welcome to wednesday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd continuing msnbc's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. mark today on your calendars. every single state in the country is now officially easing restrictions. this will be a line of demarcation. as you can see, over the past month there has been a slow but steady trickle of states starting to open the valve by letting stay-at-home orders expire and allowing some businesses and facilities attempt to reopen. some states have opened their valves more than others. but here we are on a day that will be viewed as a major milestone in this country's

response to the pandemic. and of course it's an uneasy milestone because in con straft to all that green on this map is the absence of it on this map. this is the number of states that currently satisfy the white house's criteria from mid april that they laid out, the white house's criteria to safely begin to reopen according to a group called covid exit strategy, which includes public health experts who have done their best to interpret the federal gating criteria which is at times vague while comparing it to the publicly available data on this virus, which we are learning all the time is at times incomplete. but those caveats aside, the trend is pretty clear. these experts do not think states are generally meeting that gating criteria. there are a group of states in yellow that are making progress but they're not there yet. so with unemployment spiking to great depression levels the country has basically been asked to figure it out.

they have to figure out how to live with a virus that isn't fully understood and hasn't been fully contained all of it while we inch toward that 100,000-death milestone. the big question is now what happens to this curve and how do we react? and in this environment that's not just public health or an economic question. it's now a political schedule as well. as the white house's travel schedule shez you it is an election year. over the last six weeks or so president trump and vice president pence when they have traveled notice where they've gone. they've prioritized visits to states like florida, pennsylvania, iowa, arizona, wisconsin, virginia among others. states the trump campaign says it plans to target or are key in november. so what happens next will depend on both the rhetoric and the reality, which brings me to this headline. trump campaign official confirms that allies of the president are lining up doctors to recommend reviving the economy, which would appear to contradict what we've heard from most public health experts including those like dr. fauci.

i just got in my e-mail inbox from a conservative group who will be advertising in the "wall street journal" a print ad asking for a second opinion, dr. fauci. joining me now from the white house is my nbc news colleague carol lee. also with us is jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated sxres an msnbc political analyst. with us for a medical perspective is dr. imesh adalja, senior scholar at the johns hopkins center for health security. so carol, let me start with you. this is the day the president has been wanting. everything is reopened. the vice president grabbed a burger with the governor of florida. no masks were worn there. >> yeah. >> here we are. is the white house feel today is a momentous day? this is the day all 50 states are open somewhere. do they believe this is an important day? >> well, look, i think they are certainly saying it's important that all states are opening in some form or fashion.

they're definitely making that point. as you mentioned the vice president's in florida. the president's going to be heading in michigan in part to highlight the opening. he's heading to a ford plant. and chuck, i want to fill you in on a few headlines. the president just spoke to reporters here and he talked about michigan. he said he spoke with the governor whitmer. as you know, governor whitmer and they have had some back and forth between the two of them and he's talked to her about floods he said. he said he's still going to the ford plant tomorrow but that he'll visit michigan again to visit, to tour the flood damage and meet with people. he also said according to a reuters reporter who was in there, he walked back his threat earlier today just nine hours ago ha he would withhold funding from michigan over this issue of what he calls illegal ballots which there's no evidence that there is that. he also said that he will finish his hydroxychloroquine -- his

regimen in two days and he said he has confidence in the cdc director. but back to the ballots, he said -- again repeated these claims about illegal ballots. with no evidence. and i think that underscores the point that you're making, that this is a president who's cleani leaning toward the campaign and away from everything else, it's just the campaign. >> jonathan lemire, the thing that's striking about the data we presented here is we didn't use cdc data. i can still see the visual. dr. deborah birx walking us through in that white house briefing room the gating criteria was just after easter. 30 days to slow the spread. but it was getting states prepared. how you can start opening up in may. does the white house krar that none of these states have met their gating criteria? >> chuck, the shore answer is no. this white house wants to forge forward, full steam ahead, with reopening the economy. of course they say they want

