for weeks we have been listening to firsthand accounts of our nation's health care professionals and the harrowing physical and emotional challenges facing them and their colleagues side by side in the midst of this crisis. amy pachok is a critical care nurse outside new york city and a member of the public employees federation and she's been kind enough over these weeks to share some of her struggles with us in the form of a video diary she's been providing to be nbc news. >> every day i wake up, i'm motivated, i want to help people, i want to do the right thing. i'm happy to work with my

colleagues. and they are my source of energy every day. i stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the most amazing people who have a commitment to ourselves and to the people that we're trying to save. and it is simply amazing. it is simply amazing. there is -- there is nothing that is more soul-breaking than hearing someone's pain for their family member who will never be the same again. our job is to fix people, help them, get them out of the hospital. but we see all these people and they are broken. and frankly, so are we. >> amy is now once again with us live. amy, in our line of work, we

watch these white house briefings every day. there is a flurry of numbers. i swear there are some days if mike pence said we have made a trillion masks and gowns, it would just go by unreferenced in the flood of other numbers. tell us the reality in terms of ppe and numbers where you work. >> where we work, i took a straw poll recently to see what is going on with our staff. and there are some people reporting that they get masks every day, some people report that they haven't had a new mask for six weeks, some report that they haven't had a mask for seven days. and that message that we put out, the governor put out an executive order stating that all new york health care workers should get a mask every day. and according to the responses from my staff and other staff in this area, the answer is still no.

our current issue is not just masks, but also with gowns in suffolk county. we don't have adequate protection for our bodies from bodiily fluids that she shouldt shouldn't be exposed to. and the cdc as diminished the guidelines for gowns across the nation and they continue to put all health care workers at risk. >> amy, i've watched all of your video journal entries. and we've aired it in the hours that we host. and what you've said that haunts me, when you talk about patients who are broken and then you say -- i couldn't tell if you meant to say it out loud, we are broken. and i just have to say from the outside, you guys look like super heros. but inside, what is it like? >> so the truth is, that we're doing the best that we can, but the patients that we see every

day, they are so sick and no matter what we're doing, it seems like we can't make them budge. it is true that the curve is flattening and we're getting less people in our hospital, but the sickest people, these people continue to be on critical care units and the units are all still full. normally on a normal day, if i didn't have a covid patient before the pandemic, i would have kind of a sick person and then sort of a sick person. so it would make your day manageable. but what continues to happen every day is that we're tripled and that is not normal for critical care. in critical care, we normally only have two patients. these patients are requiring multiple 2krdrip, and i mean 5 2we 12 drips every hour. and so we're managing those

drips and if they are inadequ e inadequate, we're monitoring their blood pressures, how they are breathing. and the truth is that we're exhausted. you can't sustain a level like this. oftentimes what would happen is that u8d haveyou would have a s patient for multiple days and then you would get a break. i would have an sometime where twhere -- you would have a time where the patient would be less acute. we're working 12 to 13 hour days. most people are putting in 20 hours to 40 hours of overtime in addition to our usual schedule. we've had some relief because upstate, as in syracuse, they sent nurses to relieve us. excuse me, our university has hired temporary nurses to help us. but that is still unmanageability. the floor numbers are worse

because the patient population is different. our doctors are working five and six days in a row, 2we12 to 14 r days with little to no rest. we're tired. it is exhausting. and so when you take care of people like this day in and day out, you have an attachment to them, you see where they are, you know what they look like, you know when they look well and when they are not doing well, you know that some of them aren't going to recover. we don't know what the evidence shows for these kinds of patients. this is a new virus that we've never dealt with before. and some of these people just look unfixable and it looks like sometimes frankly we're at a stop and we can't go forward. so how do you move forward when you continue to treat these people this way? are we going to have conversations with their families soon telling them that, you know, your family member is not going to make it, we can't

do anything else for them? that is not the nature of who we are. we literally help you, we make you get over the hump. we help heal you. and we just don't see that happening. this might be an end route for some people and it is hard to have that discussion. i don't think that the medical community is ready to have that discussion with family. so i feel like the message that you get from leaders, they tell you about the flattening curve. they tell you that the numbers are diminishing, but what they don't talk about is people stuck on ventilators and wmost likely will never come off of them. >> amy, we're so grateful to talk to you and to continue to again fit from yo benefit from your insights and experiences. thank you so much for sharing it. we're grateful to you and your colleagues. >> thank you so much. we're grateful to you as well. >> brian, i don't know, it is

amazing. and she didn't talk about i think the other thing that weighs on them, they are often the last people that someone really sick that is not going to make to sees. just an unbelievable burden. >> and as we so often like to ask, as to what have we learned. we've learned today's white house briefing will be interesting again depending on the update that we get on disinfectants. we have learned all over again that in the states where we say they have tomorrow they have topped the peak, the media circus goes on in the hospitals. and as it seems to move west into rural areas, i made a list governors to watch along with their states, nebraska, iowa, south dakota, and north dakota. steve kornacki is right, this is in all kinds of bad ways the new frontier. >> all of them will become household names and not for the

greatest of reasons. thanks, brian. when we come back, the way forward. what we can expect during the year ahead and what it will take for the country to get through and beyond this pandemic. we'll be back after this. back , so you only pay for what you need! [squawks] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i'm a talking dog. the other issue.

