this is our life now. having saved the world and vanquished tyranny, this is times square on the 75th anniversary of ve day because we're fighting our own battle now. and you have to wonder what would ike or winston or franklin or harry make of us right now? that is our broadcast for this friday night and for this week. have a good weekend. please be well. be safe. we need you back here next week. on behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night from our temporary field headquarters. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy to have you here, especially on a friday night. and for your troubles, as a reward for you being here on a friday night, i would like to thank you for being here by introducing you to warnell vega.

watch this. god bless him. >> hello. my name is warnellvega. i just tested positive for covid-19. i have been in the hospital for about a week and a half, and today i get to go home. i am so excited. when i first got here, trouble breathing, coughing, everything. i'm doing so much better now, and i am happy. thank you to the doctors, the nurses, and for everybody helping me to get better. >> you're looking good. >> thank you. >> so i just made it home. first time being back home after being in the hospital for so many days. i'm excited to be back with my family. they're happy to have me home. i'm happy to be home, and one of

the things i'm looking forward to doing first is having a good night's sleep. it's been a while. so i think a good night's sleep is well deserved. >> my name is raymond sanster. sanster is the last name. i'm a covid survivor. i was admitted to mt. sinai hospital on the 5th of april. just prior to being hospitalized for previous hospitalized, my mom died with covid, and then i was hospitalized here on the 5th. i came in here. i spent almost a little more than 72 hours on the

ventilators. i'm now being able to go home to my family today just after coming out of icu just over one week. i'm now ready to go home to reach my wife and my two kids. [ cheers and applause ] >> bye! >> slow down. >> take care! >> love you guys. >> all right. love you too! >> love you guys. love you too. that's warnell vega was the first gentleman there. and raymond sangster, whose mom died from coronavirus three days before he was hospitalized with it himself and was eventually put in the icu and himself intubated. but now has gone home. godspeed to you both. you know, we keep asking frontline health care workers across the country to send us

their thoughts, send us things in their own words. i think it is an interesting peek into the mind-set of these frontline health workers who are risking so much for all the rest of us, that a lot of what they keep sending us is portraits of their patients, their patients who are surviving it and making it out of the hospital. i mean it's great to see that on its own terms, but i think it's also sort of revelatory for us civilians on the outside to see how important those successes are not just to the patients themselves and their families, but also to the people who have been working themselves half to death trying so hard to save people from a disease that is very unpredictable, very cruel, and just relentless in terms of the numbers of americans that it has sickened and killed. and so they celebrate these moments, which is i think important for us to know about them. this is another one we just got from indiana.

watch this one. [ cheers and applause ] >> that gentleman was discharged today after being in here since april 24th. he sent some time in critical care, discharged today joyfully after spending about two weeks in the hospital. 300 patients is an enormous number. his discharge speaks to all the patients that have been cared for. you think about the number of hours of care that have been involv involved. it's an incredible number. so it's not just his discharge.

it's everybody that's come before him as well. >> for the nurses on our unit, it is an incredible source of pride rising to this occasion to take on the biggest undertaking of my lifetime in nursing. we just continually adjust to all the needs that are required of it. could not be more proud. >> i could not be more proud. that's tracie davis. she's an r.n. in indianapolis at indiana methodist hospital, which has been a really hard-hit hospital in indiana. "the indianapolis star" today profiling what they call the slow-rolling disaster of the covid-19 crush at that particular hospital in indiana. and so darn right. you know, they are going to celebrate when their 300th patient survives and is able to leave the hospital after all it takes from all of these health care workers to try to keep people alive once this thing has

got a hold of them. because we keep just hearing over and over again, especially as this thing has sprawled and grown into this enormous epidemic that we've got in our country, it's grown from march and has stretched on all the way through april, and now it is stretching on through may. it just keeps going. and the people who are doing the physical medical work to try to keep americans alive who are worst hit by this, they just keep telling us -- i feel like they need us to know what it is that they need to keep going but also just how hard this work is. >> it's been a very -- it's been a very difficult experience. i've been a nurse for years. i've never experienced anything like this. i've never experiences this much

