happy friday, indeed. i would like you to meet dan rensey. i think you are going to like him. i am quite sure you are going to want to know more about him. dan is a nurse. he listens in kansas. except for, right now, he listens in new york city because he came to new york city, from kansas, to help. >> hi. it's me. i'm back home after another night of wild, exciting coronavirus fun on the nightshift in new york.

when i was in nursing school, i was talking with some friends, and we were going around the group discussing why we all signed up to be a nurse. and, honestly, when i signed up for nursing school, i had these visions of myself working for a cosmetic dermatologist or something. you know, i'd go to work and the real housewives would come in and they'd get a lot of facial filler and a lot of gossip. and we'd have fun. and if you told me just not too many years after i graduated, that i would be living in a hotel in new york while i was putting bodies in body bags because this mysterious virus was mowing down everyone's grandparents, you know, i --

i -- how do you process that? and i didn't have to come. but, at the same time, i kind of did. i'm like, well, if i don't come, who will? you know? but it does not make it any easier. oh, and we got to call families. we got to call a family today because, you know, families aren't allowed in the room. they are not allowed in the building. and, of course, you know, people know that it's coming. that phone call. but it doesn't make it any easier. stay home, everybody, please. you know, one of my jobs here, at this hospital, is i'm the guy who ties the toe tags on people. and gets them ready to be sent

to the morgue. and they have me do this because i am the biggest one on the floor, and i can lift them easily in bed. so i've been -- i've been looking at a lot of faces. and i keep seeing my parents. and if you could, please, i'm 1,500 miles away from home. if you -- if -- i can't do anything about it here. so i'm just going to ask you guys a favor. if any of you ever see my parents out and about, just tell them to go home. you know, you do not need to be going to the store. my father retired ten years ago, and has watched tv every day since then. and now that the government's

told him that he needs to stay home, suddenly, the man has hobbies and he's got to leave and go around town. and he's shouting at the tv, ah, this is [ bleep ]. but, you know, we're -- we're busting our asses here, doing cpr on intubated patients. and my father's driving around town. so, please, if you see him out, just tell them to go home. they do not need to be out. they can wait this out. this will be over. >> this will be over. on the last word, here after my show, lawrence o'donnell has been featuring, for a few nights now, the 7:00 p.m. clap. the citywide cheers that new

yorkers are giving for healthcare workers every night. and sometimes those displays of gratitude come with a huge, loud exclamation point, like when new york firefighters join in outside the hospitals and they not only clap, they put the sirens on from the fire trucks to really make it impossible to miss even for workers inside the hospitals. but most nights, it is just, night after night, cheering and clapping. and part of the reason i wanted you to see these dispatches from dan renzi, who i may recognize him from mtv's real world back in the '90s. but part of the reason i wanted you to see these dispatches from him in his new life as a nurse who's come from kansas to work in new york city is because i feel like we all should really see from the perspective of a health worker. in his case, the perspective of a nurse who wanted his career to

be a housewife drama. but came to the brooklyn and bronx to help. i feel like we should all see not just what those cheering episodes for the health workers look like to all of us. i feel like we should all see what those feel like to somebody who those cheers are for. >> everyone's clapping. >> one of the hardest-hit hospitals, in one of the hardest-hit places on earth right now, has been st. barnabas hospital in the bronx, where i would like you to meet someone else. this is ernie patty, he is an emergency room physician at st. barnabas. >> well, the battle continues. the end of another shift.

we still have a large number of people intubated down here. i believe there's 13 intubated. and about five or six on cpap. a lot of people are still requiring high concentrations of oxygen. it doesn't seem like it's v slowing down, although we've had a little -- i don't want to use -- but a little low right now, which is good because we're able to get some patients upstairs to te upstairs to the icu. let's hope we reach that plateau at some point soon where we flatten the curve. i i'm hopeful. >> when he says we have got five or six patients on cpap, what that means is that st. barnabas in the bronx is one of the places that has basically a

response to patients who need mechanical assistance to breathe as coronavirus attacks the longs. lungs. what dr. patty's describing there, they've also started repurposing cpap machines, machines for people with sleep apnea, basically into a make-do clinical solution for critically ill coronavirus patients. so we are going to be speaking with dr. patty in just a moment about that hope you just saw him talking about there. about what he and his colleagues are going through this many weeks into it, at a capacity-filled hospital. but part of the reason i wanted you to get a chance to meet him tonight is because of this next tape, next piece of tape, i'm going to show you that we got from dr. patty today at st. barnabas. because, with more than 18,000 americans now dead from this, with 2,056 americans dying just

