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hey there, i'm joshua johnson. good to be with you tonight from nbc news world headquarters in new york. there's a lot less travel going on this memorial day weekend. travel from brazil to the u.s. is about to be cut off out of concern for the spread of covid-19. many americans are laying low this weekend, socially distdista distancing, laying low. others are acting like the pandemic is over. the summer sun in lake geneva, wisconsin, was enough to draw large crowds this weekend. wisconsin's confirmed caseload is rising at an accelerating rate. its death toll is rising steadily. part of a national death toll that could soon reach 100,000 people. it is hard to picture the magnitude of this, but "the new york times" made it a bit easier to see and harder to ignore. this morning's front page bore

the names of covid-19 victims from across the country with more pages inside the first section. they had just about 1,000 names in all. about 1% of the people we've lost. it's ease toy see why some folks have abandoned social distancing this weekend. the weather is warmer. we've been cooped up for months. and, hey, it's just a day or two. social media has plenty of examples of people ignoring the warnings of the public health officials, especially to beat the heat. that includes this pool party at the lake of the ozarks in missouri. it was prime beach weather in much of the country, but that was not enough to tempt some folks to the shore. a number of beaches were either mostly empty or sparsely populated with people walking or jogging, but not stopping. president trump was also out this weekend, back on the golf course. it is his first time golfing in a good while since the outbreak began. late this morning the president tweeted, quote, cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the country!

unquote. that is not true. nearly half the states are still struggling to get coronavirus under control. some areas, including new york, are seeing the numbers trend downward, but if they rise in the rest of the nation, we could be right back where we were in march. or worse. so let's take stock of things with our panel. andy slam in, the former acting administrator for centers of medicare and medicaid services. dr. david shokin, former veteran affairs. and former obama white house director and fellow with brook iggy azal institution. dr. patel, let me start with you. we have been warned by federal health officials not toe let our guard down with the coronavirus. here are clips from scott gottlieb, former head of the fda

and deborah birx with the coronavirus task force. >> as we get through the depths of july and august, we saw it with h1n1. we face a resurgence. we can't become too complacent. >> i want to be clear with the american people. we are preparing for the potential fall issue, both in p.p.e., which is protective devices both in ventilator stockpiles and ensuring we're really pushing on therapeutics and vaccine development so we can be ready. >> dr. patel, we've seen some people cutting loose this weekend. we've seen some people playing it safe. where does that leave us in our work to contain the virus? >> well, joshua, it leaves us in a predicament because as you mentioned, there are numbers that are rising in parts of the country while we're also seeing important declines in places like new york and parts of southern california. however, keep in mind that as

rates rise or as we're seeing kind of more acute cases, that will overwhelm health systems. and so in order to have a bit of a reprieve to get us prepared for that second wave -- and, by the way, by all indications we're expecting not just a second wave of coronavirus, but a potentially bad influenza season. so when you put those two things together, we need to be able to do what we can to quell -- we're not going to take it down to zero, of course, joshua, but do as much as we can to keep the numbers down so that we can be better prepared for that second wave. >> secretary shulkin, i mention the travel ban from brazil. there has been a staggering amount of covid-19 deaths there. and an equally staggering defiance from brazil's president jair bolsonaro. he's been compared to president trump, but at least president trump acknowledges it's real. bolsonaro takes pride in stemming past the pandemic, you see an increasing number of mass

graves being dug in rio de janeiro. secretary, what is the latest travel ban, the one targeting brazil, tell you about where we stand right now? >> i think we see what's happening in brazil, exactly what we saw in this country in february and march. there are not value, which is the reproduction number, is above 2.8, which is really a very serious situation. so -- >> i'm sorry, senator shulkin, that is not a number we hear very often. what is the reproduction number, what does that mean? >> that means for every person who gets infected, they will infect 2.8 other people. and that person will infect 2.8 other people and that will go on. and that's where you start seeing a very scary rise in numbers and you know that this infection is out of control. and that's the situation that we see in south america. we see it in brazil. we're also seeing it now unfortunately in peru. and we have to watch this in other countries.