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states are beginning to reopen despite warnings from medical experts. with the death toll in this country now over 50,000 and widespread testing falling

short, the road ahead is all the more uncertain. and nearly two dozen experts agree saying there will be no quick return but there is hope. the experts warn the next two years will proceed in fits and starts as more immune people get back to work, more of the economy will recover, but if too many people get infected at once, new lockdowns will become inevitable. to avoid that, widespread testing will be imperative. some say it will be an unhappy population trapped indoors for months. and worried that vaccine will elude scientists and despite the risks that the virus will be with us from now on. joining us now, donald mcneil. donald, i've read everything you've written about this pandemic. and there are new headlines that i want to get your thoughts on. the "times" reported that by

march 1, there were likely 26,000 infections in the five biggest cities. that assigns seems to go with y reporting a week earlier about, one, all that we don't know yet, and, two, how treacherous it could be to suddenly rush back into public spaces. >> you know, we still didn't know wh -- we still don't know what we don't know. but the best guesses are that it is only 3% to 10%. so that leaves 300 million americans. you can't send 300 million measures back to work, back to the subway, back into restaurants without starting the infection process all over again. and when the lockdown started, we were on the track to somewhere between 1.6 million miles per hours and 2 mi americans and 2 mill i don't know americans dying. and i don't -- i don't see that

the white house even xwragraspsw americans dying. and i don't -- i don't see that the white house even grasps in. the president and vice president just throws numbers around. and i think if this was a war briefing trying to describe the war at normandy, there would be no map on the wall, it would being just 5,000 soldiers in france and lukexumbourg, what a great country. there is no explanation of where our shortages of the ppe, where are the shortages of tests. what is the plan. and what states can open up and why. so i'm just baffled. and of course yesterday's suggestion that people inject themselves with bleach and shove

ultraviolet lights down into their lung is the most bizarre thing i've heard. i'm in despair right now that we will every get out of lockdown. >> i don't know that there are as many journalists as well sourced as you. can you speak to the degree of despair? we cover fauci and birx because we see their faces during these ludicrous xhicomments, but what the despair among the experts that you talk to? there they know wh >> they know what the path out is, but they don't see that the country is following it. some governors are following it for themselves an drew cuomo, mike divine, other dewine. they have a grasp. but a lot of this can't be done without the help of the federal government. the tests, the rea littlage rea

from china. and the study from harvard recently said that simply to get a good base of tests every day so we can keep track of whether the virus is increasing or decreasing, we need to be able to do 5 million to 10 million tests per day across the country. per day. because a negative test tells you nothing. it doesn't tell you whether that you will have it tomorrow. so you need to be able to do it widespread amount of testing and then you watch the trends. is it going up or down and where. and i mean, we do have -- you can see where fevers are going up and down, but fevers are fevers. that is not tests. and i don't see a plan to have 35 mi5 million to 10 million tests a day. and when you say a suggestion like that to the president, he

turns on the governors and he says it is on the governors to get the tests. so i just, you know -- if we go out of hiding, it will all turn on again. and the people who are determined to rush back into the stores in states like georgia are risking seeing what we saw happen before start again. and it is a very hard way to learn a lesson. we have 30,000 new infections every day. that hasn't changed. i watch that number every day. 31,9 31,900 yesterday. that has to come down. that is a total of 1.3 million contacts per day that need to be traced. there is no plan. i mean, there are plans, fwhou following the plans. >> you describe it as a dance and bill gates last night in an interview with savannah guthrie pinned a lot of the hope for any sort of reopening, any sort of coming out of hiding on a

vaccine. and if you could stick around, we'll sneak in a quick break? >> sure. >> all right. we'll sneak in a break. we'll be back on the our side. kk we'll be back on the our side. what does it mean to be a good neighbor? it means being there for each other. that's why state farm is announcing the good neighbor relief program we know our customers are driving less, which means fewer accidents. so state farm is returning $2 billion dollars to auto policyholders for the period ending may 31st. and we'll continue making real time decisions to best serve you - our customers. because now, more than ever, being a good neighbor means everything. like a good neighbor, state farm is there. being a good neighbor means everything. finding the right words can be tough.n it comes to autism, finding understanding doesn't have to be.

