plan here. it has to be coordinated, and it has to be at least in a region. and we did that. other states didn't. it was smart. and there's one set of rules, and the public has to understand the set of rules. some states are opening, even though they haven't met the cdc guidelines, which i don't even know how that happens. federal government says here are the cdc guidelines, which are basic health guidelines. some states don't meet those guidelines and they're opening anyway. well, there's a lot of pressure to open. i know. but pressure doesn't mean you act unintelligently, right? some states opened and then saw a rush of people from surrounding states. we've talked about that here, the concept of an attractive nuisance. finger lakes opens. you can't open up an attraction or a site that will be attracting people from outside the region, and then you have a problem you never encountered. right? so that's something to watch.

and some places never really made the people part of the plan, and that is a fundamental mistake, because this is not -- we are not at a point where government is going to solve anything, frankly. this is people who are solving the problem. personal opinions as opposed to facts. i did one thing right as governor that i'm proud of. i got the people involved in this situation to a greater degree than they have been involved probably in modern history, probably in modern history. from day one, this was of such a magnitude that unless people engaged and understood and bought into this, government was

impotent. government, state government can't enforce any of these things that we did -- stay in the house, close every school, close every business. state government can't enforce that. people had to understand the facts and people had to engage in governing themselves in a way they hadn't in decades. i don't know what happened. i'm still trying to figure out when government got to a place, or when society got to a place where people would accept the lack of professionalism from government. the lack of competence from elected officials. i don't know when government became so political and it all became about rhetoric, rather than actual competence, but it happened somewhere along the way. that government could not handle this situation.

people had to get engaged. people had to be informed. and that's the one thing i did right. now, they got engaged because it mattered. this is not an abstract issue. you're talking about people's lives and people's health and the health of their children. so, they were interested. they were engaged. but they were also informed. and i worked very hard every day to make sure they knew the facts. trust the people. lincoln, right? an informed public will keep this country safe. true. and that's exactly what happened here. and that's what we're going to continue to do. people need to be part of this. the whole plan that we're outlining today is all done. it's online. it's in a book. people need to understand exactly how we do this second phase, just the way they understood how we were going to

get over that mountain and how we were going to flatten the mountain. they have to understand now how we reopen, and they have to be part of it. understand the plan. hold me accountable. hold me accountable. hold your local officials accountable. but people have to be part of it. and they have to know the facts and know what we're doing, because it's going to come down to how people react and how people behave. and if they understand what we're doing, they will do it. just as i couldn't enforce any of this on day one, the local officials are not going to be able to enforce it, either. nobody's going to mandate personal behavior. people have to wear a mask. people have to be smart when they show up at work. people have to be smart when they shop. they have to understand, this is not the floodgates are open, go

back, do everything you were doing. be smart! nobody's going to protect your health but you. no one's going to protect your children's health but you. well, children aren't affected. oh, really? that's another fact that they're going to change on us. now we're worrying about, we have 93 cases that we're investigating of young children who have covid-related diseases. so, this is about keeping yourself smart and keeping yourself healthy and keeping your family healthy. we'll do everything we can, but you have to be new york tough, smart is the first word after tough. united, disciplined, loving. thank you for being here. any questions? >> governor cuomo, what will friday look like, may 15th? can people just report for work at a construction or manufacturing company that's qualified to open at 9:00 a.m.,

start of business? and can a whole staff return? who will give those answers? >> that is going to be -- as i said, this is now a shift, right? we're sort of going from phase one, which is basically a state-controlled, one set of rules all across the state. that's phase one. this reopening phase is locally driven, regionally driven, and regionally designed. so, the businesses that can open are the businesses that are approved by that region and approved with these conditions, right? every business that reopens is going to have to meet certain conditions. the state set a certain number of conditions. local governments may add additional conditions to those businesses and how they open. and that has to be done on a

region-by-region basis. >> -- get that information sometime prior to friday? >> yes. yes. >> governor, how long do you anticipate being at each phase? you know, obviously, a lot of the big businesses in our area, in any area, phase two. so, how long do you anticipate it taking to get to that point? >> you can -- it will be determined by the facts and the numbers as you go along, right? you are more of a visual person. you're turning a valve, increasing the economic activity. your question is how fast can we open the valve? you have a dial right next to the valve that says "infection rate." you have another dial that says "hospitalization rate." you can open that valve as fast or as slow to keep that infection rate below 1.1, which

