>> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. this sunday reopening america. >> americans are looking forward to safe and rapid reopening of our country. >> president trump ending the socially distancing guidelines. >> they will be phasing out because now the governors are doing it. >> americans desperate to get to work. >> nobody has made money two months and ready to get in here and make money. >> they are urging caution. >> hopefully, everybody does it according to the guidelines for opening america forward again. when we take a step forward, we don't want to take a step back. >> new hope for a covid-19 treatment.

>> the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recover. >> how long until we have a treatment or a vaccine? i'll to sir john bell from oxford university, where a promising vaccine study is well under way. also, declaring victory? >> i think when you ask how did we do? i think they with a spectacular job! >> reporter: with more than 60,000 dead and 30 million out of work, is the trump administration risking its own "mission accomplished" moment? and pole vault. joe biden takes the lead in the battleground states but calls are calling for investigation into his accuser tara reade. here is a look at my upcoming guests. welcome to sunday.

it's "meet the press" and our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. it was on january 6th that the cdc first issued a travel notice for wuhan, china. consider what has happened in less than four months' time. more than 1.1 million confirmed cases of covid-19 have been diagnosed in the u.s. and more than 66,000 americans have died. the american economy shrunk by nearly 5% in the first quarter with the worst yet to come, and some 30 million americans have filed for unemployment benefits just in the past six weeks. those are the sobering numbers, but this has not been like other crises. think 9/11, oklahoma city, even the challenger accident. instead of being united in grief, much of america is divided by politics. we see it in the anti-social distancing protests in states extending stay-at-home guidelines. we see it in a gallup poll that

finds 44% of republicans would be willing to return to normal activities now with no restrictions while only 4% of democrats say the same thing. we see it in vice president pence not wearing a face mask at the mayo clinic where it's the rule. we can even see it in the "wall street journal" report that the trump campaign has ordered red trump branded face masks for supporters. it all prompted this statement yesterday from former president george w. bush. in the final analysis, we're not partisan combatants, we're human beings, equally vulnerable and equal in the eye of god. much of that good news is obscured by the intensifying debate of how to open the country. >> we're going to open safely and quickly i hope. >> the president is pressing states to end stay-at-home orders, and by tomorrow, 33

states will have begun the process of at least partial reopening. after federal social distancing guidelines expired on thursday. >> mother's day is coming up. your mama told you to wash your hands and cover your nose and mouth if you cough. as long as we do those simple things and use common sense, we ought to be just fine. >> they did misleading pictures acting like, you know, this was like lollapalooza on the beach. has there been some type of major outbreak? no. >> in michigan. >> swastikas and confederate flags, nooses and automatic rifles do not represent who we are as michiganders. nothing i want more than to just flip a switch and return to normal. but that's not how it's going to work. unfortunately. >> on tuesday, the president promised to meet the testing benchmark set by a harvard study. >> you're saying you're confident you can surpass 5 million tests per day? is that -- >> we're going to be there very soon. >> on wednesday, he walked that back. >> i didn't say it, but somebody came out with a report saying 5

million. i think that was from the harvard report. but we are going to be there at a certain point. >> even so, the president and his political aides are trying to recast the federal response to the pandemic as a success story. >> we did all the right moves. >> i think we did a spectacular job. >> we have saved thousands and thousands of lives. i can even make that, if you want, hundreds of thousands of lives. >> the government, federal government, rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. >> the language is nothing new. for month, as the death toll has risen, the president has declared in some form or another mission accomplished. >> when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we have done. as we near the end of our historic battle with the invisible enemy. >> we can begin the next front in our war, which we're calling opening up america again. >> back in late february, you

predicted that the number of cases would go down to zero. how did we get from your prediction of zero to 1 million? >> well, it will go down to zero ultimately. >> president's own public health experts warn against reopening too quickly. >> you can't just leap over things and get into a situation where you're really tempting a rebound. >> but, perhaps motivated by the political calendar, the white house is presenting a rosier timeline. >> early summer, we could be in a much better place as a nation. >> may is the transition month, may and june probably. >> by june, a lot of the country should be back to normal. >> joining me now is dr. tom inglesby, the director add the for for health security at the johns hopkins bloomberg school of health. welcome to "meet the press." let me start with a simple question. 33 states are doing this. we noted that 18 states have hit their one-day case total high of those 33 in the last two weeks.