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grubhub. together we can help save the restaurants we love. donald, you write this -- until a vaccine or another protective measure emerges there is no scenario, epidemiologists agree, in which it is safe for that many people to suddenly come out of hiding. what is sort of a realistic scenario without political influence, without disinformation in the pipeline? what is a realistic scenario on the vaccine? >> some hope for 18 to 25 months. oth others say -- the mump vaccine took four years. coronaviruses have a tendency to have problems as vaccines because we have animal vaccines

for coronaviruses and they sometimes create this thing called antibody dependent enhancement where they make it more like i you geelt the disease than less likely. that would be a disaster. we have to do safety testing to make sure that's not happening. then comes the question of how do we make the vaccine? most vaccines in this country we make about 5 million to 10 million doses a year because we have about 4 million babies born each year and about 4 million people turn 65 and those are the normal customers for vaccinings. for this one, if we want everybody to have one, we need 300 million doses or if it takes two doses, we need 600 million doses. where do we make those doses? that's a lot of vaccine factories. we have to start building them or look to countries that might make it for us. one of those countries might include china. if the president keeps calling it the cheese virus and insulting the chinese he might have a hard time getting xi

jinping to be friendly twarts the united states or might extract something from donald trump in return that donald trump isn't going to want to pay him, like, you know, an apology and some respect. so we'll see. but the president's maneuvering this country into a very, very dire situation. and i don't see it ending well right now. i don't see a solution to these problems, of how do we make this vaccine. anybody popping up saying no problem, we've got it. i'm looking. >> do you feel more fear and despair, to use your word, around the set of sort of manufactured political crises, the political crises of our leadership in washington, or do you have more fear around the strength of the virus itself? >> oh, look. i'm a medical writer. i'm worried about the virus. we know it kills. we know it's transmissible. political mistakes, political

struggles, b that's an inevitable situation in life. but, you know, i don't know when we've been in a worse situation since 1812 when the british burned the white house. we have no economy. we have no clear way out of hiding without losing a million people, maybe, which is, you know, we lost half that in world war ii. and our -- it's not leadership. it's just total lack of leadership and confusion has gotten us into this situation. and, you know, i mean, i'm trying to think of when a leader has said something as irrational as, you know, inject yourself with bleach or other disinfectant. that sounds like mad king george in his last days. it's not the political leadership that worries me. it's the virus and the fact it's everywhere, in every state, as we've seen in the meat packing plants, in very many small towns around the country. if we come out, it will hunt us

down. people who don't take the virus seriously like that poor pastor in virginia who decided he was going to ignore it ended up dead and with his wife infected. it's not something you can pretend isn't there because you can't see it. it's like radiation. it's real even though you can't see it. they're very small germs. we have to get that through to the president. even though they're small, they're real. >> perfect last words. donald mcneil, a pleasure to get to talk to you. i appreciate your reporting on this. thanks for spending time with us today. >> thank you very much. >> coming up, protecting the country from the president after his jaw-dropping suggestions on how to treat coronavirus. ions o how to treat coronavirus for adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection

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it's 4:00 in the east. on the heels of an astonishing 22 hours of scramble across the private and public sectors to protect the american people from the president and the president's words, to be specific, extraordinary statements p pouring in from state officials to medical experts to cleaning supply companies asking people to ignore the president, his astonishing musings on unproven and potentially fatal imagined treatments for coronavirus, namely, his suggestion that people consume or inject l disinfecting chemicals to, quote, clean their bodies. from the makers of lysol -- we must be clear under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be

administered into the human body through injection or ingestion or any other route. from the officials in washington state, pleease don't eat tide pods or inject yousrself any kid of disinfectant. a massive chorus of health care professionals calling the very idea irresponsible and dangerous. one public health official warning point-blank in an interview with "the washington post," my concern is that people will die. that is how the truth tellers are fighting back against the most recent public spitballing session from the president on his imagine remedies for the coronavirus. comments we play you for this reason only, for you to see the realtime reaction of dr. deborah birx, whose face in this clip says it all. >> thin i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. and is there a way we can do something like that by injection

inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number. it would be interesting to check that so that you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me. >> unenviable position to say the least for dr. deck boborah who was on the forefront of some of the worst crises of our time. in a bill signing today, trump tried to claim that his suggestion was sarcastic. it's galling spin, even his communications department didn't attempt sarcasm as an excuse in any of the statements they put out. we heard it for ourselves, though. it wasn't sarcastic and it wasn't his only idea. he also suggested that dr. birx and the rest of the unofficials unlick i can enough to be in close proximity to tv cameras they it, that they try transmitting uv light inside the

body. i think his words were, take a look at it. it's a treatment idea embraced by conspiracy theorists but round little rejected by the scientific mainstream. the president defended his comments forcefully. >> you're the president and people tuning into these briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do. they're not looking for a rumor. >> i'm the president and you're fake news. you know what else i say to you? very nicely, i know you well, i know you well because i know the guy, i see what he writes, a total faker. are you ready? are you ready? are you ready? it's just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man. he's talking about sun. he's talking about heat. you see the numbers. so that's it. that's all i have. i'm just here to parental ent. i'm here to present ideas. because we want ideas to get rid of this thing.

if heat is good and if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as i'm concerned. >> to be really, really clear, the scientist was talking about sunlight, heat and cleaners on counters, not in the body, but as the president tries to down play his latest run at scientific inquiry, it's worth noting that the last unproven treatment that he publicly and repeatedly pushed, cheered, and promoted, hooiydroxychloroquine comes with a warning it should not be used outside of hospitals and clinical trials because of potentially serious side effects. we start with some of our favorite reporters. kara leah is here, dr. peter for from the center for vaccine development, and dr. kavita patel, a practicing fissiphysic who worked on the h1n1 response. doctor, what do we do?

