good night from our temporary field headquarters. the five largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world are, number five, germany. number four, france. number three is italy. number two is spain. and number one, of course, is the united states. but our epidemic is so huge at this point, our epidemic is larger than all the other top five countries combined. the united states, as of tonight, stands at 667,000 known cases of coronavirus. more than 32,000 of our fellow americans have now died from coronavirus. and the toll has risen so

staggeringly fast. i mean february 15th was two months ago. there were zero american deaths from coronavirus two months ago. last month, march 15th, there were less than 100 deaths nationwide. today we're over 32,000 americans dead. it went from less than a hundred a month ago to more than 32,000 now and no end in sight. one of the countries in europe that has done fairly well, relatively speaking, in terms of its epidemic given what else is going on on the continent, is the nation of ireland. ireland and the uk both got their first cases around the same time, but the uk was slow, like we were, to put in place policies designed to keep people apart and to keep the virus spreading. the uk government had some strange ideas about maybe it not being important to keep people apart from one another and it not being important to slow the

spread of the virus. because of their slowness, the uk now has the sixth largest outbreak on earth. over 100,000 cases in the uk. over 13,000 dead already. but their trajectory is terrible. even as the other bad cases, the other bad epidemics in other parts of europe start to come down, the top science adviser to the uk government warned this week that the uk may end up having the worst epidemic in europe before it's all over because their trajectory is still up and up and up. and that does seem pretty directly linked to how slow they were to start their stay at home orders, which is an ominous thing given the fact that in our country there are still places that have rising numbers of cases, particularly in farm country in the middle of the country where they don't have stay-at-home orders even today, even as all of those states start to see their numbers rise. we know what happens when you do that. we know from watching other countries deal with it. we know from watching it happen in our own country. we're making those mistakes now.

but in ireland, as opposed to the uk, they've got -- you know, the uk has got over 100,000 cases. ireland has less than 14,000 cases. the irish people have suffered fewer than 500 deaths so far and 486 is still terrible, but compared to their neighboring countries, they're doing better. it's because they moved quickly to keep people apart, to slow the spread of the virus. you might remember ireland literally canceling st. patrick's day, canceling st. patrick's date celebrations back in the middle of march. it seemed unimaginable until it happened. but now in retrospect it seems like it was of course the right thing to do and ireland probably saved thousands of lives and a huge escalation in the ultimate size of their epidemic just by doing that. well, today an interesting development in ireland. today, ireland's chief medical officer announced some good news about what they've done so far in that country, but also some

very serious news about what they're going to be doing moving ahead. the chief medical officer of ireland today put out this statement. quote, the first task for ireland was to suppress the virus in the population at large. we are increasingly confident that we are achieving this. all of our efforts now need to be on extinguishing covid-19 in our community residential settings, including nursing homes. i mentioned that ireland has fewer than 500 deaths so far nationwide. the official death toll there as of today is 486 deaths, which is, as i said, you know, a tragedy for all 486 of those deaths. it is a good news statistic compared to other european countries and compared to where the united states is and is heading. but the irish government isn't just looking at their death toll in aggregate. they are counting where people have been dying inside ireland. and so the irish government also knows and has announced that of

the 486 deaths they've had nationwide, more than 250 of them are nursing home deaths. more than half of their national total. and so having had pretty good success tackling big-picture, populatio population-wide measures to keep the epidemic overall as small as possible. announcing today those measures they've put in place to slow the spread of the virus, they will stay in place until the middle of may. they're keeping it place because they know it is working. as they are keeping that in place, they now have a new priority number one. they are now refocusing their entire national response to try to save the most lives now by focusing on the place where the most lives are being lost now, by focusing on nursing homes. the prime minister announcing that the government will be providing to nursing homes additional funding, additional staffing. they're also making nursing