so technically not meeting those phase one metrics. are we ready to be doing this as a country? >> i think we need to be going forward very cautiously. i think if you look at the overall country numbers, we're about 200,000 new cases a week at this point. and in the last month, we have had something on the order of 60,000 deaths. so most of the illness and death has occurred over the last 30 days. so overall as a country, we still have long way to go. but the states are in very different places, and some states, a small minority of states, are beginning to get closer to the white house metrics of two weeks decline, and so in those places, if they have other capabilities in place, iable to rapidly isolate and trace the contacts of patients with covid, if they're able to diagnose very widely everybody who has symptoms of covid, not just the sick people, but everybody, then those states would be the places where it would be least risky to go ahead and begin to reopen.

>> are we -- do we not have the testing capacity right now to give the states the security they have of making these decisions? how much is this somewhat guesswork because of our lack of surveillance capabilities when it comes to where the virus is in many of these places? >> i think there still is a lot of uncertainty, but there is a range of diagnostic testing capability across the country, and you can tell that in the percent of persons who are positive. in some states, they're testing so many people that the percent of people who are positive is very low, and that's a good number. in other places, the percent of people testing is very high, and that's worrisome. so it depends on where you are in the country in terms of access to testing, the operations around testing, and it's like a patchwork across the country.

>> is there a way, when were you going to know whether this is a mistake or not? is it basically waiting the next two to four weeks in the incubation periods? >> yeah. for this disease, it's going to take about two weeks, two to three weeks for us to begin to see trends that come out of the changes in social distancing. so a measure taken this morning, you probably won't see a change in hospitalization rates or icu capacity until two or three weeks from now. so that's the nature of the disease. it's going to take a little time for things to get into the system. >> what is something that these state health officials don't have access to data wise that you wish they did before making these decisions? >> i think we should -- in the coming weeks and months, we need to get a much better handle on the number of mild and moderate cases of disease that we have. the good news is that many, many people do not get seriously ill with this disease. but the bad news is that we're

not capturing those people in terms of numbers for the country and if we don't know who they are, then we can't break their chains of transmission. we can't isolate them, we can't quarantine their contacts. so we need to know much more about the mild and moderate illnesses around the country, and that will and with more diagnostic testing. >> i want to ask you something that somebody wrote about the cdc. it was i think a colleague of yours at johns hopkins, no, excuse me, at harvard. but it was sort of the odd lacking of missing data that the cdc normally tracks. he said if you wanted to find out how many people had tuberculosis in this country in the last year, ask the cdc. you want to know about health care associated infections, ask the cdc, but ask how many covid-19 tests have been done, and the cdc doesn't have an answer. want an update on how many people are being hospitalized, the cdc isn't tracking it.

want to know if social distancing makes a difference? the cdc doesn't know. what is going on? are we missing a huge component of our public health response? >> i think we do need more data, clearly, i certainly agree with the need for the dada the doctor outlined there. i think that we're tracking this epidemic in a different way than we have tracked others. we haven't had this urgent need to understand hospitalizations on a day-to-day, week-to-week base as we have for some of the other things we have confronted before. and we need to get better as a country. if you look at state health department data right now, some states are not reporting their hospitalization data. we live in a federal system. if they're not reporting at a state level, it's hard for the cdc to get that data in real time. we all have to collectively get better. we should all be rising. >> let's get a realistic timeline. next three months, next six months. a lot of people are concerned about the fall. how concerned are you? and is there any way of avoiding a bad fall outcome at this point without either advancements in a

treatment or a vaccine? >> well, before we even get to the fall, i am worried that we will have small waves in various places around the country for the coming months. hopefully, we won't. but as we begin to ease social distancing in various places in the country, this virus is highly transmissible. nothing has changed in the underlying dynamics of this virus. if we stop social distancing altogether tomorrow, we would re-create the conditions that existed in the country in february and march. what we ned to do is continue to our best possible effort, all of the individual efforts we're making around social distancing. staying six feet apart, wearing masks when in public, avoiding large gatherings. to the extent we're able to do that over the next couple months will dictate how we do as states and the country. in the fall, we have an additional challenge, influenza will reappear, and at that

