1.5% of the population. in new york, the epicenter of the virus where governor cuomo is pushing for widespread testing of coronavirus antibodies, preliminary results show that up to 2.7 million new yorkers may have already been infected with covid-19 at some point. that's more than ten times the number of confirmed cases within the states, and this raises new questions about when the disease started and how fast it could have spread since the first reported case here in america. >> how can you expect that when you act two months after the outbreak in china the virus was only in china waiting for us to act? the horse had already left the barn by the time we moved. we closed the front door with the china travel ban, which was right even in retrospect it was right, but we left the back door open because the virus had left

china. >> joining me now, an infectious disease physician and medical director of the special pathogens unit at boston medical center, she's also an msnbc medical contributor. thank you for being with us again. you've described, you've worked in infectious diseases before. you've described it as sort of my words, but like building an airplane while it's flying. the data's coming at you fairly quickly and you have to constantly adjust to figuring out what's going on. now we're getting hindsight data that indicates clearly a lot more people had this than we thought, a lot of them were asymptomatic or didn't get it very badly, but what's the consequence of knowing this information? is it good that we've maybe developed herd immunity to it or is it bad that this thing is more widespread than we thought? >> ali, thanks. you know, i think more than anything else it tells me exactly what governor cuomo said, which is that we were really behind in our strategy in

terms of who we tested. so just to reiterate the news was that there were two deaths now discovered in california in patients in early february and they died of causes that were unknown, and so their bodies were -- their tissue were checked by cdc to see if covid-19 was present skpshs these a, and these are deaths that occurred at the beginning of february. these are two weeks before the first death known in washington in the united states with covid. the patients who had these in california had no travel history, no known contacts, which means they got it from someone else who didn't know they had the disease, which means california had community transmission of covid-19 well into january, probably from the northeast that was talked about, the modeling study, it's probably true that community transmission was happening in up to five states including here in boston, well before we thought that this was possible. and the troublesome part when you look back on this, at the end of february, at the beginning of march we were still only testing people who had travel history, who only had

traveled to china, who had contact with somebody who had covid-19, and some of this was that we didn't know the extent to which this disease could be spread from asymptomatic spread or spread from people who didn't know they were sick. some of this was how narrow our strategy had been. the thing that drove that was the availability of tests and the initial delay in getting the tests out. >> the other issue, as i was talking to bill gates and zeke emmanuel, in bill gate's paper he laid out the development of vaccines and therapeutics ask treatments. your world of infectious diseases is not about big announcements, nothing is ever just unveiled. everything is tested and checked and developed over time. that's sort of the opposite to what these white house coronavirus press briefings provide us with. everything feels like a big announcement and a cure and a remedy, and it sort of doesn't help people come together and understand how to fight this

infection. >> that's right, ali. you know, science is a body of consensus, you know, and it's unfortunately what's even happening in this setting is sometimes you see these studies that are put out or reports of studies that haven't even gone through peer review. everybody's sort of jumping on those results, ask thatnd that' the studies themselves. there's all this con juncture that we don't have evidence about. it's distracting from building that body of consensus. all the conversations at the white house level, the task force, the thing that it reminds me of, when we respond to outbreaks in other situations, other countries, those in my group that do this, i've worked in outbreak settings, we always talk about the importance of governance in determining the trajectory of an outbreak. history has told us single leaders can have an impact on entire trajectories of

pandemics. the denial of hiv from 1999 to 2008 in south africa set the fight against hiv in that country behind for a really long period of time. and so it's about good governance and in this period of uncertainty where it requires nuance and wisdom, it can't be about splashes. it has to be about acknowledging the reality and presenting the facts and acknowledging what we don't know. i think that's what people want to know is what is their uncertainty about so they're not taken aback. >> thank you so much for joining me. infectious disease physician. joining me now is mayor steve benjamin of columbia, south carolina. his city like many others has been flooded with protesters at the state capital calling for an end to the governor's stay at home orders. how are you and your family doing? what's the latest from columbia? >> we're great. we're spending a good bit of quality time together. it's been amazing. i've walked the neighborhood and

