with you in order to achieve that. >> all right. doctor who took time away from working on the vaccine which we'll let him get back to, thank you very much. >> thank you very much, indeed. thank you. >> that is "all in" for this evening. good evening rachel. >> good evening, chris. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy to have you with us. last night we reported on one of the largest new coronavirus clusters that has been discovered in the united states. and it is right in the middle of the country. it's at this meat processing plant in sue falls, south dakota. the number of cases in this one workplace was 250 known cases as of sunday when the plant was shut down. as of yesterday, it was up to 350 known cases associated with this facility.

as of tonight, it is 545 known cases of coronavirus that are connected to this one plant so far. 545 cases. again, this is sioux falls, south dakota. south dakota has to figure out they're going to cope with having one of the largest clusters of coronavirus in the country with hundreds of confirmed cases all at once in their state. as of tonight, the cdc has dispatched a team to sioux falls to decide what to do there. we confirmed that with the cdc. south dakota has a republican governor, governor kristi noem who has decided for whatever reason everything is fine in their state. there doesn't need to be any stay-at-home order there. last night we showed you the mayor of sioux falls, that mayor also a republican basically

begging for a stay-at-home order given the huge number of cases they've now got surrounding this one plant in his state. the republican governor kristi noem has refused that request from the mayor just as she refused last week from the state medical association. instead she's spent the last 24 hours going on fox news bragging about how great south dakota is doing and saying how they don't need a stay-at-home order. she's done a press conference in which she bragged about how often she gets to speak to jared kushner now which is a bragging rights kind of thing. she's talked about how she's looking forward to spending state money doing awe trial in south dakota of the malaria drug that the president and various fox news personalities have decided might be a miracle cure for coronavirus even though there's no evidence of there being a cure or anything close to it. that's what she's going to do with state resources is try the

drug the president likes so much, but no stay-at-home. she's defended not trying to slow the spread of coronavirus in her state with any sort of stay-at-home order. she's defended that by saying south dakota is not new york city which by definition is true just like this pencil is not a brontosaurus and done of us are miss america except for miss america who actually is. but for the people of south dakota and for the people who work at that smithfield plant who until this weekend were working shoulder to shoulder with hundred of colleagues who are positive for coronavirus and for all people who are family members of the 3,700 people who work in that plant for their friends for every person, all of those workers have come in contact with in a state that is not at all sheltering in place and everything's open, there's no shutdown of businesses in the state, no restrictions on bars or restaurants or anything else. thank you governor noem. for our fellow americans, among

and around that cluster which may, in fact, be the largest coronavirus cluster in the entire country now, for our fellow americans who are there now staring into the precipice for want of a governor who understands what's going on here and who understands how exponential curves work and how viruses work. i mean, you should know if you are in proximity of this giant cluster in south dakota now. you should know that even know you're not new york city, new york does want to help you. new york health professionals want you and all of us to learn from them and what they're going through because they're warning about what we're all heading into with increasing speed and certainty. the longer various parts of our government in this country continue to digter and not figure it out. >> hello. my name is dr. melanie malloy. i an an attending physician at mount sinai brooklyn in mount

sinai queens. i'm on my way to work. i have just had a very nice and cathartic dance party in my car which is a good transition to work from home because i had a little bit of a stressful morning with my children, trying to get them set up for home school, getting everything kind of situated. i am a widow, so i don't have a partner to help me with them and i don't want to send them to my inlaws or my parents because they're getting older and some of them have health conditions that might put them a little bit more at risk for covid. there's nowhere really else to put them. i'm going to get masks, face shield, and everything that i need to be safe on my shift. and i am going to start my shift. i walked in and they said everybody's intubated and it looks like it's true, actually. most of our beds are taken up by

intubated patients and patients who can't breathe on their own and who are on a ventilator. almost everybody is on oxygen. and almost everybody is a covid patient. >> always a lot of ambulances outside. so, today there are 43 people in the department. that's pretty much full. but i have to say it's doing a lot better than a couple of weeks ago when we had 86 to 96 in the department, 30 people boarding. it was really tough. it was really a bad, bad week. but things have gotten a lot better now that we've been able to transfer patients. they've admitted patients. some of them are going to central park to the hospital there. some of them are going to our other sites.