>> you know, the more concerning thing that i had ant the white house briefing was, you know, they presented some perfectly reasonable studies by the applied physics lab at johns hopkins, which is an outstanding institution, on the effects of sunlight and humidity on the virus and showing that they do have a deleterious effect on the virus. the problem is this -- that's also true of many respiratory virus pathogens like influenza, but it does not necessary translate into what it means for seasonality of the virus. so you can argue the same thing are more or less true. the flu virus, what happens with flu is it peaks in the winter in the northern hemisphere, peaks in the sumner the southern hemisphere, but in the tropics it's often present all year round. just because the virus is inactivated by sunlight or humidity does not mean that this virus, covid-19, will be gone in

the summer. i think that was the reason for the presentation of presenting that data at this kind of white house briefing. the implicit message was, well, therefore we're going to be okay this summer as we open up the economy, as we start lifting social distancing. and there's no evidence for that. we don't have that yet. so i think it's really important not to translate those limited findings coming out of a very good lab to any type of policy regarding what we do this summer. >> of course you are warning people that no study suggests injei injecting yourself with disinfectant cleaners. >> that goes without saying. we're in a precarious time in the nation. there's a lot of economic pressure now to lift social distancing. we know it's been highly effective. the models coming out of seattle

now say we need to keep that social distancing for month of may until around june 1 for many states. we also know that's not going to happen. the governors are under enormous pressure to open up the economy sooner. and here's the big problem. we do not have a health system in place to accommodate that. if you are going to open up the economy sooner, it means that at places of business across the country, we have the testing in place, public health departments have the contact tracing in place, we have syndromic surveillance in place. nudge of th none of that is in place talking to most city health directors. we're not ready to open up the economy. we have teams looking at the economic recovery but have failed to link it to public health recovery. this is kind of what donald mcneil was saying. i was overhearing him previously. unless we in parallel put a commensurate response to public health, to handle people coming

back to work, we risk a rebound that will look like queens, new york, and multiple places across the united states. >> dr. patel, i want to know from you whether you think this has reached sort of a critical point where the information on the health side of things, there is such a cross-contamination message-wise with what the president sort of dabbles in, and it certainly sounded to anyone listening that he was suggesting that scientists look into the benefits of putting light in the body and injecting disinfectants in the body to, quote, clean their lungs. i wonder what the degree of alarm is within the medical community about just his practice of dispensing scientific and medical information. >> i mean, look, nicole, we seem to have a president who thinks that, you know, medical training doesn't really matter even though he said what he said was joke essentially, but his words do have an effect. i'll be even more candid.

i was pretty disappointed in dr. birx. i understand she was caught off guard, but this isn't really something that you have to even placate as a health professional. the responsible thing to do is to shut it down and say no, nobody should ingest anything or put anything into the human body. we actually have cases of children who already do this, and hurt themselves, kill themselves. so this is not trivial. and nicole, just one step further, the policy, we have systematically been shutting down science, and the fact that states and local health officials have to spend time responding to this instead of actually testing people, tracing, and working on a real response to covid is an even bigger slap and should be -- every governor should be sending a bill to the white house for the cost, the opportunity cost, of today just to spend time on dispelling this insanity. >> well, the fda is also

dispelling the insanity around an unproven drug therapy for covid. the fda today issued a warning against using hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus outside of hospitals. they are running as fast as they can to sort of clean up the disinformation donald trump is putting out about a pandemic in real time. how much does that take away from sort of the bandwidth to fight the pandemic itself? >> right. again, i mean, the fda should be concentrating -- and they are. there are dedicated public people inside of the fda doing their work on trying to get testing-of these antibody tests under emergency authorization with high quality. but how many times do we need to superstorm sandy a study? we have the va study, an nih consensus panel, the fald fahd has weighed against it, a study of-in the american journal of medicine said it's lethal to give chloroquine to severe covid patients. let's move on and look at what's

working and let our scientists do that. i can't tell you how just outraged the medical community is at all of this. >> kara lee, you and kristen welker have some reporting on the strategy 16 hours after the comments were made. reaction, we should say, the reaction was swift, it was devastating, it was immediate. but 16 hours after the comments were made by the president for people to put sunlight or uv light on the body and inject detergents or disinfectants, he came up with a story, an excuse. but it wasn't the same story or excuse that his new press secretary had. take us inside the chaos of the white house. >> reporter: sure, nicole. what kristen welker and i have learned in talking to officials inside and outside of the white house today is that essentially when the president started talking about suggesting that people use light, heat, or disinfectants to somehow cure

coronavirus, there were aides in the white house who just started texting each other saying where did he get this from, where is this coming from, and they were trying to figure it out. as one of them said to us, the reason they were doing that, they knew this was going to be really bad. what we learned is that before the briefing where bill brian, the person at the department of homeland security who's in charge of science and technology, gave his presentation of some of his research, there was a meeting in the oval office where some of this was discussed, where the yld idea of heat and humidity and disinfectants being effective on surfaces and that the virus doesn't live as long in heat or humidity and those types of things, that that had been discussed in the oval office. there was some discussion about how different ailments can be treated with radiation. what aides said is that the president just seemed to conflate all of this and ad-lib at the podium in the white house briefing room and to say that