emotion. i find it difficult to talk still. i think the one good thing that i've had so far is knowing that i talk about my nursing staff and how it's very helpful to talk to them, and they've been a great support. but it's been more than that. you know, i think that we help each other get through this because we share the same experiences. you know, we all have -- we all have families that we have to go to. we all make sacrifices by not seeing them for long periods of time. it's been -- it's been very difficult, you know, and i don't think that -- i hope that nobody ever has to experience anything like what we've been

experiencing. but i'm going to go home. i'm going to listen to some music. like i said earlier, i'm going to zoom with some of my friends and just look forward to seeing my son tomorrow. >> lyn viray is an icu nurse at mt. sinai west in new york. she herself got infected and got sick with coronavirus early on in early march. she is now recovered, and she is back on the job. i also want you to meet josephlouisiana. she actually works in a dental clinic in port jefferson, louisiana, but with the epidemic descending with particular ferocity upon louisiana, josephine moved over to do something entirely different at saint charles hospital in port jefferson. she trained to work with covid

patients who can't have their families with them. you know, they can't have their families with them. they can't have any visitors. josephine is now the one who sits with them and facilitates, you know, facetime conversations, conversations via phone or ipad between these very ill patients and their families at home. she is the one who helps them bedside to connect and to communicate their last wishes in some cases and to say good-bye if that time's come -- if that time comes. that's josephine's job now because everybody's job has changed in the epidemic. >> we're on three north, and everything's been very different since covid-19 came into play about five weeks ago. everybody's working really hard to save as many lives as they can, and it's really scary. it's just heartbreaking, and i

don't know. it is really hard. it's just very -- very different. you'll definitely look at life in a different way. you'll appreciate every breath you take and every family member that you come in contact. it's really hard. >> i just finished working a 16-hour shift. i came in at 7:00 a.m., and it's approximately 11:00 p.m. now. the day started off pretty rough. i came in running. i ran into a patient's code, realized that the day started unknown every single day. i'm very grateful for the team that i work beside. we all work really hard. we all look after one another, and we're very grateful for one another. it's kind of the family that i built, especially since my entire family lives out of state. i haven't been able to spend much time in the last two months

with them. i keep coming back, though. i keep coming back because the patients need us. but the biggest thing is they need us to also stay healthy for them because if we get sick, who's going to be here for you? the biggest concern for the public is, you know, reopening our cities and getting stuff moving, which would be great for all of us, including me. i want to be able to go out to dinner and do something. but unfortunately we can't right now. we really have to get this virus under control to prevent it from spreading out even further than what it has. >> 7:45, the end of a 12-hour shift. this is dr. ernest patti. today was definitely busier. we had to intubate a few patients with suspected covid disease. it seemed like the volume was picking up again a bit although not as bad as it was a few weeks

ago. you can hear the noise is still somewhat lower than it was when i last reported a few weeks ago. so i'm hopeful of keeping things under control although we still have to maintain our vigilance and not let our guard down because these sick people are still coming in, just not to the same degree. stay safe, stay healthy, stay strong, stay home. >> dr. ernest patti from the st. barnabas medical center in the bronx. you recognize him. we have been checking in with dr. patti every week for a few weeks now. he is the emergency medicine chief at the very hard-hit emergency room at saint barn t. in the bronx. that little dispatch was him just this past week. you can hear from him this sort of mix of hope and worry. you know, hope that the numbers won't tick back up to be as bad as they were but also some worry

from him as what he describes as the noises -- he means the noises from all the ventilators -- start to ping again constantly in the background in his emergency room as they do continue to get new patients who are in acute distress. but in addition to sending this dispatch this week, you will also want to see what else dr. patti sent us this week because basically from st. barnabas this week he sent us a big, multi-part bundle of hope. first of all, he too sent us one of these videos. this video shows the release of the 500th coronavirus patient from st. barnabas. [ cheers and applause ] the 500th patient who had beaten the virus and had been released from that hospital. patient number 500 gets to go home, to get out of the hospital alive. and you can see the health workers are so proud, right? even the firefighters came out for the 500th patient to celebrate his milestone.