is what they call an outbreak. if it hits 1.1, it means the virus is increasing exponentially. so watch that dial. watch the hospitalization rate and the timing of phase one, phase two, phase three, it's determined by those two dials, is determined by those facts. you watch the infection rate, you watch the hospitalization rate. as fast as you can come online without increasing the virus spread to outbreak or increasing the number of deaths, then that's how fast you reopen the economy. >> do you shut it if it's too fast? >> the local region has a control room, and a circuit breaker, we call it, to stay with the graphic physical metaphor -- a circuit breaker. if you see those dials going into the red zone, if you're really closely watching the

dials, you wouldn't have to turn the valve off. you would just slow the valve a little bit, depending on how well your dials are calibrated and whether you're watching or not. so, the best would be just slow, instead of off. but if the dial's going to the red zone, circuit breaker, turn the valve off until you get the dials back under control. we, the whole ride across the mountain has been getting the spread of the infection under control, what they call the infection rate, how fast it's spreading. it has to be under one, which is one person who is infected infects less than one other person, right? you have to keep the infection rate below that, and you have to keep the hospitalization rate at a manageable level. you can't overwhelm your

hospitals, period, because then people die, and that is a universal bad thing. you watch those two dials and you calibrate it locally. well, how fast can you open? nobody knows. it also depends on how smart you are in the opening. now, if you open businesses and the employees are smart and the business owners are smart, then theoretically, nobody should get infected, right? you should be able to go to work, be six feet apart from everyone, have the right precautions, nobody gets infected. you do it wrong -- you're at the meat processing plants and the poultry processing plants that we've seen across the nation. you open up. everybody goes to one place. a few people have the infection and now you have 1,000 workers infected. how did that happen? it was improper precautions in the workplace.

so, you have to -- it depends on how businesses do, how employees do, and then you watch those dials. as fast as you can reopen, reopen. just watch the dials. >> governor cuomo, as businesses are coming up with these reopening plans and we move on from phase one to phase two, how long will the businesses in each phase keep these plans in place? like, say, how long will they have to stay six feet apart or when will it be okay to maybe lift those plans? >> it depends on the facts. you'll know. your basic question is when do we not have to worry about the virus anymore? i hope it's tomorrow. i doubt it's tomorrow. it depends on how good we are at reducing the spread and controlling the spread. it's how smart we are. it's our actions, our behavior. that's why i come back to, who slowed the spread in the

beginning? the people of this state. nobody else. there was no government action. it was an unprecedented action of the people, presented with the facts, informed and engaged. hasn't happened in my lifetime. hasn't happened in my lifetime. i've never seen this situation before, where people actually did what the founding fathers thought they would do, that they would really care and really get engaged and really get informed and really act on what they believe. you know, for so many years, what government did was just irrelevant or overly political or you didn't believe anyone, you didn't trust anyone, so they just tuned it out, right? i have to live my life. i can't watch this sideshow called government politics. yeah. well, now it's a matter of life and death, and they got engaged.

i'll tell you something else gratuitously. i also believe, if we actually learn from this moment -- you know, we talk about reimagining new york so that we don't just build back, we build back better, and we're going to do that. i also think this is a moment that could change history in this country for the better. you, whoever the you is that started this virus, you had a wake-up call for this country and a moment in history that people have never gone through before. you stopped the country. you stopped the economy. you put, we call it pause in new york. you put people's lives on pause. and everyone went through a period of turmoil and stress and

reflection on their own personal lives, their family lives, their whole situation. government, society. i think this is going to be a re-evaluation all across the board. and i think we can be the better for it. i believe that. i believe we individually can be the better for it. i believe my kids are going to be the better for it. i believe i am going to be the better for it. i believe my family's going to be stronger for it. and i believe the state is going to be better for it, on an individual and a collective level. and i think people are going to think about society and government differently than they ever did, because it really, really matters now. and they understand how government can make a significant difference in their lives, and it's not going to be a side show anymore. they're not going to tolerate