point, covid will be mixed with flu and both will be contributing to hospitalizations and icu beds. so we'll have two concurrent large public health challenges at the same time. i am worried about the uptick in hospitalization rate and more people needing intensive care in the fall, but i'm still -- i don't think people should think that there will be a lull, that just because the summer is coming, we're going to have a lull before the fall. it would be wonderful if that happens, but i don't think we should at all assume that at this point given the nature of this virus. >> and i'm going to leave it there because i think that's the single most important takeaway viewers need to have. don't call it a lull. it's unlikely we're going to have a lull in the summer. dr. inglesby, thanks for starting us off with your expertise on this. much appreciated. >> thanks for having me, chuck. >> joining me now are two state officials central to making decisions about when and how

their states should reopen. dr. scott harris is the state health official officer for the alabama department of health, and dr. joneigh khaldun. thank you both for joining, and so, i want to start with you, dr. harris, since alabama's doing a lilt more opening right now than michigan, although compared to some of your southern neighbors, i would argue you guys are being a bit more cautious than others. but tell me the metrics you used that gave you the confidence to advise the governor at beginning some phased in reopenings. >> sure, so we have followed a number of metrics like i think most states have, including the white house plan for reopening. the gaining criteria i'm sure you have talked about many times on the show. they're certainly part of the things we have considered. we have not fully satisfied all of those criteria, but we felt good about our numbers, felt good about our hospital

capacity. what our governor chose to do is make a very measured step, a very gradual reopening of certain types of businesses. we did not proceed to a full phase one reopening like was in the white house plan. things like entertainment venues and gyms and in-person dining, we have not chosen to do that so far, but we think this is just a gradual first step. >> what data are you missing, dr. harris, that you wish you had but whether it's capacity or other reasons you don't have. >> there are a number of things. clearly, we would like to make sure we're testing to the level we would like. we probably have a total amount of laboratory bench capacity to do the number of tests that we would like to do, but those tests are really unevenly distributed throughout the state. if you're in a bigger, more urbanized part of our state like jefferson county where birmingham is located or madison county where huntsville is

located, you could probably have really good access to testing wherever you like, but in some of the more rural parts of the state, we're able to get testing done, but there are definitely barriers for people to obtain that, particularly if they have to find transportation or don't have ready access to a health care provider. we have also been surprised to find we have not necessarily gotten negative test results reported to us. it's hard to come up with a good denominator, so we have reached out to all of the labs who report to us, but many of them are out of state, and it's just difficult to get all that information. >> dr. khaldun, let me ask the question sort of slightly different. what are you seeing in your state that makes you uncomfortable advising the governor to begin even a partial phase one reopening? >> yeah, so here in the state of michigan, we have over 43,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths. and so we are actually third in the country when it comes to states and the number of deaths. while we have seen certainly

significant improvements over the past several weeks, our hospitals were over capacity, particularly in the southeast area of the state several weeks ago. we're still having parts of the state that are seeing an increase in the rate of rise of cases and we know their hospital capacity is not what it should be. we have to get our testing up, as i know people across the country are working on. while we're cautiously optimistic, we still think we need to be very careful. >> all right, but dr. khaldun, what do you say to those in the state who are going, you know what, yes, southeast michigan is being hit hard. are you not comfortable having sort of a let's isolate parts of the state, tougher stay-at-home measures for southeast michigan, let's loosen things up in more rural parts of the state? why are you not there yet? >> so we actually look at this data on a daily basis regionally. so again, we are still seeing, for example, on the western side of the state, that there are actually increases in the rate