in the past day, which means just in the past day, one american died from coronavirus every 42 seconds. with that many americans dead, it is one thing to clap for healthcare workers and nurses and doctors, and we should. and it's one thing to hear them explain the kind of work they are doing and how hard they're working, and what exactly it is that they're doing. but it's only if we put a camera into one of their hands that we can actually see, from their perspective, what it's really like when they are doing this work. and we should see it, particularly from these hospitals that have been pushed to capacity because what they have got is everything others should see. so i am going to do something that kind of breaks the -- breaks the cable news production rules a little bit. but i just want you to watch this. it's not superlong. it's about 40 seconds long.

the reason this breaks cable news production rules is because this piece of tape i am going to show you is something where there is no dialogue. there is nobody narrating it. i'm not going to narrate it. i'm going to shut up. but this is worth seeing. st. barnabas in the bronx. what it's like to be in this with multiple patients being mechanically kept alive. this is what it was like for the nearly 2,000 americans -- for the 2,000 americans, who fought this thing in the hospital, until they died today. this is what it is like now, tonight, for tens of thousands of americans who are fighting for their lives in hospitals right now, as we speak. this is rare to see unless you give the doctor the camera and let them show you from their own perspective. but this is just a glimpse from bun hospit one hospital of the environment for healthcare workers who are trying to save americans. like i said, this is only 40 seconds. i will shut up.

just watch. turn your sound on but just watch. if you know somebody who says screw these stay-at-home orders. you know, somebody says it's all just a big overreaction. sit them down. turn the sound on. show them that. the emergency room doctor who

shot that. we are going to be speaking with him in just a minute. we're supergrateful that he shop th shot that video for us. we are grateful for him and all his colleagues. >> these are the best doctors on the planet. st. barnabas we got the best doctors on the planet. >> thank you. >> dr. patty, all of our doctors here, the best. >> that's st. barnabas. st. barnabas lost one of its doctors in the past couple days. a trauma surgeon. dr. varier was the father of three children. he worked as a trauma surgeon at st. barnabas, fighting coronavirus like all doctors and healthcare workers at st. barnabas are doing now. trying to keep coronavirus patients alive. he, himself, became infected with the coronavirus. he died at the age of 59. frontline health workers know their lives are at stake while they are doing this work.

and, yet, remarkably, this far into it, with all the support that we, as a country, are trying to give them, it's not enough. we are still seeing hospital staff have to literally protest to try to get themselves protective equipment. to try to get enough staff, relief staff, on board to share the burden in hospitals that have crippling numbers of cases. this, for example, was today. this is a hospital in brooklyn, today. >> we need more nurses at the hospital. the nurses are working short. the nurses are working stressed. the nurses are working hard. i want my nurses to know that we love them, we respect them. the respiratory therapists, the physical therapists, the doctors, they're all working hard for the patients in this community at this time. at the end of the day, the nurses have tears in their eyes and the taste of death in their mouth. these nurses need relief. they need help. we're asking the governor, the president, whoever can help us, to send us some staff as soon as possible.

we are doing the best we can with what we have. and we want everybody to know we will continue to do the best we can with what we have. but we need help and we need relief as soon as possible. >> we also have staff members, like myself, bringing cleaning supplies from our home. to clean our computers, to clean our chairs, to clean the stretchers, to clean the vital sign machines that the patients are using. and this is a big problem. we're a hospital that we're trying to control infection control, how is it that we're bringing our own cleaning supplies to supply for the hospital? and that was one of my big concerns. >> nurses at one brooklyn hospital today, saying they are bringing in their own cleaning supplies from home. to try to do infection control as they are seeing coronavirus patients. i will also tell you if you look -- can we drop the lower third there for a second? can we drop that breaking news banner? i don't know if we can with remote control room.