homes priority sites for coronavirus testing. nursing home staff and patients will have priority access to testing above other population groups. they are also, as a government, redeploying senior staff from the irish medical service to improve infectious disease control measures in nursing homes nationwide. and as of yesterday, they have announced terms of a new agreement in which the government of ireland is asking health workers who are currently working in hospitals and clinics and other places in the irish health service -- they're asking health professionals to please volunteer to start working in the nation's nursing homes instead. even the privately owned ones where regular medical staff from the national health service wouldn't usually work. the government will pay these health workers' salaries for them to start working at nursing homes. the government has agreed to provide all the ppe, all the personal protective equipment, those health workers will need to work in nursiining home

environments. the government is also asking for health care assistance and cleaning staff and even catering staff to volunteer to do the same. more than half of their deaths in their country from this epidemic are their elders in nursing homes of all kinds, including those run by private businesses and charities. but the government recognizes that that's where they're losing the most of their citizens to this virus, and so therefore it has become priority one for that national government to surge resources and staff and expert he's into those facilities, to break existing rules about who works where, to take responsibility for paying the people who need to be in there to do it, to repurpose resources from other places, to get those places in the front of mind, to put those places in the bull's-eye in terms of where resources are being targeted and

where the most energy is being expended to try to save the most people who are at the most risk of dying. that's what they are now doing in ireland. you know, we could do that. i mean just imagine. we could -- we could do that too, and it would make just as much sense to do it here as it would there, as it would anywhere. where are you losing the most lives and where are you slated to lose the most lives as this thing moves forward? focus there, to save the most lives. we could do that. i don't think we're going to do it at the national level, not with this government. the trump administration at this point is refusing to even monitor the situation in american nursing homes, let alone provide them resources to fight this thing. hell, they're not even giving them individualized guidance on how to fight coronavirus. they're just letting nursing homes figure it out themselves. good luck and maybe not even

that. but i know some states are starting to try to take this seriously. so maybe individual states could try that irish model. maybe groups of counties could try this together. maybe small consortiums of states could get together and try this regionally if that's easier than individual states trying to do it on their own or individual municipalities and counties trying to do it on their own. i don't know how the economies of sale work here and whether this is easier to do on a smaller scale or a larger one, but we've got to try something because it can't just keep going like this. nursing homes can't be left to just do this on their own. today nbc news updated its count on deaths in american nursing homes. the nbc news count as of tonight finds that 5,670 americans have died of coronavirus in nursing homes that we know of. but that's only based on data from 29 of the 50 states. there's 21 states who didn't provide any count to contribute

to that number at all. and the number was still well over 5,000 dead. nbc's data indicates that in new york state alone, it appears that more than 2% of all residents in nursing homes have already been killed by this virus. more than 2% of new york residents in nursing homes. 2.3% appear to have already been killed by this thing. how high do you think that number's going to go? how high do you think that number's going to go in your state? how good a state is your job doing on this? today the pennsylvania state government started providing breakout data on deaths in nursing homes specifically. it's the first time they've divided up their data that way, and their numbers show that more than half the total deaths in the state of pennsylvania from coronavirus have been in nursing homes so far, 52% of the state's deaths, which is terrible. it's astonishing.

but honestly it gives you a place to focus. it tells you where to work, right? it lets you know clearly where you need to start focusing if you want to save the most lives. look at the front web page of any local paper in any corner of the country. just pick one at random. any corner of the country that you please, look at the smallest paper you can find. if it is a daily paper, you will see the same story. look for example at "the times" tribune from scranton, pennsylvania. news today of one nursing home in scranton called the jewish home of pennsylvania. they've had 12 residents die in the past nine days. if the country wants to save lives in the state of pennsylvania, if the state wants to save lives, if the community of scranton wants to save lives, hey, bull's-eye, there's a place to start. do the most work where you can do the most good.