and that's really helped our department. but we're still all the way full. so, my surgery colleague who is just kind of looking after patients just let me know that a patient who looks like he's having a lot of respiratory distress, looks like he's breathing at 40 a minute. he looks really bad. so, we're going to call respiratory down and intubate him. we're going to put him on a ventilator. >> so, we have a full icu. we have every patient in here on a ventilator. wanted to point out how we have our ivs set up so that our nurses can get some protection by only using medications and hanging things outside the room instead of having to go in every time they need to change something on a pole. as you can see it's not a huge space, but it's quite full. every bed is full. every patient is getting multiple medications.

some are getting blood transfusions. everybody has coronavirus. some people also have heart attacks at the same time. this happens, and it makes things even harder. well, my day's over. well, my hospital day is over. it wasn't the worse day i've had but it's always pretty draining. it's just -- it's hard. it's hard to think that some of your patients that you diagnose today might not be here tomorrow when you come back for your shift or, you know, all of it. i don't know. i'm just tired. >> so, it's almost 10:00 at night. and on my way home i got a facetime from my youngest child who's four. she's still awake. she really was upset because she

didn't want to go to bed without seeing me. i kind of was hoping that she would be asleep because i'm tired and i just wanted to just relax a little bit and go to sleep because it's going to be an early day tomorrow with home school. and i think that's the hardest part. i think that's, like, just being alone when i come home, knowing that, you know, my child care is going to go home, my helpers are going home, and it's just me and whatever state my children are in. and i don't really have a lot left in me, you know? so, i struggle with that because i wonder how much my children suffer from me kind of giving everything at work and coming home to it. tomorrow's going to be tough because i am going to home school all day and i work

overnight. i hope i can get a nap in at some point. but, like i said, it's just me. so, really depends. it's been a long day. probably got a couple more minutes in me, and we'll start again tomorrow. >> that's dr. melanie malloy. even as she points out that things are better this week at mount sinai, brooklyn where she works, this week is better because they're only completely full as opposed to 200% capacity in their icu like they were last week. you see her there working past the point of human endurance right now. new york city revised its count of the dead today for a count for people whose deaths were attributed to covid-19 causes even if they were never lab tested for that. i think most sharp observers

realized new york was undercounting the dead. the refiguring pushed the new york city death toll alone to more than 10,000. that pushed the american death toll overall to more than 29,000 dead. here's dr. dean babich at long island community hospital. >> so, corona or covid-19 i think really took us by surprise. we weren't properly prepared and not because of a lack of equipment or ppe or ventilators, just by the onslaught of patients flowing into the emergency room day after day. this is a mass casualty incident that won't stop. these patients are quite sick, many requiring ventilators, many requiring intensive care treatments. earlier this week we lost one of our own, a truly dedicated critical care nurse who succumb to the virus who for the better part of 15 years took care of

our patients. we're throwing everything at this disease process from antimalarials to int bay tors and plasma, and yet simple. the way to kill this virus is simply just stay home. stay home and wash your hands. and if i can give any kind of advice to anyone, it would be just that. leave the health care workers to take care of our patients and help us, just stay home. >> help us. just stay home. governors in the remaining u.s. states that are telling their residents not to stay home are flying in the face of this advice from the american health care worker who is have faced this full on first. and you know maybe it's because new york got hit first and no other places in america think of themselves as being anything like new york. but new york did go first, and they really are trying to tell

the rest of it. and so i don't know if heart land governors who are still resisting this advice find it easier to hear from a place like indiana instead of new york, but here it is from avon, indiana. >> hi, i work at iu health. tonight i'm working at iu west which is in avon, indiana. it is 5:48 a.m. which means the end of my shift will be soon. the unit i'm working on is normally an 8-bed icu. we are up to i believe 24 to 28 bed of intensive care patients. i spent the first three hours of my night intubating, lining, chest tubes, and stabilizing a patient that was going to code. but we were able to stabilize her. keep the quarantine going. i know we've been doing it for a long time, and it's easy to get