in addition, in brazil we're seeing about 15% of all infections and deaths in people less than 50 years of age. so this is really a great concern, particularly where they have a health care infrastructure that's not nearly as developed as the united states. so we may see very high mortality rates in places like brazil. so this is a worldwide pandemic and we have to be very cautious about this because, as we know, there are no borders between countries. >> andy, where should we be focusing our attention now in trying to contain covid-19? "the washington post" is reporting on how rural america is increasingly affected. what other areas do you think we should zero in on? >> well, today two-thirds of the growth in cases is coming outside of the places that were hit hard at the beginning. so that means the south, it means the midwest, it means

rural communities, and we're now at the point in late may when we're going to start to see the impact of the openings of the states that opened at the beginning of may. and we're not sure exactly what we're going to see, but this week was not a good indicator. we saw a rise in hospitalizations in all of those states. i think the important thing is brazil is not an example we want to follow, but other countries have opened safely. we can open safely. if we are focused on getting the testing we need, getting contact tracing and isolation capabilities that we need, wearing masks in public, there's a lot of things we can do safely. we can start to get our lives back even as we live with this virus. we're not going to live without it for a while, but we can live with it if we're careful. i'm fearful, though, we're starting to see some signs that we haven't been as careful as we should be. >> dr. patel, what's your sense of our overall understanding of covid-19 itself? we're continually learning more,

including about this syndrome that affects children. it's called multi system inflammatory syndrome. take a look at some of the symptoms, and they're pretty broad ranging. they range from sluggishness to cracked lips, swollen hands and feet. how are we doing in the push, dr. patel, to just understand what we're dealing with? >> we're certainly making a lot more progress in understanding exactly how this unfolds in children. and because of the growing numbers of cases, we're actually identifying -- at first there was confusion whether this was associated with covid-19, and now we understand that this is likely a result of covid-19 or at least a post-viral inflammatory inandrew cuomo inflammatory syndrome in children. it is a small case, but, joshua, all doctors are aware of the symptoms symptoms you mention and looking for them. it is particularly important because children overall have been a smaller percentage of

people affected by covid-19. in this case, even very healthy children and young adults can result in very severe hospitalizations and in some cases deaths. so i think that in general, though, adults and children alike, we are in a much better place than we were 60 days ago. and i guess that's all the more reason to stress that despite feeling really cooped up and pent up, we need to do what we can because i have confidence that we'll know even more and have better testing and have tracing in place in 60 days. >> secretary shulkin, what about the hunt for a vaccine? there are aggressive trials underway around the world. do you get the sense we're doing all we can to find and deploy a vaccine, or is there more we should be doing? and i ask you this in particular because of your experience as a hospital administrator, as someone who gets the logistics of what it takes to get treatment to people. >> i think we're really watching the equivalent of a modern miracle before us. remember, the typical vaccine

development has taken four to six years. the fastest prior to this that we've ever developed a vaccine is four years. but now using the new technology, the r, mrna technology, we're seeing we've been able to skip through processes. we're already in several cases through phase one testing, and that may deliver a vaccine to us in actually less than a year, which is absolutely miraculous. but what i'm telling everyone is that by the time that this is manufactured and enough doses and actually be able to be distributed to several hundred million americans, conservatively everyone has to plan for this virus to be with us the next 12 months, and that's why the advice that you're hearing from andy slamvit about how to open up safely, the advice from dr. patel about what we have to continue to do is so important because this virus is not going away. we may see a lull as we heard

over the summer, and that is not atypical. but what we know about second waves is that they happen several months after a lull. so that's why so many people are concerned about this fall being a time of a really concerning time for this country where we have to be vigilant and we have to be prepared so we don't go back into shutdown mode once again. >> and, andy, in our last few seconds, for the people who keep ignoring the safety guidelines, i am trying to maintain patience with them and not doing a very good job. for people who keep ignoring the safety guidelines, keeping it hard to contain the contagion, what more would you like to see to get people on board, before we go? >> well, look, i think we have a number of young people who, it's summertime. they want to be out. there are people who want to get back to work. but i think they have to remember that there are people who don't have those kinds of choices that are essential workers. they've got family members who