we know there is a type of institution where most american deaths are coming from now. that's where we need the most energy, the most innovation, the most resources, the most help. don't get mad at the nursing homes. certainly don't get depressed by the situation in the nursing homes and despair and decide nothing can be done. we're american citizens alive in the middle of this crisis. this is our pandemic. these are our lives. this is our responsibility. when you know that the most numbers of americans, the highest numbers of americans are dying in the same type of institution everywhere, it means we need to focus on getting help into those institutions. it doesn't mean that we write them off and say, oh, yeah, i guess everybody's going to die there. not in our lifetime, not in our country, not if we have anything to do with it. we reported a few days ago on a soldier's home in rural louisiana. do you remember the statistics about the highest death rate per capita in the whole country

being in st. john parish? louisiana? st. john parish, that county having the highest per capita death rate from coronavirus in the entire country, that was driven by the fact that more than 40 residents had died at a single veterans home in a town called reserve, louisiana. 44 dead. today in "the times-picayune" newspaper, that veterans home is celebrating two things. number one, they are celebrating that they have had their first two-day stretch without a death. they haven't had a death in two days. also they think they might be able to get the rest of the residents in that home tested sometimes soon. soon. that's the other thing they're celebrating. i mean they've just been told they might get enough tests to test the other residents in a home where 44 residents have already died. if you were in a living facility

where 44 people had already died, you would think that you'd be a priority for testing not only in st. john parish, not only in louisiana, but in the country, right? i mean i'm glad they are getting those tests, but you can see how bad that is, right? if a facility with closing in on 4,000 deaths among its reside residents -- what are we doing in this country? what are we focusing on instead of that? why aren't we trying to keep the most people alive? why aren't we trying to save the most vulnerable? last night "the new york times" reported on a facility in andover, new jersey, where on monday this week police got an anonymous tip about a body being stored in a shed outside a large nursing home in this small town. and when police turned up, they did not find a body at the shed, but they did go inside and they found 17 bodies piled up inside

the facility. that facility has reportedly had 68 people die recently, including two of its nurses. and the pace of death in that facility in new jersey was more than the institution could keep up with in terms of getting people into the morgue, getting people out of the morgue and into funeral homes. they couldn't handle the pace of the epidemic there just ripping through that facility of elderly and fragile people. there are still hundreds of older people living inside that facility right now as we speak. and today the local police chief and the mayor of that small town in new jersey talked to reporters about what has landed in their town, what on god's earth they think that they might be able to do about it. >> monday evening we were -- monday afternoon we had received an anonymous complaint regarding a body that had been in a shed.

upon coming here to determine if that was true, the body had already been removed from the shed and placed back inside the facility. in order to help them as they were being overcome by apparently the numerous amount of bodies, we facilitated a transfer of 13 bodies from the facility. it was overwhelming, i think, for the people that were inside. the staff was overwhelmed by the number of bodies that were becoming deceased. >> what we're doing is asking the state to step up and help us out in any way they can because we don't have the staff to be able to come in and do anything with them. i mean our township, you know, we have 12 police officers and a town staff of maybe a dozen people, and none of them are medically trained to go in and assist. i give kudos to our volunteer ems squad that came in and removed 13 bodies the other day

to assist. there were 17 bodies. they kept 4 bodies in the facility. that's what they're capable of handling. but the overflow was taken to newton hospital. >> we're understanding that they're understaffed. we'd like to get them some help staffing-wise. we understand that there's more additional resources needed in the sense of ppe. again, as the mayor indicated before, ppe was dropped off yesterday by county office of emergency management. so we want to be able to help facilitate in any way we can more additional ppe. we'll gladly accept donations of ppe at our police station and make sure that they get to the facility in order to be able to help the staff members who are truly, again, like nurses in hospitals, it's the same type of atmosphere here, working the front lines with this pandemic. >> they got a tip about at least one body being put out by the shed outside.