perhaps all of these things that were applied to surfaces could be applied by injecting them in the human body. and what we've seen the white house do is they didn't say anything afterwards to try to correct this. they waited 12 hours before the press secretary put out a statement which essentially blamed the media and said we were taking the president's comments out of context, which we know that we weren't. but she didn't say as you mentioned that this was somehow sarcasm or the president didn't really mean it. that was what the president said. we've soon him lean on that excuse for things he said in the past a number of times that are very controversial, that he doesn't want to walk back and say he was wrong to say. now we'll hear from him again today, and i'm sure this will be at the top of the list of questions people will have for him. it will be interesting to see not only how he talks about this at the briefing later today but how his health advisers, people like dr. birx talk about this when they're asked about it if

they, indeed, attend that briefing. >> is there any concern his ignorance on health and science has been revealed that's going to hurt, not help, that 23% rating on trustworthiness? >> well, look, i think that there's certainly people in the white house who are just, you know, shaking their heads when the president said something like this and when they have a problem like this that they have to clean up, not just for the political reasons and the way that the country and americans might view him and what he has to say, but also the practical reasons. they don't want the president to be seen as having put people in danger and that's what we've heard a number of health experts worn abo warn about that. in the d.c. area, we had maryland's emergency management agency putting out an alert saying they were getting calls from people wondering what to do, if they could ingest disinfectants, you know, and that's something that really concerns the white house. but we've seen time and again, you know, this is a president who, he really wants to put a

very positive spin on what's happening with the coronavirus, not just what's hatching right now but what might be able to happen in the near future and with this set of facts that he was spoetzed to come out and have his experts talk about in the white house briefing room, he chose to conflate them and twist them to try and make them seem as positive as only and that there may be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel in all this for people who are suffering or afraid of contracting coronavirus. and he did it in a way that medical expert after medical expert has said is extremely dangerous. >> dr. patel, i'm going to put you on the spot. people are going to think whatever they want, they already do, about donald trump. he was elected after a lot of things were known about him, the "access hollywood" tape was out, racist comments about judges were out. he attacked a gold-star family. lots of information was available. it would seem to me that people are going to have to make the most important decision of their life, maybe, in the next, i

don't know, four to eight weeks about whether to leave the house, about whether to wear a mask, about whether to go see their parents, about whether to take their kids to see their grandparents. should they trust donald trump when they make that decision? >> no. and honestly, nicole, for people to say, oh, well, i'm being partisan about it, no, we should not be seeking the most important lifesaving kind of advice from someone who doesn't have any of that expertise. in fact, i would urge every american to ask the question of people not just one person but people who have science, credibility, and listen to their advis advisers. it's hard for me to even apply that to president trump. so absolutely not. but trust that you do have local health professionals, public health professionals that actually do want to keep you safe and listen to them. >> dr. patel, thank you for your

frankness there. that's what everyone is looking for and why people do overwhelm ingly get numbers in excess of over 60% in every instance trust the health care professionals and plunging numbers for political leaders of the white house. thank you all for starting us off. we're grateful. when we come back, if it hasn't been made clear already, there's no prep being done by the president ahead of his daily coronavirus briefings. that's according to extraordinary new reporting in "the new york times" today that describes the president as doing some, quote, rage viewing of this very network. we'll bring you that. and georgia is going it alone, opening up parts of its economy there today as the rest of the nation is grappling with new evidence that coronavirus was here a whole lot earlier than experts first thought. and trump dangling virus relief money over one of his favorite foils. all those stories coming up.

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he's sitting home watching tv, maybe he should get up and go to work, right? >> no, he didn't. that comment was in reference to trump criticizing governor cuomo on twitter midbriefing last week and highlights the phenomenon we are all too familiar with, the president obsessed with watching tv coverage of himself. a detailed snapshot of trump in lockdown reported out by "the new york times" tells us just how much screen time he's getting. we'll give you a hint. it's way over any parent's relaxed pandemic limits for their own kids. from that piece, "president trump arrives in the oval office these days as late as noon. he's usually in a sour mood after his morning marathon of television. he's been up in the master bedroom as early as 5:00, watching fox news, cnn, and a dollop of msnbc for rage

viewing. he's angry even with fox, an old security blanket, for not portraying hip as he would like to be seen. he makes time to watch andrew cuomo's briefings closely, monitoring them." david, i'm coming to you. i got no words. >> look, in some ways it's good that donald trump is confined to his room. most people would suggest lysol into their homes would be in their room or another institution. i understand this plays poorly with the psychology that apparently he's kept up in his room, but so are the american people. and you know what, the american people aren't complaining. the american people are asking for the advice of public health officials. donald trump not withstanding that he said this was 15 people and was going to go to zero and the hydroxychloroquine