of rise of cases. we have several outbreaks there. we also know, again, in some of our rural areas, the number of hospital beds is actually not what it should be. many of our hospitals in our rural areas are actually at capacity. so every part of the state is different. even in southeast, quite frankly, even though we're seeing a decrease in the rate of rise, we're still seeing many cases and many deaths every day. we're going to be working on loosening or dialing up as far as how we're reopening the economy. the governor has actually already started that but we have to do it in an incremental data-driven approach. >> i got to imagine both of you are feeling pressure, whether it's pressure from friends and family tired of the quarantine, pressure from friends of yours who maybe run businesses, or full-on political pressure. dr. khaldun, let me start with you. how have you handled it, and have you been getting -- how have you handled the public blowback, and how do you strike the balance in your own head where you feel you're giving

full-on medical advice versus let me give you the best medical advice i can for the policy you want to implement the possibly you want? >> this is not personal. people hire me to give medical and public health advise and that's what i do. i talk to the governor and other folks in the governor's office on a regular basis to tell them the facts. these are the number of tests we're currently doing. this is where we want to be. this is what's going on with our hospitals. again, if we don't do well with these social distancing measures, more people will die, and that is just the facts. >> dr. harris, how have you -- how much have you felt that pressure? >> i mean, obviously, it's significant, as you know. there are many alabamans that just don't have the option of making a living under certain health orders. we have to find a way to strike the right balance there. i think our governor has done a great job of trying to balance

the health of the economy with the health of average alabamans. my job in public health is to give her the best public health information i can. we present the data on just as dr. khaldun said, on how many cases we have and what our deaths look like. i think alabama has been a little bit different. you know, every state is different, and there are 51 different plans for reopening, i guess, because we're all trying to look at the data and make our own decisions with the best information we have about how to proceed. but there are people who are certainly want to maintain their livelihoods, their businesses, and we have to balance that with keeping everyone safe and healthy as much as possible. >> dr. harris, are you concerned that georgia has been more aggressive, and for instance, senator doug jones in alabama has encouraged alabamans to be careful traveling to georgia. >> it's obviously, we look at that very closely. you know, there are certainly some good aspects about having every state having its own plan because every state is a little different, but clearly, all states affect the others.

so we're watching that very closely. you know, what we have done in alabama, i think, is, again, have the sort of measured approach. and i think what i have heard many states say, and what our governor has certainly said, is that these aren't steps forward that are just going to ratchet forward and can never come back. these are gradual steps. and we certainly, you know, will consider dialing things back if we see an increase in cases. so i think that's the approach that probably all states would want to take. we see where we are after changes are made, and then make changes if necessary. >> dr. khaldun in michigan. dr. harris in alabama. thank you both for sharing your expertise and sort of the regional observations that you both can share with the country. good luck and stay healthy out there. >> thank you. when we come back, the race for a coronavirus vaccine. i'm going to talk to a professor of medicine at oxford university in the uk, where they have gotten a head start in testing a

vaccine that they believe is showing real promise. that is next.

welcome back welcome back. the race for a coronavirus vaccine is on. and nowhere is there more optimism or perhaps progress than at oxford university. they're testing a vaccine that has shown success in rhesus monkeys. what's more, they're ahead of competitors because earlier testing of the vaccine for other viruses has shown it to be safe in people, so human testing can begin much sooner. joining mow now is sir john bell, the regius professor of medicine at oxford university and he's going to tell us more about this. welcome to "meet the press," sir bell. let me start with this question. one of your colleagues used the percentage of 80% chance that this vaccine is at least somewhat successful in the next year. are you that optimistic?

and are you at all concerned our optimism around the world for what you guys are doing has gotten a bit overexuberant? >> yeah, so obviously, people who have dedicated their careers to this kind of a problem have a tendency to get excited about the prospects because the prospects are pretty good. i certainly wouldn't put the possibility at 80%. that's a pretty big number. but we're gradually reeling it in bit by bit, and as every day goes by, the likelihood of success goes up. >> you're in the midst of you want to start some human trials. one of your potential hurdles is the lack of outbreaks, right? in order to do this, you need to try your next set of trials. do you know when you're going to be able to do this? and where are you looking? are you looking at places like india?

