good day. i am andrea mitchell in washington. thank you for joining us on this memorial day for our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and our tribute to veterans. here are the facts at this hour. as the death toll nears 100,000 americans, weekend crowds ignored social distancing and did not wear masks in great numbers at beaches, lakes, and pools around the country. even as states from arkansas through the mid-atlantic, including washington, d.c., continue to see spikes of new cases. today, president trump is marking memorial day with visits to arlington ceremony and ft. mchenry in baltimore after being criticized by political rivals, including joe biden, for spending the holiday weekend

playing multiple rounds of golf at his virginia golf course while unleashing a string of malicious retweets attacking nancy pelosi, stacey abrams, and hillary clinton, as well as a twitter tirade against his ousted attorney general, current alabama senate candidate jeff sessions. and the trump administration is banning travel from brazil. now the world's most dangerous hotspot due to months of inaction and denials from their president, trump ally jair bolsonaro. the ban prevents any foreigners who have been in brazil during the past two weeks from entering the u.s. we'll have a live report from rio in just a moment. but we begin with our memorial day panel. nbc political reporter monica alba at the white house. "washington post" national political reporter robert costa, moderator of "washington week" on pbs. and msnbc political analyst rick tyler joining us as well, former obama white house communications

director jen palmieri, and nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. monica, first to you. the president today now at ft. mchenry after a weekend of controversial tweets, retweets, trips to his golf course. let's talk about that, first of all. monica? >> that's right, the president and first lady just touching down in ft. mchenry in baltimore, where i believe he will be speaking shortly there to mark memorial day, this somber day of remembrance, but he will also be speaking to coronavirus and the victims, acknowledging that massive loss as we do near the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths while also acknowledging the importance of this holiday. but today is a day he did go to arlington national cemetery, as is customary, but he spent most of the weekend golfing and tweeting at his critics, knowing full well that those pictures of him hitting the links would be out there and seemingly embra

embracing them, wanting to tell millions of americans that he was returning to normal and activities he enjoyed before the pandemic became a national emergency and urging others to do so. but his democratic rivals did jump on that rather quickly, turning that into an ad, even, for the joe biden campaign, but the president defended his actions this morning as golf, calling it exercise, one of the only forms he gets it in, and he was trying to point out that his predecessor, barack obama, had also spent that time. but of course, when you line up the two trips, this president has spent more time golfing at his own personal properties than any other. the president trying to project a signal of optimism in the country returning to normalcy with so many states opening, but he sent an incorrect tweet over the weekend saying that cases and deaths were going down all over. that's just not the case. there are some declines in certain areas, but in others we have seen peaks. and even here in the d.c. metro area, there are questions about when that peak will be reached here. so, all of that, andrea, the

backdrop is now today he does mark a more serious, more sobering day where we are expecting him to talk about coronavirus in those remarks in baltimore, though local officials did want him to reconsider that trip. obviously, they went forward with it anyway. >> that's correct. the mayor of baltimore in particular asking him not to come. robert costa, the political calculus behind the president's attacks all weekend, and they did let cameras, the traveling pool, photograph him playing golf. this is not usual when he plays golf on weekends or any time. so, they wanted to show him out there on the links. >> what you saw in the president's tweetstorm over the weekend is a replay of grievances new and old. and this is part of the president's return to his campaign strategy in 2016, this combative nature, going after all perceived enemies.

if you look at who he was playing golf with this weekend, it was david bossie, a member of the republican national committee from maryland, and his deputy campaign managers from 2016. people around the president keep telling me he's turning to people like dave bossi and others in that world, dan a scavino inside the white house that works on social media, that it's the physical attack mode he's focused on more than anything when it comes to his re-election. and you see him battling with the democratic governor of north carolina, threatening to move the convention site if he doesn't get his way in terms of the organization and the whole structure of the convention in charlotte. >> and the president is talking about the coronavirus. let's listen to some of his remarks from ft. mchenry in baltimore. >> -- is a match for the sheer determination of the american people. this towering spirit permeates every inch of the hallowed soil