things to be done slowly and responsibly but that's not the public rhetoric from the white house. you mentioned dr. birx and dr. fauci. they've really take ayn back seat here. those briefings aren't held anymore. their media appearances have been curtailed at the behest of the west wing. the public optics are now all about the economy and trying to move forward. and to carol's point, and that's a direct link to the campaign. this president knows that yes, of course there are 90,000 americans who have died because of is this but right now their focus is also on the tens of millions of jobs that have been lost. the soaring unemployment rate. thinking that he can't win re-election if the economy is in these dire straits. and he feels like he needs this summer for it to turn around. he's trying to project an air of normalcy. he is doing? traveling but as you pointed out it's strategic traveling. he's going simply to battlegrounds right now, arizona, pennsylvania, now michigan. it should be noted, though, trump campaign advisers privately are increasingly

pessimistic about michigan where the president will go tomorrow. that of those trio of sort of midwest states that he swiped from the democrats in 2016 michigan is the one with the slimmest margin of victory then but also the one where he feels like it will be the steepest uphill climb this time to the point where they are almost, not quite but almost considering writing it off. >> dr. idalja, we're open in some form or another. and on one hand we can litigate whether -- how we got here. here we are now. how do we -- how would you recommend we move forward? it looks like the next -- we're go to stumble in this some people will be more in circulation than others. it feels like we're sort of wobbling toward a new normal. what do you expect the next three months to look like in this country? >> well, what we're going to see is periodic flare-ups of virus in some certain parts of the country. other parts are going to be

okay. and it's going to be like this until we have a vaccine. this is something that's established itself in human population now that states are opening it's going to really come down to individual risk tolerance and individual risk preference and hoping that the number of cases that we get can stay underneath hospital capacity by good diagnostic testing, by contact tracers at health departments. and that's really what we have to keep measuring is how could our hospitals look, can we move forward and start peeling back more social distance restrictions as the hospitals can cope with the number of cases. we're going to get more cases. that's a simple fact. and we're going to have more deaths. but this is something that's with us and we have to find a way forward. >> how should we be using testing now and who should be getting tested? >> so this is something that's a little bit of a controversy. we definitely want anyone that's sick, that's in the hospital, going to their doctor's office to get a test so they can be told to self-isolate, their contacts with be contacted and then traced and then tested as necessary. we are doing testing now for people who are going into the hospital for procedures that are scheduled like colonoscopies, for example, to avoid exposures

at hospitals. then the question becomes do we need to test people that are asymptomatic? and that's something that's different for each company. i do think in places like meat processing plants it makes sense to test a lot of people. it does make sense to test people in prisons or in nursing homes for example. the general population i think it's really going to be still triggered by symptoms. i think that's the best way to go and that's what the infectious disease society of america guidance does endorse. >> let me ask you this other question you brought up nursing homes, meat processing plants in particular, and prisons. there's a lot of experts, a lot of people believe that there's the likelihood for a second wave of this is strong in the fall. is it possible those three sectors, those institutions will have a form of herd immunity the second time around and they won't be hot spots the second time around? >> that's a good question. i do think that some of those congregate settings where there's been high intensity of spread. we've heard of whole nursing

homes being completely 100% infected. they obviously will have herd immunity. so they may become less of a problem because they're getting hit so hard now in this wave. but the rest of the population will still be highly susceptible. >> so i guess knowing that for the second wave, i guess it comes back to if you're going to work from home you don't need a test, do you? >> not necessarily, unless you have symptoms or you've been in contact with somebody that has the infection, has been confirmed or you're going in to get some kind of procedure at your hospital and the hospital's screening everybody that comes in. >> i want to move to the issue of, carol lee, the issue of doctors and the campaign. what is it that the campaign wants doctors for here? are they looking for surrogates? are they looking for cheerleaders on the economy? are they looking for people to reassure their supporters that their policies are working? what is it they want from these campaign doctors? >> it's kind of all of what you

just said. but it's designed to find doctors who can go out and speak on television and elsewhere to validate the president's approach, to say that places should open, that it's safe to open, even if as we've been talking about they don't meet the government's guidelines. it kind of underscores the fact that this is a white house that knows they need validators out there for the president's policies because they're not necessarily going to be able to rely on medical advisers that are within the administration who've often been at odds with the president. so the a.p. reported and nbc has confirmed that members of the president's campaign and other political allies are on a search for doctors who can public ly promote the president's policies and say he's doing the right thing. >> hey, jonathan lemire, in some ways what i'm going to read to you may feel as if we've been down this road before, but i