it. i believe that. so, they were -- >> and good day, everyone. i am andrea mitchell, continuing our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. new york's governor andrew cuomo just announcing that the new number of covid hospitalizations is about where it was on march 19th, when the crisis first took effect. the governor says new york can intelligently prepare to reopen beginning this friday, may 15th. here are the facts at this hour. the white house has put in place new safety procedures, including daily testing for senior staff and mandatory masks for some resident staff, after at least two staff members working in close proximity to the president and vice president tested positive for covid-19. both the president and vice president have rejected wearing masks throughout this crisis. top administration health officials anthony fauci, cdc director robert redfield and fda commissioner stephen hahn, all doctors, are all in some form of self-quarantine ahead of a critical senate hearing tomorrow

and will appear remotely at that session on the coronavirus. committee chairman senator lamar alexander now will also be chairing from home because a top republican staff member has contracted the virus. the top-ranking democrat, senator patty murray, had already been planning to be skyping from washington state. no explanation on why. hhs secretary alex azar, who has been largely missing from public view, is not on the witness list. and in a rare rebuke to his successor, former president obama has sharply criticized the trump administration's response to covid-19, telling members of the obama alumni association on a private call this weekend that the effort has been an absolute chaotic disaster. joining me now, nbc white house correspondent geoff bennett, former obama white house press secretary robert gibbs and two former health and human services secretaries, former kansas governor kathleen sebelius and former congresswoman donna shalala. geoff bennett, first to you. the new safety protocols.

you saw dr. deborah birx arriving today with a face mask. what about the challenges, especially to the national security staff? these are very small offices, downstairs in the white house basement, over in the executive office building. how are they going to accomplish this safely? >> reporter: it's a great point you make, andrea, because privately, white house officials have expressed this notion that, really, it was only a matter of time before coronavirus showed up here in the west wing, in part because, you know, the white house might look vast and sprawling on television, but in fact, these are fairly close quarters. and it wasn't until late last week for the most part where you saw white house officials wearing masks while indoors. but you do have now the west wing really trying to scramble to contain the virus. testing and temperature checks have been boosted across the board. folks who are in frequent contact, senior staff who are in regular contact with president trump, they are now tested daily, we're told, in addition to president trump and vice president mike pence themselves. they're given that rapid test.

and the west wing is being sanitized at a rate far more frequent than normal. and as you mentioned, the country's top three health officials, the head of the cdc, the head of the fda and dr. anthony fauci, are all now in some form of quarantine. but all of this really undercuts president trump's message that the coronavirus crisis is abating, and also, if people close to the president can't be fully protected here from contracting the virus, how can americans in the rest of the country feel safe going back to work? you know, most restaurants, offices, retail shops don't have the ability to test all of their employees, certainly not on a daily basis, and they're not able to do the kind of contact tracing that folks here at the white house are doing, andrea. >> and robert gibbs, you worked for years in very close proximity in the west wing. you know how small those spaces are. kevin hassett, top economic adviser who recently returned to the white house, expressed some of those concerns very honestly yesterday. let's watch. >> it is scary to go to work.

you know, i was not part of the white house -- west wing, you know, it's a small, crowded place. you know, it's a little bit risky, but you have to do it because you have to serve your country. >> robert, what about the fact, for instance, that the vice president's still not wearing masks when we saw him in public recently. the lack of leadership from the president and vice president for what has been the guidelines. and can they be safely working in the white house? >> well, i think if i was working in the white house right now, i would figure out who is absolutely essential and send a lot of other people home. as you mentioned, it looks like a big space on television, or it looked like that on tv shows, but in fact, it's very cramped. there's lots of people packed in rooms for meetings. it's not at all conducive to

dealing with a pandemic or a virus. and i think as was talked about, this greatly complicates the optics of the message of a president and his administration rushing to have people open up before they're ready. in reality, it's not about when a government wants it to open up or even a business wants to open up. it's when people have the confidence to go back out and continue some of the activities that they used to have before we all sort of started the stay at home. and i think if you watched andrew cuomo, that was a tour du force in the mechanics of communication, in having people understand the steps that are necessary, the steps that the state and regional governments are taking, that will ultimately give people confidence that there's a reason and a rationale for what we should be doing and when and how we should open up in a way that's slow and controls the continued rate of infection of this virus.

