you, good luck as you continue to do this great work. happy easter thank you, ben. >> thank you, chris. appreciate it. >> and that's going to wrap things up for this hour on nsnbc. i'm chris jansing. thank you so much for watching. i'll see you back here at 6:00 tomorrow night eastern time. my great friend ali velshi picks up our coverage. hey, ali. >> thanks, chris. good evening. i'm ali velshi. you are watching msnbc. we're bringing you the very latest on the coronavirus pandemic. fatalities in the united states are now the highest in the world with a little more than 20,000 people dead. there are now more than half a million confirmed cases across the country and for the first time in american history, all 50 states are now under a major disaster declaration. in new york city or new york state, epicenter of the u.s.

outbreak, more than 8,600 deaths and more than 180,000 confirmed cases. new york city mayor bill de blasio and the state's governor andrew cuomo today seemingly at odds over plans to close city schools for the remainder of the academic year. the mayor telling msnbc a short time ago he stands by his decisi decision. >> i have to do what i think is right to stop the coronavirus from holding this city in its grip, to fight it back and to make sure that we get out of this horrible moment in our history and move forward and the only way we're going to do that is by being vigilant and smart and not taking our foot off the gas. >>. >> meanwhile, the white house coronavirus task force has been meeting this evening. the president, however, is foregoing his daily press briefing while the illness is continuing to devastate virtually all countries across the globe. the worldwide death toll has now

surpassed 100,000 people. europe's hardest hit nation, more than 19,000 people have died as the number of cases begins to grow. in an eerily quiet vatican city, pope francis held his easter eve mass, urging people not to yield to fear as he delivered a message of help. the white house coronavirus task force has been meeting within the last few hours discussing the latest developments on the covid-19 and the u.s. response. president trump said in a press briefing yesterday that he's keen to get the country back open for business. >> i don't know that i've had a bigger decision, but i'm going to surround myself with the greatest minds, not only the greatest minds but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics and reason and we're going to make a decision and hopefully it's going to be the right decision. >> what metrics will you use to make the decision?

>> the metrics right here. that's all can i do. i can listen to 35 people. at the end i got to make a decision. and i didn't think of it until yesterday. i said, you know, this is a big decision. >> didn't think about it till yesterday? joining me, shannon pettypiece. it continues to be a series of conflicting messages from the white house. at some point they seem to be taking seriously depending on the data and scientists and other tiles tmes the president continues to dig up the old mantra, the cure can't be worse than the problem. tomorrow was the initial day the president said the u.s. should be open for business, april 12th, easter sunday. >> right. and instead we have the entire country, as you noted, under a national emergency declaration. so we are in a much different

place today than the president thought we would be just two weeks ago when he was still sort of floating this april timeline. he still seems to have almost sort of a voice in each ear. i know economists and the business community is still pushing the pred to open things. obviously no one at this point wants anyone to go back to work when it is unsafe and could lead to a rebound but pushing the president to get things back on track, i know his economic advisers inside and outside are still gravely concerned where the situation is with the economy and on the other hand, he's still got the public health experts and have interventions multiple times along the way to get the president, to put the pressures in place that are necessary to keep things where they are in the sort of national lockdown. a big question about how this decision goes forward is going to be testing. we've got about over 2 million tests, i think the last million

i saw was 2.6 million tests out there. we've got to get a testing system in place before the economy can reopen and as of last week, we were hearing from dr. birx still saying things like she didn't know why these million tests out there from abbott labs weren't being used. a lot of confusion still continues about testing. antibody testing, the task force saying last week they don't really have an antibodies test right now. that's under the surface to all this, whatever the economists and public health experts are saying remains this testing question because it seems like if we can't get that up and running, we're not going to be able to get people back to work because we won't know essentially who's sick and who can go back to work. >> shannon, thank youshannon petpe pettypiece. the congressional leaders are set to begin fresh bipartisan talks to provide finance assistance to americans. democrats are requesting more

