it just seems to be no effort on certain blue states to get back into gear. the people aren't going to stand for it. they want to get back. they're not going to stand for it. they want our country open. i want our country open too. i want it open safely, but i want it open. don't forget, people are dying the other route. you can go with the enclosed route. everything is closed up. you're in your house, you're not allowed to move. people are dying with that too. you look at drug addiction, suicides and some of the things that are taking place. people are dying that way too. you can make the case it's in even greater numbers. it's a situation that some people and i've noticed that some states could be moving more quickly and also at the same time safety. safety is paramount but people are dying in the lockdown position too. everybody understands that.

>> americans have been self-quarantining, social distancing yet we're still seeing about 20,000 new cases a day, 1 to 2,000 deaths. is there anything else the administration is planning to do to get these new cases under control? we seem to be on a plateau. >> the numbers are way down from what they were two weeks ago. the numbers are really coming down and very substantially. this weekend was one of the lowest we've had. the numbers are coming down but all throughout the country the numbers are coming down rapdly. i think you see that admiral. >> now 130,000 cases that go through august. do you agree with those models? is that your expectation? >> the models haven't been

accurate. these are a models done by a lot of think tanks and universities. some of the models have been way off. few of the models have been accurate. as far as the models are concerned, if you go by the model, we will lose 2.2 million people and because we took, we mitigated, we did things that were very tough for our country to do, frankly. we had to turn off our whole magnificent economy. we had to turn down the whole country. we're at the lowest fall of the models. if you look at 120,000 people would be at the low side. one is too many people. i say it all the time. one person to lose for this is too many people. it's a disgrace what happened. if you look at models, we're at the lowest of those projections.

mold models are done by many people all over the world. if you take the most respected of those people, many of those models are wrong. they've been wrong as far as the u.s. is concerned. >> an expectation of the death toll by the summer? >> you know what, i don't want to think about it even. i know we're doing everything we can. we're doing a good job. we acted very early. we acted extremely early in keeping china out of our country and banning people from china coming in other than our citizens which we had to take. they were quarantined or watched carefully. they were tested and watched carefully. we had about 40,000 people coming in from china from asia and we had to obviously take the people. ron desan ttis said they put

people that came from from china in quarantine. i think we saved hundreds of thousands of lives by acting early. everybody was against my doing it. everybody was. i was pretty much by myself on that one. it was a lucky thing we did it because we saved hundreds of thousands of lives. go ahead. >> thank you. earlier today the vice president urged governors to have all their nursing home residents tested. why not just mandate that? why not require that? have you considered that? >> i would consider that. i will mandate it. i think it's important to do and some of the governors were very lax with respect to nursing homes. it was obvious right from the beginning. the state of washington where 26 or 28 people died very early on.

i would have said nursing homes. some of the states, many of the states are doing that. but i think all of the states should be. that's a recall vulnerability. >> the two staffers that were announced last week as testing positive, are you aware of any additional white house staff? >> not at all. i'm only aware of people that saw them, were tested. the tests were negative and their quarantining any way. go ahead. >> thank you. i wanted to ask, are you now or are you considering separating some more with vice president pence as a precautionary measure ? >> federal, the job he's done on task force as the vice president of the united states has been outstanding.

he's a warrior too just like doctors and nurses. he's working so hard and he's coming into contact with a lot of people. he tested negative. he comes into kwakcontact with t of people. it's something during this quarantine period we'll probably talk about. i have not seen him since then. i would say he and i will be talking about that. we can talk on the phone. >> the president said dr. fauci and dr. hahn tested negative then why do they need to be isolated? is there concern they could be spreading the virus? is there concern about the testing? why do they need to isolate? >> this is a fundamental concept. it underlying a lot of the questions here. if you test negative at that pun woin