are at risk. and, you know, people just do a little bit of thinking about others. we're not saying all people shouldn't be able to go outside. being cooped up has been hard on people. but everybody has to do it in safe ways. wearing your mask outdoors, not staying out too long. it's not a sacrifice to ask for the next few months to get through this and hopefully minimize a loss. >> andy slavitt, and dr. patel, thank you very much. some cases without money and without food on the table. meanwhile, the u.s. spent hundreds of millions of dollars on machines to clean protective masks. machines that don't work. that is next. special delivery ♪

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sterilization systems to ten different cities that can each sterilize up to 80,000 masks each day. i'm hearing it can go to 100,000 masks a day, certain equipment, certain additions. it's a company in ohio that makes it, i hear it's a great product, works very well. >> at one of his daily brief beings, president trump touted mask sterilization machines designed to help keep p.p.e. in supply. as it turns out, the machines work, but not nearly as well as expected. the administration claimed they would allow masks to be used up to 20 times. in reality, the machines only sterilize masks for two to four uses. medical professionals say the mask material begins to degrade after that. the president publicly pressured the fda into approving these machines. after that, the manufacturer, the battelle memorial institute raised the price to nearly

$7 million each. nbc senior political analyst john allen reported this story out and joins us now to discuss it. in your reporting, you mentioned a mask maker who went on steve bannon's podcast and got a lucrative government contract. was there a straight up hookup or is there more to it than that? >> actually there was a little more to it. the american manufacturer called prestige ameritech had been arguing for years and years that it was a problem that there wasn't mord wasn't more domestic manufacturing. they tried to go through dr. rick bright who said heed been retaliated against for some of the decisions he made at the h.h.s. department. but eventually the way the prestige ameritech got its deal was bannon introduced the head of that company or the number two guy at that company to peter navarro at the white house and peter navarro got it going. it's one of two contracts in the history of the american

contracting database which goes back now 15 or so years where it says the white house ordered this. >> how is the contract process supposed to work for equipment like masks, especially at a time of emergency? >> well, usually what you'd have is competitive bidding process for almost anything the government acquires. there are waivers in emergencies. there are a variety of reasons the government can say this is the only people who can do this or there is some sort of emergency. that's what happened in this particular instance. but it really -- this is two steps. you had president trump coming in and telling the fda that they had to give battelle not only a waver, but the waiver they wanted. they could clean the masks at its own facility. the president called the fda chief. as the president said, bingo, bango, bongo, the fda changed

the waiver so it could sell is machines to the government so that $16 million value suddenly shot up to $413 million. and at last count on may 1st, the defense department which actually does the contracting work had said it would be up to $600 million. >> some companies are profiting off the coronavirus pandemic by serving as middle men between supplies and government buyers. you mentioned in your reporting granger who supplies the dupont cover alls at twice the cost. why would the trump administration not just go directly to dupont and purchase what it needs? >> it's hard to fathom, joshua. my colleagues and i asked a lot about this particular deal and nobody wanted to talk about it. in fact, we couldn't get the other parties to name the last party, which was granger. really sort of a crazy situation where the government agreed to fly raw material for dupont

called tyvek over to vietnam. the material was sewn into suits over there. and then dupont sold them to granger for $4 apiece, and granger took custody, sold them to the government for $8 apiece. and we're not talking about a few coverall suits here. we're talking as many as 4 1/2 million for the h.h.s. department, they're paying basically twice what the middleman paid. >> now, is this illegal or is it just unseemly? i mean, if you're a businessman and you can make this kind of money on this kind of transaction, that's kind of how capitalism works. but is there anything unlawful about doing that? >> yeah, joshua, i mean, i'm not a prosecutor but i will try to answer your question this way, which is to say the president of the united states ordered what the fda did to clear the way for the battelle contract. the coronavirus task force supply chain group, which is run by admiral policzek at the white