>> secretary sebelius, we understand now that iowa's governor has decided to go into a limited or a modified quarantine, self-quarantine, because of her visit to the white house last week. you were a governor and you were an hhs secretary. what should they be recommending? what is safe? >> well, i think, andrea, again, i'd go back, as robert did, to what we just heard from governor cuomo. people are willing to make huge sacrifices for their health and their family's health, even if it involves some economic pain, which clearly, we're seeing across this country. what they need is information, and they need honest facts. so, cdc guidance, which was put out earlier talking about the trajectory of downward disease trend, it set a national framework. the white house has now held on to the newest cdc guidance, which, my understanding is, is a

place-by-place information set of how you reopen child care centers, restaurants, offices safely. we have an example of a place where individuals are tested every single day. nowhere else in the country is that going on. where the individuals are able to travel on private planes, where they are probably cleaned more frequently than anyplace else under the sun, and yet, the virus is inside the white house. definitely we want to keep the president and the vice president, key leaders safe and secure, but it gives the people information about the fact that they're not safe. where is safe? we need the new cdc guidance. we need governors and mayors to be able to make intelligent decisions based on information. we're in the least tested state in the country. we have big outbreaks in processing plants, big outbreaks in prisons. we still have nowhere near the right amount of protective

equipment or the right amount of testing for our governor and our local mayors and city officials to know if they're doing the right thing. people are willing to make sacrifices, but they need information, and they don't want to be stupid about it. we had a little glimpse of what it is like to be in an office where people refuse to follow the general principles -- wear a mask when you're inside, stay six feet away. we've watched daily the white house officials, our president and vice president, refuse to do that, refuse to wear masks, refuse to stand far enough apart, continue to travel without that. and what we're seeing now is a virus outbreak that at least gives people the notion of what happens when you don't wear a mask and when you are too close together. but it doesn't provide much help or information for business owners, health officials, local leaders who really want

information so they can give their citizens that information and then people can make choices about doing the right thing. >> and congresswoman, i know that in the hearing tomorrow, the house did not get access to dr. fauci as a witness, so this is a senate hearing. how effective can it be when it's going to be virtual, basically, what garrett haake of our team has called the largest, most high-profile and unusual zoom meeting ever? and what about the ability of democrats to try to press them for answers? and you don't even have the hhs secretary listed as a witness? >> well, we live with what we can get, and it will be a very important hearing. but look, the white house has now set a new standard for the country -- testing every day. and my governor is asking people, some people, to go back to work. and who's being asked to go back to work? people that work in restaurants.

our grocery store clerks aren't being tested at all. and there's no one i know in this state that's being tested every day. are the lives of people that live in nursing homes less precious than those who work in the white house? we just don't have the testing to open up, and i'm sure that my colleagues in the senate are going to ask very hard questions about why we're not paying attention to the cdc guidelines, which say your trajectory has to be going down, not leveling off -- going down. they'll have an opportunity to question tony fauci and others. i wish alex azar was there. he's a very intelligent man. but if he was there, the question is, would he be able to answer some of those questions? >> would he be politically able

to is the implication. robert -- >> exactly. >> i want to ask you about president obama, because the former president has stayed so much out of politics and so carefully stayed out of politics, and now we understand on this call -- i know you weren't on the call, but you've talked to a lot of people who were -- he has really weighed in against president trump's handling of all of this. >> well, i think the former president, like literally two-thirds, 70% of the american people, are really aghast at the lack of preparation for getting ready for this pandemic that we saw from this trump administration. for two months, this administration, this president thought it was a hoax, they wished it away. they told the american people it wasn't that infectious, that at some point it would just disappear. and then for two months we've made a series -- they've made a series of bad late decisions. and as both the two former health secretaries have just said, we're not giving people guidance. the cdc can't play the role it