beneath our feet. in this place, more than 200 years ago, american patriots stood their ground and repelled a british invasion in the battle of baltimore during the war of 1812. early on a september morning in 1814, the british fleet launched an assault on this peninsula. from the harbor, some 30 british warships attacked this stronghold. rockets rained down. bombs burst in the air. and the deck of one ship, a gallant, young american was held captive. his name was francis scott key. for 25 hours, key watched in dismay as fire crashed down upon this ground. but through torrents of rain and smoke and the din of battle, key could make out 15 broad stripes

and 15 bright stars barraged and battered but still there. american forces did not waver. they did not retreat. they stared down the invasion and the hell that they had to endure. the fact is, they held like nobody could have held before. they held this fort. the british retreated. independence was saved. francis scott key -- >> michael beschloss, let's talk about the president and ft. mchenry and the historic significance. in your book "presidents of war," recounting all the previous presidents and how they handled wartime, and that, of course, speaks to -- >> andrea i think the reason he's at ft. mchenry today is that the battle he's talking

about, the battle in which "the star spangled banner" survived, that was a month after the worst military defeat at that point in american history. the brits came to washington and burned out the white house, burned down the capitol. so, i assume what he's trying to suggest is that we can come back from bad times. but i think he's got really two models in history. one is franklin roosevelt, who was the pinnacle in most ways of leadership and wartime leadership after pearl harbor. he had a plan for victory, let americans know what it was. he and his experts kept on saying to americans, here is how best to protect yourselves. and the other thing is that all through that war, he was always showing americans that he knew how much everyone was suffering from the fact that this world war was going on. at the other end of the spectrum would be woodrow wilson in the flu pandemic of 1918-1919. woodrow wilson pretended it wasn't happening, never gave one speech about it, did not let

people know how to protect themselves, sent soldiers to europe on coffin ships, as they were called, even though he was told not to, and had huge complicity in the deaths of 670,000 americans. had wilson been more of a leader, he could have saved a lot of people. instead, he tried to pretend that was not a national emergency and everything was fine. i hope that's not what we're seeing from president trump today. >> rick tyler, what we're seeing also is that there is certainly the president's numbers for handling the pandemic, his poll numbers from various polls are falling. and joe biden's got a 17-point advantage in a fox poll last week over the president in his handling of the pandemic. overall, an eight-point lead nationally, and we don't really focus much on national polls in an election year. but when we talk about the president and dr. fauci and others, his numbers are actually

rising against the governors and against people like dr. fauci, for wearing a mask for the restrictions. how do you read that? is this working for donald trump in some regard? >> well, if it is working, and i don't believe it is, it's going to be very short-lived. just juxtaposed to beautiful words that donald trump was actually reading at ft. mchenry, and it rings very hollow, because we have seen great leaders -- fdr, margaret thatcher, ronald reagan, winston churchill. we've all witnessed their physical decline, and we witnessed their mental decline. but we're witnessing this with donald trump as well, but we're also witnessing a spiritual decline. this is a man who is degraded, and he debases -- he talks about this epidemic as if it were to a war, and it is a war, but he's

abandoned the field. he's a dereliction of duty. everything we would do to fight a war in the conventional sense this president has decided to completely ignore. and we are paying for it with lives and treasure because of what we have lacked in preparation, what we continue to do, lack in preparation. there will be a second wave. we don't have to guess about this. and it is coming. and it won't be in blue america like in new york city or baltimore or the other cities. they've already been hit hardest in the blue america. it will be in red america. it will be in rural america, in counties that many of us have never heard of. and the likelihood there is you will know someone who is affected, you will know someone who will have died. and we are giving the wrong information. think how wrong dr. birx's model was. she revised her models. down 60,000 dead. well, today we will pass 100,000 dead, and it is only the beginning of the summer. and we must double down and rely on our governors, i guess, to prepare, because red america,

rural america, where trump voters live, is going to be hit next and it's going to get hit hard. >> and jen palmieri, joe biden and dr. jill biden emerged for the first time from their home since march 15th, i believe. and it showed they were both wearing masks. they went to a war memorial in new castle, delaware. this is also almost the fifth anniversary of their son, a veteran, beau biden's death. so these are really touching -- a touching war memorial visit and the first time that he is coming out of his home, and i guess testing whether there were other safe ways that he can emerge, given his age, given the restrictions, and the fact that he is modeling what the government is saying to model, in contrast to the president, who's going against his own government. >> yeah, and it's such a juxtaposition when you see how dr. biden and joe biden are