with -- one point, that means you tested for that one point in time. the incubation period could be many days. if you're in close contact just testing negative on that one day doesn't mean you won't be positive later on. the prudent and recommended thing to do is to self-isolate yourself for the entire period of incubation and really then some. that's what they're doing. it's a precautionary matter because they were negative. we all hope they remain negative but if they turn positive in day or two that still possible even with a negative test. >> thank you. phil. >> one of your mother's day tweets you appear to accuse president obama of the biggest political crime in history. those were your words. what crime exactly are you accusing president obama of committing and do you believe the justice department should prosecute him? >> obamagate. it's been going on for long

time. it's been going on from before i even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened and if you look at what's gone on and look at now. all of this information that's being released and from what i understand that's only the beginning. some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. you'll be seeing what's going on over the coming weeks. i wish you'd write honestly about it but you choose not to do so. >> what is the crime exactly? >> you know what the crime is. it's very obvious to everybody. all you have to do is read the newspapers except yours. >> john, please. >> if i can just get a clarification on the testing. we have seen clearly the number of tests have gone up. there's been some advancements in testing. you said twice that every american who wants a test can get a test. that's not the case. 1.9 million tests per day is far short of every american that wants a test. >> i will say just from listening and hearing like you

do, we all do, not everybody should get a test because they have to have certain things. they're going no know when they're not feeling right. those are the people that will be getting the test. admiral. >> everybody who needs a test, can get a test. we have plenty of tests for that -- right now in america anybody who needs a test can get a test in america with the numbers we have. if you're symptommatic with a respiratory illness that's an indication for a test and you can get a test. if you need to be contact traced, you can get a test. we are starting to have asymptommatic surveillance which is very important. again, that's over three million tests per week. that is sufficient for every one who need a test, symptommatic, contact tracing and our best projections the asymptommatic kind of surveillance we need to get that. that's the way it is.

i work at hhs. i work there every day. i don't get tested every day. i get monitored for my symptoms. i wear mask when i go in. that's a safe work environment for the environment we have. if i became symptommatic, i would get a test and if it were positive, i would isolate and there would be contact tracing to stop that just the way it was done here. if i'm not symptommatic, i do the precautions as every one is recommended in phase one and that's the essence of safely opening america. >> the numbers are coming way down and coming down rapidly. that's a beautiful thing to see and that's pretty much universally all across country. >> americans who are going back to work shouldn't expect and shouldn't need, shouldn't want to have the same thing that people coming to work here at the white house have which is the ability to get tested

regularly regardless of symptoms? >> let me clarify as well. people who come into close contact with the president get tested on a regular basis. if i were not in close contact with the president, specifically, i would not get tested like most people here do not get tested. that's a very specific circumstance. when i work at hhhs, i don't get tested. i do the exact thing that we ask americans to do to monitor your symptoms. if you're symptommatic, self-isolate, get tested. if you need to be contact traced, be contact trace and cooperate with your local public health but not everybody who walks in here get tested every time they do. fp you're symptommatic here, at hhs, a meat packing plant, at a school, you need to get tested. >> the meat packing plants are

doing well. we're finding out who had the problem. they're being quarantined. the meat packing is moving along nicely. they were trouble spots. they were hot zones definitely. >> when thing i think is important, just to finish, we have now and nobody says it. they just don't want to write it. buy far more tests than any other country in the world not even a contest and the quality of our tests is the best anywhere in the world. that's very important. go ahead. >> to make sure i understand the white house's position, are you saying that right now you feel there's enough testing, adequate testing across the united states or do you feel it needs to be ramped up and by how much? >> i think we have been clear all along that we believe and the data indicate we have enough testing to do the phase one gradual reopening that has been supported in the president's plan and the task force plan.

there are many models out there. if you look at our aging bagsed models, it's far below that. you get about that number. i'm not going to come here and say, we can absolutely swear it's god's truth this is number we need. we know, we have enough to open and we're going to be very careful with our surveillance programs and with the data come in to inform us even further as we grow and learn. >> i think -- let me add a bit to that. most days i don't come to the white house to work. i go to fema and hhs.