the police showed up. they ended up hauling off 13 bodies. they left four more behind. they just took the overflow bodies. there have apparently been 68 deaths at that facility already, and this is happening right now in the united states of america. and the way we are dealing with this as a country is to hope that good samaritans with spare ppe, maybe you work at an auto paint shop and you've got a respirator you could loan us. their hope -- the way we're dealing with is they're hoping that regular citizens with spare ppe might be able to drop off some spare materials they have on hand at the local county office, and then the local cops will then try to drop that stuff off at the door? or maybe they'll bring it the next time they get called about the bodies stacking up there again. i mean this is where -- this is the kind of facility where

americans are dying in huge numbers, and that one's in new jersey, but it's all over the country. i mean in massachusetts today, belmont, massachusetts, a facility considered to be a very well-run facility, a five-star facility, they had reported 13 deaths as of saturday. as of today there are 27, right? you can be a poorly run facility. you can be a well run facility. but even in well run facilities, americans are dying in huge numbers in concentrated places that we can see and identify and help if we choose. i mean where we are counting the deaths in nursing homes, it turns out that nursing home deaths are often the majority of people who are dying in a particular region or a particular state. mostly, though, we're just not counting them. the federal government is not tracking this. and if the federal government isn't tracking this, then, you know, states or even local communities are going to have to figure out a way to help these

plac places to get medical staff in there. not all nursing facilities have a lot of medical staff, but they need them now. they need medical staff added to the regular rota of people who they've got working in those facilities. they need medical help. they need protocols for how to handle this right and supplies to be able to fulfill those protocols. they need priority and regular access to testing. they need to be visible and connected to the larger health care response that we are seeing in the hospitals but that we are not seeing in these places. when the police chief there from that town where they have had 68 dead, where any had to come in and haul out 14 bodies of overflow from the morgue this week because they got an anonymous tip about bodies stacking up, when that police chief said these people are just as much on the frontline as these doctors and nurses we are applauding from our window

sills -- i mean the federal government should be doing this. they're not. we can't wait for them to start doing it while we let this many americans die every day. and some places are trying. the democratic congressman who represents that part of new jersey where that facility is where we just heard from the mayor and the police chief, he says that when he got a call in his office asking that facility to please source body bags, he says he asked fema -- he called fema to inquire about please maybe sending in some national guard medics to that facility. that's an option. fema does not seem to have reacted to that request, but that request was reportedly made. in new york state, new york's governor andrew cuomo has this week started to announce every day the number of deaths specifically in nursing homes when he announces the total state death toll. he goes out of his way to say how many of those were in

nursing homes. he's starting to get more and more pointed questions about nursing home death tolls and which facilities need the most help. maryland and virginia, the governors in those two states, one democrat and one republic, have formed state task forces. they've joined forces there in those two adjoining states to form these multi-agency task forces including the national guard to go into nursing homes, to try to assess crisis situations, to try to prioritize supplies into those facilities, to try to organize help. the mayor of seattle this week -- seattle's been so hard hit. she this week asked firefighters to take over testing in nursing homes, which is one way of making sure that nursing homes are priority testing sites. firefighters had tested first responders in seattle as priority testing targets. now she's asking firefighters to please target nursing homes. in the great state of michigan, which has the third largest number of cases in the country, the governor of michigan just in the past day signed a statewide executive order that directs

nursing homes in michigan to start reporting any covid cases among staff or patients to the health department, to create separate housing for residents with coronavirus, to provide ppe to all employees who are working with any coronavirus patients, to send any medically unstable patient to the hospital. her executive order covers a number of things that nursing homes need to do better and that they need help with in order to stop the tide of death through these facilities where more americans are dying than any other place. that at least is a start. we'll talk to michigan governor gretchen whitmer next. stay with us. stay with us think of people in . think of people in . but when you have the chase mobile app, your bank can be virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions and check your balance from here. you can save for an emergency from here. or pay bills from here. so when someone asks you, "where's your bank?" you can tell them: here's my bank.