money for hospitals and state and local governments to pass the proposal for more small business loan funding. more than 16 million americans are out of work as far as we know. there may be more than that. despite setbacks, there's fresh hope we could see a new bill passed as soon as thursday. however, that relies on members from both sides of the aisle coming together amid the crisis. joining me is democratic congressman for connecticut, jim himes. good to see you again. how are you, your family and your constituents? >> we are well, thank you, at least inside this household. connecticut is getting hit very, very hard. we just crossed the threshold of 500 deaths. we're a small state but right up against particular in my part of connecticut, right up against new york. we are seeing very, very significant increases in new cases the good news is governor lamont pretty early put all of the isolation restrictions on,

shut down the restaurants. so we're hoping that maybe we're peaking. but our cases and our intensity looks an awful lot like new york. we're a small state. so everybody time somebody passes, there's a good chance you or your neighbor knows who that was. it's a somber moment. >> when phase three, the $2.2 trillion bill was passed, we didn't have the jobless claims numbers. we've had these weeks of them in, 6.6 million last week, the number from the prior week was revised to 6.8 million, 3 million before that. we about 17 million people who have filed for claims. we don't know if the 6.6 are actual numbers or bumping up against what the system can process. given what we know now, what does this next phase need to

look like to you? >> the next phase needs to include what leader mcconnell and president trump said they wanted, which was more money for small businesses we saw in the matter of a week roughly a third of the money, the $350 billion that had been set aside for the paycheck protection program loans was applied for. of course that number is just going to go up very rapidly. we do need more money for our small businesses in particular. unless we are all surprised by this thing just drying up and going away and the way the president seems to think may still happen, by the way, there's no evidence anywhere that that is what is happening, it may turn out that the $1,200 per person cash infusion that was made is not going to carry people over. one of the challenges here is you've got that cash infusion. that's good, it goi's going to quickly next week for people that have direct deposit information from the irs, you'll have the loans for small

businesses. the unemployment insurance, ali, much of that could take a very long time to get out. the idea that gig workers and freelancers and independent contractors can apply for insurance, eigit's a great idead a long time coming but the systems and overhead don't exist to deliver that money. my point being a lot of that unemployment insurance that you are making reference to, you know, it's going to take a little time to get that out the door. >> congressman, because you're in a small state, the degree of overlap between the work you do and the work that the governor does and state representatives is higher. there is a call on governors to allocate $500 billion to the state. maybe the average american is not registering why this money is not all the same pot of money. the president has made reference to our stockpiles versus state stock piles. if states don't get the money they need, states can't run

deficits. so the net result is a cutback in services people are going to feel. what's the net effect of that? how can that affect people in connect? >> you're exactly right. state can't run deficits and the outlays they're doing right now -- two things are happening. one, they are spending to build extra hospital capacity, they are spending through the medicaid program. our governor is working 24/7, i talk to him every day, he is going all over the state. our state governments are spending like never before to counter this pandemic. at the same time, in a state like connecticut where income taxes are a part of the revenue of the state, a significant part of the revenue of the state, of course those revenues are going to go way down because of the shutdown of the economy. and what does that mean for people? it means if the federal government doesn't make those states whole, states will have to dramatically cut servicess are as you said, or they'll need to raise income taxes, raise property taxes. it's really important that the federal government step up to

make the state governments whole. this is really important, ali. i was listening to the conversation you were just having. i don't know what it means for the president to say he's got to make a decision. the action is at the state level. by the way, the competence is at the state level, too. i've listened to the vice president it will me for weeks there's such great numbers of masks and ventilators, we are not seeing them here in one of the american epicenters. it will be our governors, ali, who decide when and how isolation and economies and businesses start back up. unless he's going to override the governors and states who are going to deal with this on the ground, i don't know what he's talking about. >> congressman, stay safe and our best wishes to you and people of connecticut. >> doctors and nurses across the country are continuing to battle on the front lines of the fight