played chess and had dinner with my family more than we have in years. that's been good and everyone here is happy and strong, resilient. >> talk to me about what's going on, these protests are unusual to say the least. we've seen a lot of video of them on tv want they have sort of an extreme almost tea party nature to them, but on the other hand, some of it channels a frustration that we're all feeling, right? there are people who are desperate to get back to work. they may still be getting paid to stay at home, but they're worried about their jobs. there are people who want to get out and have personal touch. how are you dealing with these protesters? >> well, we started early here in columbia, south carolina, with our response to what we saw coming a generational challenge. in february i called together midlands coronavirus task force. they met on march 6th for the first time, and we've been planning as a city to deal with

this, how we propped up our businesses. we put up $1.4 million out the door to support small businesses. our city employees have been working from home, been working to make sure that people have food. dealing with food insecurity issues and the like. it is a fact that long-term social distancing is economically ruinous. however, you can't be pro-business without being pro-public health. we've been making the investments and making sure our citizens have what they need. they've been protesting the governor's order, i've had my back and forth with the governor. i won't get into that right now. the reality is we've got to make sure we invest in testing infrastructure, in getting the data that allows us to keep people safe. by focusing on data that shows a deceleration of these cases over at least 14 days. then we can move forward in trying to transition back into not just an economy, because we'll see in some places that open up too fast that you can open up the doors to a business, but if there's no consumer confidence there, citizens won't

show up. >> mayor, you tweeted out that the city of columbia has added an additional $400,000 in funding of forgivable loans to small businesses. is that the same model that the ppe is using that if you keep people on your payroll, is this money for payroll or is it for operations? >> all of the above, operations, for payroll, obviously fixed costs, rent and the like. the first was a million dollars. we got out the door in two weeks, 220 buzzes asinesses and several in the pipeline. these are obviously for much smaller businesses. the average loan has been about 4,000, 4 or $5,000. we'll tell you some of the testimonials we got from people have been amazing as helped them through this difficult period. another $400,000, that's on top of the half million we've given to nonprofits that provide

critical infrastructure and another 250,000 we've given to some of our senior resources folks who help with our meals on wheels programs to deal with food insecurity. it's repatriating money back to the taxpayers to help keep our economy going in these difficult moments. it's what we have to do. we've got to be thoughtful. we have to be honestly be thinking way ahead, you know, wayne gretzky became a great hock ke hockey player not going to where the puck was but trying to get to where it's going. we try to be very thoughtful and forward thinking here in columbia, south carolina. >> full points for making a canadian hockey reference on my show. always good to see you, sir, stay safe and our best wishes to the people of columbia, south carolina. coming up next, my interview with senator bernie sanders. he's making the case for medicare for all and why it's needed now more than ever, but he's backing off on the time line a little bit. you'll hear what he's talking about when we come back. you're watching "velshi."

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welcome back. for nearly a decade now, bernie sanders has galvanized a massive political movement embodied by democratic socialist values and a defining universal health care platform. now, after dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing joe biden, sanders is back to the senate full-time helping to lead the charge to find solutions to the covid-19 pandemic on both the economic and the health care fronts. i'm happy to welcome senator sanders back to the show. senator, thanks for joining me again. i last talked to you a couple of weeks ago just before you had decided to suspend your campaign, and at the time you had told me about a bill that you and several of your senate colleagues were working on to extend health care coverage to all americans for all medical care, not just coronavirus-related care. what's the status of that? >> look, the main point here, ali, is that when 26 million people have lost their jobs, many millions of them are losing

their health care as well. this is on top of the 87 million before the pandemic were either. what we have got to make sure right now during this crisis is that everybody in america goes to the doctor or the hospital when they need to go without worrying about how they're going to pay for that. and that means that we make sure that medicare covers the uninsured during the crisis, fills the gap for the underinsured including those people private insurance high deductibles and high co-payments. bottom line here is if you're sick right now, you go to the doctor when you need to. you go to the hospital when you need to, and medicare will cover all of those bills. >> senator, in an op-ed that you penned in the "new york times," you in part lay out why guaranteed universal health care is needed now more than ever. you say the absurdity and cruel ity of our employer based