can play because of the politics of the white house. our testing isn't up to snuff. it still isn't, four months after the first case landed in the united states. you know, i think this has been botched from the very, very beginning. it's not getting any better. and i think you've seen the president lash out over the last 36 hours on twitter because he realizes that more and more he's being judged on an abject failure of his leadership. >> thanks so much to robert gibbs, to two former secretaries of health, both secretary sebelius and shalala, who is now a congressmember, and of course, to geoff bennett at the white house. let's take a look at tennessee, where covid-19 cases are on the rise. nearly 15,000 cases statewide. but the state is reopening anyway, stores and restaurants at half capacity today, requiring servers and patrons to wear protective masks and to continue self-distancing by six feet. nbc news correspondent catie

beck is in downtown nashville. catie, this is a tough balancing act for the business owners in music city. how can they, many small restaurants, how can they do this six-foot business and still stay in business anyway? >> reporter: i think a lot of business owners are trying to figure that out, andrea. i think they're trying to figure out, is it even profitable for me to open if i'm only going to be at 50% capacity? one business owner that we spoke to here says, basically for him, it's going to cost him $250,000 just to open his doors, so he wants to be sure that he's going to have enough business to sustain that and not have to close and then reopen again. so, there's mixed confidences here among business owners. some are really very excited about the possibility of opening their doors today. they've been waiting for this day for weeks. others are saying we're not ready to open our doors yet, we're going to wait. we're going to basically give it a few more weeks before we take the leap and take that risk. another thing to note is that here in nashville, bars and entertainment venues are not open. this first phase is limited.

it's just restaurants and retail. and with some pretty strict restrictio restrictions. they're going to be taking temperatures of servers. they're going to be requiring servers and patrons to wear masks. they're going to be having the six-foot distancing rules and no parties over ten people. so, it's not really going to look exactly how it did before, even during phase one. certainly bars and entertainment venues, they're eager to get the next phase under way so they can open as well. andrea? >> catie beck in nashville. and now to arizona, where restaurants will begin dine-in services today, despite the state seeing its highest spike in covid-19 deaths last week. msnbc political reporter vaughn hillyard is in phoenix, arizona. vaughn, just what precautions are these restaurants going to take to avoid infections? >> reporter: andrea, this is coming, as you said, just last week the most number of deaths in a single week here in the state of arizona from covid-19. of course, while testing has increased in the state, so have the number of cases. and the arizona republican

governor doug ducey and his team say they have taken steps to begin opening up these businesses, dine-in, and retail last friday, because they're seeing the percentage of positive tests among all of the tests conducted for covid-19 slowly go down. those are the grounds in which they are saying that they are opening. again, last week was the highest number of deaths. at the same time, businesses here in the state for nearly two months have been shut down, including the likes of bebo pizza pub. these businesses, i was just talking with the owner, lauren cole, and she said, look, our workers are eager to go back, we are going to sanitize every table, every chair after every guest comes and goes. we are going to take the necessary steps to make sure our customers are safe. of course, you continue to see these deaths increase here across the state. this is a tough time for these businesses, but they're sure ready to give it a try. andrea? >> vaughn hillyard, thank you. and friday's devastating unemployment numbers show that more than a quarter of the total

job losses are in the restaurant industry. 5.5 million jobs in all. so, are restaurants ever going to be able to get back to p pre-crisis job levels as states reopen and will people want to eat in as long as they can stay safe distance? jeff is the head joeudge on "to chef" and has helped the restaurant coalition lobby congress for the industry. good to see you. thank you very much, from a 30,000-foot level, after we looked at unemployment numbers, we thought immediately about the high number. you've got more than a quarter of the overall jobless numbers are in the restaurant sector. how are they ever going to get back into business? >> well, listen, it's going to take a long time. that's why the independent restaurant coalition is asking congress for a restaurant stabilization package, particularly to help restaurants

not only get open but to stay in business, you know, for the unforeseeable future. opening a restaurant with 50% capacity is no guarantee that you're going to do 50% of the business. in fact, the question isn't when these restaurants can open up, the question is when the customers feel safe walking into a restaurant when you have the bartenders and the wait staff wearing masks, where the entire restaurant smells like clorox. it's not a recipe for hospitality. and so, we have a long way to go. you can't just kind of wish that you're going to snap your fingers and all of a sudden the customers are going to show up. and i have a feeling that they may show up, you know, to sort of, for a sense of solidarity, they want to get out of the house maybe for a week or two. then they're going to realize that it's pretty dangerous. and then what's going to happen? we're going to start seeing, you know, covid start going through these restaurants. you're going to see restaurant workers coming down with getting sick. and so, people are going to realize they're going to have to stay at home.