so dr. patti sent us that. dr. patti also sent us these pictures from his co-workers from st. barnabas outside after sending off that 500th patient, trying to encourage everyone with signs that say, keep calm and think positively, and the sun will come out tomorrow, and we will overcome this. dr. patti also sent us pictures of the stuff that he and his colleagues have been sent from all over america by just regular americans trying to lend support, to try to like bolster and support and show a desire to help the st. barnabas doctors and nurses in what they're doing. and it's an amazing collection of stuff from all sorts of people who perceive all sorts of needs. a woman named marge in silver springs, maryland, sent in respiratory equipment, a respirator and masks. dr. patti received what he called an enormous box of

hawaiian-themed gifts and treats from darlene in honolulu, who used to live in new york city and wanted to send that. iris, who works at planned parenthood in ohio, sent the st. barnabas emergency room some masks. beth in chicago sent what she called her own personal supply of masks. so you see the appreciation both of people sending that stuff to st. barnabas but also the appreciation of the st. barnabas physicians saying, do you believe people are being so kind? so it's nice. i mean that mutuality, i think, is nice to see. but i mean honestly, you know, big picture in the news, things are terrible obviously. we are closing in on 1.3 million cases in this country. we are over 77,000 american deaths at this point. the unemployment rate today hit 14.7%, which is the worst level of unemployment in this country since the great depression. do not need to qualify it any other way.

the associated press tonight reporting that at the highest levels of the white house, there was political intervention to block the cdc from issuing practical guidance about how businesses and services could safely reopen without risking people getting infected there. the white house at the highest levels intervened to block the cdc from releasing that guidance to the american people, which would save lives because the white house is encouraging all sorts of states to open up. the cdc produced guidelines on how to do that safely. the white house blocked it, and then the white house overtly lied about it when they were asked, when they were asked about the cdc guidance. they said, oh, that guidance wasn't actually approved by the cdc. actually the cdc had approved it, and the white house blocked it. so things are bad. i get it. i mean if there's one thing that's worse than an astonishingly botched response to an existentially challenging

pandemic that is killing tens of thousands of americans on an ongoing basis, if there's one thing that is worse than that, it's maybe an astonishingly botched response to that kind of an epidemic that just keeps getting worse over time, right? where the public health people and the scientists are actually exerting less control over the country's response over time rather than more. where the scientists and the public health people who actually know what to do are getting more and more muzzled as the terrible response of our government continues and actually gets worse day by day. so i got it. everything's terrible. i know. and we are going to cover a bunch of that stuff over the course of this hour tonight, including a look at what might be the worst state in the country in terms of how the epidemic response is being botched and how the people of that state are being prevented from knowing the truth about the scale of the disaster there. things are bad. i know. we will cover -- we will still continue covering all the badness of it. but for a hot second here on

this friday night, i do just want to cover one piece of this that is something constructive and innovative and good. so forgive me. let's go back to dr. patti at st. barnabas for a second. you might remember something that caught my attention in this photo that we showed from dr. patti a week ago. and you see he's got his respirator on. he's got his face shield up on the top of his head. he's got his ppe gown, his gloves on. but you can see the sticker of himself, the sticker of his own face, that little picture of a smiling dr. patti that is put on his medical gown as a sticker. dr. patti had told us that somebody sent that to him. among all the people who have been sending him and his staff great stuff, somebody sent that picture of him with his headshot so that his coronavirus patients could see his face and know that there was a human being being all that protective gear. turns out there is a kind of amazing story behind that. that sticker with dr. patti's photo on it was sent to him by

somebody who has never met him in real life. her name is lori justice shockett. she is an artist but also has a medical degree. she is married to an e.r. doctor, and she is the mom and the stepmom of two more e.r. doctors. she is connected. right now one of the things she has started doing is making ppe portraits for medical staff who wear full protective gear when taking care of their patients so you the doctor, or you the nurse send you the smiling photo of yourself. she will print, laminate portraits that you can stick onto the outside of your ppe gear so that your terrified patients who can't really see any of your face, they can at least have some idea of who you are and what you really look like. and where this idea came from, i had no idea, was the ebola outbreak in liberia in 2014 and 2015. an american artist named mary beth heffernan, who teaches at occidental college, she was