want to read because this morning was another reminder and it feels like we're having almost every morning there's a -- trump's back to his habit of doing something with his twitter feed, it gets everybody a little bit like what? and then like today he totally backtracked. but here's what david graham writes. he goes, this is one of the many things that makes trump's twitter feed such a bizarre phenomenon. if he did this privately it would rightly be a massive scandal yet when he does it as part of a few dozen widely varied missives over the course of a morning it's written off as just another wacky missive from the wookey president becoming numb to trump's tweets is easy but these show just how dangerous that is in general. he's talking about whether it's about the voter fraud accusations or things like this. you know, we all just shrug now? >> i think there's some truth to that, chuck. and i agree that it's a dangerous phenomenon. i was struck. i spoke to some of my colleagues in the white house press corps earlier this week. the idea that some of the president's utterances have lost

their ability to surprise in some ways 3 1/2 years into his term. and then he comes out and says that he was -- yeah, then he comes out and says he was taking hydroxychloroquine. and that was stunning. that was a moment where people were surprised. he just volunteered that. he wasn't asked. and now of course he says he's going to be winding down the use of that drug which has not been proven off any positive side effects, preventtive or otherwise, in terms of covid-19. but certainly we should still as journalists pay keen attention to what the president is saying. he is -- whether it's in a tweet or an oval office statement or whatever it might be, it still matters. and today is a good point where certainly democrats pointed to his tweets about michigan and nevada and said that look, he's trying to basically come out against making voting easier during a national health crisis, suggesting that this has dangerous implications for november, wondering what other states might be impacted. would he actually withhold federal funding? for an electoral purpose. and now he has backtracked off of that. but it's something that's going

to come up again. we're under six months to the election. that is his focus right now. and i think we should all be prepared to cover him extensively and yes, to not entirely lose our sense of surprise or shock. >> yeah. dr. adalja, let me go -- the hydroxychloroquine thing came up. there is a member of congress who's an obstetrician running for the senate in kansas, roger marshall. he says -- he said this in a statement. "i would encourage any person over the age of 65 with an underlying medical condition to talk to their own physician about taking hydroxychloroquine." but then he add "i'm relieved president trump is taking it" and he is also taking it i think and that's recommended it to family members. where are you on this? and what risks did the president bring on himself by taking it as a prophylactic? >> there's no evidence this works as a prophylactic. there is a randomized control

trial with health care workers to see if this works prophylactically. but we haven't seen any indication for it. the same is true for its treatment use. we have seen some studies trickle out with treatment and the benefit doesn't really seem to be there. obviously we're waiting for big randomized controlled trials to be able to give definitive statements. but this isn't something i would recommend doing outside of a hospital and if you are doing it you really need to talk to your doctor about it, make sure you're getting monitored with an ekg looking for side effects, and it's not a benign drug. just because it's fda approved for rheumatoid arthritis ans lupus and malaria prophylaxis doesn't mean it's safe. you still have to weight benefit and the risk. and when it doesn't actually have a treatment indication for this, when we haven't studied it and know, it's really not something we should do outside of a hospital protocol or a clinical trial setting. >> very quickly, dr. adalja, the governor of florida, ron desantis, in some ways earlier today took a bit of a victory lap where he believes despite what he said were a lot of naysayers claiming that the way he was handling the outbreak wasn't going to work, that florida was going to hit hard, he's basically saying hey,

florida didn't get hit hard, we're doing a good job. what would you say to governor desantis? >> we have to -- you have to wait and see. when you start relaxing social distancing, it's not going to be immediate that you see cases. you're going to see an increase in cases just by simple biology because people are going toinlt racke to interact. and i wouldn't declare any victory laps because the country as a whole has failed with this virus and we have an endemic infectious disease that put our country into an economic shutdown. i don't think anybody can take a victory lap here. but i do think that you have to really wait a little bit to sxee look at your hospital capacity and if it's okay it's okay to remove social distancing but i don't think that anybody should really be cheering what's happened anywhere because we didn't do very well as a country on this pandemic. >> i think we're all hoping there aren't -- nobody wants to be home to a hot spot. i think that is for sure. carol lee, jonathan lemire, dr. amesh adalja, thank you all for

getting us started. up ahead we're checking in on one of the first states that started to reopen. we'll talk with colorado governor jared polis about how his state is doing. and later the future of flight. traveling anywhere anytime soon is going to look a lot different thanks to the coronavirus. how safe are airplanes really? and can airlines handle the baggage that comes with getting off the ground again? getting off the ground aga in usaa was made for right now. and right now, is a time for action. so, for a second time we're giving members a credit on their auto insurance. because it's the right thing to do. we're also giving payment relief options