of coronavirus. more than 20,000 americans have lost their lives and while the president continues to push towards reopening the country there are stark warnings that could trigger increased cases and deaths. i want to bring in dr. gupta. gentlemen, thank you for being with us. joseph, let me start with you. i think americans have come to terms with the idea that there is data. there is a certain amount of testing. there is some testing for coronavirus. there is hopefully going to be quickly scaled up testing for antibodies to find out who's got it. we continue to hear from these white house press briefings that it's a decision, it's a time, it's time to get back to work. at this point i would imagine that the white house task force should be depending on the science and the dwrata. >> absolutely. you see that kind of daily play

out in those press briefings, you know, of what the president is feeling that day on whether his emotions win out on that day. i think science is driving the decisions and guidelines at this point and the science and experience from other countries such as china, which tried to open immediately shows us it was a bit of a mistake to rush it that quickly. this is going to have to be a phased opening up of the country. >> let's talk about where we are in terms of flattening the curve. in your state and in some states it started to happen. how are we supposed to read that? does at that mean our projected death totals and infection totals are going to be lower or are we achieving keeping they low enough that we are not overstressing our health care systems that but that they will still continue to happen?

>> well, ali, i think it's the latter. icu utilization is lower in states like new york and washington state where our governor just returned 400 ventilato ventilatorsso there's some success. there's reason to be optimistic that what we're doing, the psychological impact that social distancing is paying off in terms of lives saved. what we're seeing in terms of the modelling forecast from my colleagues at the institute of health metrics, well, maybe we're going to have 61,000 deaths in total by the end of august, not the end of may, but that means we still need to practice social distancing until the end of may at the very least. that's built into those federal governments -- forecasts. you're already seeing a commitment to this in florida, texas, missouri, there is apparently a desire on the governors' end to allow nonessential businesses to remain open under very abstract

guidelinesthis guidelines. this is not going to work and will have repercussions in the absence of federal leadership. >> let me ask you, joseph, as an epidemiologist. we're used to disasters, terrorism, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, something happens and then we fix it. the issue with this and i think it's an issue with lay people like me, someone not a scientist or doctor, the idea this isn't just a wave that's going to go past us. we've seen in asia reinfection. we're not entirely sure what kind of resistance one has once they've got it. so we have to think about our return in a more sophisticated fashion and i'm not sure we're there yet. >> absolutely you're right on all of those points. the analogy that we use the most often when we're talking about at least this natural disaster is the war analogy and the most akin and the natural disaster would be fire fighting.

the later you respond to the fire, the bigger the fire is going to be and we've seen what the fire is like once it's spread across the nation and we've seen it rage out of control to this point. we have it under control and that's why we're seeing it flattening in states where they've had stringent stay in place orders. originally we thought it was going to be seasonal, but right now we're not seeing it slow down any and we're almost to may and so before long we should start seeing that seasonal dip that we've talked about with influenza and colds. every indication is it's not slowing down. we're seeing it in waves right now. so we're learning a lot about this virus every day still as we go forward.

>> dr. gupta, where are we in terms of our supply chain for ventilators, for tests, swabss are personal protective equipment if the days since we've talked? >> it's a good question, ali. one of the critical gaps in our knowledge on ventilators is what's the shortfall by state? we know new york state needs more still, although their icu bed fill seems they have surged capacity. right now i think we have adequate capacity but the unknowns introduces a level of uncertainty. you brought up testing. dr. birx question why we don't have a million abbott tests out there being utilized. one of the problems is we don't have swabs, that little device you need to run the abbott test, a little q-tip to stick up your nose, i'm simplifying it, that's a bottle neck.

we're missing critical gaps, reagents to run the tests, swabs to scale up testing. it's not good on that element, but when it comes to ventilators, i think we're actually right now doing okay. >> dr. gupta, thank you so much. vin gup t coming up, the country is still in the midst of an election year. given health concerns, voting by mail is gaining support but there's one own opponent, the one that lives at 1600 paf pennsylvania avenue. ♪ limu emu & doug [ siren ] give me your hand! i can save you...