handling today compared to the way trump has operated this weekend. i mean, even by the standards we've come to accept or come to expect from donald trump, this is remarkably in catastrophically self-absorbed, you know, the golfing, the tweets, the telling governors that they should open church but then going golfing instead of going to church himself, threatening to move the convention from charlotte. and by the way, i bet you that convention is going to end up in florida at mar-a-lago. i think that's what he's trying to drive towards. but i imagine if joe biden were president this weekend, if barack obama were president, you know, communication structures, imagine the kind of weekend we would want to have prepared for america. you know, you would want the president to lead the country in a televised event, perhaps, that's mourning all of the loss that we've had. do that throughout the weekend. leave monday to honor veterans.

but definitely put the american people first. and what you did see instead is him putting himself and his grievances first. >> and in terms of biden coming out, i think he's handled this well. it's good for -- if he's going to emerge from his home to be going to lay a wreath as a symbolic, important first step. but i don't know that he has hurt himself by being at home, you know. he's reaching audiences he doesn't normally reach. it's much easier to go on to a zoom conference call as a voter than to show up at a rally, and i suspect that he's -- the audience that they're gathering, i know in terms of numbers, is bigger than you might have out on the campaign trail. he's just like everybody else. he needs to be careful, and he's going to model that behavior, but i don't think that has to mean a sacrifice on the campaign trail for him. >> no, clearly, his numbers have gone up as he's been campaigning from home, virtually, and the

president, arguably, is endangering the troops, the people who have to travel with him, as well as the people that he meets along the way, and he has not been socially distancing or wearing a mask when he's around them. so, obviously, time will tell. thank you very much, jen palmieri. thank you, as always, to monica alba and michael beschloss and rick tyler and, of course, robert costa. meanwhile, coronavirus cases continuing to spike across brazil, even the most remote regions of the amazon jungle, as a new white house ban on travel to the u.s. will take effect later this week for any foreign national coming to the u.s. who has been in brazil for two weeks prior. let's bring in nbc's chief global correspondent bill neely in rio de janeiro. bill, it's been horrendous across brazil. any reaction there to the travel ban from the brazilian

president, who has been a close ally of president trump's? >> reporter: yes, exactly, andrea. nothing direct from president bolsonaro, but he has just retweeted the comments of his chief adviser, and he says this is normal, this travel ban. it's not against brazilians per se. we've already had a travel ban against china, for example, and he has said that anyone in brazil who thinks that this is some kind of a betrayal by president trump, of his ally, president bolsonaro, he says that's simply press hysteria. well, as you know, andrea, bolsonaro has been unrepentant almost from the very beginning. and last night as the travel ban was being announced, he was at an antilockdown protest with his supporters, initially not wearing a mask -- sorry, initially wearing a mask, and then he took it off to have selfies taken. he was hugging people in the

crowd. and you know, millions of people in brazil do look to him for example, and the example they're learning is that he doesn't believe in social distancing. so that's one reason that the virus is spreading like wildfire here. it's the largest outbreak outside the u.s. it's spreading faster here than anywhere else. and of course, bolsonaro's reaction, andrea, has been very interesting, almost chilling after 5,000 deaths. remember, he said, "so what?" after 10,000 deaths, he took a spin on a jet ski and said, look, 70% of the population are going to be infected. there's nothing we can do. and after 20,000 deaths just a few days ago, he simply doubled down on the antilockdown rhetoric. and that has continued in the last 24 hours. that just comes from a field hospital, andrea. and let me tell you, they cannot build those hospitals fast enough because the casualties are horrendous. it's more than 22,000 deaths

officially, a third of a million cases. but nobody believes that the case load is that low. people are telling me that it's possibly 10, maybe even 15 times higher than that. so, president trump said that the united states needed to be protected from a country like brazil. he said that bolsonaro was aiming for herd immunity. and indeed, when you hear bolsonaro say that 70% of the population are going to get it, i think you have to assume that that, indeed, is what bolsonaro is aiming for here. so, that travel ban will come into effect midnight friday. andrea? >> and bill, as you've been reporting in the favelas, there's no ability to hand wash. there's very little water, little sanitation. it's been extraordinary. please stay safe, you and tony down there in brazil. and coming up, as crowds flood to the beaches this

memorial day, covid-19 cases continue to spike in new hotspots across the country. are americans doing enough to protect themselves? and a little later, wuhan's chief virologist speaks out for the first time about claims that the coronavirus originated in a lab. stay with us. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. you're watching "andrea mitchell repos"rt on msnbc. - i'm norm. - i'm szasz. [norm] and we live in columbia, missouri. we do consulting, but we also write. [szasz] we take care of ourselves constantly; it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me. i still notice a difference. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