recommendation and now the loy sol recommendation, the reality is the message from donald trump is dangerous. it conflicts with that of our public health officials and the less we hear from the president the safer we are. and i would also say this, nicole, in terms of his own behavior in this moment, this is a man since the outbreak of covid-19 has spoken and tweeted more about his own approval ratings than he has about the 50,000 americans who died under his watch. so if we need an assessment of the president's character as he has locked himself in his room, watching tv so he can make a self-assessment of his own ratings, perhaps we just go forward ignoring the guy and as you spoke with dr. patel, listen only to the doctors as we begin to make decisions about how we return to normal and our daily lives. >> let me follow up with you, david. i think there's all of this. there's all that he does to sort of threaten the things that we do to keep ourselves safe. if there's anyone out there

thinking about injecting bleach, don't do it. we're only covering it because trump suggested people do. but the other side of the ledger seems to be all the things he could do to help people that he doesn't do. if he wore a mask for one briefing and did an elbow bump, those mimics would be mimicked not just by his base but there's also the whole bucket of missed opportunities to use a bully pulpit for good. what do you think of that? >> and using the term the bully pulpit. it's the history of the bully pulpit. the president through his own character leads the nation, and every four or eight years we see a president, his character shines through in the toughest moments, not the easiest moments. the missed opportunity hoar is significant not just for the president, i suppose, his own re-election and for the public health of the american people, but it's reflective of the fact, nicole, of how broken our american politics are in this moment. and in our broken politics, we have accepted a broken

government. the american presidency has been broken by this man. the responsibilities we used to expect of the office are no longer upheld. but the brokenness transcends even the white house. this is not a partisan comment. our congress is broken as well, an institution, regard legislation of who is in party, it's not a partisan comment i'm making, our institutions of democracy have failed us in this moment, and at least on capitol hill, where they failed to prepare us for this moment, they reacted swiftly and responsibly. nancy pelosi has done her best to try to get the right public health message, to make sure the resources are there for public health community, for states and municipalities. donald trump has decided to ignore even the responsibility in this, the greatest moment of all. when all of this is done, we will have a november election hopefully and we can decide who stays and who goes, but we have to reflect as an american people, do we accept the level of government we currently have?

because i think we've had a whole of government failure. we need to re-examine the democracy that we have put in place to protect us in moments like this. and when you have somebody like donald trump at the top of the ship, he is to intellectually vacuous, he doesn't even realize he has the opportunity to lead us to a stronger democracy in this moment but has failed us once again. >> eli, where do you put this briefing last night? i mean, there are only a handful of issues that even had trump allies saying, oh, no. i would put the good people on both sides. i mentioned the attacks on judge curiel, the attacks on the gold-star family, the week-long battle with the widow of johnson. maybe there are more than a handful. where do you put his performance last night in terms of events that have shaken based on karolyi and kristen welker's reporting even the white house staff? >> well, i mean, that's a heck of a list, you know, and every

time -- every night we watch these briefings, you almost forget the briefing the night before because it's two hours and it's so many new things that you have to go through and fact check. i think what's different about this statement that the president suggested last night that some of these treatments, you know, you could inject -- do an injection, you know, with a disinfectant, what struck people differently about that is this is something that could be really dangerous, because as much as a lot of us in the media take the things the president says with a grain of salt, there are a lot of people across the country, who are going to respond to this and take this seriously. a month ago, after the president started touting hydroxychloroquine, an arizona couple took it and the man died. so we're a month after that and the president is still touting these things. i think there's an alarm that rings when you have public health officials hearing this and understanding that people are going to hear this and look at the disinfectants they may have many the house and perhaps contemplate some sort of remedy,

home remedy, and that scares a lot of the public health officials. it's obvious you can lump this into the same things,ing b sharpie gate, amending a hurricane map, refusing to admit he's wrong, so many instances in the last three-plus years where we've seen the president, because he watches tv, because he's not prepared, doesn't attend the actual task force meetings, going in, standing before a camera and a microphone and just letting it rip and then having to sort of explain away the consequences later and say he was sarcastic or say he was misquoted or attributed to the press or whatever. what's different in this case i think is the public health ramifications and the fact that in a pandemic when people are scare and people really are relying on the government for information, for clear information about what to do as phil ruckers' question to the president made clear last night, trump's response continues to be to get agitated, to lash out at the press and seemingly express indifference about, you know,

whether or not people could parse his statements. saying today that he was being sarcastic as a defense, it's amazing that that's something he thinks is a defense when you're trying to -- when you're expressing something that's not 100% clear to the public about the public health amidst the pandemic that's seen 50,000 americans die. >> should he be covered differently because of all of that, the public health ramifications of the things he says? >> you know, i struggle with this and i think a lot of people who cover this administration really struggle with all of these questions about, you know, when you're asking questions, when you're televising the briefings, are we doing -- we're doing our job as we've always done it, but what happens when we have ample evidence at this point to understand that no matter what we ask in many cases you're not going to get clear information in response. i mean, earlier this week, the president stated at the podium that he was using the defense production act to get more swabs made. a day later he came out and

said, actually, i'm not doing that. so when you can't really rely, take to the bank anything this president tells you, it raises really profound existential questions for journalists doing this job. and i wish i had a better answer for you, nicole, about what we're spoelzed to do. he is the president. we have to continue to show up. we have to ask these questions. we have to cover the things he says. it's really difficult and something we've all struggled with and are still struggling with even in the fourth year of this presidency. >> eli, i think you just said one of the most important things for our viewers to hear. we struggle with it. we struggle with it. i saw these comments right after he made them and i immediately thought, oh, bleep, what am i going to do with that? what am i going to do tomorrow? it is -- it's really hard. i hear all the criticism on all sides of it. obviously you do too. i appreciate how frank you are. >> thanks for asking the question because it's an