where are you looking to do these trials? >> so, we have still got lots of disease in the uk. we probably have something in the order of 15,000 to 20,000 transmissions a day in the uk, so there's no shortage of disease here. and we'll push -- we have already started clinical trials, so we have already given the vaccine to about 1,000 people. and we're going to grow that pretty rapidly. we have consolidated the phase one and two programs because we are pretty confident that the vector itself is safe, because it's been used in about 5,000 people already up to now. so that's allowed us to really accelerate the phase one program, and we hope that there would be enough disease that we would get evidence that the vaccine has efficacy by the beginning of june. >> what's the likelihood that if this fails as a vaccine, there will be something that is usable as a therapeutic?

and i'm just wondering, in the reverse, as we hear good news about, for instance, remdesivir, on its ability as a therapeutic, how helpful is that in the development of the vaccine? >> so probably it's helpful for sure, it's probably not helpful in the development of the vaccine. i don't think it really -- it works by a completely different mechanism. it works on -- >> gotcha. >> -- the rna preliminaries which is completely different replication method in the virus. we're stimulating the immune response to the virus, which is at the other end of the therapeutic options that we've got. so the two are probably not connected. but both could be helpful steps to try to get the virus under control. >> there's been some concern that you guys are going too fast, that -- and it's not just you. it's all of the labs that are

attempting to get a vaccine. that there's such pressure coming from national governments that some safety protocols will be overlooked. i'm sure you, like others, are claiming you're meeting all the protocols, but there has to be some concern that the pressure is going to create gaps on this. what are you doing to try to prevent that? >> yeah, so you're absolutely right. it's a big issue for us, is trying to be sure that we do this quickly, but we don't miss out any of the key safety steps. i think we've got reason to believe that the efficacy, the efficacy of the vaccine in terms of generating strong antibody responses is probably going to be okay. the real question is whether the safety profile is going to be fine. so that's actually the main focus of the clinical studies. we did all of the preclinical work you would expect anybody to do, and although some companies have left out, for example,

primate studies, they haven't done as many preclinical studies as we have, we did all of them. we did mouse, ferret, primate. we wanted to get a good read on what's going on. and now we're being very careful in the clinic to try to monitor exactly what's happening. but you know, that doesn't mean there won't be safety signals because there may well be and we'll be on alert to see if we can see them. >> when is the next time you will find out if this is not going to work? you know, there's these different moments where you'll find out, oh, we can go to a next step. when will you know if this isn't going to be a successful vaccine effort? >> yeah, so i think there will be primate data released this week. that will be an important milestone. and then we'll have to wait until there's enough incident disease in the phase two cohort, which has been vaccinated now to see whether we have largely

eliminated the disease in those vaccinated with this vaccine as opposed to the placebo. that's really the test. that's what we'll probably get a signal based on current levels of the disease, we'll probably get a signal in early june. we're ready to move trials overseas if the disease peters out in the uk, so we have sites already in play in other bits of the world where it's active. we're pretty sure we'll get a signal by june of about whether this works or not. >> and finally, do you have a sense of if this will be a one-time vaccine or something closer to the flu where perhaps we have to have a different vaccine due to a mutation every year? >> yeah, so coronavirus doesn't mutate at the pace of flu. and as a result, i suspect we may need to have relatively regular vaccinations against

coronavirus going into the future. that, of course, remains to be seen, but that's my bet at the moment, this is likely to be a seasonal coronavirus vaccine. >> sir john bell at oxford, the whole world is rooting for you. thanks for coming on. >> thanks so much. take care. when we come back, finding a vaccine is one thing. fixing our economy is another gargantuan challenge. >> as we go to break, look up in the sky. it's the navy's blue angels and the air force's thunderbirds flying around the country in honor of the nation's health care workers.

welcome back. the panel is with us from their remote locations. nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt. former congressional budget director and current president of the american action forum, douglas holtz-eakin, and dr. nahid bhadelia. we have done a on the vaccine, on the reopening. but let's talk about the economy. just give us your big picture sense. you hear about 2008, you hear about the great depression. how would you describe where

we're at right now, and where you think we're realistically headed? >> well, chuck, we had some horrific economic data. we saw the largest one-month decline in consumer confidence, the largest one-month decline in consumer spending. we had 30 million people apply for unemployment insurance in the past six weeks. i think it's fair to expect that over the months of april, may, and june, we'll see national income decline by 10%. the worst year in the great depression was 12%. we're going to experience that this spring. >> do you think, doug, i want to stick with you for a minute. do you think the ideas that have been perkulating in congress left and right in general have been meeting the moment or do you feel as if in some ways members of congress haven't fully grasped how big and how gargantuan this is? >> i think congress deserves credit for moving quickly, moving dramatically. if you think about what's going on, we're losing 10% of national income.

