this, but you have to be able to tell the american people, look, this is what we're doing on ventilators. this is what we're doing on surging material to hospitals, this is what we're doing x, y and z, and we just whipsawed all day long, all week long. we're whipsawing from different conclusion to different conclusion with strange sort of issues with whether the president is popular on facebook or not. under girding everything is this

leadership question. >> hey, john meech el,achem, i ask you about tennessee where you live. the governor signed an order following georgia, mississippi and florida which came online with those kind of policies yesterday. what is your view, snapshot of what it looks like in tennessee? these are places over the last couple of months thought maybe it was a new york story and it may not visit nashville and memphis and east tennessee. what does it look like right now there? >> i think it mattered enormously that dolly parton got involved, honestly. she gave a million dollars to vanderbilt. i mean she is the real governoror. that helps. honestly, it sends a signal that this is serious. our friend tim ma grgraw is doi

songs from his living room daily. people are beginning to take it seriously. we are in the midst -- i remember thinking at the beginning of this, i hope i don't have to say this but, in fact, i do. we have a partisan pandemic. it depends on where you live and what channels you watch whether you trust certain facts and data. to a large extent -- and this sounds overly grand, i know, but i think it has the virtue of being true as henry kissinger used to say. the enlightenment is on trial here, facts and data that shape human decisions because they are objectively true, that is something that now is very much under assault and i think it absolutely begins at the top. the other thing i hoped at the beginning of this is that it would not become a perpetual referendum or commentary on this

particular president. but to steve's previous point, it is simply a fact that he is not communicating coherently and universally truthfully about what we face. it is very curious. see, he has become this anti-federalist figure from the 18th century, right. suddenly, it is states' rights. he loves the idea somehow or another the border between my state and kentucky and mississippi and georgia and alabama, somehow or another the virus is going to see a border and say, oh, wait, that's a republican gopher, i'm not going there. it doesn't work that way. still ahead, remember this. front page graphic in "the new york times" showing unemployment claims last week. well, that nearly doubled this week. in just a few minutes we will get the job report for the month of march and wall street is bracing for it. we will have it covered just ahead on "morning joe."

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let's talk about the financial side about this that's taken an incredible human toll, staggering jobless claims number crossing yesterday. during our show as we reported, 6.65 million people claiming unemployment just last week. the week before that, the labor department announced 3.28 million claims, bringing the month of march total to more than 10 million jobless claims. in fact, the past two weeks all but eliminated the jobs created in the past five years. so, steve, you have a chart on where the unemployment rate is likely headed from here. how bad do you see it getting? >> sure, willie. we can talk about that. look, in meachem's honor let me be slightly churchillian and say we're at the beginning of the beginning here. you are seeing the leading edge. there will be unemployment numbers but they will be

relatively benign because they're gathered before most of this hit. if you look ahead you can see where we're going from here, which is essentially into double digit unemployment. if you look on the left side you can see we've been sitting at 3.5%. first quarter still around 3.7% for the reasons i said, and then we will just go up like a rocket ship. these are goldman sachs's projections but if you look at main street economists you will see something like this. in the second quarter of the year that started yesterday, the day before, we go to 13.2%, and then in the third quarter over the summer they're projecting we will hit 14.7%. just for reference, you can see the dotted red line across the middle. that's our 2009 peak at so10%. we are talking about an unemployment rate 50% higher than where we got to during the great financial crisis. many people say to themselves, well, this is going to be a "v" shaped recovery. we will bounce back as fast as we bounced down because people will go back to work. if you look at what the projections show, that's not

what we're looking at. we're looking at a long, slow recovery in jobs, unemployment rate going down to 9.5% at the end of this year. then you can see 7.4, quarter by quarter. end of next year, 6.3%, still very high. in 2020 to 5.2%. we don't get back to anything like today until 2023 which is a long time from now. just one political footnote, donald trump will probably be facing double digit unemployment on election day this fall and we can all debate the consequences of that. >> so, steve, a lot of those jobs obviously fall in small businesses that may have to shut their doors through this. they just don't have the money to keep running through this crisis. let's talk a little bit about the ppp, which is the paycheck protection program. that's the small business loans, $350 billion in that $2.2 trillion stimulus package

supposed to go out today. we've heard from big banks there's chaos, they don't know the rules or how to implement the program. i heard from the head of a mid sized bank in the south, very concerned. they want to get the money to their customers but no guidance at all from treasury. what are you hearing about how that program is going to roll out? >> it is rolling out slowly as you implied. look, i would say a little bit as jeffrey was saying to be two-handed about this, these are new programs, that he ver complicated, they're hard to implement. with that said it is rolling out very, very slowly and there's enormous confusion among the small business community as to how to access this and getting not a lot of response when they make phone calls and send in e-mails and things like that. i would also point out there's $375 billion for that program in the legislation. most people think that number is way too small, that before this is over we will need something like a trillion dollars. even then many small business he are not going to know how to use this. it is not going to be enough. they're not going to want to