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and platelet donations and asks all healthy donors to schedule an appointment to give. now, with the corona virus outbreak, it is important to maintain a sufficient blood supply. your blood donation is critical and can help save lives. please schedule an appointment today. download the blood donor app. visit redcrossblood.org or call 1 800 red cross today. you can make a difference. every day we report on the numbers of cases and deaths here. each number represent a member of our community who has died. it's no secret that the city of detroit has been hit hard. these containers with the words

"short and lodge term refrigeration rental " on the side of them can be seen. staff members tell me bodies are placed in these refrigerated containers from inside the hospital. >> that's a local news report from one hospital in detroit, michigan, this week. hospitals across detroit have been struggling with a flood of coronavirus patients. there have been staffing concerns. there's been ppe concerns, overflow facilities have been set up in detroit. michigan has over 29,000 confirmed cases. today the state passed 2,000 deaths. that gives michigan the grim distinction of having the third highest death toll in the country after new york and new jersey. given that, it is -- surreal is not the right word, but it's close. it's remarkable at least that this was the scene yesterday outside the michigan state capitol. a confederate flag waving trump

2020, flag-waving people out on the street and ultimately blocking traffic in protest of the michigan governor having a stay-at-home order in place. these protesters demanding that the governor just rip the lid off, open it back up. let folks get back to business as usual. why all this overreacting? it's only more than 2,000 dead and counting. tonight in michigan, republican state lawmakers are trying to force an end to the governor's declaration of a state of emergency. also four sheriffs in northern michigan now say they will not strictly enforce the governor's order to try to limit the spread of coronavirus. between the scale of the outbreak in michigan, which is quite significant, and the political pressure there and donald trump tonight telling states basically, it's up to you guys. do whatever you want, who am i to say? how does michigan specifically get through this crisis? if you were the governor of michigan, how would you proceed through this mine field?

joining us now for the interview, i'm pleased to say, is michigan governor gretchen whitmer. governor whitmer, i know you have so much on your plate right now. thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. >> yeah, glad to be with you, rachel. >> so i mentioned that your state is in pretty dire straits in terms of the scale of your epidemic. you've gone over 2,000 deaths. you have the third highest death toll in the country. can you just give our viewers a sense of where you think you are in terms of your position on the curve and what you're most worried about in terms of the impact of the epidemic in your state in the coming weeks? >> sure. so, you know, we have taken an aggressive stay-at-home order stance similar to a lot of other states right around us. both republican-led and democratic-led. this is not a partisan issue. covid-19 does not respect party lines or state lines, and that's why we've all got to be in this together. what we've seen is the curve looks as though it's flattening. we're pushing the curve down. that means we're saving lives.

that means we've saved our health care system from being completely overrun and inundated. that means fewer people are getting sick. it comes with a sacrifice. there's no question. people are -- all people are making sacrifice right now. but i think the thing that i'm concerned most about and that i think my fellow governors are as well is resurgence. when you see a, you know, political rally -- that's what it was yesterday -- a political rally like that where people aren't wearing masks and they're in close quarters and they are touching one another, you know that that's precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people. people came and converged together in lansing and then they went out back to their homes across the state of michigan. the odds are very high that they're spreading covid-19 along with it. so it's that kind of irresponsible action that puts us in this situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home

orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting. >> i know that you have joined a regional plan along with other midwestern governors. it's you in michigan plus wisconsin and minnesota, ohio, indiana, kentucky, illinois, to try to work together as governors of that big region of the country to work essentially with policies that are copacetic, that make sense on a regional level, that you're not undoing one another's good work in terms of the way you proceed. you guys are a pretty diverse lot. how hard was it to come together of a group of that size to agree that this is a common cause? >> well, you know, one of the things that i have come to appreciate in this awfully tough situation is that there are a lot of other governors who have reached out. we share our best practices, our thoughts. we're listening to one another, listening to our experts, and sharing that intelligence. you know, mike dewine, who is my neighbor to the south in the