yes. can you see what that nurse is wearing? do you see the dates written on her gown? we believe that is in terms of that gown being reused because of the extent to which they have to reuse all of their gear, including their gowns. so they are labeled with sharpie to let you know what days they've been used. and this is -- this is not -- this is not only happening in new york. we are starting to see signs of real crisis, for example, in michigan hospitals. nurses in michigan hospitals have staged sit ins and protests in the last few days, to try to draw attention not just to the need for equipment but how understaffed they are for the volume of seriously ill and dying patients they are seeing in a flood. headlines in michigan are stark. running out of body bags. coronavirus has michigan hospital workers at a breaking point. this one from the detroit news. inside sinai grace war zone. we started to run out of body bags. detroit, today, opened its first

beds at its convention center to try to take some of the strain off of their overrun hospitals. the first 25 beds opened at the convention center in detroit today. they hope to have 250 beds operational by the end of the week. i have to tell you the michigan republican party is attacking that state's governor for being too tough on this coronavirus thing. demanding that all this stay-at-home nonsense should be lifted. there's just no reason for it. call the governor. literally, addressing the public. telling the public to call the governor of michigan and complain about the state's stay-at-home order to try to slow the spread of the virus. michigan's fine. why do we need this stupid stay-at-home order? complain about the governor. that's the michigan republican party, how they are approaching this. i mean, yeah, michigan's fine. they are running out of body bags because, what, it's spring? because they haven't been conserving them? they have been wasteful with their body bags.

but, honestly, things are bad in a lot of places. the indiana governor, today, announced that there are over 300 deaths and overcases but they don't know how many cases they are going to be able to track because they don't know how many tests they are going to be able to do because they are out of swabs. there aren't enough swabs to do more testing. they have run out of them so they are now experimenting with how they might be able to maybe magiver some more of those. >> the military posted this video of sailors cutting and sewing and rigging homemade masks for use on board that aircraft carrier. i think the military might have thought of this as a kind of, you know, heartwarming, everybody's pitching in kind of thing. but it also shows that even the united states navy does not have adequate supplies to provide masks for active-duty sailors, currently deployed on aircraft carriers.

and so they really are making them, themselves, in craft shops onboard ship. the navy says they are making 30 a day right now. they hope to be up to 50 a day by next week. i should tell you, at full tilt, it can have over 6,000 sailors on it at a time. if you are looking for a snapshot of how the epidemic is shaping up where you live or, if i know you, where your parents live or your grandparents live, and you're worried about them. we are going to post a link tonight at maddow blog. this map. not being put out by any government agency but it's made by a company called topos. it's a company that does mapping and artificial intelligence stuff. founded by a couple data geek professors who teach at upenn and cooper union. what we are finding in the absence of a good national clearing house, people who are

good at scraping statistics from all the different sources we can get them now, are trying to make the data easy to visualize, easy to access, and, therefore, easy to use for decision-making. for example, this is the topos map that shows number of cases, on a county by county map in the country. places with a high number of cases in dark red. they also map a moderate number of cases. they map those in a lighter color of red. here is a map that, from -- from -- also from the topos database, that looks very different. you will see this highlights different parts of the country. this shows the rate of increase of new cases in individual counties in the country. so you see those dark red blocks all over the country. those are counties that have a high rate of increase of new cases of the virus. places where the epidemic is really taking off. you see it's everywhere. and you can zoom in to, say, a place like alabama, which looks pretty red hot on this map. and then once you are in

alabama, you can look docounty county to see where the epidemic is growing fast. you can do this where you live. you can do this where your parents or grandparents live. again, this is the topos map. t-o-p-o-s. covid-19.topos.com. everybody is trying to do their own data visualization tools because the u.s. government is putting up basically nothing useful. but this, at least as of today, is the handiest thing i have seen so far to figure out basically what parts of the country ought to be freaking out a little more than they are. the other -- one of the other tools i have found to try to do that, as the government puts out no useful information, is to look at news coverage. literally, just the free press coverage of what's going on in nursing homes. tonight, nbc news has this really terrifying report in which they have gone state to state to try to figure out what the death toll from coronavirus

has been in american nursing homes so far. obviously, from what we know about the virus, it is particularly dangerous for people who are older or who have underlying health conditions. and the way that we prevent people from getting it is by keeping them distant from one another. nursing homes are a perfect storm in terms of the virus being able to spread and the virus zeroing in on the people least able to fight it. nbc news, tonight, finds more than 2,400 nursing homes, in 36 states, that are contending with known coronavirus cases inside their facilities. nbc news tonight is documenting more than 2,200 americans dead in nursing homes, already. but the most astonishing thing about this new reporting from nbc news is, as this epidemic rips through nursing homes all over the country and cities and rural areas and suburbs and red states and blue states. everywhere.