lax. but we keep getting more and more admissions and these people might walk in through the emergency department. and within an hour they're on life support. and their ages run from young to old to no co-morbidities. maybe they didn't have any medical problems before to having lots of medical problems before. but by the time they get to me, they are -- we're trying really hard to keep them alive. and sadly, sometimes they get even sicker. now their kidneys aren't functioning. you know, other organ systems start to fail. but keep the quarantine going. this is real. this isn't a time to have a block party or go visit people you haven't seen in hin a long time. stay strong. remember you're doing this for a reason. you're doing it for the patients that i'm trying to save and my coworkers are working hard to

save. and you're doing it for you. you're doing it for your family, your loved ones, your friends that you don't want to get this. >> you don't want to get this. as brandy who is an icu nurse in indiana. just one of the heartland states that is struggling now too. i mentioned at the top of the show one of the biggest coronavirus clusters in the country, if not the biggest, this is just discovered in south dakota which is a state where there's still no stay-at-home order. they're not alone. sharing a border is nebraska where there's also no stay-at-home order. hospitals in grand island in central nebraska said yesterday they are filling up and they are starting protocols to ship their patients tout other nebraska hospitals for relief. next to nebraska in south dakota is of course the great state of iowa which also has no

stay-at-home order despite having more than 1,800 known cases in the state of iowa. they've got another republican governor there who thinks that's fine. today iowa announced its largest one day spike which was 189 cases in one day driven by 86 new cases associated with one meat plant alone, another meat packing plant. this time it's a tyson pork atlanta in iowa. they've got a total of 166 workers at that one plant who have tested positive so far in rural iowa. but again, governor thinks there shouldn't be any sort of stay-at-home order in iowa, no reason to do something like that to slow the spread, same in north dakota, south dakota, arkansas. all those republican governors are like sure, no rush, it'll be fine. in nebraska the big coronavirus news today is that they are planning on reopening a big nebraska crossing mall. it's a mall called the nebraska crossing that's out in gretna,

nebraska outside omaha. they're going to reopen that mall next week. quote, we aring go to be the first shopping center that reopens in north eric many. they're so excited to do that. why are they planning on reopening next week? well, presumably they think things must not be that bad if there's no stay-at-home order. never mind the hospitals already overflowing inside one part of that state. never mind the gigantic cluster in neighboring south dakota. never mind. it'll probably be fine. the world health organization has now outlined six things that need to be in any country, any place where officials want to start lifting restrictions and getting back to a normal way of living. six things that you need before you can open back up according to best practices from the world health organization. this is the whole list. you can see it there on your screen as outlined by the w.h.o. director. but if you don't want to read all of that, i'll tell you for our purpose as americans you

don't need to read past step one. or if you're ambitious steps one and two. because step one, the first thing you need in place before you can think about reopening is making sure that transmission is controlled. well, is transmission controlled in the united states right now? hm, here's the global chart of new cases every day. that's us right up there at the top, way above everybody else. in terms of new cases every day. so, if step one is making sure that transmission is under control in our country, we're not there. well, if you want to be ambitious though you might want to look ahead to step two out of six. what's the second step you need before you can open back up? >> the new strategy summarized what we have learned and charts the way forward. it includes six criteria for countries as they consider lifting restrictions. first, the transmission is

controlled. second, that health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate, and treat every case and trace every contact. >> health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate and treat every case, and trace every context. step two after you've controlled transmission before you can think about opening up is make sure you as a country have the capacity to detect every coronavirus case in the country, confirm that with a test for everyone, isolate every single person who tests positive, and then trace every contact that person has had so that you can test, isolate, and trace contacts for all of those people too. how many of those things do we have in place as a country? yeah, none. none. we've got more than 600,000 cases in our country. we have more than 25,000 new cases reported just today. the backlog to get a test result in new jersey right now which is the second most cases of any