state of ohio, republican governor. my friend j.b. pritzker over in illinois, democratic governor. you know, this group of seven governors, republican and democratic alike, know that our economies are similar, know that we have sheer borders, and it's important for all of us that we get this right. if one of us just takes away all of the precautions and says, we're out of this miraculously, we're back to normal life, that means covid-19 is going to spread. and so a regional approach really made a lot of sense to us. it doesn't mean we're all going to do exactly the same thing at the same cadence, but we are going to be sharing our practices, how we're going to do it. we're going to be talking regularly to make sure that as we are determining caseload and testing and, you know, all of the mitigation tactics that we've been able to pursue and see what the numbers mean, that we're making the best educated decisions based on the best science and always centered around the health of our people.

>> one of the places in which you are sort of out ahead of your fellow governors even regionally is this executive order that you've just issued about nursing homes. we've been trying to keep the spotlight on nursing homes in large part because even when i try to talk about other things, i find myself being unable to think about much else because i'm so concerned about what i expect is going to be the ultimate death toll and what we're already seeing in terms of the death toll really piling up in american nursing homes. this executive order that you issued has a number of different components. you're mandating that nursing homes report their cases. you're monday dating that they find a way to separate coronavirus patients from non-coronavirus patients and that they indeed may have to send patients to regional hubs if they're small enough facilities that they can't manage that kind of separation on their own. what kind of expertise did you consult to come up with this list of imperatives for nursing homes because you really are cutting a new path here in a way

that other states haven't done. >> well, we know that our older populations are, you know, uniquely at risk here in this moment. and so it's important that we are taking extra efforts to protect people. one part of the executive order also is that employees of these nursing homes can't get fired if they don't come to work because they're ill. that's an important piece because we know low-wage workers who don't have paid sick leave and don't have health care are compelled to go into work for fear of losing their jobs, and that's one of the contributing factors to the spread of covid-19. and in a nursing home, it's particularly dangerous. and so we've been working with our experts. we've been working with, you know, people that work in our nursing homes to see how -- what actions do we need to take to protect this uniquely vulnerable population in our state. >> governor, i have to ask you -- and i'm sure you know it's coming.

i know that it's probably all the national discussion has probably been a distraction while you're dealing with this crisis in your state. but as joe biden enters into the phase of his candidacy in which he needs to be thinking about a running mate, a lot of people have talked about you. if vice president biden asked you to be his running mate, would you say yes? >> you know what, rachel, i'm not going to even go there with you. i've got my hands full with covid-19 and trying to save lives in the state of michigan. this is the job that i worked for two years to get. i am grateful even on these hardest days where there's rallies outside my window, where i'm worried about the health of the people rallying and i'm on the zoom with, you know, health care providers who are telling me about cold storage and the herculean efforts they're making to save lives. so i'm not thinking about politics right now. i am focused 100% trying to do the best i can as the governor

ev of michigan, and i appreciate your effort, but i'm not going there with you. >> i hear you, and i absolutely respect you for it and more broadly. governor gretchen whitmer of michigan, you really do have your hands full, governor, in terms of the serious situation in your state. come back anytime, anything that you want us to help get the word out nationwide about what's happening in michigan and what you need, just come back and let us know. >> thank you. >> all right. much more ahead here tonight, including checking in with nurses and doctors in one of our hardest-hit states, who have a take on this that you might not expect. that's coming up next. stay with us. stay with us isn't just a department.