you know, this is a long, long process that we're going to go through. one of the things that this -- going to be a few months and we're going to get through it, i think they're mistaken. >> when you think about things like menus and salt and pepper shakers, things that are commonly touched by diners, how do restaurants manage all of those kinds of things? >> you know, listen, you can go to paper menus. i mean, you could do things like -- you know, if somebody makes a reservation, they get a menu, they preorder it. there are a lot of things that you can do. you can pay with paypal or some other means of a cardless payment system. but again, if you're sitting in a restaurant and someone coughs, do you empty out the restaurant? if a worker gets sick, do you close down again? and again, the problem is, if we do 20% or 30% of the business that we were doing precovid, we lose a ton of money.

and so, what's the point of opening just to lose a ton of money? restaurants can't sustain those kinds of losses. >> you want a congressional package, but everyone is getting in line. and now the white house and senate republicans are saying, enough, already, let's wait and see how things play out. how do you get congress to even listen to you when there are so many needs? i'm not saying yours are any less important, but so many people already in line. >> yeah. in an election year, if you want to see 25% unemployment and think you're going to win an election, good luck. you're going to need to support these restaurants and these businesses so they can keep people employed, or else there's going to be some big changes. >> and tom, one quick question, how serious do you think the supply line issue is in the meat -- for meat? do you think that that's a serious problem? meat, chicken, i guess, for restaurant owners. >> yes, there's a serious

problem. you know, what's going on with the supply chain is there are two separate supply chains, one that goes to restaurants and hotels. it's a different pac. and the other one goes to supermarkets. and so, if you were selling your supply chain to something, you know, processing for restaurants, that supply chain is shut down. also, if you're, you know, a pig farmer, and you want to raise your animal, it's about 200 pounds that you need to raise it to before it gets processed. now all of a sudden your processing plant's closed down. that pig doesn't stop growing. you have to continue to feed that pig. when you feed that pig, it costs a farmer money. the farmer can't sustain these kinds of losses, and they euthanize the pigs. they have nowhere to sell it. it's not a matter of a pig that's 300 pounds and this all kind of opens up, you can't put that pig through a processor. they're not set up to take pigs that size. same thing with milk. if you are a milk farmer or dairy farmer and you are selling into a processor that processes in five-gallon containers for restaurants and hotels -- you

can't -- for gallon and half-gallon containers. it's a different process. dairy farmers supplying that side of the market, they've lost their market. so what we really need to do is we need a plan from our government. because the other thing, restaurants, you know, can fix a lot of these problems right now. if government starts feeding people -- we're seeing huge lines of people lining up for food, in food banks. if they actually used restaurants, we can keep our supply chain intact and we can actually start doing a lot of community feeding and we could do this through -- but the government's got to support this and pay for this. this way, you keep restaurants open, you keep workers working and you keep the supply chain intact. but to do this, you have to have a plan. and we don't have a plan. we're kind of like ad-libbing this as we go. and this is something that, you know, the idea that we haven't seen this, we didn't know about this. you know, two years ago, bill gates did a documentary on this. we knew this was coming. there was a playbook. obama had a playbook.

government decided that they were going to wish this away, and that's not going to happen. we need a plan and we need a plan right now. but you can use restaurants to keep the supply chain intact and you can feed a lot of people who are in need right now. >> well, tom colicchio, great idea. i love that you're talking about solutions. we do need a plan and we haven't had plans. and thank you so much today. we'll stay in touch. and coming up, once thought to be unaffected, now a rare, mysterious illness linked to covid-19 being seen in children. what do we know about the virus's impacts on kids, coming up next. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity.