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earlier this week wisconsin voters voters headed to the poles in t -- polls in the middle of a pandemic. the state's supreme court ruled voters should head to the polls and there were long lines even though there were fewer polling stations. some voters in line challenged

the court's decision. >> this is so wrong. this is just so wrong. this election should have been called off. they're telling us to stay in the house and stand six feet from each other but then one of the most important times they're forcing us to come out here in a gr groust -- group. stop playing politics with our lives. >> joining me, former colorado governor, john hickenlooper. governor, good to see you again. we talked 24 hours ago. let's talk about this. we got a different topic here. we have seen pictures of people in other parts of the world take their lives into their own hands by voting because voting places, polling places are targeted bsi.

on the one hand i admire the people say we're going to vote. on the other hand, it does seem unreasonable in this time of stay at home for people po lito line to vote. >> we take voting for granted too often. in colorado, since years ago we went to an all-mail ballot. it means that everybody gets a ballot mailed to them at home. they can still come in and vote on election day like they always have. it allows them to sit at their kitchen table, make this important decision and send in their ballot. we track every ballot so we can be pretty darn sure there's not fraud despite what the president might say. we decrease turnout, we're keeping people safe, especially in this time of covid-19 and we save money. $6 per voter.

when you're talking about 6 million voters, that's real money. >> listen to an exchange the president had with a reporter, noteworthy, the president did vote by mail. >> mail ballots are very dangerous for their country. they're cheaters they collect them and they get people to go in and sign them and there are forgeries. >> you were high lily critical mail-in -- >> reporter: yet you voted by mail in florida's election. >> how do you reconcile that? >> because i'm allowed to. >> because i'm allowed to. the whole point is allowing people to vote by mail. the governor is referring to an incident in north carolina where a guy was going around and collecting people's ballots, it was a criminal matter, it overturned an election there. but in fact, there's no widespread evidence that mail-in

voting increases fraud. >> yeah, we do a very focused, rigorous audit on every election. so statistically we're looking at different groups of votes as they come in and inspecting them and looking at every possibility that there could be fraud involved. there are isolated incidences of a few votes here and a few votes there but no evidence of any kind in all of these audits that suggest there's fraud affecting the outcomes of our elections. in no way. >> i want you to listen to what one wisconsin poll worker was saying to assure people about the safety of voting, particularly because they've got curbside voting. i want to get your comment on it. >> you can come to a polling place and do it safely. you have the ability to do curbside voting just like they're doing here, even if it's in a different municipality without drive-up voting. you can request the person come out, they'll deliver you a

ballot, they'll check your i.d. you are incredibly safe to go out. >> what do you make of a situation like that? this guy's in full protective gear with mask on. is that an alternative for us, curbside voting, where you hand in a ballot and don't touch all kinds of equipment? >> that's another alternative, but the voter should put that ballot into some type of a mailbox that's secure. it's not just vote by mail. it's also getting more people registered to vote. i think we should all, every american, we're a democracy, we should all care about more people voting. i'm on the side of making it easier to vote for everybody. they can choose to come in on election day if they want but they can put their ballot in the mail if that's easier for them.

for senior citizens, a large number of them overwhelmingly support this notion of ease of voting and vote by mail. we should be doing anything to make it easier for people to vote, not harder. governor john hickenlooper, a current candidate for the united states senate. the decision in wisconsin boiled down to a technical fight but it was a fight between the state's democratic governor and a republican in the state's legislature. on monday wisconsin governor tony evers issued an executive order pushing the election to june 9th. the state supreme court overturned the decision and later that same day the united states sprupreme court ruled in favor of wisconsin republicans on a separate issue voting to overturn a lower federal court's decision to extend a deadline for absentee balloting. there are a lot of technical

things going on here. for more of what this portends for the general election in november, i'm joined by jeff row ros -- jeffrey rosen. jeff, goo $ d to see you again. there are some fundamental issues we need to be thinking about. how do you evaluate what happened in wisconsin? >> well, it has a feeling of bush v. gore reductix. as in bush v. gore, the majority said the court's decision on the narrow question should not be viewed as expressing an opinion in the larger election. that point cannot be stressed enough. as justice ginsburg said in her extremely powerful dissenting opinion, the question here is whether tens of thousands of