let me talk you through the protocols because i would never get tested if i wasn't coming to the white house. every day we come in, we get our temperature taken and asked questions about if we have is symptoms. if you don't, you enter the workplace. there's hand sanitizers in rooms all over the place. they put pieces of paper that say don't sit in every third seat, to separate people. there's a lot of precautions we're taking in the federal government that are separate from testing. those are the precautions that the agencies that we're working at every day are using to let us continue working. >> if people want to get tested, they get tested. we have the greatest capacity in the world. not even close. for the most part they shouldn't want to get tested. if they feel good, they don't have sniffles, sore throats, they don't have any problem. if they do feel there's something happening, they have the absolute easy. the governor doing a fantastic job in florida.

he said, he's got a little bit of the opposite problem. he's got so much testing that people sit around and wait for people to come in. they have far, a great over capacity for testing and there are numerous other states that have told me the same thing. that's a good problem, not a bad problem. okay. >> you said many times that the u.s. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. >> yes. >> why does that matter? why is this a global competition if every day americans are still losing their lives and we're still seeing more cases every day. >> they're losing their lives everywhere in world. maybe that's a question you should ask china. don't ask me. ask china that question. when you ask them that question, you may get a very unusual answer. yes, behind you, please. >> sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically? >> i'm not saying it

specifically to anybody. i'm saying it to anybody that would ask a nasty question. >> that's not a nasty question. why does it matter? >> anybody else. >> i have two questions. >> it's okay. you pointed to me. i have two questions. >> next, please. you called on me. i did and you didn't respond now i'm calling on the young lady in the back. i wanted to let me colleague finish. >> thank you very much. preer appreciate it. >> you called on me. >> that was interesting at the brian williams to recap. rather than allowing caitlin collins of cnn to ask her questions, the president called an end to the news conference after a dust up and answer with an asian reporter over why he called out china. she asked a perfectly legitimate

question about why inject global competition into testing when the death toll is still rising. perhaps, mirroring what is going to be over and over again said in defense of this administration his reply was don't ask me. ask china. interesting white house press conference. let's say at the outset none of the established medical experts were there today. for americans wanting to hear from a representative of the cdc, for example, that was not possible today. no dr. birx. the cdc director and dr. fauci are going through a kind of limited quarantine after coming into contact with a positive case. the president came out with a declarative statement. it took a long time in his remarks before he got to expressing anything about the

rising death toll in our country and even then he couched it as part of a global problem. he said, quote, we have met the moment and we have prevailed. when questioned about that later he said he meant testing. that he meant testing. the admiral has clearly learned to back up the commander in chief. his first words out of his mouth were thank you mr. president for your leadership. there was a lot about testing, as you might imagine. we do have great testing capacity at the white house. we're doing it. he was asked a lot about the positive cases they've had about face masks. he said we've learned a lot and the american people have learned a lot about face masks. the good and the bad, by the way. indicating there was a downside to face masks. he said it's no t one sided.

did not elaborate but sa said the wearing of face masks included the good and the bad. he asked what else is new. about the fourth quarter into next calendar year i think it's something that will be very special. the only people who can mess that up in the president's telling are the democrats. about the pediatric illness that's affecting children out of nowhere and killed several in new york area. the president said children recoffer from that. the admiral was called upon to correct that, which he did indeed do. he said most children recover from that. there's been fatalities. in something that didn't come out right, the president said

one of the things we were most proud of deaths per 100,000 people. he ranked us along side germany. the point he was trying to make is that we're at the lowest of the industrialized world in deaths per 100,000 people in population. didn't quite translate that way. continuing to go through my notes. the president said he called the one black republican senator and that's tim scott not from georgia but from south carolina who confirmed to the president he was troubled by it. on testing which will be the headline from this press availability, here are some quotes from the president. americans should all be able to get a test right now. if somebody wants to get tested right now, they'll be able to get tested. he added, not everybody should