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now to that really troubling development in covid-19 complications for children. at least three children now have died in new york state from a rare inflammatory syndrome believed to be related to the coronavirus. hospitals have identified at least 73 cases among toddlers and elementary school-aged children in new york state. i'm joined now by two doctors from the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health, dr. joshua sharfstein, vice dean of public health practice and community engagement and paul inglesby. dr. sharfstein, first to you. this is so troubling, because first of all, the symptoms mimic other common symptoms among children with, let's say an allergy. parents are not identifying it as quickly as they might because there hasn't been enough publicity about this.

what would you tell parents of children now with this really strange syndrome? >> so, sure. well, this is a very concerning development because this kind of response to an infection, which has been seen before in other circumstances and is very rare, can be quite serious. and as you can see, can even be fatal. i think it's really important for parents to be attentive to their kids, obviously. fevers, strange rashes, a conjunctivitis in the eyes, cracked lips. all of those things together are what people are worried about. and have a low threshold, to call the pediatrician and talk it over. i know there are a lot of pediatricians out there who would love to get that call and be of assistance. >> dr. inglesby, how important is it to diagnose early and get real medical help?

>> i think this is very important. this can cause inflammation of blood vessels, and ultimately can be life-threatening. so i think parents who have any suspicion of kawasaki's, any of these symptoms that dr. sharfstein just mentioned i think should have a low threshold for calling their own doctors and getting -- [ inaudible ] >> and dr. sharfstein, also, the public health implications of opening too early. we're seeing in south korea, which was heralded around the world for its aggressive control of the outbreak when it first happened, now seeing a hotspot in seoul, south korea. they have traced it to one man who went into a nightclub on may 2nd and infected at least 84 other people through contact tracing. what are your concerns about the

way the white house is moving to reopen and encouraging states to reopen when they haven't even met the first cdc guideline, which is two weeks of infection rate going down? >> right. well, i think the south korea example is a good one because we're not -- nobody is saying that there should be no risk at all, we have to wait for the virus to be totally gone before starting to reopen. but it makes good sense to have a response capacity, to have that contact tracing, in order to be able to jump on a situation like they're doing right now in south korea. and that contact tracing this hope, and i think is likely, will be able to control this so they can continue with their reopening. the challenge in the united states is that places are reopening without having that public health response capacity, and if it gets out of control because there's nothing to control it, then you're looking at another stay-at-home order or

major restrictions again. today at the school of public health, they're launching a free online contact tracing course, and we're hoping a lot of people, a lot of departments are able to make use of it to develop that public health response capacity. >> and is that available, dr. inglesby, only for people in maryland? or is it -- well, it's an online course, dr. sharfstein just said, so i guess it is available to other people. but can this be a national impulse from the bloomberg school? i know bloomberg is already doing a great deal for new york state, new york city. >> yes, i think that's exactly what it's intended to be. it's intended to be a tool for public health agencies around the country that are trying to scale up their contact tracing capabilities. and i think, as dr. sharfstein was staying, we think this is really one of the most important capabilities that needs to be

built across the country. it's what other countries that i've had success trying to bring their case numbers down with covid have had in place. and as you were saying, in south korea, one of south korea's great successes is being able to manage cases very, very quickly, very effectively. and even now, as they're reopening and having a new outbreak to deal with, that's their plan. that's how they will react to it. and that's what we'll have to do as we have outbreaks and continued disease spread in this country, which will be our normal until we have a vaccine. we're going to have to be able to respond quickly to outbreaks and to the spread across the country. so i think we're very excited about that tool. >> thank you so much, doctors inglesby and sharfstein from the bloomberg school at johns hopkins. and coming up next, the politics of coronavirus, as both presidential campaigns go on the

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. the battle to fight coronavirus is now taking center stage in the 2020 campaign, both president trump and former vice president joe biden using it as part of their messaging. biden's in an unpaid video posted this weekend the trump campaign using its vast resources for a paid tv ad. let's watch. >> during the coronavirus pandemic joe biden criticized president trump's china travel ban. >> hysterical gene phobia. >> he was dead wrong. for 40 years biden's been wrong

on china, giving china most favored nation status, letting china walk all over us. >> you know, it's a two-way street, they have to treat us well also. >> how are you doing? for real. >> i'm tired. i'm scared every day. my job is to go to work, and help people who are sick. >> you go in and risk your life every day. god love you. >> well, joining me now are bill kristol, director of defending democracy together, former chief of staff to vice president dan quayle, and correspondent for the "pbs newshour." yamishe, we're seeing the campaigns dialing it up, one has a ton of money, the other doesn't, one is out and about, the other is in his basement running a virtual campaign, one of the most effective retail candidates in democratic