wisconsin voters can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. under the district court's order they'd be able to do so and now they can't. if you're trying to figure out what this means for november, i guess you can say the supreme court is not going to be happy when lower courts step in at the last minute to change the election rules, even if they seem necessary in order for people to receive ballots. they haven't said more than that but they've made clear they, the supreme court, are willing to intervene and put their thumb on one side of the scale rar than the other if they think that's necessary to preserve the status quo. it certainly suggests we could have very significant supreme court battles, state by state, in the very anxious months leading up to the presidential election. >> now, this distinction, i was talking to the former colorado governor right before you, colorado had been voting by mail options for voting for six years but that was something conducted by the legislature, it was a decision that was made.

the court's narrow reading of this -- the part in which they say it doesn't apply to future cases is the -- what part of that, is that the governor's decision to do it? in other words, the court is saying if the legislature sees fits to do this overtime through a normal legislature process, that's not the court's business. >> i think that's a good distinction, ali. the court is likely to be far more deferential when the legislature acts to change rules. here it was the district court that decided to allow ballots received after april 7th, that is last tuesday, but before the counting deadline of april 13th, that's next monday, to be counted. and justice ginsburg said it doesn't make any sense because a lot of people aren't going to get them and see proved to be right. tens of thousands of people didn't get their ballots. this suggests the u.s. supreme court is likely to be more likely to intervene when a lower court changes the status quo and less likely when a legislature

intervenes. it significant which legislatures are democratic and which are republican. it's something like half and half. that can be very significant in swing states where some legislatures are not going to want to change the rules to make voting easier, others will but the u.s. supreme court will insist on legislative intervention before they're going to be sympathetic to making voting easier in the pandemic. >> jeff, good to see you as always. jeff riff ro jeffrey rosen, ceo of the national ins sttitute. at papa john's, we want you to know that from our 450-degree oven, to box, to you, it's our policy that your pizza is never touched once it comes out of the oven. and we're taking extra steps, like no contact delivery, to ensure it.

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these communities where people come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, black

and brown, migrant communities, they can't afford to miss a paycheck, they can't socially distance, they can't uber to work, they can't skype in or use a zoom meeting. >> there was a little bit of black people can't get it. guess what, here i am. i got it. >> health disparities have always existed for the african-american community, but here again with the crisis how it's shining a bright lightunac. >> the pandemic is drawing attention to the racial disparity. in milwaukee, 28% of the population is black but represent 73% of coronavirus

fataliti fatalities. in michigan, 14% of residents are black, 40% of covid-19 deaths there are of black people. joining me now, executive director and chief economist at the washington center for equity growth and law professor of u.c. irvin, author of "kol acolor of money, black, banks and racial inequality." this has been something that's been going on for a while. heather, one of the things that you bring up is that our health care system, which is inefficient in the best of times compared to other western countries is also badly dis bauted and in times of pandemic, that is what underscores the system. people who don't have access to good health care on a good day die on a bad day. >> certainly. one of the things this pandemic has real underscored is the kind of inequalities we've seen in our economy for a very long time

are real fromagilities. we had a weak economy coming into the pandemic. those workers that didn't have access to the kinds of jobs that gave them health coverage and didn't have access to jobs that gave them paid sick days and other on-the-job protections like unions that would allow them to be able to get to work safely and know if they got sick they could be cared for without fear of contracting this coronavirus. so this high rate of death that we're seeing in communities of color is the result in many ways of the economic inequalities that we've allowed to fester for far too long in our society. >> and some of it is health care and the other part is basic economics. we have a history in this country of using free slave labor and then labor at the lowest cost possible and then when african-americans moved

into other parts of the country we had redlining and recent policies that continue to make it difficult for african-americans to participate in the economy the same way others can. you point out these are policy decisions still being made, including in phase three, the 3.2 trillion dollar relief package. it's a system where we're very worried that someone who doesn't deserve one of our tax dollars night g might get it. >> even when we're trying to help people, pee still put a lot of barriers for people to show they deserve the help. i was pointing out this week in the c.a.r.e.s. act, some of the you can't get stimulus checks for your small business if you are an ex-felon. even if you committed a felony ten years ago, ever, and you own a bit of a small business, you