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welcome back. as we hold our breath and wait and see how this experiment will turn out college may be a hopeful sign. it was among the first states to reopen. governor jared polis allowed his stay at home order to expire three weeks ago and colorado has not seen a spike in cases since then. in fact, cases have been steadily declining since that order was lifted. the state just released its dracht guidelines for restaurants and bars to begin reopening with a final decision on whether that plan can proceed expected next monday. polis, who was tested for covid-19 publicly on monday, also now says free testing is

available to all coloradans with flu-like symptoms with the goal of 10,000 tests being conducted every day. and democratic governor jared polis joins me now. you had the scrunched-up nose of the day. that photo went all viral with you getting the swab test. you really made it seem as uncomfortable as it looks. governor, let me start with -- i have not been tested yet. i've not had any symptoms. knock on wood. you know, there you go. i'm also in a state that is pretty low on the per capita testing rate here where i live. but governor, let me start with are you ready to open up this economy more? it's like a valve. are you ready to go to the next step? >> you know, i think this is sort of a false dichotomy between open and closed. there's no place in the country, no state where nightclubs have thousands of people, there's 20,000 people at a concert. no states. there's also no states where

grocery stores are closed. everybody is trying to figure this out based on the data they have. it's different in different parts of the country. it's different in different parts of our state. we've had parts of our state that have had restaurants open for three weeks now because they have very low viral incidents and now we're looking at how we might do that statewide in as safe a way as possible. so we're being thoughtful and we're trying to do our best to get as much normalcy as possible and try to prevent those numbers from peaking again. >> i want to spend more time on the economic part of this. look, before you got into politics you were a successful tech entrepreneur. and i'm curious where your head lies when it comes to how you rescue some businesses and which ones you don't. and i say this because you can help a company get through a few months but you can't -- government can't dictate demand to come back. which of these businesses do you

try to support through the long term and which don't you? >> this is a global economic slowdown. so it's independent of what individual units of government do. the date that let's say manufacturing people come back to work and most of them were at work in colorado throughout this crisis, the date they come back is less important than whether there's demand for their product and supplies, supply chains intact for their product. so ultimately it's more about what the market supports, what consumer confidence supports. these government decisions on exactly the date and when and where and how, sure, they make a little difference. this week, next week, three weeks. but what really matters is the long-term economic situation. >> right. and i guess the question is if you're going to reopen the economy you have to get people comfortable in the economy. and i guess we just have to figure out what comfortable is. do you think it's testing and tracing everywhere? is that the best way to make

people feel comfortable to circulate in the economy? >> part of when we open up stores a few weeks ago in our stores, retail stores, the employees in the stores wear masks. that's of course for their health benefit. it's for the customers' health benefit. it's also for consumer confidence. when we're looking at restaurants, it's about how you can increase spacing, how the wait staff wears maxz, and we make sure that customers are aware of those additional protocols, those additional measures restaurants are taking above and beyond what they took last year to help restore the confidence as well as making sure that people are safe as possible. >> in your old life what kind of liability protection would you want as a business owner? what's fair? and as an elected official what isn't fair when it comes to that? since your head's been in both of these places. >> well, tech is easy because it's largely telecommuting. companies that can telecommute people should stay telecommuting. we encourage that.