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i don't think anybody expects to go to the hospital, to end up in the icu, and not to come home. we've seen certain families where everyone has been affected. you know, every member of the family has either gotten the

virus, or multiple members have died. >> new orleans east is normally a very small community hospital. with covid-19, our world has been turned upside down. patients that we're seeing are very, very sick. and unfortunately we're seeing a lot of patients, they're not getting better. we're seeing them get worse, and they die. and that's the reality of it. we're having to hold their hands and be that family member with them as they go. this is bringing out the best in the nurses because their compassion is just -- it's a beautiful thing to see. nurses calling to say, hey, do you need me to come and work? do you need me tonight or i may not be able to do a full shift, but i can do four hours just to help out. they don't care about i work in this department or i normally do this. just where do you need me? and they're just ready to go to

work. they want to make sure these patients are well taken care of because we all live in this community. these are our neighbors, our friends that are in these beds, and we don't want to see anyone else succumb to it. >> taking care of patients that are in the hospital, are intubated and, you know, on a ventilator not doing so well, that's when it becomes really heartbreaking because now you don't have family members that are at the bedside with these people. it gets personal. it's a very sad time. you don't know if this is the day you're going to contract this virus or if this is the day that you'll be personally affected by it with one of your family members. >> it's pretty terrible to be totally honest. it's like the entire world's flipped upside down. so before we so see, you know, one isolation patient maybe every couple days in the e.r.

now we're seeing every single isolation patient every day in the e.r. we're using a month's worth of ppe in one day right now. so before we would use 2,500 masks in a month. now we're using 2,500 masks in a day as a hospital system. you even see nurses, techs, all of the patient care people, housekeeping is in the same boat now, which is kind of nice that everybody is all of a sudden on the same very strange team. but they've done a lot of things to work together to get ppe groups that they're sharing stuff with each other. they're buying their own supplies that they need. that's what america needs to do to support their health care system is get all of those supply lines working, get all of this testing that keeps being talked about actually functioning. >> that's what america needs to do to support their health care system is get all those supply lines working, get all this testing that keeps being talked

about actually functioning. a snapshot from new orleans from nurses and doctors in new orleans where yesterday and the day before were the two highest death tolls yet. we've been trying to bring you first person perspectives about what's going right and what's going wrong. that last thing you just heard there from dr. scott mackey in new orleans, when he said, we need to get all of this testing that keeps being talked about actually functioning, that's what america needs to do to support our health care system, it turns out there is another physician like dr. mackey in new orleans, who happens to be in a really influential position, who happens to have a really good idea about how to make a specific part of that happen. that good idea and that doctor are here next. here next.cape. but when we realized she was battling sensitive skin, we switched to new tide plus downy free. it's gentle on her skin, and dermatologist recommended. new tide pods plus downy free. safe for sensitive skin with eczema and psoriasis.

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(baby sounds and cooing (notification chime) (keyboard clicking) as the white house continues to push out fantasy happy talk about how ready the country is to open back up while a state like south dakota still doesn't even have a stay-at-home order

despite the fact that they've got a huge cluster of more than 700 cases emanating from a single meatpacking plant, while the idea of testing everyone in america remains a faenntasy let alone then tracing the contacts of every positive case, while the reality of the raging american epidemic continues unabated and the white house continues to pretend it's all under control and we're about to get over it, a not so modest proposal has been put forth in the journal of the american medical association. quote, the u.s. should consider suspending the first year of medical school for one year and giving the incoming 20,000 medical students the opportunity to join a national service program for public health. the program should begin at the start of july. incoming medical students should spend the month in online training in infectious disease epidemiology, infectious disease control in high-risk settings and outbreak response. in august, students should

deploy to state and local public health departments to enhance the capacity to support a test, trace, track, and quarantine strategy. the federal government should fund this project as a national service effort with a salary for the students and health coverage. along with testing tracing, the medical students should be deployed to nursing homes and prisons where coronavirus is of course tearing through those populations absolutely unabated. it's a novel idea but one that seems oddly rational given the fact that we don't really know what the people who would otherwise be first-year medical students are going to be doing this fall anyway. doesn't this seem like kind of the perfect thing to apply them to? joining us now is dr. joshua scharfstein, one of the authors of that article. he's a public health professional at johns hopkins. thank you for being here. i appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me. >> i am just a layman reading