moved and intrigued by the images of the full spacesuit-like ppe that health workers were wearing while caring for people with ebola in liberia. and she started studying it, and she ultimately created the ppe portrait project, describing it as an art intervention designed to improve ebola care. this was not a whim. it was not a small thing, and it was not an easy thing. this was a deeply researched, grant funded project focusing on the psychological effects of isolation on patients, and ultimately the beneficial effects of puncturing that isolation by allowing them to connect better with their providers. mary beth heffernan, the artist, was invited by the government of liberia to come work with doctors at ebola treatment centers in 2014 and 2015. she told us that she has always hoped that what she started doing in liberia these few years ago would become best medical practice for all kinds of

patients who have to experience the isolation of never seeing people outside of ppi, seeing only masked faces for days at a time. well, now this epidemic that we are in appears to be putting her idea into effect, putting her idea at the center of consciousness at least in more and more places. it was heifer nan's work who inspired this. the same work inspired a stanford university researcher who works on quality improvement of patient care. as the covid-19 epidemic drove tens of thousands of patients into american hospitals and american frontline health providers everywhere were into full ppe whenever they could get their hands on it, the stanford

researcher katie brown johnson got in touch with mary beth heffernan and now they are working together on a project at stanford that provides ppe portraits to hospitals across the country. they have a diy web, which is basically a template that health workers can use to do this. i will also tell you that we got kind of a hilarious offshoot of this idea from a brother and sister team named linda and jack. jack was recently being treated for cancer at the hospital during the covid-19 epidemic, and after seeing all the medical workers dressed head to toe in protective gear, jack and his sister linda and their other siblings decided to design their own sort of homegrown version of this very fancy, high-level art world, high-level medical world idea. and what jack and linda and their siblings came up with is a version of it is that is sort of equal parts awesome and

hilarious and slightly unsettling. look. be hold. it is the selfie mask. this isn't you printing a portrait of your straight-to-camera smiling face on a sticker that you put on your gown. this is you approximating the look of your face as kind of a mask overlay. it's like wearing a face suit of yourself on your face. they tell us they've now made a bunch of them at the hospital jack is being treated at for cancer. this is jack's oncologist wearing his. look at that. he could shave that goatee. nobody would ever know. along with a link to the stanford template, we'll post a link to the selfie mask web tool

that lets you upload an image and print one for yourself just in case you too want to stop walking the dog looking like this and instead want to start walking the dog wearing your own face on your face, right? i told you. it's like equal parts hilarious and awesome and unsettling. but it comes from this idea that is deeply rooted in patients needing that human connection with their providers. and it turns out to have pretty good data -- pretty good databases in terms of understanding how this can help patients when they are otherwise at what may be the most worst and scared time in their lives. joining us now is katie brown johnson, who is the research scientist at stanford university school of medicine, who helped revive the ppe portrait project invented during the ebola crisis, now being put back into

practice for the coronavirus era. thank you for being with us tonight. i have to ask you how much of that i got wrong or -- >> oh, no. you're so coherent, rachel. thank you so much for having me on the show. >> tell me about the way this idea, which is sort of cute and intriguing and interesting and warm hearted, how it ultimately translates. i mean you are a serious researcher in terms of patient outcomes and the way that patients interact with their health care providers, how that can ultimately affect the course of their care. what does your research show? what do we know about how this improves things for patients? >> yeah. so i'm a social scientist and very interested in human connection and patient provider connection. and so with the fear and isolation that was coming up around covid, we knew we needed to address it right away.