with the most vulnerable populations in those facilities both for getting it and for being unable to survive it. as coronavirus just rips through american nursing homes, it's freaking nbc news that is doing the tracking of those cases and those deaths, nationwide. it's nbc news doing it as a journalistic project, which is great. but the reason they are having to do that is because there is no federal effort, whatsoever, to even track that data, let alone to do anything about it. the federal government is not only not responding to the particular vulnerabilities of nursing homes, where thousands of americans have already died. and where thousands more have a bullseye on them. the federal government is not even looking. they're not even counting it. there isn't federal data on it, and they're not trying for it. i mean, this will be the deadliest swath of this virus. through our elders, in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and so far, the federal government, literally, is -- is -- is pretending it's not happening.

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page one today in the great state of louisiana. a veterans home, hit hard. 25 have died at facility in reserve, louisiana. many not tested for virus. here is indiana today.

24 dead, after coronavirus outbreak at long-term care facility. here is virginia. one long-term care facility in virginia reaching a grim milestone today, with 40 deaths at that one facility. here's alabama. also, new today. testing reveals 36 cases at one nursing home in alabama. that also yields this g gut-wrenching headline. nurse at alabama nursing home dies from covid-19. here's new jersey. three nursing homes in the town of elizabeth, new jersey, alone, have lost 45 residents to the covid-19 outbreak. here's north carolina. second veteran dies amid coronavirus outbreak at rowen county veterans home. here's 19 cases in the great state of oregon. here is a different headline from louisiana today. coronavirus outbreak at -- excuse me -- excuse me. kentucky. here is a kentucky headline today. coronavirus outbreak at louisville nursing home infects

29 people, killing five. >> i mean, choose your state, choose your newspaper, choose your local tv station. you will find at least one story like this everywhere you look. it is ubiquitous local news everywhere in the country. but that's how it's being treated. local stories, that just happen to be happening everywhere, at the same time. coronavirus hitting nursing homes, veterans homes, long-term care facilities, and hitting them hard. in los angeles this week, the l.a. county public health director went so far to say quote, it would be perfectly appropriate for families to take their elderly loved ones out of nursing homes. just bring them home, if you can, because the homes are just that dangerous right now. currently, there is no national response even trying to address this part of the crisis. there is no coordinated national effort. this is a problem that is everywhere. and this is the most vulnerable patients in the country. as nbc reports tonight, the federal government isn't even

tracking cases in nursing homes let alone doing anything about this part of the problem. every state is on their own. and, yes, states are -- some of them -- trying, at the state level, to do something. in maryland and virginia, the governors in those two states have made a pact to work together, even though one's a democrat and one's a republican. in those two states, they've now started multiagency task forces, specifically for nursing homes. task forces that can intervene, that can come in to help. that can help with things like testing. help with things like supplies. help with thing like infection control. help with things like treatment. and that's encouraging. that seems like a good model. it's larry hogan in maryland who ordered it first. now, northam in virginia ordered it as well. those two states trying that. and maybe other governors would follow suit. that would good. but that's two states out of 50, and it comes in the absence of any federal response.

ultimately, there has to be something bigger here. more than 2,000 americans, already, dead in these kind of facilities and it is poised to kill thousands more americans in these facilities. and we can't just let that happen. right? we're at a critical point right now when it comes to this part of american life. we're past the point of prevention, of keeping it out of these facilities. in thousands of these facilities, it's already there. and once it's in there, it is so dangerous to these populations. now is the time when there needs to be help. there does need to be intervention. we cannot sit back and let it happen. we will lose too many thousands of americans. there has to be an effort to stop it. and i know, apparently, the federal government isn't interested in doing this. but they have to. honestly, they have to. during the obama administration, andy slavitt served as head of medicare and medicaid services. it also meant he was overseeing the type of healthcare coverage