access it. this is part of what i was talking about before, you will see many businesses shut down and not be able to reopen and that's an enormous amount of destruction to the economy that will be hard to untangle. we will pick up on this topic just ahead. banks warn of utter chaos in the government's new program to help millions of small businesses. there's such little guidance from the trump administration that lenders aren't even sure they can participate on this opening day. stephanie ruhle has that reporting next on "morning joe." you've got it all.

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the u.s. navy announced it has relieved the captain who sounded the alarm about an outbreak of coronavirus aboard the "uss theodore roosevelt," an aircraft carrier with a crew of nearly 5,000. the captain raised the alarm this week, sending a strongly worded letter to navy leadership detailing his concerns about the spread of the virus on the carrier. joining us now with her latest reporting, nbc news national security and military correspondent courtney kube. good morning. i know you have been reporting out the story overnight. what was the justification for relieving this commander of his post? >> reporter: well, willie, it was the letter that you mentioned. it was the fact that captain crozier wrote that letter. it wasn't so much that he expressed his extreme and deep heartfelt concern about the welfare of his crew of the

aircraft carrier "uss theodore roosevelt" but it was the manner in which he distributed the letter that got him relieved of his command. he sent that e-mail, really a memo far and wide. we don't know exactly who to. we know he sent it to his direct chain of command, but he also sent it on an unclassified server to apparently dozens of other people, and ultimately when the senior navy leadership briefed us on their decision to relieve captain crozier late yesterday afternoon, they explained that that was really what -- the reason they decided to relieve him of this post, was that they lost trust and confidence in his judgment, in his decision to send that on an unclassified server. now, it did have a little bit of information about the readiness of the ship, and that is generally a classified piece of information, but it wasn't just the fact that there may have been some information on there that could be sensitive and that the u.s. navy wouldn't necessarily want in the hands of an adversary, but it was the fact that the another got out to

the media and the fact that he made such a public plea, navy leaders said, well, that breoke trust and confidence with the sailors on the ship and caused undue harm and alarm among families. we heard in a relatively rare way, we don't usually hear from navy leaderships about their decisions to relieve someone, a captain of a ship, but we heard from the acting secretary of the navy, thomas moseley where he explained exactly why it is he decided to relieve captain crozier. >> this decision is not one of retribution. it is about confidence. it is not an indictment of character, but rather of judgment. by not sending the letter to and through his chain of command and to people outside of his chain of command, by not protecting the sensitive nature of the information contained within the letter appropriately and, lastly, by not reaching out to

me directly to voice his concerns after that avenue had been clearly provided to him through my team, that was unacceptable to me. >> reporter: so the reality, willie, this feels very political in the siemitiming of and there are a lot of questions now about why do this when there are sailors still being taken off that ship. they don't know if they have coronavirus or not. they're worried about the fate of their fellow sailors. is it the correct time to take away their beloved captain, willie? >> nbc's courtney kube. thank you very much. up next, restaurant workers are among the hardest hit in the economic shutdown over coronavirus. acclaimed chef guy fieri is leading a new effort to keep them whole and he joins us ahead on "morning joe." ♪ ♪ and with the most tv shows, movies

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[ barking ] breaking news. the march jobs report crossed just moments ago and just like that 113 straight months of job growth has come to a grinding halt. 701,000 jobs were shed last month, and that's not even a complete picture of just how bad things are right now. joining us now, nbc news senior

business correspondent, msnbc anchor stephanie rule. senior fellow at the university of virginia miller center, chris liu. he served as deputy labor secretary under the obama administration. ceo of gen youth, alexis glick. they conduct research for school wellness. stephanie ruhle, these numbers are grim and what do they tell us? >> well, these numbers aren't really representative of sort of how brutal the picture is because, remember, it is a full backward-looking picture from last month before this thing really hit. the number that is the most relevant without a doubt is yesterday's jobless claims topping 6 million. think about this. yesterday's number of just above 6 million is even worse because in the last week we know thousands, if not millions of americans, have been desperately trying to log on to their