so the research behind this, a warm and a competent provider connects with the healing mechanisms within a person's body. ppe tells you competence right away. the only warmth that you might get would be a ppe portrait. so that's really some of the basis of the research that has us interested in pursuing this. >> i can imagine, i mean, just seeing doctor patti wearing his portrait -- i mean we had talked to him in his apartment so we knew what he looked like. then we had received these video diaries from him in the e.r. at st. barnabas where he is completely covered up. sometimes we have to use subtitles in order to be able to convey what it is he's saying. but being able to see him, you

are able to make that human connection back to the guy you recognize or the guy who you might think you could know, rather than having this almost alien interaction even while somebody is doing their best to save your life. i think even though who aren't patients inherently get how this might work. >> absolutely. i think it's really valuable for patients. i think the exciting thing that we've been -- we shouldn't have been surprised, but we've been surprised at how important this has been for health care workers. so health care workers experience a huge amount of burnout in general, and we're really hoping that this -- well, we hear from them already that this really helps them feel humanized and reconnected. and those are the types of things that are going to help our health care workers. those are the types of feelings that are going to help our health care workers be able to do the long haul that covid is

really calling for. >> cati brown johnson, research scientist at stanford university school of medicine, thank you for helping us understand this tonight. it obviously captured our imagination a little bit, but understanding this comes from a pretty deep place from your understanding about patient outcomes, it's really intriguing. >> thank you so much for having me, rachel. >> all right. much more ahead here tonight. stay with us. h usr a convenient time or for hospitals to get back to normal again. that's why, at cancer treatment centers of america, we aren't waiting. we're right here, still focused on the only thing we do, providing world-class cancer care, all under one roof. because cancer isn't just what we do, it's all we do. cancer treatment centers of america. call now for an appointment.

ibut you're not alone. apart for a bit, we're automatically refunding our customers a portion of their personal auto premiums. learn more at libertymutual.com/covid-19. [ piano playing ] at t-mobile, taxes and fees are included. and right now, when you switch your family, get four lines of unlimited for just $35 dollars a line and taxes and fees included. so what you see is what you pay every month. check it out at out t-mobile.com/4for35

so we're working 24/7 toected 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. mr. president, i'm so

grateful for the governor's leadership in iowa, so very impressed with her team. iowa's been leading the pack. iowa, with governor reynolds' leadership has been a success story because whether it be the mitigation efforts, social distancing efforts, and now rolling out testing at a record pace in the state, iowa has stayed in front of this effort. >> are we talking about the same iowa? vice president mike pence at the white house this week praising the great success story that is iowa. iowa leading the pack, rolling out testing at a record pace. got lots of testing troubles in iowa. people are waiting like two weeks-plus for their results. i don't -- i'm not sure why the white house thinks that things are going awesome in iowa. they do have testing trouble. they have several of the fastest growing outbreaks in the country in iowa. they did terribly with social distancing.

they actually never did a stay-at-home order, and they have lots -- i mean don't take it from me. i will say the local press in that part of the country itself appeared mystified by this characterization from the white house that iowa is doing great. the quad city times ran with this headline. quote, pence calls iowa success story as virus-related deaths and hospitalizations climb. "the des moines register" made a similar point. quote, although pence this week called iowa a success story in its handling of the pandemic, rates of infection continue to climb across the state. one columnist with the omaha world in nebraska simply tweeted a picture of that success story line from pence with this as her caption. are we in the upside down? against that backdrop, vice president pence visited iowa today. he ended up arriving an hour late after the news broke that his press secretary had tested positive for coronavirus. because of that, other staff members on board his flight were

asked to deplane and go get tested. so the vice president was late. by the time he actually landed in iowa, iowa was dealing with a flood of headlines about one of the meat processing plants in the state that pence had been bragging about how great it was it was reopening. the governor, kim reynolds, had announced that more than 400 workers at that plant had tested positive. that was yesterday. today as pence was finally belatedly landing, the state was grappling with headlines about the fact that it's not actually 400 workers from that one plant like the governor said just yesterday. turns out to be more than 1,000 workers at that one plant in waterloo, iowa, who have become infected. more than 1,000 workers from one plant. that's not to mention their families, their community contacts, nothing. just the workers, over 1,000 cases, one plant, governor's sober assurances yesterday. i mean for whatever reason the