private health care system should be apparent to all as tens of millions of americans are losing their jobs and income as a result of the pandemic, many of them also losing their health insurance. this is what happens when health care is seen as an employee benefit, not a guaranteed right. you and i have had this conversation before. it didn't have to be this way. we are one of the only countries in the world certainly of the developed countries in which your ability to be covered for health care, for medical care is dependent on your employment. it's hard for people to get their head around the fact that it doesn't actually have to be that way, and it isn't for most people. >> please, i hope that the viewers understand as you've just indicated, we are the only major country on earth not to provide health care to all people as a right, as opposed to an employee benefit. 50 miles away from where i'm talking to you right now as you well know is canada. somehow or another in canada, they managed to provide health care to every man, woman and child as a right spending about

half as much per capita as we do. and if there's anything that the american people are now learning is how absurd, how irrational it is to have your health care tied to your job because when you lose your job, you lose your health care. that's why we have got to fight in my view for a medicare for all single payor system. it will cost the average american substantially less than they are paying today and cover all of us in a comprehensive manner with freedom of choice for the doctor or hospital you want to go to. >> you and i have talked about this for a long time. i come from canada, i grew up in a system in which it was a single payor system, and i've seen it work. i've seen the nonsense that people talk about it down here about death panels and people dying in the waiting room at hospitals. it's not really true. the line ups of americans coming to the united states to get health care is not true either. given that you are not the candidate right now, i know you're staying in the race, but given that you're not likely to be the democratic nominee and

given that joe biden hasn't fully endorsed this idea, and given that donald trump and republican senators aren't endorsing the idea, what's your best outcome right now in your mission to try and get people to embrace this? >> well, my best outcome is to go forward in the direction of medicare for all, but not do it perhaps as quickly as i would want? for example, ali, in my view if joe biden said tomorrow that every american 55 years of age or older would be eligible for medicare, i think that would be enormously popular and enormously effective policy program. second of all, in a simple way, you know, one of the many problems of our current dysfunctional system is not only its cost, not only the people who don't have health insurance or they're underinsured, it is the incredible complexity of the system. you got to fill out a million forms in order to get anything,

and at least what we should do is lower the eligibility age for medicare from 65 to 55 and cover all of the children in this country, and then we can figure out what i say that we can expand and improve the aca. those are some of the things that joe biden can do without embracing a full medicare for all concept. >> senator, stay with me for a second. we're going to take a quick break and get into the second part of our discussion, which is about the economy, how to rebuild it in the midst of this crisis. you're watching "velshi" on msnbc. g "velshi" on msnbc. nice. way more unique fixtures and tiles. pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice! on any budget, with free shipping.

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welcome back, senator bernie sanders is my guest. senator, i want to turn now to the other glaring issue that america is facing, and that is of course the economy. in the current situation that we are in, it gives us a unique opportunity to change our system

and fix it. now, given the current political climate, what are the things that you think we should be saying to ourselves given that we're going to spend a lot of money and given that it's a really heavy lift, what should we change structurally now and for the long-term? >> rolook, we have to recognize the severity of the crisis. just in my own state of vermont just the other day, we brought food up to a low income part of the state and far more people came out to get that food than had been thought. this is true all over the country. we have a nation today, ali, where half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. what happens when those paychecks stop? and i'll tell you what happens. your family goes hungry. so i think the lesson to be learned is number one, right now in the next major piece of legislation everybody in this country has got to feel assured they're going to get their basic necessities, food, rent, mortgage payment, taken care of, and we have to do it in an

implementation way, which is as simple and efficient as possible. >> all right, so you've helped put forth legislation called the payroll security act, in which the government would help fund a company's payroll costs for workers who are not able to work up to $90,000 per worker for six months. now, that's something that you've seen germany, denmark try a version of, the uk's implemented a similar scheme. to some degree we've tried that with the airlines, right? it's sort of worked a little bit where we've given some money to the airlines as a grant to say as long as you keep your people on the payroll, you take this money and you don't have to pay it back. what's the status of your bill and how does it compare to these various efforts? >> we have five sponsors. elizabeth warren and amy klobuchar are also on it. i think we'll get more sponsors as we proceed. the beauty of this program is its simplicity.