state's websites, call unemployment offices so they can file for unemployment, but they haven't been able to. it is not the fault of any of these states. people want to offer these unemployment benefits, but the surge is just unmanageable. so the number is brutal, and what it tells us is that for any of those states out there who say, oh, this thing isn't that -- hitting that far and wide, it is just the hot spots, that's not the case. the one thing i would say that's a slight positive, it means that we're listening to the health professionals who said we need to shut this country down if we're going to address coronavirus, and when you look at those unemployment numbers clearly they're showing that we are. >> all right. chris liu, a lot of folks are already looking at recovery, what it is going to look like, what shape it is going to take. can we even talk about a recovery without a sense of mass uniform testing as well as anti-body testing and also a vaccine? >> well, that's exactly right. we can't get to that recovery point until we actually get passed the public health crisis

and we don't even have a great sense of where the economy is at the moment. as stephanie just said, this is really the tip of the iceberg in terms of bad economic news, to lose 700,000 jobs in one month is staggering. to reference again, this only covers up to the first half of march. a lot of the states had imposed shelter-in-place offereders after that. it doesn't include those in unemployment. about 450,000 of the job losses were in leisure and hospitality, relatively few in retail. we will see those numbers start to go up, and largely untouched by this is kind of business and professional services, sort of high-wage salaried jobs. that's what you're going to start to see in the second wave of job losses. you're right. i mean this is kind of a momentous day in kind of a bad day, that a 9 1/2 year streak of job gains is now over. i think the only question at this point is how severe this

downturn is going to be and how long it is going to last. >> hey, steph, it is willie. i want to ask you about something i know you have been covering closely for the last couple of days, and that is the rollout today of the $350 billion in loans to small businesses to the ppp as they're calling it, the paycheck protection program. i've heard from big banks, chase, bank of america, who say they don't know the guidelines here, they're not sure how it is supposed to work. i'm hear last night and again this morning from a friend of mine that runs a mid size regional bank in the south saying they're flying blind in terms of the guidelines. they want to help all of their customers. they want to get the loans out, but effectively they're asked to loan out their own capital at 1% or something like that and the government is saying we'll get you back later. what more can you tell us about the guidelines, how it works and how we get the money to small businesses? >> here is the thing. they can't trust the fact that the government is saying, we'll get you back later. banks are one of the most highly

regulated business, right. think about this for a moment. this is $350 billion that can be forgiveable. if you think about the unworthy organizations applying for the loans -- and i'm not saying any bad actors behind this. bravo to congress, to treasury and the sba for wanting the do this and to the 1,700 banks that want to get this money to their customers. but the sba and the treasury didn't even get the guidelines to these banks until last night. they can't turn this around in less than 24 hours. i myself spoke to the people running this at chase and b of a and wells who said, we want to get it done, how can we do it. those smaller community banks don't have a chance. it is wholly irresponsible. when you watched last night's press conference literally steve mnuchin was standing at the

podium like oprah winfrey, you get a car, you get a car and you get a car, and it doesn't work that way. to say to the small businesses in america who don't have two months of liquidity, who are desperate for this money, it is disingenuous at the best, even the fact he said, call up one of the fdic banks. that's incorrect. you can't call a random bank. you can only do it with a bank where you are an existing customer. it is against the law because these banks can only do it with existing clients who they have already vetted through know your customer and anti-money laundering rules and steve mnuchen knows that. >> alexis glick, the preparation for this crisis, the response to it, many call it botched, especially on the science level, on cdc guidelines and on the president actually getting on the same page with his top scientific advisers. what can families with no safety net count on in terms of the messaging that they're hearing

from this government given the lack of organization in the response? will the banks be prepared? we're looking at massive unemployment. is there any nugget of information the government has put out there that families can count on? >> well, let me just contextualize it in two ways. i often like to use analogies to explain this, right. what we're seeing in terms of the data today is a lagging indicator. what we've been say of seeing happen in the stock market is a bit of a leading indicator as to the underbelly of what is happening in the economy. let me use a football field for an analogy for a second. on a football field you know there's 100 yards. you know where the goalposts are and how to get to the end zone. the problem we're experiencing right now is that the end zone, the goalposts keep shifting. the reason the goal peases keol shifting is because of the high degree of uncertainty as to how we contain, sustain and suppress the virus. right now what we need to do is

stop for a second. i wrote a piece two weeks ago called "america wake up," because what i was calling for is for everyone to go shelter in place. what we need to do right now is bring the best economic minds to the table. it is like stepping out on a football field. i want tom brady on the field. i want drew brees on the field. i want a rookie quarterback named kyler murray on the field. i want the best coaches. right now we're at about the 35 to 40 yard line but we keep moving the goalpost. so what we need to do is everyone across this country needs to wake up and recognize shelter in place is the only thing that's going to help this economy. >> that's right, that's right. >> and what we've seen thus far of this stimulus, this stimulus right now is meant to bring liquidity back into the marketplace. it is not a stimulus though, and so the issue right now for american families, mika -- and i work with kids across the united states. 30 million kids rely on school