important -- it's a dilemma, you know. maybe the dilemma of our time in washington and the press corps. i don't think any of us have figured it out. >> i think you're right. eli, thanks for coming on and again for being so frank. after the break, some businesses in georgia are reopening today, a controversial decision made by that state's governor. it's happening as frontline medical workers across the country say they're in a state of disbelief about the rush to open. listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath. never settle for 25%. always go for 100. bring out the bold™

starting today, businesses like hair salons, gyms, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys are free to open in georgia thanks to an order from the state's republican governor. not just georgia, several states have announced plans to eetz restrictions, blind-siding front

lyon medical workers the "washington post" said it's been met with dread among emergency officials who are in complete disbelief they are reopening the state. compounding that disbelief is the fact we've only just begun to wrap our arms around the full scope of the ongoing crisis. "new york times" saying researchers believe hidden outbreaks are creeping through cities like seattle, new york, boston. in january and february, earlier than previously known. let's bring in the reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network, kimberly atkins, senior correspondent for wbur, david jolly is still here as well. kim, let me start with you. we need to reopen, people want to reopen even if it's as a new normal with masks and social distancing, but you have to ask the question how bald with was georgia's plan? it was so bad that pence and trump are against it. >> yes.

i mean, one interesting thing about the reporting, about the reopening plan in georgia was how closely it matched a lot of what we see out of this white sox, which is that it caught a lot of people by surprise, including state officials, emergency officials, whose jock it will be to ensure the safety of georgia's residents. we know that there is on one side, there are people who support reopening the country, and to some extent you understand. people's businesses have been closed for weeks. it is economically devastating. but there is no way to reopen without assurances that it will not lead to a spike in infection rates, in illnesses, and in deaths of americans. that is what every single expert has said. and so without even following the guidelines put out by the white house, which requires a

14-day period of a decline in the rate of infection, some of these states are moving forward anyway, and it's just hard not to think that this could be a potentially catastrophic thing if it leads to an outbreak. we've seen jouft breaks social securitied with some of the protests that have taken place, that have led to booms of infections. we've soon tragically in wisconsin afterthe election that went forward that people who went out to vote, that tlfls infection taken place out of that. it's just every bit of evidence we know and there's still a lot we don't know about this virus shows that policy decisions to bring people together before this is contained have turned out to be very bad ones. >> you know, as kim is saying, rev, everyone has this desire for us to move toward doing things to reopen our economy. but 80%, 80% of americans don't agree on much, but 80% of americans are for leaving the

at-home orders in place because they put above that strong desire to reopen public health, public safety, and the health of safetyover their own families. what do you think is behind what has been deemed even by the president and vice president an unsafe plan for reopening in georgia? >> there is no rhyme or reason as to why the governor of georgia and other states that are considering this are doing this. it's hard to even guess at what's behind it because there's no logic to it. the real question that has not been answered is what do the governors have, what data do they have, what facts do they have now have that changes the facts they had when they closed the state? there are no in facts. no one has said to them why did you close it in the first place if you're now opening it and what has become contrary to the original decision? the number of deaths and those

testing positive are going up in georgia. when you look at the fact that we're talking about every gathering, whether it was even some of these protests mass resulted in people being tested positive for the coronavirus, then i do not understand how anyone that is in any way sensitive to the constituents they're charged over would even flirt with the idea let alone open up any businesses. i don't know any barber in georgia has that has six-feet-long arms. how are you going to have social distancing in a barbershop or in a beauty parlor? i mean, let's be serious. you are really telling people, put yourself in danger for what reason i cannot mablg. >> david jolly, i'm coming to you as a follow-up to a comment you made earlier about sort of the fabric of our institutions

being broken and frayed. it would seem that sort of the fabric of our connections to one another are broken and frayed and people like you and me, looking at our twitter feed to see that every single day. but i want to ask you about the face-offs and the images between health care workers and nurses. i saw some from wisconsin yesterday who were out protesting the lack of the kind of equipment that will save their lives against people who are coming much closer than six feet to them in some instances who are making social distancing and stay-at-home orders about their liberties. how do we heal all the fraying between yourselves as members of communities? >> yeah, and nicole, it's a great question. in an academic sense, this current situation presents a tougher problem between how do we protect the economy and people's ability to earn wages and provide for their family while also protecting the public health. it is hard to escape the political undertones of this. there is where your leaders are failing us in in ways. we have two americas politically

who are questioning each other in this moment and frankly at the leadership level are trying to gain advantage of the other going into november when the reality is our politicians should be following public health officials, not trying to lead public health officials to where they want to go. covid has exposed just how broken our politics really are. and again, it's something to examine later, but our politics are so broken, we seem to accept and affirm the broken government that it has given us. we have the power to change that. we really do. when you look at georgia and other states who are reopening ahead of public health advice, it is hard to ignore the politics in that. and when we take the academic conundrum of economic growth and protecting the economy versus public health, the real tragedy in the decision by somebody like governor brian kemp is not a person that has the ability to decide whether or not to go back to work. it's the line worker who because

their boss follows governor kemp's advice now has to go back to work. they don't have a choice. it taos hourly wage earner who now has to expose themselves to the danger of covid because of a political decision, not a public health decision. >> all right. david has alluded to politics. we'll take a small turn in that direction after the break because donald trump, using coronavirus aid, is talking about forcing the u.s. postal service to ralz theise their ra. i just love hitting the open road and telling people