what it says is that we will continue you on your -- getting your paycheck and your relationship to your employer in a way that other approaches do not. and as you indicated, we have already done this for 2 million workers in the airline industry who are now getting their regular paycheck, whether they're working or not. the advantage of that is that it also covers health care. people are getting not only their paycheck but their health care from the private sector as well, and it is a program much more easily implemented than what you have right now as people have to go on unemployment and that takes forever. some people get decent unemployment benefits, some don't. then you've got to go on medicaid to get your health care. some states do it well, many states do not. it is a simple, efficient way, more efficient way at least, to make sure that working people in this country are able to

maintain their standard of living during this crisis. >> right, and for people who are worried about it, i just want to point out the thing that you underscored. we have done it with the airlines. it's not some weird wacky idea. we're actually doing it so we have an example of how to grow from there. let's look longer taeerm, when do reopen the country on a larger scale, what's the longer term rebuild? people have said this is the most influential and impactful thing that's happened since world war ii. do we need big programs like a wpa style program to get people back to work or to build our infrastructure? what's the long-term outcome of this? >> well, ali, i would hope in the midst of this unprecedented economic and health care crisis, the american people do a lot of thinking, a, about where we are today, how we got here, and b, where we want to go as a nation. and i think that fundamental rethinking should be that the

function of american society should not be for a handful of people to become multibillionaires while so many of our people are struggling just to put food on the table. that we must create a more just and egalitarian society. what does that mean? it means that the minimum wage in this country has got to be a living wage. it means that we should, in fact, given the fact there's so much work to be done in this country from child care to infrastructure to health care, that we must guarantee every american who is able to work a decent paying job. it means that health care is a human right, not an employee benefit. it means that we tackle the great crises facing our country, which is not only public health in terms of this pandemic, it is climate change in the years to come. so the goal here has got to say, okay, we cannot sustain or tolerate a system where three people on top own more wealth than the bottom half. we've got to create a nation in

which all of our people have health care, have educational opportunity, have decent paying jobs, have secure and dignified retirements. that is the vision that we need for this country, and i would hope that having pulled that band-aid off of the current economy where we see so much economic insecurity and misery that people will think about a new way forward. >> senator, earlier this week, you and your colleagues in the senate passed unanimously $484 billion bill that the president has now signed. this is money to go to small businesses and hospitals, but we've learned that you're talking about a more equal and egalitarian society, we don't even have that amongst businesses. what we saw is that businesses that have attorneys and cfos and accountants on retainer who were able to file the paperwork for the paychecks protection program got it and someone around the corner, mike bodega doesn't have a relationship with the

accountant or the banks or any of those things and didn't get it. >> you're absolutely right. that is hopefully what this new bill is going to address. substantial sums of money in the new bill goes to those small businesses -- and i mean small businesses who don't have the lawyers and the accountants, who don't know the local banker -- but we want to make sure that those businesses who in many cases are the backbones of their community, are able to access the federal grants. >> senator, thanks as always for joining me. senator bernie sanders of vermont, we'll talk again soon, thank you, sir. >> thank you very much. all right, we're seeing some amazing things as a result of this pandemic lockdown. look at this, jelly fish in the clear waters of the venice canals. our air is also cleaner than we have seen in our lifetime. it's a good sign for climate change, but experts warn it likely won't stick. that's next on "velshi." so you only pay for what you need!