get a test but then he repeated, if people want the get tested, they get tested. he said in florida the governor told him people sit around and wait for people to get in. they have an over abundance of testing there. then at the end, when asked why is emphasis on comparing nations of the 184 nations, he sk constantly mentions, why that competition in the face of this death toll. he said don't ask me, ask why that. it's a lot but it's every time we cover one of these events and with us to talk about it robert costa. dr. vin gupta and acting administrator of the centers for medicare and medicaid services

during the obama administration. dr. gupta, i'm compelled to begin with you because of this statement from the president. americans should all be able to get a test right now. if somebody wants to get tested, they'll be able to get tested. by my reading of the current situation in this country, that's simply not true. do you concur? >> i concur. let's be clear on what's happening here. this is an effort to move the goal post to say mission accomplished. there was mission accomplished or some variation said multiple times by the add miadmiral and e president with regards to testing. since we're cherry picking data, let me give you a metric that matters. it's the number of covid tests per confirmed case of covid-19. on that metric, we do terribly. we have 6.8 test for every positive case.

why does that matter? it matters because first of all, astonia in czech republic has a rate 7 times high. that means we're only testing individuals that we think will be positive largely speaking. this whole asymptommatic piece that the add admiral kept referencing, that will be critical to return to work strategy. we need to be testing more people, not less and the vast a majority who are infected don't have symptoms. we need to be testing asymptommatic individual, broadening our scope and i'll say this. the whole conference about incubation periods and why dr. fauci and hahn shouldn't have been present there, it didn't make a lot of sense. incubation is time from exposure to the development of symptoms. yes, maybe we'll see if they develop symptoms but if they got the right test up front, we

should know whether they did or did not have virus in their nose and they should be cleared. if that's not the case then i'd like h imto explain what he meant. that was a very unclear and confusing. i think we need to be precise by incubation period. >> andy, it's been our contention that here to fortesting has been dependent upon zip code and how much money you have. do you know any reason to disagree with that today? >> i think this is still the case. the president has just called for nursing homes to be tested. we've had people call for nursing homes to be tested for six weeks. we haven't had the tests. nursing homes, public housing, prisons, meat packing factories, hot spots, any place where this

disease can be, we need to be doing a lot of testing or we're not going be safe going back out and opening up society again. it's the essential workers, the people who are of color and living in multigenerational households, these people are not getting tested like the people who live in the white house. >> robert costa, you have discussed the president saying the quiet part out loud. if there was a bumper sticker to emerge from what we witnessed and it came from the end. i quote, about the death toll, don't ask me, ask china. >> right. you see across the republican party an attempt to focus now on china. to not engage in any kind of litigation of the president's

leadership in recent months, his handling of testing in trying to make china the foil. you saw in his interaction with cbs news, this concentration on china. his aides are telling me he wants it to be the foil in 2020. he's not going full throated yet because he still has trade deal with china on the table and a relationship with xi jingping. the other issue, nursing homes. the administration is trying to signal they are focusing on that as well. so many governors based on my reporting over the last few hours are raising red flags on the call today. they still have testing issues at nursing homes across the country. >> i want to play for you some of what the president said about testing. >> farce americaas far as ameria test, they should get a test now. that's the problem with a

question like that. we go through a whole announcement saying we're number one in the world by far, by factor of two and three and four and i get a question. when will everybody get tested and if somebody wants to be tested now they'll be able to be tested. >> dr. gupta, back up to you. explain to people in the moments after hearing that, again, how the president can be right that by whatever mettic ric he is us we lead the world in testing. don't ask about a percentage of our population and to explain how it is to andy's point. you can live in a poor community in this country, you can be an essential employee in this country and have no idea how you could get a test. >> fundamentally they get a test. you can't just walk up and say i want a test which is what the president is implying that anybody who says on demand i want this, i'm going to get it.