state in the country is two weeks backlog to get your test result. at mount sinai brooklyn where you just met dr. melanie malloy, in the bull's eye of the bull's eye there's a sign up on the overflow tent letting people know even there they can't test you if you've not symptoms mild enough that they're not going to hospitalize you. no, we do not have systems in place in this country to stop transmission at all but also to deal with testing, isolating, contact tracing. we're not doing -- it's not happening. so, we're going to open up now before we have any of those things in place? 25,000 new cases a day, 2,000 deaths a day? sure, why not. tear the lid off. pay no attention to the cluster in south dakota. tear the lid off. i'm sure it'll be fine. >> i will then be authorizing each individual governor of each

individual state to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state. it's going to be very, very close, maybe even before the date of may 1st. so, that will be for some states. actually there are over 20 that are in extremely good shape, and we think we're going to be able to get them open fairly quickly. >> over 20 states -- is one of those states south dakota? i try not to pay too much attention to things said by the president because they usually have no rational connection to things done by the president. so why bother watching the lips flap when you can instead just watch what happens. but what he did just say there this afternoon at the white house, over-20 states are in extremely good shape. they'll open up very soon before

the end of the month. that's what i consider to be one of those kate mckinnon, she comes to the door with a love actually set of queue cards to let us know what happens. donald trump becomes president, he will kill us all. this is one of those trump moments. sure, mr. president, just open everything up. may 1st sounds way too long to wait. at least 20 states, just rip the lid off. dr. tony fauci told the associated press we're not there yet when it comes to opening back up. thank god tony fauci is still willing to say that. california's governor gavin newsom released six steps california will follow before they open back up. and those six steps track basically with what the world health organization is laying out as well. so, maybe california will continue to lead here despite what the president is saying.

if so, i think you can expect to hear more talk from that state's governor about california being a nation state instead of just a state. we're going to talk with the top democrat in the senate chuck schumer tonight about what's going on with the federal response and this reported $25 billion airline bailout deal tonight and the president saying he's going to cut all u.s. funding on the world health organization and all the rest. but big picture for all of us in terms of the stuff the federal government needs to get in place, the stuff that we as a country need to get in place so we can start to imagine the end of this thing, honestly, we are nowhere near having in place what we need to open up. we're nowhere near having in place what we need to open up that mall in nebraska, let alone anything else. we are still not even coping with where we have the very worst outbreaks with the most americans on track to die. the worst case scenarios we are

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this was in the "wall street journal" just a few days ago. quote, the department of veterans affairs is experiencing serious shortages of protective gear for its medical workers treating patients infected with coronavirus according to excerpts of internal memos shared with "the wall street journal." a few days ago in the journal, one of those memos circulated among a group of top-ranking va officials, said quote, experiencing serious ppe shortages. several sites doing 3d printing but it is not enough. soon ppe will be rationed. these were the kinds of alarm bells going off this month within the department. to the public though, the va was taking a stance very different than that. on the same day that internal memo circulated at the highest levels of va warning of serious shortages and rationing, a spoks

woman said there was no concern about shortage of equipment, quote, all va facilities are equipped with supplies and we're monitoring the supply of the items to ensure a robust supply chain which sounds great. good talk. the only problem is internal memos showing exactly the opposite ground truth that facilities kept leaking out. the journal soon got their hands on another internal memo that was sent to top level va officials saying that the rationing of ppe had officially begun by which point va workers on the front lines were dealing with that reality. at one kansas city facility, personnel were given one mask per day. they were told to make it last unless it is, quote, ir redeemably soiled. in the days since the journal has reported that the situation

deteriorated further, quote, a shortage of face masks and n95 respirators has led the department to tell which employees get masks and which don't according to internal memos reviewed by "the wall street journal." mask supply levels in the va health administration do not support providing masks to all other employees. they also told hospital administrators that the department will allow staff to bring their own masks or respirators when hospitals don't have them available. bring your own. see what you can cobble together from stuff you find around the house while you treat america's veterans at va medical facilities. i will say that bring it from home anecdote tracks with information we received from one va medical facility in georgia where staff were told the medical center was seeking donations from the public for