politics. how is this matchup going to work for joe biden in particular the challenger is this. >> well, joe biden was already going to be in a tough position because, of course, president trump is the incumbent president and they tend to win if you're an incumbent president. that said the coronavirus is center stage and the way that president trump has handled it is a big part of whether or not he'll be reelected. we see that democrats are doing all they can to get people riled up on that. we saw that rare audee from former president obama talking in private call to former obama staffer saying that president trump has made a chaotic disaster of his coronavirus outbreak and as a result they should be fired up to get behind joe biden. that was him news using that information to get people excited about joe biden. democrats are saying, look, we're being safer. joe biden is remaining in the basement and as a result he's looking at social distancing in a more serious way. but there's no -- there's no question that president trump is going to be out and about. he's going to be using the oval

office, the white house, wherever he can, to make the case that he should be reelected because he is the better person for this job. >> and bill kristol, from what your perspective, as someone who was working in the white house, you know how cramped the spaces are, what about the white house's push to get the company -- the company, the country reopened, and how people are going to evaluate that when they have their own fears, are people going to be willing to do what the president skpis says and go back and go to restaurants and do things like that? >> you know, i think, andrea, they're going to reasonably say, gee, the white house has a heck of a lot more ability to control who's coming in and out, testing everyone, if they have a problem, maybe i should be cautious and maybe the white house should be cautious in maki making relations or embracing people on the street that want to open everything up immediately. on a broader question, the white

house will try to get into a huge number of tactical -- biden said one thing on china he wishes he hadn't said and so forth. obviously the biden campaign will have to play defense on that. i think they understand this, they need to keep on the big picture. has this been handled well or not. every administration might is are messed things up in the beginning, these things are hard to manage. i don't know if someone said it on your show or someone else that getting a "b" or "b" plus in dealing with the pandemic is pretty good, you don't expect "a" performance, from the beginning at least, but you also expect the administrations to adjust and to learn and to do better as they've gone on. it's not even that trump made a lot of mistakes, which he did in january and february, but where's the adjustment, wls the learning? is the government getting better. the people being driven out is scientists and more serious people and we have a more chaotic and irresponsible message coming from the president of the united states today than we did a few months

ago when he made his first semiserious speech to the nation. the failure to learn and get more responsible, the failure to actually deliver on things like testing and tracing and so forth, i think that's a good message for biden. i think, keeping on the forest -- the level of the forest, rather than the trees, i think will benefit him well. honestly, objectively, if we're going to have a referendum on whether the administration did a good job in handling this crisis or not i think biden wins that referendum. >> of course, health care was the big issue that they regained the house, the democrats regained the house on, largely, briefly, bill, are republicans getting nervous about losing the senate, given the health issue, and the economic problems as well, of course? >> very much so. they have wrapped themselves with president trump, it's too late for them to unwrap themselves, in my opinion, and voters may decide this matter has, you know, botched its chance to govern. it did some things, i'd say if you're a republic, voted

republican in the past -- on this big health crisis, public and economic, what do they have to say and there i think this coming up the next package, where trump wants to sort of fight it, and they're going to -- republicans will be cross-pressured on that. yes, i think republicans are at great risk in the senate and i think republicans think that as well. >> and we're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately for today. more to come, of course. and that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports," remember, follow us online, on facebook and on twitter at "mitchell reports," ari melber picks up our coverage after a break. a portion of their personal auto premiums. we're also offering flexible payment options for those who've been financially affected by the crisis. we look forward to returning to something that feels a little closer to life as we knew it, but until then you can see how we're here to help at libertymutual.com/covid-19.

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good afternoon, i'm ari melber, here are the latest facts at this hour. illinois governor jarks bpritzker, a senior staffer tested positive for coronavirus. they've issued a statement and noted the government at this hour is considered tested negative for the virus. meanwhile, last hour new york governor andrew cuomo announcing the statewide closure in that hard hit state will end this week, in fact this friday, may 15th. some regions will be able to start a limited reopening at the end of the week. the governor says there are 161 new deaths in the state but as for the curve, the hospitalizations rate remains on the decline. meanwhile, michigan's auto supplier