can't get these funds. and i think the virus actually just exposes i think a lot about the sort of racist systems and the way the economy is structured to benefit the already strong and do hurt the already weak. and i this i one of the things is the virus is clearly not racist and you can go around and say you actually don't have -- we're all the same and so we're all affected in the same ways but the way that this virus gets at communities that are especially vulnerable at heather said, even before we started they are vulnerable and they're going to get hit way harder because of this. and then the stimulus package, we saw it was going to the bigger firms, those who already had lawyers, who had established relationships with the banks, a lot of businesses of color, women-owned businesses, they were very last in line. they usually are but this especially is going to highlight some of those already problem

disparities. >> heather, we have people inside who think these inequalities need to be addressed, some people don't believe they exist. if you're in the camp they need to be addressed, the argument is it will cost a lot of money and is really hard to do. everything we're doing right now is going to cost a lot of money and is really hard to do. how do we take that opportunity in which we're going to spend money and change systems and make very difficult shifts to try and address some of these inequalities. this is not a freak of nature. these are policy decisions. >> certainly. let me lay out a few things, ali. i think i'm going to echo some of the things that maris has said. we need to make sure in this hour of need we have a government that is capable of acting and can do so effectively and do so without discrimination and make sure aid and support is getting to those parts of our economy that need it the most. if that means people of color

are being hit the most, we need to make sure our support is going there. second, we need to make sure that we address the fragilities in our markets themselves. and so what i mean by this is that as maris has said, there are too many small businesses owned by people of color, owned by women. they're not able to access these benefits that are a part of the c.a.r.e.s. act. we need to make sure we write that and make sure that is available to everyone. that's important for wealth creation across our society but it's also important for the vie valt -- vitality of communities. we need it make sure we keep the support flowing to people and families and businesses and small businesses and all businesses affected by the coronavirus as long as they need it, as long as we can see this is having this very severe drag on our economy. we know over the past few weeks, over 17 million people have applied for unemployment benefits, and as long as we see

folks out of work, as long as we are not able to get back to business as usual and we're seeing the aftershocks of this, we need to make sure that we have systems that continue to have those funds flowing we're really -- we really believe that we need to wait until we have triggers off until the economy recovers before we let the money stop flowing to communities. it may cost a lot of money. here's the thing we know. there's a lot of empirical evidence, the longer it lasts, the longer our economy suffers. the coronavirus has crossed havoc across our societies and we need to spend now so we don't have magnified damage later on. >> let's hope we take the opportunity when we have it.

let's keep this conversation going. thank you to both of you. switching gears slightly, one group is incaple of social distancing and they are the nation's incarcerated population. they face a unique threat as prisoner deaths mount. in cook county jail, riker's island and others and in washington, kansas and louisiana uprisings have taken place. joining me is joyce vance. you and i have had this conversation a few times over the last month. the problem is it falls into the same category of all of these things we're shining a light on. they're hard things to change immediately. so everybody has sort of thought, gosh, if there's a pandemic, it's going to be really bad in prisons. now we have pandemic and we don't have a mechanism by way of

saying there are probably should people we shouldn't have been incarcerating in this country, or in the process of a pan dem, shouldn -- pandemic shouldn't be facing the prospect of death in prison, how do we get it? >> you previously talked about problems with health care in the african-american community. what we're see hearing is not a coronavirus crisis in our jails and prisons, it is that spotlight being shined on what was already a problem. so, for instance, we have a hot spot in cook county, and the system is poorly equipped to do a large enough number of releases to make it possible to engage in social distancing in jails and prisons. but the reality is our governors need to take the lead in releasing people who are over 50, who are at high risk, who are unlikely to recidivate so they don't impose a public