it's the best practice. right now up to half of folks are able to go into an office in colorado. but many companies are only having 10%, 20%, 30% going because they can be just as productive. in fact, we as a state only have about 40% of our state workforce going in. the rest are able to work from home in a safe way. i think it's a policy lever. i'm so thrilled congress did the paycheck protection program. many businesses would simply have had to lay people off and close their doors without that lifeline. and i continue to hope that congress steps up and does even more to save our small businesses. >> you would like to see that extended more. are you in favor of a full payroll protection, kind of like what the europeans have done? >> i think it should be targeted after the businesses that have been disproportionately affected that are not coming back right away. you know, as i said, tech, they can telecommute. manufacturing is back. aerospace stayed around. but if you're in tourism, if you have a restaurant, if you're a nightclub, they're not even opening anywhere in the country. these are the kind of businesses

that if we value having them as a society we've got to figure out a way to make sure that they can make it through this and that they're there when we reach that light at the end of the tunnel, a vaccine, a cure, or we suppress it to the level where that kind of activity is safe. >> i'm curious, every state has a different sort of main revenue source when it comes to their budget. what are you most concerned about that's going to create a hole -- revenue hole in your budget going forward? >> our state mostly relies on income tax, secondary sales tax. i think every state no, matter where you collect, it you're experiencing a hit. and it's a time for belt tightening. i mean, families are tightening their belts. many two-income households now have one income. many single income households have lost certainty about their job. government no, sir exception. government's tightening their belt. thankfully again congress came through. i'm hoping the house-passed bill that speaker pelosi worked on, negotiated with the senate, with the president can reach an outcome that provides additional

support to those on the front lines. not just states. first responders, cities, counties, all those who are incurring these covid-19-related expenses. fighting to keep us safe. >> governor jared polis, i'm going to leave it there. our 50-state reopening day is today. you've been there a little while longer. i hope things continue to get better and that things are -- continue to be safe and healthy in colorado. up ahead -- >> always a pleasure. >> secretary of state mike pompeo is facing even more scrutiny. controversy swirls around his firing of the department's watchdog. nbc news has new revelations about how he's been spending taxpayer dollars. chances are you know us. yoo-hoo, progressive shoppers. we laughed with you. sprinkles are for winners. we surprised you. on occasion, we've probably even annoyed you. we've done this all with one thing in mind. to help protect the things you love. and if we can't offer you the best price we'll help you find a better one. it's not always the lowest!

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in this case i recommended to the president that steve linick be terminated. i frankly should have done it some time ago. let's be clear. there are claims that this was for retaliation, for some investigation that the inspector general's office here was engaged in. that's patently false. i have no sense of what investigations were taking place inside the inspector general's office. couldn't possibly have retaliated for all the things -- i've seen the various stories that someone was walking my dog to sell arms to my dry cleaner. it's all just crazy. >> welcome back. that was secretary of state mike pompeo this morning during his first public appearance since the firing of state department

inspector general steve linick late last week. secretary pompeo confirmed that he did recommend linick's firing but refused to give more detail on what actually prompted the recommendation. at the time he was fired linick had been investigating pompeo's use of a political appointee to run some personal errands. but the bigger story maybe was he was also looking into an arms deal with saudi arabia that the secretary had approved against the will have congress. these concerns about how secretary pompeo was using his office were echoed by state department officials in an nbc news exclusive report last night about dinners, what appeared to be political dinners secretary pompeo and his wife had thrown but they were using taxpayer funds. state department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for pompeo's political ambitions. joining me now is nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. and andrea, i just want to start with the fact that there was a press conference today by the secretary of state during a week where there was controversy.

that doesn't always happen. >> he has been holding small press conferences once a week pretty regularly now for the last couple of weeks since the pandemic. the agreement is that only seven reporters can attend for social distancing. this was the first time i've been able to get in. he took four questions. i was the fifth person and did not get a question. and we had of course broken the story about what was in the inspector general's investigation initially. the personal issues as well as the saudi arms deal was being investigated. and for the secretary to say somewhat disingenuously today that he didn't know what he was being investigated for, well, he had actually been notified about the saudi investigation. we know that. we know that he declined an interview, which is very unusual for a cabinet secretary to refuse to be interviewed by his inspector general. that he had responded with some

written questions. and he refused today to discuss what the issue was, what his answers were or be transparent about his defense all this. and then says he knew nothing about it so it can't be retaliation. and then ridicules the investigation to conflate, you know, that his dog was being walked to sell arms deals to his cleaner. well, that is no joking matter to the people who are really concerned about the inappropriateness of all of this and that it's a pattern with the secretary of state including including three out of four trips to kansas on the taxpayer dime when he was widely reported to be considering and under great pressure from mitch mcconnell to run for that seat. >> i want to go to these dinners, andrea. you and i have covered this town for a while. he's not the first cabinet secretary to have presidential ambitions. evens the first cabinet secretary to try to have -- create sort of kitchen cabinets and all this stuff.