that's not how i works. the cdc said repeatedly and if you go on their website now, anybody has to have symptoms. you need to see a nurse practictioner or a physician to get a test. what's the big overarching problem when it comes to health system inequitities, access to health care? we know that certain zip codes are better services than others. if you don't have durable access to health care, you're not going to get a test that easily. we know that african-americans make up 13% of the u.s. population but 27 president % o deaths. that's a reason. that's health care access, preexisting inearthquaquities t worsened by this outbreak. i will add quality of tests, this test he keeps references, 85% sensitivity. for every 1,000 individuals that get that test, 150 get the wrong answer. he needs to stop talking about

that test. >> there were some familiar t e tells when the president reached his late remarks about the death toll. he said, we mourn for those who have lost a loved one. he stopped himself mentioned that was worldwide. mentioned the 184 nations, again because it always helps his argument to call it an invisible enemy. to paint the united states as just one of these 184. then indeed later, he couched it in global terms as if to escape any liability. talking about when he's asked about models. he does this every day. the model had he done nothing and comparing current performance. as you look at the models, as of

this afternoon, where are we headed? >> if you look around the world whether it's greece, the czech republic, new zealand, vietnam, hong kong, there are countries around the world that are successfully, safely opening up their economy. italy because they have done a very nice job of sticking to their strategy and they have res d -- reduced the case count. we're sitting here in the class of a small number of countries, brazil, iran, russia that have levelled off at a very high rate and if you look at the map that you're showing now, we have levelled off at a high rate but it's misleading because if you take out the northeast, the rest of country is growing at about 15 to 20% of new cases. as we all have come to learn about the lag that exists here, what shows up in case count today, shows up in

hospitalizations in a couple of weeks, shows up in icu beds a week or two after that and shows up in fatality rates sometimes after that. it will be sometime in june when we experience the reality of the policies that are put in place today. if people are being less careful today than a month ago, then you're going to reason to believe that death counts will be much higher than they are today. we all have to be extraordinarily careful of not getting fooled into thinking that a, we are doing something better than we are and b, this is impossible because it's not. there are countries around this world that are facing this and taking this on. we're just not one of them. >> robert costa, finally, talk about how atmospherics become substance to him. questions get pulled apart. questioners get pulled apart.

he said i understand you very well. better than you understand yourself. question, answer exchanges become personal. it can color the nature of his answer and at an event like today where we heard not word one from the cdc, these kinds of exchanges and the role of his temp and temperament in these exchanges begin to matter. >> for those who have known the president for decades going back to his days in new york city, they always say that when he was fighting on the real estate wars in that battle groupds ground is and '80s, he wanted to be his own spokesman. clashed with reporters but the presidency, three and a half, four years in, this is totally different context. if the president remains unchanged, his aides say he still wants to be the person out front. in front of the data, in front

of the science and because he knows no other way of leading an organization, including the united states of america. based on my reporting, there's no one around him who is able to change those traits in any way. if anything they are trying to lightly manage it usually in a way they find internally pretty ineffective. >> to our viewers, i can't thank these gentlemen enough for joining us after sitting here and monitoring that press conference with us. our thanks. i will return tonight for our usual time broadcast. we'll take our break and our coverage and after that, on the other side my colleague katie tur continues this hour right after this. tion could lead to vision loss. so today i made a plan with my doctor, which includes preservision... because he said a multi- vitamin alone may not be enough. and it's my vision,

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continuing msnbc coverage, moments ago the president spoke in the rose garden to tout efforts to expand testing in this country even though experts say we're still far short of where we need to be to safely reopen. at this event the president claims we have prevailed on the issue of testing and he made yet another series of promises. >> your staff, your senior staff as you referenced is able to get tested every day. when will it be that americans across the country will be able to get tested every day thaz go back to work? >> very soon. it's an interesting question because normally you would have said that you are not tested and you would have been not getting tested. if we get tested it's a problem. if we don't get tested, it's a problem. i like the way your question was fra phrase better this way. it is a positive. if somebody wants to be tested they will be able to be tested.