safety threat and they need to do that in a smart way with quarantine and ensuring these people have places to go and access to food and medical care after they're released. >> is that something we can get into place quickly? or is this the kind of thing we're going to learn a lesson from and have commissions and hopefully in three years maybe have a better system? >> you know, i'd like to say that we can do it, but i think it's frankly unrealistic. we haven't been capable of doing this in the best of times, but in many ways it's a question of our political will and the mindset, quite frankly, that our leaders have about how we treat people who have been incarcerated. it should be easy to look at people who are elderly or people who are in prison or jail -- i should say really in jail on technical violations of their probation. maybe they didn't go to a probation officer for a visit when they are supposed to. they should in some sense be censured by the criminal justice

system. right now is not the time to keep those people in custody. our governors need to take the lead in putting people back out into the community in a safe way rather than just being forced to do these releases once prisons are overtaken with infection. >> joyce, thank you as always for joining me on this. joyce vance is a former u.s. attorney in the state of alabama. coming up, we'll hear from one of the least protected groups of health care workers about why they are especially troubled during their fight on the front line. you're watching msnbc. did you feel pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ if you have moderate to severe psoriasis... little things, can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla.

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we've seen a thing or two. so get a quote at farmers-dot-com. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ while health care workers in hospitals and nurse homes are on the front lines of this pandemic, home health aids are being hit from all sides. they work for low pay. it's the lowest paying job in the health care field. they have no job security, and they often work in private homes. many home health care aides have found themselves suddenly out of work because their employers fear people coming and going during stay at home orders. joining me now is one of those people, a home health care worker in that very same situation. melissa, thank you for being with us. you were working for somebody, a 94-year-old woman. and when this first broke out you were told stay away because

they didn't want someone coming into the house who might bring in the infection. what happened next? >> thank you for the opportunity today to share my story. i'm melissa st. hilaire. and a home healthcare worker for a 94-year-old laldy. i came to taking care of her and it was much training when i came to work, and the lady say that -- >> go ahead. >> yes, when i come to work on march 20 she said that she would like to talk to me and i said okay let's talk before i start working, and she said that --

>> seems we're having a problem with the skype connection. going to try to get melissa back. she's a home care worker in miami, florida. she was telling us she worked overnights caring for a 94-year-old woman, but on march 20th she was told she was not to come to work anymore. she worked until march 25th, and chis is a big for a lot of home health care workers because they don't necessarily qualify for unemployment insurance. many of them are unbanked. we do have a bit of good news from two of our viewers in elbridge, new york. the couple wrote me to share how coronavirus has brought them closer together during this strange time in american life. quote, we had a casual wedding ceremony planned for late april. i'm 59 and my fiance is 69, so nothing fancy. but on march 16th i decided to call the judge to check in with him. he told me if we wanted to get married anytime soon we needed

to come to the courthouse before 8:00 p.m. because the courts and judges were shutting down. so we gathered my son, my daughter-in-law, and headed to the courthouse 7:00 p.m. on march 16th. we had a quickie coronavirus wedding. both jack and i are diabetics with medical issues that puts us in the shelter in place social distance group. sadly since then we haven't been near my family, but happily we have each other. please send me those stories. my story@velshi.com. send me your pictures, send me your video. it's how we find out what's going on out there with you. so thank you. i'm going to try and find melissa and continue that conversation with her because it's important we all hear it. that does it for me at this hour. thank you for watching. you can catch me back here tomorrow morning 8:00 to 10:00 eastern. nicolle wallace picks up our

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hi, everyone. we're so happy to see you on a saturday night. we're going to spend the next hour reporting and listening to the sounds of a nation on pause, an entire country holding its collective breath as we wonder if we'll ever gather again to worship, to celebrate, to grieve, to eat together, to learn, to work, to take in a movie or play or to cheer on our favorite sports teams. right now thousands of americans are grieving the loss of loved ones, and millions are worried about lost jobs or lost savings. families separated, children not in school, and for many americans it's the great unknown about when or whether a return to normal is around the corner that causes of the most anxiety. but this evening there's reasons for cautious optimism. the number of