you and i both were there when the clintons had coffee clachs in the white house and that blew up in their face. i can't remember many people doing this on the taxpayer dime without it eventually blowing up in their face like what happened to the clintons with those coffees that they attempted to do in the lincoln bedroom business. >> this is sort of a balancing act and this report was led by josh lederman of our team and posted overnight. and it's created a stir because it seems to be on a scale and with a frequency that is unusual and on the taxpayer dime. and that is one of the questions that we would have to check, whether john kerry, hillary clinton, condoleezza rice, maidline albright, predecessors, ever invited people on the taxpayer dime, especially the wealthier people like john kerry paid for it themselves. but these are lavish rooms that

have donated antiquities, american art and american furnishings from donors to the state department. the ben franklin floor-u know the floor on the eighth floor. and it's a beautiful reception area. it's often rented out for special events. it's used for state dinner luncheons when a state dinner is taking place, the head of state comes for lunch, the vice president attends and makes a toast. there are a lot of -- and reporters have sometimes invited. here it was predominantly people like karl rove and charles koch and others who have in the past been supportive of pompeo running and have contributed to him in the past. and that's what has been so controversi controversial. and gifts given as well to those who've attended. >> well, it's been interesting to watch him. you brought up the kansas trips. it was just two months ago that he went to the villages in florida and you're like interesting. definitely looks like a guy that's got a little bit of an eye on not a kansas race but maybe one in 2024. anyway, andrea mitchell, thank you. >> can i just say that there's a lot of reporting, chuck, that he

has firmly rejected that kansas race but is looking at 2024. >> his moves seem more 2024 than anything else. up next the future of flying. is social distancing really possible and effective in the dpooinz confines of an airline cab snin? as we go to break this is what the president said moments ago when asked by reporters of his handling of this pandemic. >> mr. president, with 4% of the world's population and 30% of the outbreak, what would you have done differently facing this crisis? >> well, nothing. if you take new york and new jersey, which were very hard hit, we were very, very low. these are extraordinary times, and we want to thank the extraordinary people in the healthcare community, working to care for all of us. at novartis, we promise to do our part. as always, we're doing everything we can to help keep cosentyx accessible and affordable. if you have any questions at all, call us, email us, visit us online.

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welcome back. in our open questions segment today we're taking a look at the future of flying. with nearly all travel halted

with the pandemic, the airline industry has been battered. look at this. this chart shows the number of people who have passed through a tsa checkpoint since march. travel has dropped more than 90% from the same time last year. yesterday fewer than 200,000 people went through a tsa checkpoint. but now that every state has started reopening in some form, would-be travelers are left wondering when they will feel safe getting on a plane again and what airlines are doing to make it safe to get back in the air. joining me now is joseph allen. he is a professor of exposure science at the harvard school of public health. he's the author of a recent op-ed in the "washington post" titled "airplanes don't make you sick. really." and msnbc correspondent trymaine lee, who is also the host of the podcast "into america." the latest episode of "into america" takes a look at what's happening in the airline industry. trymaine, let me let you kick things off. what did you -- what have you felt like you've got your arms around when it comes to flying

on an airplane right now? >> the big takeaway for me is i don't plan on flying anytime soon, chuck, quite frankly. infectious disease experts say that airlines and airplanes are the perfect environment for this stuff. but we should also be concerned about the actual economy. you talk about 200,000 flyers. that's compared to the 2.6 million a day just a year ago. and so while the airline, the airport, tsa is trying to make sure folks social distance every step along the way and even the airlines are trying to board folks from the back to the front, there still is no guarantee that you'll be safe from covid-19. we've all seen the graphics at this point. if someone coughs or sneeze in aisle 14, it's going o'spread for three or four aisles in front and behind them. and still there's no guarantee, even though the airlines say they're trying to keep that middle seat open, there's no guarantee. and so right now as the bottom is falling out for the airline industry and consumer confidence is really low at this point,