basic things like disinfecting wipes, paper towels, and bleach let alone gloves and face shields and masks. they're soliciting bleach from the public for a va medical center? despite the evidence of what's happening inside the facilities, the the public line from the va has continued to be everything is just fine, there's nothing wrong at all. when "the wall street journal" went to the va for comment, hava spoekswoman christina noel told the paper quote, your premise is false. all employees that need ppe have it. doesn't seem like that's true. why won't the va admit it? there is a real crisis taking place. we learned as of today more than 1,500 va staff have tested positive for coronavirus, 13 staff members are known to have died. there are more than 4,200 coronavirus cases among veterans in the system, 257 vets are

known to have died. that's separate and apart from the situation in state-run veterans homes, ones run by various states. in those facilities we have seen dee ti deterioration in homes in alabama, new jersey, maine, washington state, north carolina. in the worst case which you have been hearing about over the last several days, 44 residents, 44 veteran residents have now died at one veteran's home in holy oak, massachusetts. 44. one facility. the trump administration secretary of veterans affairs robert wilkie have been largely absent, little to no press. we know from the "wall street journal" reporting he is being briefed about equipment shortages but hasn't said anything about that in recent weeks. problems at the va are not a surprise. lots of different health systems are having problems, but they're not going to get any better

simply by avoiding answering questions about them and pretending everything's fine. they're not going to get better by happy talking the public saying there are plenty of supplies when there are not. the va is the largest health care system in the entire country run directly by the federal government, serving more than 9 million of our nation's veterans. bobbing your way through this is not going to work. it's not even going to work as pr. joining us now is founder of iraq and afghanistan veterans in america. he's host of "angry americans" podcast. paul, thanks for joining us this evening. ais i'm really glad you're able to be here. >> good to see you, my friend. >> well, talk to me about how you feel about this va story. i do not want to think of every center as being the statement as ooefr. i know state run veterans homes have different challenges but it strikes me as nuts and

increasingly actually just weird that the va is maintaining this public front that everything's fine, they don't have any shortage, they've got no problem. >> well, it's dangerous and potentially devastating. here the big picture. we now know we're a nation at war against the virus. we're a globe against the virus. but here at home, there are two major portions that could add tremendous resources and it could be the cavalry or be a deck of cards. the department of defense on one side and the department of veterans affairs on the other side. department of veterans affairs serves 9 million people nationally. they have awe sacred duty to care for veterans and that's important. this time it's much bigger than that. they are the nation's backstop. every time i've come on your show we've talked about va problems, data issues, and it's always affected mostly veterans. now it affects you, affects everyone. if your hospital overflows, the va is tasked nationally to be there to control that overflow.

the bottom line is the va is not ready. the department of defense is not ready either. but the va is not ready. and the secretary of veterans affairs wasn't seen in public for a week. he takes easter off, not putting anything on twitter. to thely awol. he should be the lead element in combatting the virus and providing support not just for veterans for the entire public. he's mia. that's a failure of leadership that should concern everybody. >> paul, one of the things that you have raised both online and on "angry americans" is concerns about testing. as far as we can tell, the va has only conducted about 37,000 coronavirus tests, and i know that just sounds like a random big number. but for perspective, new york state has conducted more than 12 times that amount. the va is putting out daily numbers. they do have a lot of facilities. we know about a lot of va staff

and a lot of veterans who are positive. but it seems to me like the testing number should be a lot higher particularly since they are a health system directly run by the federal government. >> 100%. i mean, think about it. they serve 9 million people. they're supposed to be the nation's backstop and they've only tested about 35,000 people. there was a point where new york state was testing more daily than the entire veterans affairs department has tested so far. what we found at the veterans affairs department is the more they test, the more they find. you touched on this on your show. you can see where outbreaks are coming, where problems are emerging. new orleans has a number of cases about three times the number of most other places. then you see places like new jersey and new york where the deaths are concentrated. you're start ring to see detroit and washington, d.c. and where things are working like california. so, this is a real insight into how the coronavirus could hit other cities, could hit rural areas. but you've got to underscore the fact that this is an extremely