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the impact of billions of people staying home due to the coronavirus is leading to some amazing changes in the vier environment. factories shutting down, fewer cars on the road leading to a purification of the air that we breathe. in india, a pause in pollution offering a view of the snow capped himalayas that has not been visible in decades, in venice, the water sparkling clear with sea life.

as a society, can we use this unintended moment to learn and change direction moving forward? here's my colleague nbc's cal perry with more. >> what we have done together over the past few months has been nothing short of remarkable. billions are home, our metropolises are empty, the very transportation hubs many point to as poison for our planet are now vacant, so too our centers of commerce are silent. if you're looking for hope that a more balanced relationship with our planet is possible, these actions have made an immediate and discernible difference. satellite images from the european space agency show air pollution has subsided in cities across europe. madrid, rome, and paris all saw significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide, decreases of up to 45% in some places. >> if the economy stays slow, transport stays down, you know, we could see a drop in carbon dioxide emissions this year of

5% or more. and that may not sound like that much, but we've never seen that in the past 75 years. >> reporter: air travel around the world has evaporated. last year tsa handled an average of 2.5 million passengers a day in america. this month it's 90,000 a day. crude oil prices have crashed. we've literally extracted from the earth more than we can use or can store. oil prices on monday were considerably cheaper than hand sanitizer. the reality is, as quickly as we flipped the switch off, we will likely flip it back on. >> it's not going to last that long, so as soon as everybody gets back to normal, these emissions are going to start unless we decide to do something different. >> crude oil prices on monday were way cheaper than hand sanitizer, $37 a barrel negative. that was nbc news correspondent my friend cal perry reporting from london. as cal alluded to on monday,

those prices entered negative territory for the first time ever. the price per barrel trading well below zero, and since then, oil markets have rebounded some, but they're still trading at about a third the level they were at in january. now, normally, this type of a drop in oil prices might indicate a boon of sorts for consumers. it's like a tax cut, right? but under the current circumstances it causes a few major issues. first of all, it doesn't matter because a whole bunch of people are not driving so cheap gas doesn't necessarily help, but once we start driving, the fact that gas is so cheap actually undercuts efforts to bring about climate change. conversely, the lack of demand in the oil industry, particularly in a place like the united states which is a major oil producer, puts jobs associated with the energy sector in greater jeopardy. two sides, three sides, four sides of a coin. joining me now emily at kin, founder and host of a remarkable podcast heated, and steve levine is the editor at large for

"medium." these two sort of cover the gamut of energy and the impact that it has. steve's the author of a book called "the oil and the glory: the pursuit of empire and fortune on the kas pcaspian sea" for people like you who think about a carbon neutral, carbon negative future, it wasn't designed around the stopping of all of the economy? >> no, and i really want to kind of take a second to just squash the narrative that coronavirus is some sort of a means to an end to solve climate change. it's not. it's an illusion to a means to an end, but it's one that sort of perpetuates the false idea that only way to reduce carbon emissions and solve climate change is through economic destruction and death, and that's just not the case. you know, solving climate change isn't just about this concept of

reducing co2 emissions and becoming carbon neutral, it's the concept of reducing co2 emissions and becoming carbon neutral so we don't have economic destruction and so that millions of people don't die. that's what the climate crisis is. if we're reducing co2 emissions through a process like a virus that's killing millions of people, then we're not really solving the climate crisis. fortunately, every actual plan to solve the climate crisis is exactly the opposite. when we're planning to solve the climate crisis, we're planning to add millions of jobs to the economy. we're planning to save lives, which also helps the economy. there are ways to do this that doesn't look -- that doesn't do exactly the same thing that climate change does. so i just -- i really am not a fan of this narrative that the planet is healing because we are part of the planet. humans are part of the planet. so if a virus is killing us, then the planet's not healing.