that most people use to pay for their stays in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. president obama picked mr. slavitt for the job after slavitt helped repair the broken rollout of the obamacare website. andy slavitt knows what it means to approach the overwhelming, the seemingly impossible, and to try to fix it anyway. so we called him tonight because he is the person i decided i would like to most talk to, at least to talk to first, about what i find to be a middle-of-the-night, sit up and worry about it, issue. joining us now, andy slavitt, head of centers for medicaid and medicare services. mr. slavitt, thanks for making time to be here tonight. thanks for -- thanks for your expertise. >> thank you, rachel. thank you for your focus on this really incredible, important story. >> well, let me ask you if there's anything i have said about it. you can probably tell i feel emotional about it. and it really has literally been keeping me up. in the way that i have been talking about it, just as a layman observing these things, am i saying anything that

strikes you as wrong? or that feels like the wrong approach to this as a problem? >> the only thing strange is that you're almost the only one saying it. there -- let's step back a second. there is a million and a half americans living in nursing homes today. there is about 15,000 nursing homes in the country. many of them are quite small. and think about who these folks are. people who are 80 today were born at or around the great depression. many have served in the korean war. they have lived through so much in this country. and the promise that medicare and medicaid in our country owes to these people is a dignified life. a healthy hive. a and a peaceful existence to their last days. s sadly, this is not happening. the time to have dealt with this, of course, is a few years ago. not in the middle of a crisis. in 2016, in fact, president

obama created regulations that we put through that were wholesale -- meant to address complete nursing home infection control, nursing home safety, overuse of anti-psychotics. all these things. but, sadly, in 2017, the trump administration got rid of those regulations. said they were not going to enforce them. that's turned out to be, i think, the root of a lot of the challenge here. >> andy, in terms of trying to get our hands around this and not giving up on this and not deciding this is too hard to do, i mean, it really does feel like an impossible problem because it feels like, as you said, a lot of these facilities are small. they are everywhere. there's nothing uniform in terms of the way care is provided or the way they are overseen. it feels like an overwhelming problem in terms of -- even when you think about it to the level of one facility. like, when we first learned

about that facility in kirkland, washington, that had a whole bunch of people positive. and then we learned, ultimately, a whole bunch of people would die there. it wasn't for a lack of trying or caring to keep these people alive that things went so badly. do you feel, at all, that there is a constructive way to approach it? that there is something, for example, that something as powerful as the federal government could do that would meaningfully make a difference? >> oh, this is not impossible. with people's lives on the line, you cannot go in with the attitude that this is impossible. if i were there, there's three things i would do, immediately. the first thing i would do is i would test and get resources to every nursing home in the country. because we know, right now, the nurses and staff, many of them are infected. we don't know which ones. many of them don't want to show up. so, over the next seven days, i would commit to testing every single one of them, and getting gear to every single one of

them. the federal government, absolutely, has the power to do that. the second thing i would do is i would help them. we're in the middle of a crisis. i would get them resources. i would go to congress. i would get them resources to retro fit some of their facilities. hospitals are not taking nursing home patients right now, many times, because they prefer to have them die in a nursing home. i would -- i would get money for infection control. i would get resources for telemedicine for doctors to come in to talk to patients. i would get the cdc to issue guidelines so i could bring in hospice nurses, because there are going to be folks that do not make it through this. and i don't want people in this state to be dying alone. and the third thing i is do something you talk about really repeatedly and i think it extends to everything this administration's not doing right. transparency. i would have a monday morning, tuesday morning, wednesday morning, thursday morning, and friday morning phone call with the nursing home operators of this country. we would publish a dashboard, around the country, of infection control record. of where there were infections. of how many people were

infected. of deaths. and the way this will get fixed -- and this is not to embarrass anybody -- but the way this will get fixed is there are nursing homes doing it right. and the nursing homes that are doing it right can give guidance to the nursing homes that are doing it wrong. we don't have enough time to go back to the drawing board and create new regulations. i wish we did. but, in the middle of a crisis, i'd get them all on the phone. we would be sharing best practices. we would be publishing them and we would be, slowly taking down infection rates. and for those that couldn't do it, we would be moving people to facilities that could. >> andy slavitt. former head of medicare and medicaid services under president obama. as i mentioned host of the new podcast in the bubble. that three-part strategy is incredibly practical and both ambitious and overdue and necessary. i hope a lot of people are listening to you, to that, tonight. to give us hope about this crisis. but, also, i hope people who can do something like this are listening to you, too. if they won't do it at the federal government, every state

should start doing this themselves. thank you so much. >> thank you, rachel. >> much more to get to tonight. stay with us. [ flatulence ] happy birthday? if we don't stop her, who will? we need to go undercover. hey, only rock trolls are allowed here. barracuda! cool. who wants to party? without smiling. you should be mad they gave this guy a promotion. you should be mad at forced camaraderie. and you should be mad at tech that makes things worse. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade, who's tech makes life easier by automatically adding technical patterns on charts and helping you understand what they mean.