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the postal service is a joke. because they're handing out packages for amazon and other internet companies and every time they bring a package they lose money on it. the postal service, if they raised the price of a package by approximately four times, it would be a whole new ball game. but they don't want to raise because they don't want to insult amazon or insult other companies perhaps they like. if they don't ratz the price, i'm not signing anything. >> one of trump's more bizarre and longest running attack lines, the u.s. postal service. today he confirmed a "washington post" report saying he would withhold coronavirus aid if the post office doesn't hike its prices. the postal service is projecting a $13 billion shortfall this year because of the pan death penalty -- pandemic. he's railed against the postal service for years claiming

mismanagement especially as it relates to amazon. amazon, of course, is owned by jeff bezos, who also owns "the washington post," one of donald trump's obsessions. let me read you, rev, what joe biden says about this attack on the post office. mark my words, i think he's going to try to kick back the election, somehow come up with some rational why it can't be held, threatening the post office. what in god's name is that about other than trying to let the word out he'll do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote. that's the only way he thinks he can possibly win. >> it is very curious at a time that we are facing a pandemic of proportions that we never experienced, that this president knows that everyone including dr. fauci is saying it may be a second wave in the fall which could affect the election, which means all groups including

nonpartisan groups, are saying let us now start teaching people and campaigning around, mail in the vote so we have a november election. and it would be in my opinion the most politically naive people that would think this president would not want to see a reason not to delay the election and clearly if there's no postal service or if it's not operating in full services, that you could have a mail-in election, it would lead to a postponement. i don't think that joe biden is out of line here at all. i think that's exactly what we're looking at. we're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs when the unemployment numbers are skyrocketing, and we're looking at numbers bigger than the depression. so we're going to put hundreds of thousands of workers out. we're going to do all of this in terms of people who are home, who need their mail, oh, the reason that it makes sense

politically is it will interfere with a mail-in election. we should not stand by and allow the president to leverage what a stimulus package because he wants to try to play games with a mail-in election in november. >> we spent a lot of time dealing with united states postal service because the anthrax attacks had affected them so tragically. it's jarring to see how two presidencies later there's an american president at war with the american postal service. >> yes, and i think we are seeing a combination of things happening here. i think the rev is absolutely right, given the president's recent attacks on the idea of expanding mail-in voting. but i also see in times of crisis we have seen this president sort of revert back to his, you know, grievances of choice.

and as you noted, he equates, he connects the u.s. postal service to amazon and jeff bezos is one of his favorite political opponents that he sees in his eye that he likes to attack. and also this idea that they're not -- the postal service is somehow not pulling its fair share or doing what it needs to do to say solvent. keep in mind, this is one of the few federal agencies, quasi federal agencies that pulls in revenue. it's not like the other ones that are entirely dependent on the federal government. and keep in mind where we have tens of thousands of people who have filed unemployment claims, the logic of asking the postal service to charge more for delivery at a time where people are dependent on delivery doesn't make sense either. so it seems that the president is leaning on something that he's comfortable with. >> that's always the case, kim.

thank you all for spending some time with us. i miss seeing all of you around the table. after the break, the faces of the pandemic. remembering those we've lost next.

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a really sad milestone here in the u.s. today. 50,000 people are now dead from coronavirus. that sheer volume makes it difficult to tell you about each and every one of them, but it's worth a try. anthony brooks was a councilman in the san antonio area. his husband was a local business owner. they died two days apart. their families want to remind all of us the importance of social distancing. same goes for gary young. he was 66, funny and loving. his daughter says his jokes got annoying but she would do anything to hear one of them again. his wife passed just a few months ago. another heartbreaking phase of the pandemic, the 4 month old

daughter of a new york city firefighter. she had everyone wrapped around her little finger. we're thinking about her family today and their unimaginable and unbearable loss. and finally, a 32-year-old father of two beautiful children, one of them with special needs. he died after a week's long battle in the hospital. his wife wasn't able to send him off, but when she gathered his belongings, she unlocked his phone to save some of his photos and she found a note written to her by jonathan before he was intubated. he said he loved her and the kids with all his heart and encouraged her to always be happy, no matter what. good advice for us all. that does us for our hour. thank you for letting us into your homes. our coverage continues with chuck todd after a quick break. k

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i spoke to a daughter who couldn't understand how her father got sick so fast to the point where he was in the icu and intubated. >> taking care of critically ill patients that you can't talk to their family face to face, you can't offer human solace like you nor mamally would. it comes at a lot of