>> steve, let's talk about what emily was just talking about with jobs. one of the issues with oil falling negative or frankly even at $25 a barrel or $20 a barrel, in fact, in america what you've written about extensively is fracking, where america has found its fortune, and you can't frack with oil at 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, $45 really even, so what's this doing to jobs in the energy sector? >> well, the -- right now we're not seeing yet the fallout that's probably about to come. the lens to look at really is 2015, 2016, the last time we were in this situation and hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost on the oil patch, and we came to understand just how big oil is in the market.

it's not just the men and women who work on the oil rigs and in the offices but all those associated businesses that are suppliers and so on. you know, the way the economy works, it shaved off gdp growth around the world. it sent the world into a recession. because we're in a recession anyway, what's going on with oil is almost invisible in the big picture, but it definitely is part of the picture we're seeing of a big drop of jobs on the market. but i think the most important thing that look at with the drop of oil prices, with the drop of demand and supply is the

politics. part of it is, yes, we're seeing cleaner air. we're seeing cleaner water. when this is all over in a year or two, there's a real question in places like beijing, delhi, jakarta, the most polluted places in the world, do they want to go back to murky, thick air and thick water? i think we could see a very different global political situation. the other thing is the world for the united states was much different from now just one month ago. we were in the driver seat producing 13 million barrels of oil a day. that's the largest on the market. we had shed our reliance on saudi arabia, on opec, on russia. now we're back in that same place. it's highly unlikely that we're going to return to those volumes

anytime soon. >> emily, when oil is $4 a gallon, you can sort of get a whole bunch of people who otherwise are not consumed by climate change to say, yeah, you know what? i'll buy a more efficient car or i'll find some other way around it. with oil under a dollar a gallon, does it hurt the movement to push people off of fossil fuels? >> i think what hurts the movement more is to keep, honestly, on the narrative that this is some kind of -- that this is some kind of beneficial thing. what i see -- what i've been seeing now in the last couple of days is how the fossil fuel industry and its sort of political allies on the right have been using the narrative that have we -- that people saying, you know, it's -- the climate is healing or something like that means that the movement wants to sacrifice our

livelihoods for the planet. so when i think it hurts the movement to try and push people off fossil fuels using the virus as some sort of beneficial thing. i think that's what really hurts because it's just false. it's an actual false idea that anyone who wants to solve climate change wants economic destruction to be the side effe effect, if that makes sense. >> thank you to both of you, emily atkin is the founder and host of the heated podcast, steve levine is the editor at large of "medium" and the awe thr of "the oil and the glory." these devastating numbers are forcing policymakers to choose between human health and the health of the economy. kevin hassett joins me next. he's part of president trump's coronavirus economic task force. n us, you're much tougher

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the effect of the coronavirus on the economy has been massive. much of the global economy has come to a complete halt. millions of people are filing for unemployment benefits and lining up for food banks. this year alone, including the period before the pandemic this year, 28.9 million people have filed for unemployment insurance, eclipsing the full-year totals of every year on record except 1982 and 2009. we're not even in may yet. the number is so astounding that the director of economic research from indeed, an employment search engine, told "the washington post" the numbers are so large and covers such a short amount of time is that your first reaction is they are a typo. there are disagreements on every side about the best course of action. policymakers and public health officials are having to weigh the health effects versus the economic effects and some of that guidance will come from the president and his newly established economic task force. the president's former council of economic adviser's chairman and long-time conservative

economist kevin hassett made his return to the white house. kevin joins me now. good to see you my old friend. >> it's nice to be back. >> you have come back at quite a time for the nation. 26.5 million people filing for first time unemployment benefits in five weeks. we've seen nearly until now we had had 113 consecutive months of job growth. now, after the last recession, kevin, it took about four years to recover the not even 9 million jobs that were lost in that recession and we thought it was a big deal. what is the recover ki now look like to you? >> i think you're exactly right to put it in the context of the great recession and the way i like to think about it is that you know, we're looking at many multiples of job declines and right now every ten days or so we're losing as many jobs as we lost during the great recession back in 2008 and you remember back then there was a debate

where reinhart was saying it will take ten years to recover so we're looking at a shock of many multiples of that t. we're in black swan land of what's going to happen next in the economy and i think what we're doing right now is -- they're falling it phase one, phase two, phase three, we're building a bridge to the other shore and what we're going to have to do is try to make it so we can prosper when we get to the other shore and the virus is going to decide how long the trip is. and so it's absolutely the heaviest lift, the most remarkable shock that i've ever seen and it's time for everybody to work together and come up with a plan that when we get to the other shore that we can prosper again because it's going to be a very, very big challenge. >> you know, you look back to 2007, median wages were about $59,000 and it did actually take us about ten years to eat up all that extra capacity, all those people who didn't have jobs to the point that we got to a lower