vulnerable population. more than half patients at the va are over 65. they've got tons of these retirement communities and homes. the state ones are just the canary in the coal mine. maybe we push tons of resources and it's not a problem down the line or maybe this is the tip of the iceberg. everything that happens having to do with the coronavirus in the united states should center around and with the va. they can be the cavalry or the house of cards that falls beneath us when we need them both. >> paul, the host of the "angry americans" podcast. thank you so much for your time on this. thank you for sticking with this. come back and talk to us about this as this story gops. i think the va needs to be honest about what's going on. we're talking about what needs to be done. i want to continue tracking that with you my friend. thanks for being here. >> 100%. my pleasure. i hope the secretary will join you before i join you again. >> i'll do my best. thanks. we've got much more to get to tonight.

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this was the headline out of koki dateline oklahoma today. oklahoma nursing home hit with 45 positive covid-19 cases. this is rural wayne, west virginia which is about a half hour south of huntington, west virginia. right now the city of wayne has 67 confirmed cases of coronavirus. of those 67 cases, 66 of them come from a single nursing home. this was the headline in richard, virginia today. a long term care facility there has had 45 residents die from coronavirus. it's one of the deadliest outbreaks anywhere in the country. the medical director there calling nursing homes, quote, a virus's dream. richmond, virginia, wayne,

virginia. no regional problem would affect those places alone. this is not a hotspots only issue. it's shaping up clearer and clearer every day, one of the things we're going to have to answer for as americans as citizen who is lived through this is the fact that it was clear by now that the places we are most likely to see the most american deaths from this thing are congregate living places like nursing homes and long term care facilities. it is clearer than day right now. what are we doing about it? you want to save the most american lives in this crisis in figure out how to save them there, nursing homes, long term care facilities. take montgomery county, pennsylvania as a kind of case study. more than 800,000 people live in montgomery county. they've got the second largest outbreak in the state of pennsylvania, more than 2,300 cases in that county. the good news is even though cases are doubling every seven

days or so, the spread of the virus does seem to be slowing down there which is giving hospitals in montgomery county a chance to keep up with the patient load. that is not something they were sure they were going to be able to do. it's good news that they are. but look what's happening in long term care facilities in that same philly suburb. of the more than 600 facilities, at least 73 of them have cases of coronavirus thus far, ten more than they had on friday. at least 7 facilities in the county have 25 cases so far. so far 64% of the coronavirus deaths in that county are coming from congregate facilities of one kind or another. 61% of the deaths. the reason i'm able to give you that granular snapshot from that one county in pennsylvania is not because there's some kind of national database i tapped. the federal government isn't even keeping track of this. this is the place where most

americans will die, federal government not even counting, not even keeping track let alone working on it. but in montgomery county, pennsylvania, there was a concerned local official in charge there who is keeping track which allows me to give you that data. her name is dr. valerie arco. she has been holding a press conference every day about the state of coronavirus in her county and every day a feature of her update social securis is how coronavirus is ripping through long term care facilities in her county. she's watching them because they are on her patch and that's where most americans are at risk of dying. just imagine if we had that kind of attention from leaders everywhere. imagine if we had that kind of attention from leaders in washington. it is useful to have that kind of granular information, that kind of daily focus on where the most americans are at risk of getting killed. but having that focus and getting that clear picture,

having the data is half the battle. the other half is being able to do something about it. without any federal help. and in the absence of any kind of national plan or even national acknowledgment that coronavirus is spreading through congregate care facilities like wild fire in this country and poses a real risk of basically a cull nationwide of elderly people and vulnerable people in these facilities coast to coast. given that risk, given the start of that happening, what are local officials supposed to do here? what can they do? i have just the person to ask next. xt