the so-called cares act borrows 10% of national income and is trying to distribute it to americans in the form of unemployment insurance, loans to businesses, grants to businesses, checks. that's however just a band-aid. the real work has to be to get the economy to stop falling. we cannot do that continuously, so we have to get the economy moving again. there, you're add the tough intersection of the public health mission, which is the primary objective, also the most important economic policy. >> right, and dr. bhadelia, i feel like this is the challenge you in the public health community and health officials in general, there is life and livelihood, and that balance, and what do you fear from that the pressure public health officials are going to be feeling about reopening the economy, what do you fear that's going to lead to? >> chuck, you heard tom inglesby

talk about the fact the conditions haven't changed from when we put the lockdown into place, which means reopening is this balance of restarting the economy against acceptance of the risk that we will get more infections. and of course, those infections will result in hospitalizations and deaths. when you look at the preparedness of the states, it's kind of a patchwork. so the capacity, the poor capacities in certain terms of testing, dr. inglesby mentioned the fact of how many people you test, and w.h.o. says if you're testing to a point where more than 10% of the people you're testing are still coming back positive, you're not testing enough. of the 33 states, 12 of them have rates above 10%. when you look at icu capacity, of those 33 states, eight of them have already hit their head room for icu capacity. when you talk about contact tracing, there's a hopkins study that says we need 100,000 contact tracers and npr did a study of all of the states, 41 states responded and said we have about 7,600 contact tracers and we're looking to hire 36,000 more. we're not there in terms of capacity or it's a patchwork where some states are potentially doing it better than others. so my fear as it is with a lot of public health folks is

insuring that states meet those capacities before they take the risk of putting particularly the vulnerable among our communities at risk. so nursing homes, prisons, minority communities. >> let me ask you the question this way. over the last two months, in the medical community, what -- have we learned enough and with the news on remdesivir, how much now -- how much capacity has that bought us? how much of an ability that we know there is some best practices that can lessen the time in the hospital or lessen the mortality rate? how comfortable are you getting that we're there where that can allow us to have some more reopenings? >> we're definitely in a better place than we were in some ways. so one part is our testing capacity is better. if you look at the numbers, about a month ago, we were testing ten people, you know, eight to ten people per 1,000, and we're now testing 18 to 19, so that's better. remdesivir is promising in the

fact that it provides you with the proof of concept as dr. fauci said that drugs like it or in itself could help reduce mortality, but we still need a whole other range of drugs such as we need medications that if you're exposed potentially, it keeps you from getting sick. and then from what we know about this disease, you know, we're learning that it's basically making the body attack, uses the body's immune system to basically attack itself. the virus wreaks havoc. and a lot of drugs are still in the works, haven't shown -- are starting to show some promise, but we don't have a slam dunk in helping with that aspect of the disease yet. >> let me move to the politics. kasie hunt, we're going to get in front of the split screen, the senate is coming back, the house isn't. the senate is saying, well, look, we have to tough it out,

essentially. the house is saying it's not safe. it's the divide we're seeing in america in some ways between left and right. >> and chuck, you're even seeing it in who is deciding to wear masks when they come up to capitol hill and who isn't. and you know, this is emerging as the kind of partisan divide that i think if you listen to the experts like those that we have just been talking to, you know, if americans are not all on the same page about engaging in the public health protection measures, it gets a lot harder to get to the point where you can feel confident in reopening, that everybody will remain healthy. and the longer that this goes on