house, jared kushner was heavily involved in that effort, they worked on project air bridge, you may have heard that term before, which is what the dupont suits were part of. so, you know, there is absolute blessing from the very top of the government. and in order for there to be any sort of -- if there were wrongdoing, in order for there to be criminal charges, you'd have to have a justice department that had any interest in that. i think one of the issues in contracting right now -- and this goes beyond just contracting, into all sorts of areas with this coronavirus response effort. one of the big issues is there's no oversight of anything. so you have the president come in and tell the fda what the science is, he did that with the cdc, he's done that with the n.i.h. you have a president order a contract. he's fired inspectors general all over the government so there's nobody within those agencies to make sure the agency officials are doing the right thing and also the companies that get the contracts are doing the right thing. and then on capitol hill, he has instructed his task force not to

testify about any of this stuff, at least through the month of may, which means really all the oversight stops have been pulled out. that doesn't mean each of the deals is bad. it doesn't mean there's any criminal activity, it just means there's nobody to enforce accountability. >> that's nbc's john allen. john, thanks very much. still to come, the furor over face mask. the idea is i protect you, you protect me. getting everyone to live that out is tough. what should we do? that's just ahead. stick close. raise your rates just because of an accident. cut! is that good? no you were talking about allstate and... i just... when i... accident forgiveness from allstate. click or call for a quote today. accident forgiveness special delivery ♪

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you could be the person to get someone else infected without knowing it. you could literally cost someone their life. on memorial day we honor those who died protect us. but now will we protect each other from death? and if you won't, what happens' yo what's your excuse? joining us to discuss it is comedian and host of the podcast nick dominic. and the host of the dino show on xm. dean, let me start with you. we have nearly 100,000 coronavirus deaths. we also have people going to the beach, ignoring the cdc recommendations. where is the disconnect? >> well, look, people want to get outside. i understand that. i really hope, like you were saying, joshua, the idea of being responsible. they're wearing a mask to protect others, even social distancing for others, i don't know why people don't want to wear a mask.

i wore a mask. my mom saw my picture. she thought i became a doctor. it was an exciting day for my mom. the idea of makting yoing your happy is not a bad idea, thinking you're a doctor. donald trump is not wearing a mask, he's doing that to signal to his mask, don't wear a mask, it's okay. governor mike dewine in ohio saying wear a mask. the governor of north dakota. donald trump is peeling away little by little from other members of the gop. trump and trumpism, care about fellow americans, care about loved ones you haven't met. i wish trump would get on that board. it's trump selfishness. >> we did hear from mike dewine and the governor. he made an impassioned plea about what other people might be dealing with, another reason to wear a mask. pete, let's dig into this thing about the president playing

golf. he's been getting criticism for playing golf this holiday weekend. he was at his course in virginia. no president works all the time even during national crises, lincoln was at the soldiers home monument. f.d.r. came up with an idea while on a fishing trip. is this golfing trip a big deal in the bigger scheme of things? >> joshua, i'm hearing in my ear piece, f.d.r. and abraham lincoln's people asking that you not have their names leave your mouth in conclusion with donald trump's. they are vastly different to handle. there are so many different things -- >> i have doubts you are in direct contact with them, sir. i'm just skeptical. call me crazy. >> excuse me, believe me, i'm in contact. a lot of people didn't know that these two presidents were two of the most celebrated presidents of all time. this president, of course, the difference between fda and abraham lincoln, the difference is they cared about the american

people and the public. this president criticized president obama when he went golfing when two people died in ebola in the united states of america. this president has spent $134 million of taxpayers money, 250 times he has gone golfing because he truly doesn't care, joshua. he's not concerned about the american people. he's only concerned about the numbers. and when they go up, that's why he doesn't want us as he said this week, taking any more tests. he said when there's more tests, there's more numbers. of course, he has no idea about arithmetic. >> we've heard from dean in ohio, governor cuomo in new york that it transcends politics. it does not transcend privilege. some parts of the country, some demographics who are disproportionately affected by covid-19. i would hope that would give us more reason to unify around covering our faces to protect as many of our fellow americans as possible. but how do you see it? >> first of all, f.d.r. and