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they've broken everything that can be broken except the bars, because you can't break the bars. windows. microwave. they trashed the officer station where they do their work. the computers are broken. the cameras have been taken down. it's just like mayhem. >> it 's just, like, mayhem. that is a prisoner at the lansing correctional facility in kansas just outside kansas city, kansas. describing, in realtime, a disturbing -- a disturbance at that prison yesterday. the incident apparently started mid-afternoon, around 3:00 p.m. it lasted for more than eight hours. aerial footage of the prison showed stuff being thrown out of the windows in cellblock c. officials say there was

widespread damage throughout the whole facility. tactical teams went in, used teargas. two prisoners were ultimately treated for minor injuries. so far, at least officials say they have not been able to confirm what caused that disturbance at the prison. but that young man, the prisoner you just heard talking to the local news station, khsb, he called to say what prisoners were angry about was the handling of coronavirus cases at that prison. so far, 12 prisoners and 16 staff members at lansing correctional facility have tested positive for coronavirus. and prisoners are reportedly upset about how it's being handled and the fact they don't feel they can protect themselves from getting infected. it's also worth noting that the cellblock where that uprising took place is just a few hundred yards from the infirmary, where people who are sick with the virus, are being held and treated. kansas governor laura kelly said today that the investigation into what caused that disturbance is ongoing. she said she would promise transparency into the state's

handling of the matter. but this, of course, comes at a time when governor kelly already has her hands full. including in some ways she probably shouldn't have to deal with. governor kelly in kansas is a democrat. she's issued a stay at home order for the state. ordered a ban on large gatherings. but then, this week, a group of republican legislators overturned her order against large gatherings because, apparently, they want residents of kansas having large gatherings right now. yesterday, in response, governor kelly actually filed a lawsuit. calling on the state supreme court to push back that effort by republican lawmakers, and settle this issue quickly. very quickly. especially, given this weekend's easter holiday and crowded services on sunday morning. >> this is not a normal disagreement about policy or politics. the actions to jeopardize both

the health and safety of kansznes kansans. we do not have time to play political games during a pandemic. i am confident the supreme court will take up this matter, and adjudicate it quickly. i will not stand by while lives are in jeopardy. and i will not allow the rule of law or the constitution to be trampled on during an emergency. i took an oath to uphold the constitution and laws of this state. it is a promise i made to each of you. we will get through this together. we will continue to flatten the curve. and we will beat this terrible disease. please, remember, stay home, stay safe, save livings. >> today, we learned that the kansas state supreme court will, in fact, take this up quickly. they are going to hold an emergency session tomorrow morning on the matter. again, this is the democratic governor putting in place a ban against large gatherings, and republican lawmakers saying they have overturned it.

and it's no longer in effect. the hearing in the state supreme court is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, saturday morning, which is an unusual timeframe. but the urgency is there for a reason. the court is making arrangements to allow the public to view those arguments, maybe through a live stream on their website? any case, it's tomorrow morning, 9:00 a.m. i will tell you, i have already cleared my calendar. but that wasn't hard. watch this space. as a struggling actor, i need all the breaks that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut.

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well, the battle continuings. the end of another shift. we still have a large number of people intubated down here. i believe there's 13 intubated. and about five or six on cpap. a lot of people are still requiring high concentrations of oxygen.

it doesn't seem like it's slowing down. >> dr. earnest patty is senior emergency medicine physician at st. barnabas hospital in the bronx, which means he is the senior emergency medicine physician at one of the hardest hit hospitals in one of the hardest hit boroughs in the hardest hit city in america, which happens to be the worst epidemic on earth. here's a third-year resident at that same hospital, at st. barnabas. >> in the past two weeks, i've probably seen as much death as i've seen in the past three years. it's bad. i feel like at this point everybody we intubate, it's terminal. like i don't -- it almost feels futile. the worst-case scenario is not having a vent because then you're playing god. you're deciding who lives and who dies. and i don't know how anybody can do that and sleep at night. >> i don't know how anybody can do that and sleep at night.