>> we should note the president claimed back on march 6th that anybody that wants a test can get a test. then the task force official in charge of testing clarified that anyone who needs a test subject to the white house's phase one n get a test. the president dismissed concerned about the spread rof the virus in the west weng wing and the press conference ended with a tense exchange between the president and cbs reporter on the issue of china . more on that in a moment. this comes as more than 81,000 americans have died from this virus. nearly every state in the union is starting to reopen amid collapsing economic conditions. new york state is planning to reopen some businesses in some places on friday. the president is aggressively pushing for the country to reopen but the question remains, is it safe?

joining me now with the laitest is my nbc news colleague. it seemed like the president wanted to reframe the conversation. the united states is not behind. it's actually leading. we're doing so well that businesses across the country can reopen but at the same time, the white house has had two staffers test positive for the virus. now multiple administration officials are self-isolating. they belatedly instituted a policy where everybody needs to wear masks. these are not things that are country is able to do. not every business will be able to have a test for everybody that walks in the door to make sure that they are workplaces are safe. the white house has this. they can't keep the white house safe. what message is that sending? >> it's unclear. i say that because the president

has said different things about the importance of testing. he seems to be saying testing was important. it was last week he said a test is only good until your next infection. you can't be testing every one every moment. i think when we take a big step back from what we heard today, the numbers bounced around. there was more of how great the testing system is at 300,000 tests the president suggests. don't forget it was two weeks ago the president told kristin welker they will be at five million tests a day very soon and he backed away from that. the fact they are talking about 11 billion for states for testing even though the president only said one billion but administration official have put it at 11. what we have in the white house today was an add mission is they have not done enough testing. they were hoping to do some sort of victory lap on testing and that will be more. that's in contra digs of what they have been saying for some last two months going back to

the point you made which is the cdc moment where he said if you need a test, you can have one. to me, today is an admission from the white house that the testing isn't sufficient and they plan to spend more to do it. >> what do you think motivated that. the president is reading polling about his numbers and worried about his prospects for november. worried he will end up losing to joe biden. >> polling is one of three data points i would suggest is influencing. they are in talk with conversation with governors. some governors are saying they need more tests. we're suggesting that the

unemployment rate will be 20, 25%. there's a recognition that to unleash the animal spirits of the economy, to have that snap back the president wants in q3 or q4 you need to instill confidence in the public. confidence in the public is not likely to be there unless there's more testing to give people a comfort level of going out and resuming their lives. i would suggest those three officials that we're talking to are leaning on governors and saying the governors input does resonate with the president. >> confidence comes with consistency. that's ha builds trust. the white house has not had c consistency in its messaging on the coronavirus. certainly not with the way they are behaving. what they are saying does not match what with they are doing. i want to play the way the news conference ended. there was a tense exchange between the president and

caitlin collins of cnn but before that there was another one. let's play it. >> you said many times that the u.s. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. >> yes. >> why does that matter? why is this a global competition to you if every day americans are still losing their lives and we're still seeing more cases every day? >> they're losing their lives everywhere in the world and maybe that's a question you should ask china. don't ask me, ask china. yes, behind you, please. >> sir, why are you saying that to me specifically that i should ask china? >> i'm not asking it specifically. i'm asking to anybody that would ask a nasty question. >> that's not a nasty question.

>> this comes on the heels of the president, i believe he went after her in a new york post interview. there was a moment early on in this pandemic and the spread that she said somebody in the administration used a nasty slang, asian slang for the virus to her face. what's going on here in. >> i don't know. i don't have the answer why the president attacks certain reporters in certain context and why he went after her there. and seemed to be upset with caitlin collins from cnn who he has gone after in the past who he has ignored. he ended the press conference abruptly. i don't think there's anything that's unclear about that and earlier in the press conference he went out of his way to escalate ever so slightly his rhetoric on china. number one, he seemed to suggest that china wanted to renegotiate a trade deal and he wouldn't do it. number two, he seemed to suggest