lincoln's people just asked me to ask pete not to mention them again. i think it must be important to bring that up. >> fair enough. >> you two have a connection to the presidential beyond that i don't have. how did that happen? >> actually your audience is now telling me they have always wanted dino to wear a mask even before this. but finish, dean. >> see now? go ahead, dean. >> thank you, pete. here's the reality. we are seeing really the underlying disparity in our society on steroids right now, and you see it with the black community, latino community, native american community the way they're disproportionately affected by covid-19. the death rate now 3-1 african americans to white in this country. similar numbers for hispanic and native americans. that goes along simmering palms in our society of institutional racism from access to housing to actually access to health care to jobs that give you health

care to working on jobs that are essential services making you go out there. it's either lose your house, lose your apartment or work and risk your life. we're seeing it in my community with muslims who work in meatpacking factories. look, it's a challenging thing to solve. but now we're seeing it firsthand. i hope going forward, i hope joe biden brings it up frankly about trying to address this disproportionate impact on people of color in our country during covid-19 because it's much deeper than this. this is a much more fundamental problem in our society. >> pete, before we have to go, tomorrow is memorial day. tell me what you would like to see people do to honor the nearly 100,000 people to memorialize those who have died of covid-19. pete, what would you like to see? >> i think that's a great question. i think that people should wear a mask and be careful. when you think about the number of veterans that are actually older and who are more vulnerable as a result, we still have some world war ii vera veterans, vietnam veterans as

well that are vulnerable. the best this can we can do is stay at home, socially distance and wear a mask. veterans in this era, combat veterans are the health care workers, on the front lines, those working in grocery stores. we need to honor those folks who are putting their own lives on the line and we can do that right now by just being more responsible, more safe, wearing a mask and socially distancing and doing whatever you can to honor those people while they're working right now so we don't have more memorials like we saw on the front page of "the new york times" today. >> gentlemen, i appreciate you being with us. thank you. next time hopefully you can come out of your shells a little bit more. there's no need to be shy. >> thanks, joshua. we'll try. >> we go back a long way, dean and i, josh. thanks for having us. >> i couldn't temperature. it didn't show. but i appreciate you guys being with us. thanks very much. coming up, the trump and biden campaigns are ramping up their attacks on each other. we'll talk about the presidential race next. chances are you know us.

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coronavirus has been such a crisis that for a while you could almost forget that it's an election year. not any more. president trump and joe biden are renewing their attacks, focusing on recent events that got each man sharply criticized. the trump/pence campaign is selling clothes that say "you ain't black." joe biden said that during a recent radio interview referring to people who are still deciding between him and the incumbent. biden has apologized for that,

saying he was too cavalier. meanwhile, the biden campaign produced an ad showing president trump golfing this weekend and depicts the president as an absentee leader. let's talk presidential politics with danielle moody, host of the podcast "woke af." and adrian, communications for hillary for america campaign and msnbc contributor. good to see you both this evening. danielle, let me start with you and this opinion piece from the

washington post that says that joe biden still needs black women for him to win. it highlights three areas. biden's vice-presidential pick, supreme court, particularly who might be a new supreme court justice, and his black political agenda. what are your thoughts on that? >> i mean, my thoughts are this, joshua. that, yes, joe bide n does not have the entire black community on lock. that was evident in his interview over the weekend with charlamagne from the breakfast club . he has work to do and literally needs to set out an agenda that is about more than just congratulating the naacp, congratulating himself for a crime bill that really disenfranchised many in the black community. and so it's really important for him to buckle down and to see that there is a lot of work to be done as it pertains to criminal justice reform. as it pertains to our current public health crisis that's ravages black and brown