white house seems very invested in lauding iowa as a great success story. if hi i had to pick a state, i wouldn't pick them. i mentions the "omaha world-herald" and the reaction of their columnist. that whole part of the country is having trouble, particularly in the places where those states come together. one of the reasons that sioux city, iowa, is dealing with one of the worst outbreaks in the country is thought to be because of a huge meat processing plant that is just across the missouri river in dakota county, nebraska. that county, dakota county, just saw a record surge in new cases, their largest number of new cases in one day yet. they had 361 positives in one day, and that's a county with only 20,000 people in it. we don't know how many of those positive cases are workers from that dakota county plant, which also just reopened. the plant is not announcing how many of its workers are infected. nebraska's governor says the plants don't have to say how

many of their workers have tested positive. he said it's a business decision. it's their call. but that county, dakota county, just across the missouri river from sioux city, iowa, dakota county does have a population of less than 21,000 people, and they are up over 1,400 cases overall now. i mean not testing in the first place, not allowing test results to be made public when there is testing, i mean denying that these outbreaks exist or that they attend to any specific place or workplace is a bad strategy. it's a specific kind of bad, though. it's the kind of bad that one nebraska state senator is now calling a political cover-up in his state, and he joins us next. stay with us. ering free laundry services to the family of frontline responders. visit hope.tidecleaners.com to learn more.

...little things... ...can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you.

at t-mobile, taxes and fees are included. and right now, when you switch your family, get four lines of unlimited for just $35 dollars a line and taxes and fees included. so what you see is what you pay every month. check it out at out t-mobile.com/4for35

confident financial plans, calming financial plans, complete financial plans. they're all possible with a cfp® professional. find yours at letsmakeaplan.org.

this week nebraska's republican governor pete ricketts announced that the state would no longer release

any data on coronavirus case numbers in specific meat processing plants. he said counties would have to get a signoff from the individual plants if they wanted to continue releasing that kind of information. the governor made that announcement, i should say, just as at least one major plant in the state known to have at least dozens of cases was about to receive the results from testing all of its workers. this announcement from governor ricketts drew incoming fire from a bunch of places in the state, including from a state senator named adam morfil who represents parts of lincoln, nebraska. he said that ricketts shutting down public information on the spread of coronavirus inside nebraska's meatpacking plants is, quote, commonly referred to as a political cover-up. quote, there's no legitimacy to this as a privacy concern. understanding where outbreaks are occurring is important from the public and the government to know from a mitigation and public safety point of view. no data equals no spread equals victory will eventually say

there's zero new cases in plants, sort of like the claim na zero nebraskans in prisons have the virus but only because we have tested zero nebraska prison inmates. joining us now is senator adam morfeld. he's a state senator from nebraska. thanks for making time to join us tonight. >> thank you for having me. >> so i am fixated on your state because i feel like governor ricketts is mounting a response to this epidemic that is troubling to me, and it seems -- even though a lot of states have not great responses, what seems particularly troubling is the lack of data that's being released to the public. the state's not releasing data on individual nursing homes. it's not releasing data on individual meat plants now. and as you point out, they're not even testing any prisoners in the state. i want to ask if you feel like national concern is warranted at this point from those of us in the rest of the country looking in on what's going on in your state.

>> i absolutely think that national concern is warranted, and it's warranted because just releasing aggregate data is dangerous to the public safety because we can't tell as a public whether we should be rewarding or keeping accountable public or private entities that are doing a good or bad job. and quite frankly right now, we should be building trust, not nailing certain things in secrecy. we need to make sure we are allocating scarce resources to where we need them the most. and if we're not providing specific data, the public doesn't know where the actual problems are, which means that organizations in a state like nebraska can't provide critical training and services for employees and employers. and public officials like me don't fully understand what the scope of the problem is and how well we're doing. all of this plays into the narrative that the governor wants, which is that we're ready to open back up, that things are on the upswing, when we haven't