and the sharper those divisions become, the harder the overall mission is. and you know, don't forget, every month that goes by, we're a month closer to a presidential election. and that's going to influence so much of this conversation as well. >> i'm curious, kasie, the whole testing weirdness of the senate. the president said, oh, use this quick testing feature we have been using at the white house, and then mcconnell and pelosi decided not to accept it. what is going on there? >> they don't think that they should be seeing having access to things that regular everyday americans don't have access to. and in that way, the imperative is a little different. my question is, if they do bring the house back, it's different than the senate in that it's 435 people. they are scattered across all corners of this country, all coming back. the risk is very high. will those rank and file members say, this is something that we need in order to be able to function? pelosi and mcconnell are relatively old school in their thinking about things like this. i mean, there was a lot of reluctance in the beginning to even close tours at the capitol, and nancy pelosi was saying we're the captains of the ship.

we are the last to leave. at the end of the day, concerns among her members pushed her to change course on that. >> all right. douglas holtz-eakins with the economy, nahid bhadelia, and kasie hunt on politics. kasie, you're going to stick around. >> when we come back, how attitudes about the pandemic have changed over the last seven weeks. when we started our business

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pick an order, print everything you need, slap the label onto the box, and it's ready to go. our costs for shipping were cut in half. just like that. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get 2 months free. welcome back. data download time. as some states begin to reopen, many americans are trying to adapt to this new normal.

a survey has been asking if americans feel that the worst of the pandemic is behind us or is yet to come. in week one, which was the week starting on march 15th, only 7% of registered voters said the worst was behind us. by week four, beginning april 5th, that number only rose to 11% who felt that way. by week seven, beginning on april 26th, 29%, four times the original number, did believe the worst of this virus is behind us. in week one, more than a third of americans said they were very concerned about their family's financial stability. by week four, that had slipped and is now down to 27% as states begin to reopen some businesses. while americans are feeling likely better about their physical and financial health, they're also increasingly resigned to the fact this is not ending anytime soon. on week one, only a quarter said they expect the pandemic to last six month or more.

that ticked up 11 points by week four. and now, a majority, 56%, believe the pandemic will last six months or more. which is probably why when asked about a return to some pre-covid-19 activities, many say they'll move slowly. in some cases, very slowly. more than 60% of americans who fly regularly said this week that they would wait at least four months before flying again. and 42% of regular air travelers said they would wait even longer, seven months or more. nearly half of those surveyed remained concerned about their health. they seem to agree that coronavirus is difficult to manage, causing pain, and it's not going away anytime soon. when we come back, we're going to turn to politics. joe biden has denied the allegations made by tara reade. has he said enough? that's next. these days staying connected is more important than ever.

so we're working 24/7 to maintain a reliable network, to meet your growing internet needs. we're helping customers who are experiencing financial difficulties stay connected. we're increasing internet speeds for low income families in our internet essentials program. and delivering self-install kits to your door. nos comprometemos a mantenerte conectado. we're committed to keeping you connected. for more information on how you can stay connected, visit xfinity.com/prepare. what do you look for when i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. mhm, yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely.

do you just say yes to everything? hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. now offering zero commissions on online trades. we charge you less so you have more to invest. ♪ welcome back. kasie hunt is still with us. joining us is amy walter, national editor of the cook political report. all righty. let me play one of the bites from joe biden's interview on "morning joe" from friday. here it is. >> would you please go on the record with the american people. did you sexually assault tara reade? >> no. it is not true. i'm saying unequivocally, it never, never happened. and it didn't. it never happened. >> amy walter, "the new york times" is not satisfied with the vice president's answer. in fact, they write, mr. biden's word is insufficient to dispel

the cloud, and the inventory should be strictly limited to information about mrs. reade and by a panel put together by the dnc and foster as much trust in its findings as possible. how much appetite is there in the democratic party to do something as extensive as "the new york times" is outlining? >> not much, chuck. and i think for a lot of republicans and conservatives, the idea that the dnc is going to put together an unbiased panel to look through the documents of joe biden is kind of stretching it. look, chuck, we are in the place where we have been for so much of these last couple years especially in the light of this me too movement about the fight not just over who to believe but the fight over hypocrisy. that's where a lot of this debate is being centered on. democrats, including joe biden, but a lot of democrats and