communities. so you can't go on, be a wise guy, make jokes when there are serious issues that have been a pandemic within the black community for quite sometime. >> i don't know how you see it, danielle, before i come to you, adrian. it seems to me the risk for the biden campaign is not that black voters might choose donald trump. it's that black voters might choose none of the above and stay home. >> absolutely. and that is something that is very real. remember when donald trump said, you have nothing -- don't vote for me, you have nothing to lose, right? well, black people are 250itire losing. they're tired of trying to choose between a worse condition or a not so good condition. and biden has an opportunity with this election cycle, not just with his vp pick and his supreme court pick, but with an actual agenda and plan, like the plans that we saw coming from elizabeth warren on the campaign trail, we need to see that coming from biden and it needs to be more than just lip

service. >> adrienne, what do you think of trump's campaign using biden's words against him? some say it's pot versus kettle. some say he shouldn't have said t he apologized for it. how do you see it, adrienne? >> i guess i'm not surprised by this. at the same time it opens up a complete pandora's box for the biden campaign to really draw a contrast. i mean, donald trump has been horrible for people of color throughout his entire presidency, and i do agree with danielle that joe biden is going to work hard for every single vote, and that includes every single vote among people of color. they brought him back to this race, let's remember, in south carolina, james clyburn endorsing him. african americans in particular brought him back. so you know he's going to fight tooth and nail for every single vote he can get.

he has an agenda to demonstrate that. does donald trump want to go there? does he want to have this conversation right now about his failed presidency for communities of color? by doing this, he is opening up that door and i don't think that's a fight he wants to have. >> if they did open this door, adrienne, i can't think the president would flinch. he hasn't apologized for anything he's said ever. he has said some of the most unthinkable racist horrible things in the past and has never, ever, ever flinched about it. it almost feels, danielle, like joe biden stands to lose more from this by comparison to the rest of his record because he might actually feel like, well, here's what happened, let me explain this. president trump has never shown a propensity for apology or intro spection. so would kind of roll off him, i think, right? >> yeah, but, you know, i think what was really good, what the biden campaign did really right is that ad that you showed at

the opening. that's what we need to see more of coming out of the biden camp. we do need to see a stark contrast, right? we do need to see that donald trump is golfing while americans are dying. and once he realized who was dying from covid-19, then all of a sudden it's time to reopen, right? when we see that 80% of those that are dying are black and latino, are low-income, are on the front lines of this pandemic, and so all of a sudden he doesn't care. i think that biden, though, what he needs to do is that he needs to draw the contrast, but he also needs to show us what he's going to do for the black community. he needs to show us what he's going to do with public education. he needs to show us how he's going to stop voter suppression. he needs to show us how he's going to fix a very broken health care system that has many at the bottom now dying, suffering unnecessarily. so he has a work to do in showing the contrast, but in also laying out his plan. >> very briefly, adrienne, take

a list of the people we are aware of on the short list of biden candidates. if you had to put $100 bet on one of those in terms of who gives him the best chance of win being based on how they might impact the campaign, in the last few seconds, who would you put your money on? >> joshua, are you going to do this to me? they're all strong. gretchen whitmer, the key swing state. kamala harris is obviously somebody who can bring a lot of voters. the great thing about this party right now is we've got an embarrassment of -- we have strong female candidates joe biden gets to pull from. >> does it need to be somebody of color, a val demmings, stacy abrams or kamala harris? >> look, i hope it is. if it's not a woman of color, huh- you better be sure there will be women of color campaigning for him. this is ultimately his decision.

val demmings, stacy abrams, kamala harris all strong choices for him to pick from. >> thanks for being with us tonight. before we go, a racial disparity around the issues of covid-19. for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure.

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in the midst of this national trauma, so many of our fellow americans are rising to the occasion. their words and their deeds serving as a crucial reminder that in this time of stress and catastrophe, we really are all in this together. from the start of the coronavirus outbreak here in the u.s. and elsewhere, nursing homes have been hit especially hard. cdc data reveals that one-third of all covid-19 deaths in the u.s. were tied to nursing homes. one-third. some facilities have been affected more than others. that is the focus of a collaboration published this week by "the new york times," the bat more sun, kpcc public radio, and the southern illinoisan. it reveals a striking racial divide in how and where the virus hits. joining us is one of the story's authors, danielle ivory of "the new york times," welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> elderly people are especially