unemployment rate but it was a ten-year recovery. the market recovered faster but for people and their wages it took ten years. is there some likelihood that it takes us less than ten years to recover from this? >> yeah, i think there's a strong likelihood but it's going to defend very much on what we do next. if we look at the great depression, that's going to be the last time we saw unemployment rates that we're about to see, most economyists think it was prolonged. the feds keeping interest rates too high. hoover jacked tax rates way up. kind of the opposite of what we think you should do now and looking back at the shovel ready projects and the policy decisions that were made at the great recession that a lot of people agree on both sides of the aisle that that bill could have been better and so i think we've learned a lot about what policies work and what don't and so i think we're not going to

make the big policy mistakes of the great depression and i think we'll improve upon the policies of the great recession and there's a chance we might recover quicker than you might expect. this is the biggest shock that any economist have ever seen and you and i would talk about like what's the tax effects going to be from the tax cuts and i think you know, we were pretty close. we just about got it and it was a small shock. we've got lots of models that tell us what happens when you have a small shock in taxes up or down. this is a giant shock. there's just no experience for this and so you know, it's really going to be an incredible challenge for us. but what we have to do is we have to, you know, take big policy -- make big policy choices but then what we have to do is we have to monitor closely what's going on and be ready to fix things and turn on a dime and so on. that's a very, very heavy political challenge. we're not going to get it right in phase four. >> let me ask you about

unemployment. you brought up to great depression. before we went into this coronavirus we were at 3.5%. the great recession we got to 10%. the congressional budget office calls it 14%. their private sector economists talk about 15% and the depression was about 24%. where do you think we're going to end up? >> i think that my best guess and you know, i never duck questions. you ask me factual questions i give you a factual answer and this is based on my own best analysis is that the first quarter gdp numbers is going to be minus 8% and the second quarter is going to be, you know, a negative number that's three times that big in terms of gdp growth. i think the unemployment rate right now when i scratch it together i'm looking at numbers north of 16% for the next job support. and so we really have seen, you know, a massive increase in unemployment insurance claims

and the other thing that we're watching closely in addition not to pile the bad news on right now is that if we didn't have this ppe, the loans to small businesses, then given the amount of claims we've seen we'd expect about a million small business failures and so i think we're not going to have that because we've made a, you know, a very smart policy which get money to those guys. >> this is where i wanted to go with you. let me ask you about this. jp morgan put out a study. small businesses have less than a month of cash buffer, 25 have less than 13 days. 25% have more than two months. we ran out of the first $250 billion from ppe in two weeks. we've now added -- sorry $350 billion. we've added more to it now. do you think we're anywhere close where we need to be? i had a guest who said we need 1 to $1.5 trillion to small

business because that's where jobs get kreuated in this country. >> it's worked very well. they've made a whole bunch of loans that have helped people survive this difficult time where the economy has just shut down and how much money we need eventually is going to just depend on when the virus, you know, is quiet enough that everybody can get back to work and hopefully that will be sometime soon but i think that you know, congress has shown an appetite to keep making loans to help people you know, get to that other shore. i think that the image i kind of have in my mind is we're making a pontoon bridge to other shore and we're throwing pontoons down but it's foggy and we don't know where the shore is and we're hoping we get there soon. i think it's nice to see that there's some states that have started to open up. one of the things i've noticed in the data that you've probably noticed too, is the economic harm is really kind of uncorrelated with the location of the disease in the sense that unemployment insurance claims have skyrocketed all across the country and they're not really

corelated in any way where the disease happens toe be. that's because the federal government has shut down every state's economy by suggested there is some opportunities now as governors see what's going on to get the economy going again in places that don't have so much disease. >> good to see you. thank you for joining me. senior advisor to the president. we'll talk again soon. >> coming up on a.m. joy, california senator and biden vp short list kamala harris. kamals

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