they're hoping if they can just put in some precautions and get through the next few months, maybe the next six months, that maybe things will be -- get some comfort for flyers. >> all right, joseph allen, you've got to understand here at nbc in particular one of our medical experts, virologist joseph fair, he believes he contracted the virus on an airplane. here's a guy that has avoided getting ebola and he was wearing his blogloves and his mask and thinks he may have gotten it in his eyes. so it has rattled a lot of us. tell us why -- tell us why we should feel more secure being on an airplane. >> yeah, i understand that anxiety's high and i share trymaine's view that we have to be careful here. i think we share a common goal in that we want to save lives and the economy. and i'm quite confident that we can take steps to make the air travel experience safer. i've been studying air quality on airplanes for a long time. i was a lead author of a 2013 national academies report on infectious disease mitigation in

airports and on airplanes. so i know this topic really well. and i think what might surprise people is this. if you look at the air quality on an airplane when you're seated and the air systems are running, it's very similar to what is required in a hospital airborne infection isolation room. let me put some numbers on this. in an airplane the ventilation rate, you get about 10 to 12 air changes per hour. that's how much fresh air comes into this space. hospitals require six or twelve for new buildings. that air in an airplane is also filtered through a hepa filter. captures 99.97% of all airborne particles. hepa filtration recirculated air is exactly what airport -- hospitals also require. but let me take that story you say about the one example and say what i'm saying is time on an airplane is lower risk but people do get sick while they travel. that's because we can't disentangle that entire experience. but often people point to the time spent on an airplane. there are areas that i'm

concerned about. in particular airplanes don't always have gate-based ventilation on when you're boarding that airplane. that needs to change. >> you know, trymaine, i was curious, as you went through this, because it's my understanding with what joseph allen here said, which is on the actual airplane is one thing but it's the airport experience. is that really where the risk is? >> the entire process seems to be concerning. when you walk in, you want to grab a coffee or grab a donut or you want to sit down and have a slice of pizza before you get on board, is everything properly sanitized? and also i talk about obviously wear masks. there's no requirement. now, the airlines are hoping that people, you know, follow the rules and keep their mask on. but if someone decided to take their mask off there's no -- the entire process from start to finish there are pitfalls every

step along the way. but right now airlines are just hoping to mitigate some of the issues along the way. chuck? >> joseph allen, how would you get on an airplane? how would you travel? how would you dress? >> yeah, i would have no problem traveling right now. i think we all have to assess is it necessary, right? because airplanes are vectors for, first and foremost. so i'd be less worried about the risk or time on the airplane. i will say this, and i agree with trymaine here-s as we reported in that national act miz report there are steps the airport needs to take, the ashl needs to take and of course the traveler needs to take. in terms of what the airports need to do they need to deploy some of these healthy building strategies. i have a book that just came came out called "healthy buildings." the same strategy you would use in a home, a school, an office. bring in more fresh air, filter they're. pay special attention to the bathrooms. we know people can shed this virus in stool. you have to have the exhaust running in the bathroom. be very careful in that environment. airplanes should leave a gap

between seats. they should choreograph the seating. they should end in-flight service. and individuals have a role to play here too. and i agree people aren't always playing by the rules. but they're going to have to. you leave home with your wallet and your keys but you also can't leave home without your mask these days. mask swearing a must throughout the entire travel experience. and people are going to have to recognize that if they don't abide by these rules we should see air travel as a privilege that might have to be restricted and pulled back if we don't manage this properly. >> well, let me ask you this, joseph allen. we do not have any national criteria on what airlines should do. i mean, we talk about this middle seat. okay. it's my understanding that some airlines, i'm not going to single them out, claim they're not selling the middle seat but they're not promising they won't sell the middle seat. i imagine the faa could say no, no middle seats. done. should we be going in that direction? >> yeah, chuck, you know, i

think it's indicative of the larger problem, is that we've had a failure of central leadership across the country and states have ad hoc approaches to everything. the restaurant industry's trying to figure out one by one. the same thing's happening with this industry, which really would benefit with some leadership coming from cdc or some others, or the cdc not being muzzled to say these are the steps we have to take and make it uniform. right? so we're not competing even with the airlines and travelers are left wondering, well, is one airline's approach better than the others? how about we have some uniform standards. we put out this 2013 national academies report as guidance for airports and airlines on how to mitigate infectious disease. there are good recommendations in there. actually, the first recommendation we made was that airports should have a pandemic preparedness plan. so there are steps airlines can be taking. it needs to be done not in an ad hoc manner. it needs to be real government and real leadership here so we can establish a uniform standard. >> my guess that also nonstop flights are going to once again be very popular as people