vulnerable to coronavirus. your story reveals a mystery about the racial disparity in these cases. you report nursing homes with mainly black and latino residents were twice as likely to be hit withth coronavirus as homes with mainly white issues but that's not the only issue. quote even predominantly black and latino nursing homes with high ratings were more likely to be affected by the coronavirus than were predominantly white nursing homes with low ratings, unquote. why is that? >> well, what we wanted to do is see if there were any patterns that could tell us why some nursing homes seemed to be much more vulnerable than others. some have been totally devastated, others have had no cases or just a couple of cases and everyone has recovered and it's been almost fine. so we started just throwing every factor that we could at this equation. and what we found is that, although there are some very

strong predictors like a large senior living home with lots of people are is probably going to be more vulnerable. a nursing home in a community with an outbreak already that's dense is probably going to be more vulnerable. but in the end, the stronger predictor on top of that was race. so if we saw a nursing home with a black or latino population that was one-quarter or more of the whole population, they were twice as likely to be hit, even if they were -- even if you were comparing a large black and latino nursing home with a large white nursing home. and as you said, there were some predict there's were just terrible. like the government has a star rating system that rates nursing homes from a scale of 1 to 5. and we found that a 5-star black and latino nursing home was still more likely to be hit than a 1-star white nursing home.

>> we know the coronavirus has just kind of reiterated the deep racial disparity in health care outcomes and in so many other things. that's got to be part of the explanation, i'm guessing, for why black and brown nursing home residents are suffering this way, even if they are at facilities that are more highly ranked, that are said to give a higher standard of care. >> well, that's what seems to be happening. when we spoke to experts about this, we heard again and again that this is really highlighting a disparity that already existed, that on average a black or latino person, because of a multitude of structural inequities, is more likely on average, by the time they get to be the age that they might enter a nursing home, physically -- it's almost like they're older than a white person entering a nursing home at that age. they're already unhealthier. >> what have nursing home

operators told you about this? do they have any explanation for this disparity? >> oh, gosh. i think everyone is kind of grasping at straws for the explanation for this disparity. but what was clear is that this disparitity is showing up, not just for us in our analysis. we've been collecting nursing home data for the last two months to try and figure these kind of things out. but we talked to some nursing home operators who own lots of nursing homes, and they said this that they had done similar analyses. and had come up with the same conclusion. that there was a striking difference in how nursing homes that mostly serve black and latino people were being affected by the coronavirus. as opposed to the nursing homes that were serving mostly a white constituency. >> i'll be interested to see more about how this plays out. glad that you did this collaboration. very happy to see kpcc public radio is as part of it.

i can't help thinking that in the final analysis, we may look back and say, not necessarily that these nursing home operators didn't know, but that they knew and didn't want to say what we all kind of know to be true about the way african-americans fare in the health care systems. but conversation for another day. danielle ivory of the "new york times," thanks very much. and thank you for making time for us on msnbc. i hope you have a great memorial day, especially if you're heading out to honor our service members. i look forward to seeing you next weekend. i'm joshua johnson. stay safe, stay sharp, we will get through this. good night. giveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault. cut! sonny. was that good? line! the desert never lies. isn't that what i said? no you were talking about allstate and insurance. i just... when i... let's try again. everybody back to one.

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this sunday, reopening america. >> now i want it open, and we're going to open. >> as the number of new cases levels off -- >> i feel great! i feel like it's almost back to normal. bring it on! >> and nearly 40 million now newly unemployed -- >> i'm trying to earn a living. i'm trying to work. >> an eager america slowly welcomes some return to normalcy. >> i couldn't wait. i saw on the news that they were open, and i said, i'm going to go. >> even amid concerns over opening too fast. >> we would ask everyone to hold off on any kinds of parties or large gatherings. plus, new hope for a vaccine. >> we hope, if everything goes to plan, that we could have a vaccine by early next year. >> our studies show theoretically that there is natural protective immunity to this virus. >> at issue this morning, can we open quickly and safely? and how soon could a vaccine be available? i'll talk to governor mike dewine of ohio and vaccine spec