even hit our peak yet. >> we are seeing in a number of states varying levels of transparency when it comes to how big the outbreaks are in individual plants. there aren't federally required guidelines on these things. there's guidelines, but there's no actual rules that the plants have to follow. some county health departments or state health departments have been able to exact promises from individual plants that they will test all of their workers and that they will make those results public. nebraska seems to be the least transparent of all states in terms of the number of plants that aren't saying anything publicly and where the information that we've got about problem outbreaks comes from anonymous tipsters, comes from journalists ferreting out the information, and it seems like it may ultimately come from individual county health departments defying this line from the governor now that they can't release this information and they have to defer to these businesses. it sort of feels like things are

getting worse in nebraska and not better over time. >> it is getting worse, and you wouldn't know it from the governor's office, but you would know it from the local public health officials that are telling the truth, that are coming out and saying, hey, listen, we have major problems in our state right now. like the republican mayor of grand island. i think it's also important to note that if we don't know exactly where the problems are, we can't allocate resources in order to help people. and that only plays into the governor's narrative again that we're supposed to be ready and open for business when, in fact, we are in the middle of our outbreak. and that's very concerning because the governor seems more concerned about protecting the reputation of businesses, which is one of his stated reasons why this information needs to be private, rather than saving the lives of nebraskans and protecting the public health and public safety of our state. >> adam morfeld, state senator from the great state of nebraska, i am concerned so much about nebraska because i like

nebraska a lot and because i really am worried that you have one of worst managed large epidemics in the country. i know that you've been doing your damnedest to squawk about it and try to improve it. keep us apprised and keep me honest as we keep covering this. we're going to stay on the story. >> thank you, rachel. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. with us my gums are irritated. i don't have to worry about that, do i? harmful bacteria lurk just below the gum line. crest gum detoxify, voted product of the year. it works below the gum line to neutralize harmful plaque bacteria and help reverse early gum damage. gum detoxify, from crest.

at t-mobile, taxes and fees are included. and right now, when you switch your family, get four lines of unlimited for just $35 dollars a line and taxes and fees included. so what you see is what you pay every month. check it out at out t-mobile.com/4for35 woke-up-like-this migraine medicine. the 3:40 mid-shift migraine medicine. introducing ubrelvy™. it's the migraine medicine for anytime, anywhere a migraine attacks without worrying if it's too late or where you happen to be. one dose of ubrelvy™ can quickly stop a migraine in its tracks within two hours. many had pain relief in one hour. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. few people had side effects, most common were nausea and tiredness. ask your provider about ubrelvy™ or access doctors from home with telemedicine. migraines can strike anytime, anywhere. ubrelvy™. the anytime, anywhere migraine medicine.

you ever wish you weren't a motaur? sure. sometimes i wish i had legs like you. yeah, like a regular person. no. still half bike/half man, just the opposite. oh, so the legs on the bottom and motorcycle on the top? yeah. yeah, i could see that. for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. yeah, i could see that. darrell's family uses gain flings now so their laundry smells more amazing than ever. [woman] isn't that the dog's towel? hey, me towel su towel. more gain scent plus oxi boost and febreze in every gain fling. working on the front lines, and here's one small way that you can help them in return. complete your 2020 census today. 2020 census data helps communities plan funding

for hospitals, clinics, and emergency services across the country. an accurate count helps public health officials know who is at risk, and first responders identify the resources they need to protect our communities. complete your census at 2020census.gov and help shape our future.

this, i think, is a clarifying moment. senator pat roberts is a republican. he's the senior u.s. senator from the great state of kansas. at a senate hearing yesterday, here's senator roberts expressing his concerns about how the operation of meat processing plants is being affected by all these covid-19 outbreaks that are happening at all of those plants for some reason. here's what he thinks the problem is. >> the problem is our workers, and just this morning they showed up at the plant not in numbers that we had hoped for, but we at least keep the meatpacking plant open.