liberals who held one standard for folks like brett kavanaugh and seem to be holding a different standard for joe biden. this, chuck, reminds me a little bit of the battle we saw in 2016, and quite frankly, we still see today with evangelicals and their support for donald trump. how can you support this personal who is going against the standards you set for somebody else? at the end of the day, this is what voters are left with. not so much who they believe or don't believe but how they battle this cognitive dissidence, and usually partisanship is what breaks the tie. >> and kasie, on social media, it's basically the hypocrisy of the defenders of the party of bill clinton and donald trump. right? that's what every social media debate devolves into, whataboutism on the part of those two gentlemen? >> i think also to amy's point, republicans are focusing on how brett kavanaugh was handled and

how the media handled brett kavanaugh. how democrats talked about brett kavanaugh. they're not talking about donald trump because the reality is that they can't. because the list of accusers that this president has is very long, and you know, each individual accusation has a different set of facts, a different set of claims. in the case of joe biden, there is one, and that claim is now being explored and they're having to grapple with it, but you're right that, you know, this debate has become very muddled and devolved into lobbing charges back and forth. at the end of the day, i think americans who care deeply about this issue and care about women and harassment and changing that culture, at the end of the day, this is going to be a choice between joe biden and donald trump. there are two separate sets of facts there. voters will be able to make up their own minds about that. >> kasie, i think without the piece of paper showing up, but i am curious, how many democrats on capitol hill are empathetic, do you think, quietly, are quietly empathetic with the call by "the new york times" for some formal investigation?

>> chuck, i don't know if there's a huge appetite for that. you talk about shifting the debate into a different sphere, the email question around hillary clinton, that's kind of the first memory that democrats have. and you know, i think behind the scenes, the biden campaign is very much trying to focus on insisting they're not going to get into a situation where it's but her emails. but i do think, you know, democrats want this campaign to be as clean and straightforward as possible, and to extent there are questions about transparency, that's going to be a problem for every democrat, and particularly women democrats. they have been the ones who have had to answer questions about this accusation. nancy pelosi has defended joe biden, kirsten gillibrand as well. the easier the biden campaign can make them in terms of answering our questions in hallways the happier democrats are going to be. >> as difficult as perhaps friday and the weekend has been for joe biden, amy walter, if you just looked at the polls, the last two weeks in particular, i mean, whether it's

a battleground state or a quasi-battleground state, it seems as if it doesn't matter if it's a national poll, a state poll. biden is ahead or on the move everywhere. how much of it do you attribute to just the pandemic and donald trump? and how much of this is democratic rallying around -- democrats rallying a bit around biden? >> yeah, it seems more like the former, chuck, that this is as much about donald trump as anything else. i mean, what you noticed over this last couple of weeks is that, you know, voters are expecting their political leaders to meet the moment. a lot of governors have and you're seeing their approval ratings up in the 70s in some cases, close to 80%. donald trump's are back where they have always been because he met this moment in the same way he meets every moment. it's polarizing, divisive, and putting people back into their political camps. the one thing i will note,

though, chuck, is for as strong as joe biden is looking in those states, and in national polls, what you also see is that president trump hasn't cratered. and his overall vote share, if you look at the matchup between joe biden and donald trump, doesn't match his approval rating in a lot of these states. in other words, he still has room to grow in these states. there's a group of people saying i like the job that the president is doing. i'm not yet quite ready to say i'm going to vote for him. it's easier for trump to getthosis people back. they haven't defected, at least not yet, to joe biden. >> it's a reminder, amy, and something john reese and i talked about yesterday. he's still in his range. his trading range. may be at the low end of his trading range, but he's still sitting in his range. and we know what that means. >> anyway, kasie hunt, amy walter, thank you. that's all we have for today. thank you for watching. thank you for trusting us here at nbc. stay safe. be well. practice social distancing. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

the u.s. death toll from coronavirus now topping 60,000. president trump is insisting that it is safe for states to reopen. plus, new reporting about how some vulnerable republicans are choosing to distance themselves from trump's response to the pandemic. and new details about what joe biden's accuser says could and could not be included in the alleged sexual harassment complaint she says that she made against him.