meals for their sustenance, for their nutrition. right now it is not just 30 million kids in the school building, it is millions more. what we have seen in 10 million filings for claims in the past two weeks is going to double or triple over the next couple of weeks. we have so much more work to do, and the most important thing we can do right now is shelter in place because there are going to be inevitably one, two, more bills to help this economy get back on its feet. >> chris lu, you were deputy secretary of lane under president obama. let's live in an imaginary world where you are working with this administration as deputy secretary of labor. we just passed last week a $2.2 trillion package to help small businesses and to get money into people's pockets. nancy pelosi already talking about a fourth piece of legislation. but if you are sitting at that table this morning, where is your priority in helping this

recovery that as the data from the last two days have shown us is cratering? >> you know, our priority right now needs to be providing a level of financial stability to millions of families that are sheltering in place right now. if we really want to get passed this public health crisis which is essential to getting the economy up and running, people needs to stay home. that means they need money in their pocket to buy groceries and pay rent. so we call this a lot a stimulus package, what we just passed, it is really a relief package. we need to continue thinking in terms of additional relief as long as this public health crisis goes on, but what is also critical in all of this is that it is going to take a lot of work from the deep state bureaucrats that the president criticized for the last three years to make sure that the irs gets their checks out to people on time, that the state unemployment systems work the way they should, that the sba loan programs work the way they are supposed to. it is the execution of getting money out the door is critical at this point.

>> yes. steph, that's a problem for a lot of families who are waiting for this check that went through in that legislation. some people may get it quickly, others we've learned in the last couple of days may have to wait months before they see that check in their account. they have to get through today. they've got to get through this week. they've got to get through this month. >> the good thing, willie, is sort of across the board at a state and local level, and you are also hearing the same thing from banks and other lenders, there are relief programs. i know people -- it was just april 1st, they're looking at all of their bills. there is not a blanket federal relief bill that says you do not have to pay your bills, but what we do want to say to everyone, pick up the phone, call all of your lenders and say, here is the situation that i'm in, do you think i can have some time. i can tell you we're hearing more and more positive stories that especially because lenders know the money is coming, people just don't have it today. it is a really stressed time. i will say one more thing, willie. these ppp loans, okay, every

single one, whomever gets one, is going to have to provide their tax id. right now there are tax professionals and there are creative accountants working with small private equity firms and hedge funds, and they're going to try to apply for these loans. none of those companies are hurting. they make their money from management fees. those management fees haven't been touched. we are going to workday and night to see every single institution that gets a loan here, and if there is foul play i cannot imagine something more grotesque when the government comes together and finds $350 billion to help american business survive, if that is abused here we are right here, right now for the next year going to be talking about it. >> all right. stephanie ruhle, you're going to pick up coverage in about 13 minutes. thanks very much for joining us here now. alexis glick, before you go, given the ohrihorrific numbers have been looking at already, what is the word you would use to characterize this economy right now and tell us what you hope people will do to help gen

youth feed america's children? >> well, we are in fragile territory. what we are doing right now, i think everyone is stepping up. this is not about the right or the left right now. it is about all of us working together, bringing the greatest minds to the table to actually look at what are the levers that we can put in place right now to create some certainty in a period of high degree of uncertainty. one of those levers that we're doing at gen youth is we are addressing not just 30 million kids who rely on school miles but the millions more going to school feeding sites across the united states right now, because a week ago they could feed their kids and this week they can't. so right now at gen youth you can go to genyouthnow.org, we have created a fund, a covid-19 school nutrition fund. it is allowing school feeding sites across the united states to apply for up to $3,000 to get the equipment that they need to deliver the meals to families and kids in need.

it is cooler bags. it is grab-and-go containers. it is protective equipment. the food is guaranteed by the government. it will be at the school's site. if we don't get the frontline workers, the school nutritional professionals and the volunteers the equipment they need to deliver the meals we are doing families a disservice. that's what we're trying to address right now with gen youth. we would be thrilled to see more educators, more school buildings apply with us. we want to get you the help you need. we're asking folks to put their heart in their hands for schools' sakes to support our nation's kids and right now they need our help. >> alexis glick and chris lu, thank you both for being on this morning. up next, many of the jobless claims are from workers in the restaurant industry, hit hard in the fall-out from this outbreak. we will talk to renown chef guy fieri about his efforts to stem the bleeding. as we have all week, "morning joe" is showcasing how musicians