and what's happening is is that they're not catching the virus at the meatpacking plant. it's afterwards. >> it's afterwards. the problem is the workers. they're not getting infected at the plant. nothing's happening at the plant. it's these people after they go home. it's just a coincidence that all the meatpacking plants all over the country are having huge outbreaks among the workers. the problem is nothing that's happening at the plants. it's just coincidentally that they all have these terrible worker people who are getting infected elsewhere, victimizing the plants. health and human services secretary alex azar echoed this argument this week on a call with members of congress. he told them that outbreaks at meatpacking plants in this country are due to the, quote, home and social aspects of workers' lives. they're not getting infected at work. they just all coincidentally happen to be getting infected at home and then coming to work at the same place. it's so weird.

then there was wisconsin this week. a lawyer for the democratic governor of the state was making an argument to the state supreme court this week about why governor tony evers' stay-at-home orders were so important, why they shouldn't be overturned. the court's conservative chief justice interrupted the lawyer with a remark that for a lot of folks i think really seems to clarify and sum up what has been going on here. >> the cases in brown county in the span of two weeks surged over tenfold from 60 to almost 800. that's two weeks that would be required for emergency rule making so -- >> that's where the brown county got the flare. it wasn't just the regular folks in brown county. >> the giant outbreak in brown county wasn't the regular folks there. it was just the meatpacking people, not the regular people. so you can't really call that a point of concern. it's not the regular -- we're

starting to get a sense of why these huge outbreaks in the middle of our country seem not to be causing any concern whatsoever among lots of political leaders. at least no concern beyond what effect the outbreaks might conceivably have on the plants themselves as opposed to the thousands of people who work in them who are all getting infected there. those workers are thought of as apparently being not regular, you know, too different, not part of the real community. maybe, therefore, they're not really real people. but, you know, it's one thing to not particularly care what happens to this group of other people. it's another to decide that what happens to them really has nothing to do with, no effect on all of the rest of us. and because of that, i want to show you something that was sent to us today by a data visualization company called tectonics. this is a map showing the tyson meatpacking plant in cass county, indiana, in march of this year.

so this was a plant you've probably heard something about. it shut down last month. this is the plant where 900 workers there tested positive for covid-19. about 40% of the workers at that plant. this is a plant in cass county, indiana, that just reopened yesterday. now, all those tiny bluish-white dots in there, those are people' mobile devices giving off a signal at that facility. tectonics used anonymized location data from cell phones to create an animation of what happened to those mobile devices and the people attached to them over the course of the month of march. those devices traveled out into the surrounding counties and into surrounding states and then ultimately also across almost the entire country. by the end of march, people who had been inside that cass county tyson plant, which would eventually be diagnosed with 900 coronavirus infections just among people who worked there, people had traveled to nearly every state in the nation.

and it makes sense actually. meat processing plants are in the middle of a sprawling national supply chain. the trump administration and leaders in these states with all these meatpacking plant outbreaks, they may want to blame these outbreaks on the workers in these plants and describe these outbreaks as no big deal because it's just those people. but however much you're going to have to pay for that at the end of your life when you have to answer for the way you have lived, right now that sort of prejudice and short sightedness is not going to make these outbreaks go away. ask it's not going to magically contain these outbreaks to those workers. there is going to need to be a better plan for this. and the clock is ticking. your family, get four lines of unlimited for just $35 dollars a line and taxes and fees included. so what you see is what you pay every month. check it out at out t-mobile.com/4for35

♪[ siren ] & doug give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need!

only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ our bargain detergent couldn't keep up. with us... turns out it's mostly water. so, we switched back to tide. one wash, stains are gone. daughter: slurping don't pay for water. pay for clean. it's got to be tide. to get back to normal again. for hospitals and at ctca, we aren't waiting either. we're still focused on providing world-class cancer care. because cancer isn't just what we do, it's all we do. call now.

do you need a best new thing in the world today? i do. we got one that's plural. may i introduce the newest members of the rachel maddow show family? oliver james and henry joseph. oliver james is the elder brother by four whole minutes, which we are hoping and expecting him to low lord over henry joseph their whole happy lives. both kiddos are perfect as you can see, and healthy and already speaking up on their own behalf. they will of course, be the beginning of a whole new adventure for our beloved associate producer johanna. we're happy for you and mike and these bundles of joy. it's a crazy time in the world but