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valerie is the chair of the board of commissioners of montgomery county, pennsylvania. she's also a fi viphysician and worked on health care reform and finds herself in the center of responding to a new public health crisis with a significant coronavirus outbreak in

pennsylvania in her county. and with long-term care facilities being particularly hard hit, she's been making daily check-ins with those facilities and daily discussions of what's going on in those facilities part of her county's response and part of how she's keeping her county informed. thank you for being here. i appreciate you making time. >> thanks, rachel. i appreciate you shedding alight on this incredible important issue. >> how do we not have found? tell me in the control room whether you can hear her, because i can't hear her. you can hear her. can you still hear me? >> i can. >> all right. i'm going to give it a last college try. we're going to take a quick break. i promise we'll fix this. we'll be right back. stay with us. l fix this

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to banish the technical gremlins that made that break necessary. so therefore, i'm confident in introducing to you the chair of the board of commissioners in montgomery county, pennsylvania. thank you so much for being here. and i'm sorry about that glitch. >> no worries. it's an interesting time we're working through here. so i appreciate the opportunities to be with you. >> generous of you to put it that way. one of the reasons i wanted to talk to you is because i have watched your press conferences in montgomery county and i noticed one of the first things you do after giving a general overview of what's going on in the county and you've been give thing super detailed snapshot of how the virus is spreading through nursing homes in your county. and i have latched onto that and latched onto the way you have communicated to the public about that, because i think that is the part of this response where the most american lives are at stake, where the most american

lives can potentially be saved if we get it right and the most will be lost if we screw it up. i wanted to ask you why you decided to make that part of your daily briefing and why that's been so much of your own focus. >> well, rachel, as you mentioned, i'm a physician and i also have a degree in public health and in the years that i practiced medicine, i have to tell you this is one of the most heartbreaking things i've seen. and i've learned through the beginning -- since the beginning of this pandemic, that the more information that you give people while still protecting people's privacy, the easier it is for them to understand why we're asking them to do a lot of really difficult things, like close their businesses and keep their kids out of school and stay home. when it comes to our long-term care facilities, they have some of our most vulnerable members of our community, our parents and grandparents. they are taken care of by incredibly hardworking people.

in the case of our county, we see that 61% of the lives that are lost to the coronavirus are happening in long-term care facilities. we just wanted to make sure people understand how serious an issue this is. >> and you mentioned there at the top, giving people information while still protecting privacy is a way to get people to do the right thing even when what they're being asked to do is hard. is there any reason where every county and state in the country dealing with this could don't that kind of public disclosure you're doing in montgomery county? we have heard from a lot of local officials and governors a real resistance to releasing information about how bad the problem is in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. they don't, in a lot of cases, democratic and republican states, they don't want that information out there. and we've had a number of

different excuses. what do you say to those officials about why you've been able to release that information when others haven't? >> i think it's important to just give people the truth and the facts, while still protecting personal information and privacy. but this is a very real issue we're experiencing in our county. and i think one of the ways that we can help draw more attention to issues around how long it takes to get tests back, how difficult it still is to get personal protective equipment for these workers, is to help people understand the impact in our neighborhoods and communities by the lack of these really critical items. so hopefully by just shining the light on the fact that nursing homes take three to six days to get test results back. so when they're trying to protect and isolate patients, they're waiting as long as everybody else is waiting to get test results back.

and in the intervening days, a lot of other people can be exposed if the workers don't have enough personal protective equipment. that's just one example of how really long people can be impacted by this. >> doctor, you have been modeling good civic behavior by being up front about the fact that 60% of the deaths in your county have been people in long-term care facilities already. thanks for helping us understand what's going on where you are and making time for us tonight. >> thank you. take care. >> all right. right about now, i'm usually racing to end of the show or to subtly bleed over into the next msnbc hour that starts right now. but i don't have to get off the air by my deadline of 10:00 p.m. tonight, but nbc is hosting a special live report on the coronavirus pandemic