that they are aware of these reports or aware this chinese may and i stress may because we haven't confirmed this at nbc, maybe hacking as it relates to a possible vaccine. his rhetoric on china was slightly stress on slightly hotser than it was in first part of the press conference and as to the specifics of why he picked on. >> hans, thank you very much. more than two months after the first covid-19 case was first confirmed in the united states and more than four months after the virus was first detected in china, there's still a lot of unknowns and a lot of mystery surrounding this virus including a new illness related to covid-19 that's affecting children. it's being called pediatric

multisystem inflammatory syndrome. moments ago the president down played that. >> it's a tiny percentage but you're right, we're looking into it very strongly and the admiral has known about this for long before this happened. it's a very, very small percentage. people recover from that. the children recover from that. >> with me now is dr. megan rainey. doctor, thank you very much. this is something that's concerning parents out there. they are waking up and looking at their kids. some might see a rash. i saw a rash on my kid the other day and i got really nervous. what are doctors seeing and what should parents be on alert for. >> thank you. as a parent, myself, i also have concern. i think parents everywhere are looking at their kids in a different way. up until really recently, we

were told that kids might catch covid-19 but they weren't going to get sick from it. now the president right that this new illness, this new syndrome is very, very rare among kids with covid-19. we think it's a post-infectious complication. kids that had covid-19, maybe had few symptoms develop it as an afteraffect from an inflammatory disorder or immune system acting up. what scary about it is we thought the kids were okay a and now they're not. what should we look out for? the biggest thing is to try to keep our kids safe in the first place. social distancing, mask, washing our kids hands. if your kid is not acting right, call their pediatrician or family practice doctor or bring them to an e.r. if they've had a fever for more than four or five days. if they really not acting like them themselves. in terms of rashes it's the discolor ration of the fingers,

toes, lips or vomiting. those are things that would make me worried. we're doing our best to figure it out and to get treatments. >> are these kids with -- >> any death in a kid is too often? >> are these kids with underlying conditions or healthy? what do we know about the kids it's infected? >> there was a publication out today looking at kids in new york city who are hospitalized. they show that most of them did have underlying conditions. with this new ill ngsness, it l like they were perfectly healthy before they caught covid-19 which is scary to us as doctors and parents. >> why is there still so much we don't know about this virus? >> you know when you look at there virus, it's been around for four months. scientists have literally have been working at breakneck speed to try to identify the virus.

figure out who gets sick and why. identify what happens after someone gets sick and develop tests. compare this to hiv. it took us year to identify the virus for hiv, to develop tests and identify how it was transmitsed. we already have all those things for covid-19. we just don't know all the details yet.s getting to see science in allmes messiness which is glorious and causes uncertainty. we're used to saying we'll wait until the gold standard comes out. we don't have that luxury with covid-19. if we chase that promising result too quickly, it ruls in drama like hydroxychloriqine. the big thing is patience and being uncomfortable wicomfortab

uncertainty. >> what you have with this disease that you don't have with most other diseases is there's so many people now, and hospital s around the world are seeing patients and they're gathering all of that data. this patient has this symptoms, these underlying conditions, this patient has these attributes. how do you, as a scientific community, look at all of that information, go through it, and then formulate diagnoses or a good idea of who this might affect over who it might not affect? >> absolutely, katie. so we talk in science about there being kind of grades or levels of evidence. and the first step is like you described. just observing, saying who's getting sick, what are the ka g

characteristics of the people getting sick, what are the characteristics of the people getting better. and using that to create descriptions and hypotheses. the nest step is to collect data in advance and watch people going forward or better yet to do a randomized trial, where it's like a coin flip where this person gets this treatment, and we compare the outcomes. the observational studies are the easiest. they're also the lowest quality of evidence. that's what we're seeing right now for a lot of new treatments. it's what we saw early with remdesivir. the next level are those forward looking studies, which are just starting to come out. and you're right, because there are so many patients that are sick, sadly it gives us the opportunity to have results a little more quickly. i'm hopeful we'll start to see more positive studies that give us hope in the next weeks and months. >> good news is we're getting a lot of information. that's the silver lining to all of this. thank you so much for joining