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welcome back. this memorial day weekend, americans packed the beaches and

the bars across the country, many not social distancing, many not wearing masks. and as they packed the bars and the pools, many were in states with rising infection rates. nbc's dasha burns is at jackson hospital in montgomery, alabama. cal perry is in lake geneva, wisconsin. and kathy park joins us from point pleasant on the new jersey shore. dasha, first to you in alabama, where the spike in new cases has been alarming. >> reporter: that's right, andrea. the hospital behind me here, jackson hospital, does not have any icu beds available, and the other hospitals in this area are not faring much better. some have even had to send patients to birmingham about 90 miles away from here to get the care that they need, and that is because this is a new hotspot. the cases in montgomery county have doubled, doubled over the last two weeks, and the doctors in here, they are seeing some heartbreak. i spoke to doctor lisa williams,

who told me in her 14 years of practicing medicine here, she has never seen anything like this. take a listen to what she told me this morning. >> we've been having a lot of overflow in the icu. the community has -- you know, at first everyone was doing a great job at protecting themselves. but now, unfortunately, i don't think people think it's very serious. we see patients of all ages and all walks of life with covid-19. no one's immune to it, and i think that's what's scary. >> reporter: have you ever seen this many patients come through in such a short period of time? >> i have not. >> reporter: and andrea, meanwhile, the state is continuing to open up. just on friday, even more restrictions have been lifted. now entertainment venues like bowling alleys, theaters can reopen, summer camps can reopen, child care facilities can open with no limitations on numbers. and the doctors here are pretty worried about what that's going

to mean for their capacity and for the patients here. i'll send it over now to cal perry in lake geneva, wisconsin. >> reporter: this is a lakeside town that relies on business from folks who live in chicago, and this weekend was no different. packed streets here along the lake as we saw visitors from out of town streaming into the state of wisconsin. now, in illinois, the face mask coverings are required. here in wisconsin, they are only recommended, and very few people are wearing those face coverings. got so crowded here yesterday that some of these restaurants had difficulty letting people in. take a listen to david, who owns a restaurant just down the way. >> yesterday, for example, on a sunday, we had to literally close our doors and stop letting people in the building several different times and shut down the wait list and shut down essentially our business and the public because we simply couldn't handle the volume or had space to safely kind of

manage that, the crowd. >> reporter: now, this little bit of squall rainstorm aside, the weather has been great this weekend and it's supposed to be great tonight. people expect, again, these streets to be packed. and there really hasn't been any guidance from the state government, which saw, of course, those restrictions that they had put in overturned by the supreme court. now over to my colleague, kathy park, in point pleasant, new jersey. >> reporter: cal, thank you. so, behind me is a rally here in point pleasant beach, new jersey, on the jersey shore, that has broke significantly. organizers tell me that the intent, the purpose of this event was essentially to help the little guys, the small businesses here in shore towns that have really struggled in the last couple of months, and they're hurting now more than ever because this is the start of the summer season, and this is where they make most of their profit. but because of the ongoing restrictions that are in place, they are hurting even more. so, we had a chance to speak with the organizer just a moment ago, just to get a better sense

of exactly why they're out here today. take a listen. >> the number one purpose is to fight the tyranny that this shutdown has caused and to fight the tyranny that the governor is imposing on the american people in the state of new jersey. we don't believe in his executive orders. we don't believe in him legislating by executive order. >> reporter: now, these rallies are happening all across the country, in sacramento as well as chicago. now, originally, we were told that this was supposed to, you know, help reopen the economy of new jersey, but it has taken a very political turn. you might notice some of the trump 2020 flags behind me. i also asked the chief of police in this community exactly how they're able to gather here, because here in the state of new jersey, gatherings are supposed to be limited to 25. and he says that police officers will be monitoring the situation and they'll be using their