probably fearful of wanting -- the last place they'd want to do is change planes in atlanta or chicago or one of those huge hubs. joseph allen, trymaine lee, thank you both for this. and please, catch trymaine's podcast. it's available right now. subscribe to "into america." it's great -- trymaine's got a great voice for this, but it's some great topics. it's available wherever you get your podcasts. next stop, sao paolo. a new hot spot in the pandemic. coronavirus cases leaving the hospital there on the verge of collapse. we're on the ground with some new reporting after this. we're new reporting after this (♪)

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get started for free at ancestry.com welcome back. this is a global pandemic, and right now outside the u.s., there are several countries facing significant increases in cases. one of them is in our own hemisphere. it's brazil. the country is now reporting the third number of highest cases worldwide as its president urges people back to work. and today the country's newest health ministry expanded the use of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for the virus despite officials repeatedly warning there is no evidence the drug is effective in treating the coronavirus. this comes after the previous two health ministers refused to promote the drug as a treatment. so in some ways, as bill neely and i discussed yesterday, what we're seeing in the bolsonaro administration is on steroids than what we've seen in other places. bill neely joins us now from see

paolo. how bad is it there, bill? >> oh, it's pretty bad. i was at a hospital today, one of the biggest in brazil, and the doctor told me that they have a 95 to 100% occupancy rate in icu. in other words, it is technically absolutely full. they have 300 deaths a day in see paolo. in the last 24 hours, a record day, nearly 1200 deaths. the situation is spiraling out of control, you might say, and brazil isn't even at the peak of infections. that will come over the next few weeks. and there is a lot of tension and a lot of anger between breezy's president, bolsonaro, who basically says i don't want the lock down. i don't want social distancing. let's get back to work, and the governors and the mayors who are scrambling for ventilators, scrambling for personal protection equipment. i talked to one governor, the governor of see paolo last

night. he is very angry at his president. let's take a quick listen at what he says. >> this is dangerous when you have someone as a president of brazil saying to people go to streets, go to regular life, ordinary life. do what you want to do. play, enjoy being together. at this moment, it's almost a crime. >> it's a crazy thing? >> it is completely crazy. we have right now a war with two virus. the coronavirus and bolsonaro virus. mr. bolsonaro defends populist and that and we defend the science and life. >> and the doctor i was speaking to, you mentioned the president and the government saying that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were okay to use, indeed encouraging doctors to use it. the doctor i spoke to, again,

said no evidence whatsoever that this is effective. indeed, a study in brazil was suspended last month because patients were dying, having taken high doses of chloroquine. there is a huge disconnect between what the president says and what the medical establishment is saying here amid this crisis. >> bill neely in see paolo, bill, thanks very much for being on the ground there. and i guess you could say at least we haven't fired any health ministers. we'll be right back. isters we'll be right back. so, no more tossing and turning. because only tempur-pedic adapts and responds to your body... ...so you get deep, uninterrupted sleep. during the tempur-pedic summer of sleep, all tempur-pedic mattresses are on sale! there is one thing we can all do together: complete the 2020 census. your responses are critical to plan for the next 10 years of health care, education, and more. go online to 2020census.gov and help shape america's future.

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finally tonight, the white house is remembering one of the longest serving members of its staff. wilson roosevelt german worked at 1600 pennsylvania avenue for 55 years, starting in 1957 as a cleaner, a doorman and a butler. he served 11 presidents from dwight eisenhower to barack obama. german retired in 2012.

he died last weekend from complications of covid-19. he was 91 years old. just thought we should share that sad news with you, especially to any washingtonians who knew him well. that's all we have for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. good evening, thank you, chuck. i'm ari melber. we are tracking several stories for you tonight. some about the pandemic. others charting new headaches for the trump administration. it has been now four different officials ousted as independent watchdogs which has drawn questions from even some top republican senators. now new problems hitting a trump official whose conduct was under review. reports that mike pompeo may have misused taxpayer money for political ambitions. also guilty trump aid michael flynn taking new steps to try to cash in on that special deal that was coming from trump's doa. plus roger stone emerging with something to