us, as always. and thank you for helping to explain what is a very scary syndrome a lot of parents worried about that. as we've been saying, even as the death toll and number of new cases continues to climb, and as the president claimed that we have prevailed on the issue of testing, the majority of states are already beginning to reopen or lay out plans to reopen for at least some of their communities. today, restaurants in phoenix are now allowed to reopen their dining rooms with restrictions. restaurants are also opening in nashville, although live music venues in the music city are still closed. let's bring in ron hilliard in phoenix and katie beck in nashville. but let's start with you, ron. so restaurants in arizona, reopening. are people showing up? >> reporter: katie, there's a good number of restaurants that aren't even opening today because of that level of anxiety. we're talking about anxiety. i was talking to one restaurant

owner who said look, i'm not opening up, because not only do i have to ensure the well-being of my workers, but the customers. he said he feels like not only is the federal government passed off the responsibility of health on to him, but now the state government. here in arizona, last week was the deadliest week of covid-19, the deadliest yet. yet on friday retail opened. restaurants are allowed to begin dine-in services today. and it's not just arizona. we're talking about nevada, texas, katie. new mexico, go up to colorado where they have a democratic governor where the governor has ended the stay-at-home policy in that state. when you look, the number of deaths is not zero. we're not just talking about wyoming or montana, here in the west you are continuing to see deaths. it may not be a sharp increase, but they have held their ground. and that is where the concern is for these restaurant owners.

this is a popular wilderness beer garden restaurant. they're not opening up, because they can't guarantee the safety of their customers. they're hoping later in the week, but that is the question that the government has passed off the responsibility to retailers and now to the restaurants. not only the questions legally, but their social responsibility. katie? >> so 164 new cases in maricopa county, 5,900 cases in total. 240 deaths in total. when you compare those numbers to new york, they look small, but let us remember that each one of these people that has died is a person with a family and they're somebody whose life was stolen from them by this virus. k5i9 y katie, you were talking about how one owner in nashville just didn't feel comfortable reopening. when you drive around the city there, and you're looking at what businesses are starting to

open up and what aren't, can you give me a percentage, half of the businesses reopening that are allowed to? just from your own experience, 30%, is it the majority? >> reporter: yeah, katie, i was estimating on that earlier walking around broadway, which is sort of the thoroughfare of bars, restaurants and downtown businesses here. we were estimating about 50%. so about half of the businesses on broadway appear to be open. grant it, a lot of those businesses are bars and music venues and those are not going to be allowed to be opened until later phases. but there are some restaurants that it's so expensive to open their doors. '9" can be $100,000, $200,000 just to get everything operational again. so they don't want to have to do it twice. so they want to make sure they do it, their employees can come back to work and get it going full swing. so there are some business

owners looking at how things are going and deciding when to pull the trigger and when to open their doors. others were elated for this day to come. they had made all of the necessary precautions put in place. the masks for server, they had the six-foot distancing, no more than ten in a party. so there are some businesses that will see this as a huge reason to celebrate and others that are going to wait to open their doors. >> thank you, guys. that is all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press" daily and you'll be with me from 1:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. "the beat with ari melber" starts off a short break.

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welcome to "the beat." i am ari melber. tonight, the trump white house is tightening all policies to guard against coronavirus now that it's whiting the trump white house. later, steve schmidt will be here on donald trump's troubling, conflicting messages. also, returning to the show, former presidential candidate tom steyer tonight. he will weigh in on how to safely restart this economy. and then something we rarely say on the evening news. former president obama hating president trump's leadership. the famously careful and basically widely respectful elder tatsman. everyone knows he doesn't talk about donald trump much.