the news every day and trying to understand what's happening, but it seems to me from my admitted position of ignorance that we really do need a kind of public health corps, a public health sort of pseudoarmy to do really labor intensive work both in terms of infectious disease control and the kind of contact tracing that really is data-driven, you know, phone work and computer work to get this thing under control. is that your sense in terms of our national need for manpower here, and why would this be the right group of people to do it? >> absolutely. what we need to do is slow the spread of the virus, and one way we've done that so far is through this extreme social distancing. but if we're going to ever be able to open up, you know, absent a transformative treatment or vaccine, we're going to have to be able to slow the spread of the virus without shutting everything down. and the way you do that is you find the people who are sick as quick as possible through

testing. you make sure that they isolate, and you give them support to isolate themselves. you find their contacts, and before their contacts become infectious, you quarantine them and give them support to be able to stay in quarantine. and that all takes people. it takes resources, and it's a huge commitment, but it's one that we can do. it probably will take about 100,000 people in the united states and a down payment on that number could be medical students who volunteer to do this. we also think other kind of students, public health students, but also people from affected communities could be doing it because really we're going to need a tremendous workforce and a national health service program for public health could be a way to do that. >> and what kinds of entities would do the right kind of training for folks to do this sort of thing? we've seen in massachusetts a big effort to hire up 1,000 people to do contact tracing. that's the state in partnership with a big non-government

organization that has the history of doing this, particularly in developing countries abroad. if we were going to try to do this sort of thing nationwide, is it a federal agency that would be well positioned to do this kind of training, or would you expect that medical schools would be the right place to train the cadre of people that you'd need to do this kind of work? >> i think public health school should play a big role in the training. then you'd have a national service program, and people could deploy to different places. they could be helping to staff partners in health, which is a great organization in massachusetts, or local health departments or state health departments depending on the strategy that is chosen. but you'd have, like, a trained workforce ready to go to do all kinds of work, not just finding individuals and figuring out their contacts, but talking to them about the importance of staying isolated in quarantine and also meeting their needs. we don't want people to say they'll stay at home but really

they've got to go out and get food. we've got to figure out a way to get them food. in some cases, people may need some income support to be able to stay at home. it's money well worth spending because what we're doing is we're stopping the virus from passing from person to person. >> dr. scharfstein, i've only got about 30 seconds but let me ask you one important question. i have lost my faith that the federal government and that national efforts are going to come together in time here. does this kind of idea that you're talking about scale so that it could be done by individual states or small consortiums of states? >> it could. it could be done that way. of course like many things, it would be better if it were federal. but in that's not in the cases, then a group of states could figure out how to do that. and i think that would help because you would get a lot of people well trained, ready to serve, and play this important role that we really need right now. >> dr. joshua scharfstein, public health professor at johns

hopkins, thank you for being here tonight and talking to us about this idea. i think it's really constructive. thanks. >> my pleasure. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. working on the front lines, and here's one small way that you can help them in return. complete your 2020 census today. 2020 census data helps communities plan funding for hospitals, clinics, and emergency services across the country. an accurate count helps public health officials know who is at risk, and first responders identify the resources they need to protect our communities. complete your census at 2020census.gov and help shape our future. complete your census at 2020census.gov when you think of a bank, you think of people in a place. but when you have the chase mobile app, your bank can be virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here.

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i want to tell you that tomorrow night we're going to be joined by governor j.b. pritzker of illinois who among other things has recently been involved in a pseudo secret effort this week to fly chartered planes full of medical supplies into illinois basically under the radar in order to evade the federal government so the federal government wouldn't steal those supplies like they have from other states. we're going to talk with governor pritzker about that and lots more tomorrow night live. i'll see you then. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. so it was pseudosecret until just now. what if the federal government is watching your show and somehow interseptember? what's going to happen next in this drama? >> i have a hot tip that the stuff is already on the tarmac