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pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice! on any budget, with free shipping. wayfair. way more than furniture. welcome back to "morning joe." most governors and mayors have shuttered the dining rooms of restaurants across the country to limit the spread of coronavirus. the move has forced restaurants, big and small, to lay off employees and to shift to takeout and delivery just to stay afloat. according to the national restaurant association, the industry so far has lost more than $25 billion in sales and cut more than 3 million jobs due to the coronavirus. those numbers, of course, expected to rise as this pandemic worsens and continues. joining us now, chef and

restauranteur, guy fieri. he's in partnership with national restaurant association educational foundation launching a restaurant relief fund to help u.s. restaurant workers who have been financially impacted by the coronavirus. guy, it's so great to see you. good on you for doing this. i think any of us who has a favorite spot, a favorite diner, the kind of place you travel to, is heartbroken to work past, see a sign in the window that say we're closed. we hope to see you back soon. we don't know if we'll see them back soon. we think about the waitress or cook we see a couple of times a week. talk about this program and how it might help those people. >> all your points just hit it right on the head. it's -- your favorite restaurants, the places you celebrate these milestones. it's your neighborhood joint. all of them. we're talking tens of thousands of restaurants closed. millions, 3 million upwards to 5 million of these employees without jobs. a lot of these folks are living paycheck to paycheck. devastating. so we partnered with the

national restaurant association educational foundation, awesome people and we said let's put something together that's going to focus on the employees and how we can get them some money. and it was quick action. i mean, my attorney was the one right in the middle of all of it getting people organized. we brought in the california restaurant association for some support on how to do it. so the group of us really started noodling this and said, how can we get some money? we went directly to the people that participate in the business with restaurants the most. so just last night, coke helped push us over the $10 million mark. uber eats just launched a fantastic new app that you make a donation to your favorite restaurant on the app. they're going to match that and donate the money to the fund. we're talking about big money moving fast. 10 million bucks so far and going towards this -- my goal is $100 million. it's lofty, but we've got a lot of people with a lot of need. if folks are interested in how to get involved to donate or to

get this fund, they can go to rerf.us. restaurant employee relief fund. >> we'll make sure that's up on the bottom of the screen so folks can watch it. if i'm a cook or i'm a waiter or, you know, i run a restaurant, how do i access this? do i just go direct to the website? because there are a bunch of them watching today who i'm sure are very interested in this. >> go directly to the website. i will be honest. we've had a lot of attention to it from the donation side which is awesome and from the employee side, which is so needed. and i just say give us a little bit of time of. we've had a couple of ups and downs with it but i think we've worked out the bugs. i don't know that everybody was expecting 4 million hits in the first morning. but this is a program that's not going to just be for today. we've got a lot of our partners committing, for instance, discovery, that i do my shows, "diners, drive-ins and dives." they made a committee for every donation the employees make they'll match it. that will go on for 60 days.

we're looking forward to seeing more of the partners, more of those partners that really need the restaurant industry. we're looking for them to get involved. hopefully the number will continue to grow. there will be more money for more of these employees who, really, as you can understand, across the country, really need the support. >> so give us a sense, guy, i think it's important to think about who these people are. the restaurant workers who literally went from making a living to zero. and work so hard. these are long hours, long days. but their lives have come to a grinding halt. what inspires you to try to get money to these people and get them the relief that they need? >> grinding halt is exactly what happened. these are folks that don't usually have big savings. people who work in the restaurant business. usually working a couple of jobs. they're usually in families because the restaurant hours are so flexible they can work a night job or early morning job.

so there's not a lot of -- this is a business where everybody likes it and wants to be in it and have a piece of one but there's not a lot of cash rezeefr reserves inside of it. we're talking the tip business where the cash is in hand. things will -- businesses will close and things will change, but restaurants, they'll always be there. and then this shutdown, which, of course, is necessary, really has brought it to a grinding halt and people are standing there with, how am i going to feed my family? that was the whole interest, the whole drive. we have restaurants that are open for delivery. we have restaurants open for takeout. and i really hope everyone will explore, as i do on my show, explore the restaurants in your community that are open for delivery or for takeout. that can really help. it just may keep the lights on and keep a few people employed but it really is necessary. >> guy fieri, thank you.

donate by going to rerf.us and just as we end the week, reading about an e.r. doctor from new jersey who died of the coronavirus. our health care workers are on the front line and the country is at its knees. the questions we need from the president and his team during his daily briefing is not stuff about him. it's not about ratings. we need a timeline on testing, on uniform testing across the board testing, a real map. and we need an idea of a timeline on a vaccine. those are the two ways out of this. right now it's on us. it's on the american public to socially distance, to try and stop this, and that's not going to be enough. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's friday,