even by new york city's standards, the community that st. barnabas serves, the bronx, is just getting hammered. a study published by nyu found that across new york city, quote, to date, the bronxs has seen the highest rate of deaths per capita. it must be utterly transformative for say, say, the senior emergency medical physician in charge. joining us now is dr. ernest patti, the senior emergency medicine physician at st. barnabas. dr. patti, i know you have just gotten off work. i really appreciate you taking time to talk with us. thank you. >> thank you for having me, rachel. i appreciate it. thank you. >> i want to start by expressing my condolences. i know you and the team at st. barnabas lost a colleague from coronavirus, dr. ronald verrier, trauma surgeon, father of three. i've been reading about him tonight.

i imagine that must make going to work even harder now. >> it makes it very hard to go to work. it really does. when it hits home like that. i mean when we lose any patient, it really bothers us. but when you lose somebody that you've worked with side by side -- dr. verrier has even cared for my own family members, my uncle, my daughter. i mean it's -- and he's a dear friend. it hits very close to home. thank you. >> dr. patti, you sent us footage today that was very affecting, not because you showed us anything that was particularly gory or particularly narrative. you just gave us a point-of-view video showing what it's like in the clinical context to be among lots of patients who need mechanical assistance to breathe, what it's like to be a health worker in that environment, the sounds of that, the machines, the beeping, the struggling of the patients. it's something that we who aren't health care providers almost never see. i wanted to ask you, though, i

know st. barnabas is not exactly a sleepy hospital under normal circumstances. i know you see something like 1,200 trauma patients a year. how does what you're doing now compare to what you normally see? how abnormal is your day in the life right now compared to a busy day in the time before coronavirus? >> i have to say probably two of the things that struck me the most right from the beginning, rachel, were having to -- when you walked into the department, the level of noise and the level of assault on your senses was just increased it seemed like a hundredfold. the number of machines that were beeping and alarming and making noise and trying to catch our attention was much greater than i've ever experienced in the past. and those would be the ventilators because we had so many of them in the emergency department. we were basically running our own icu down there, and we still are. tonight when i left, we were still running an icu. the other thing is having to wear ppe or personal protective equipment like this for the

entire day, nonstop, because i can tell you today i was actually performing an intubation on a very, very sick person who was covid-positive. and what struck me as i was going in to do the procedure was, i thought to myself, i always say a little quick prayer, and i thought to myself, i hope this ppe protects me as well because this guy, i know, is suffering so badly and is definitely infected. and i don't want to get sick because i need to come back here and work again and help more people. so those two feelings running through your head, and the other thing that bothers me as well is not being able to have family by the bedside when we work as hard as we are. many times during normal resuscitations, families are present, and they can see the level of commitment and dedication that we put into each one of our resuscitations. here the patients are alone. they don't know us. they can't really even see our faces because we're all covered

with these masks and face shields and gowns and ppe. it really -- it makes it very hard for both the physician and the caregiver as well as the patient. it's -- it's unbelievable. >> dr. patti, i can't tell you how much we appreciate what you do. i'm hoping -- i'm putting another ask on you on top of everything else you're doing. but i'm hoping in coming days, you'll come back to us. we played tape from you earlier in the hour. you were talking about the hope, that you're hoping that the numbers are going to start to go down, that things are going to start evening out in terms of the patient load. we would love to talk to you in coming days as this proceeds in your hospital and as you and your colleagues fight this fight for us. >> i really appreciate that. i'd welcome chatting with you because let me tell you. sometimes being able to express what goes through your head, i mean i can tell you when i drive home from work every night, i'm constantly talking to myself, to whoever the creator is, looking for answers.

and it's tough to get them sometimes. but i just want to remind you and all the viewers out there that this is a team effort. i work in emergency medicine. it's a team sport. it's not just one individual. i could not do what i do without the contributions of everyone that works in this hospital. everybody contributes so much to help us get our job done, and, you know, i have to applaud all of them. it's an amazing team that i work with. >> and we all do. dr. ernest patti, senior emergency medicine physician at st. barnabas hospital in the bronx. i'm going to call you next week, sir. i hope you'll be able to come back. thank you. >> thank you, rachel. stay healthy. thank you. >> you too. we'll be right back. once it comes out of the oven. and we're taking extra steps, like no contact delivery, to ensure it.

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