discretion. also in the state of new jersey, masks are not mandatory when you are outdoors. they are highly recommended. but if you see behind me, andrea, folks out here are shoulder to shoulder, not much social distancing happening. back to you. >> thanks so much to kathy, to dasha, and of course, cal perry as well. and joining us now is dr. anearbydr. amees dr. anearby adalja from john hopkins center for health security. you've been tweeting about this that beaches were mostly safe, but we saw were not just beaches with people enjoying the water. what we've seen around the country are crowds and crowds of people along beachfronts as well as in bars and in restaurants. >> you have to remember that it's not just going outdoors that spares you from this virus. it's actually social distancing. if you are in a place where you are going to be interacting with other individuals, you're going to give the virus a chance to transmit. so it's important that the

outdoors are relatively safe but nothing in this pandemic era is going to be without risk, and you have to really think about what risk you want to put on yourself by exposing yourself to individuals. and that may be different for each person in their risk tolerance, but we shouldn't act as if this virus is not here anymore. >> and just from the numbers, we know that we're not talking about a 1-1 risk here because one person can infect five people or more. that was the issue with churches and other religious institutions, because of the difficulty in social distancing, and that's why many churches are resisting the president's call to go back to church yesterday. >> we've definitely seen what we call superspreading events that happen in churches. churches are indoor. people have certain activities there, singing, that might allow the droplets to emanate at a much higher rate, and we can see large groups of infections traced to churches. so, churches have to be handled in a particular way. because we've seen epp deem

logically that there are many ways that people can get infected. so they are not the most safe place to go right now, until certain measures are put into place to make church-going safer. >> governor asa hutchinson in arkansas was talking about the freedom to go out and about, even though their numbers have been increasing. let's watch some of that from yesterday. >> we have to manage the risk. we take the virus very seriously. it's a risk. it causes death. but you can't cloister yourself at home. that is just contrary to the american spirit. and we have to discipline ourselves. we have to manage the risk. i make the comparison with, you can be in an automobile, and it's very risky, but you manage the risk by wearing a seat belt. >> dr. adalja, who will do you manage the risk when you don't know what the data are? one of the things that was so shocking on thursday, "the atlantic" magazine published that the cdc was conflating and

combining diagnostic tests with antibody tests, which give you no -- makes the information meaningless on both scores. >> it's very important that when governors and other policymakers and public health authorities are making decisions, they're using the correct data. and when you lump together antibody tests and pcr tests that are looking for acute infection, you don't get the right information. you want to know where your state is going, where your state is. and to do that, you really need to look at the number of new cases that are being diagnosed by pcr and what the percent positivity is of those tests, because it's not necessarily the sheer number that we worry about, it's what percentage of the tests that you're sending with pcr are positive. and that's really what we want to do. in an era where there's so much conspiracy theories about how many tests are being done, how many cases there are, this type of data just -- these data problems add to that conspiracy theory mnd mind-set, so we want to have high fidelity in the data and make sure states are

doing this in the appropriate way because we want people to know exactly where they are in this epidemic. >> now, how and why would the cdc combine these disparate factors? is this deliberately to try to make it look as though we're testing more people? how does an accident like that happen? >> i don't know that it's deliberate. i think that it's just people not being very careful with the data and not quite understanding that antibody tests, although they are telling you somebody was infected, they aren't the same thing as a pcr test, which is telling you who is infected currently. one is kind of looking back in the rearview mirror. one is looking at where you are now and looking forward. so you use these pieces of informations for very different things, and they're both valid types of information, but you can't conflate the two or you're going to get bad information and have a decision that's not driven by the best data possible. >> dr. adalja, as always, thank you so much. thank you. and coming up next, why has wearing a mask gone from being an issue of medical safety to taking a political stance?

stay with us. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. u're watchingl reports" on msnbc. well, dad's still dead.

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in many states, it's now mandenedatory to wear a mask wh you leave your house to help stop the spread of covid-19. president trump has mainly avoided wearing a mask in public, saying, in fact, he's not worn a mask in public at all, saying last week in michigan head not want to give the press the, quote, pleasure

of seeing him donning one. so, how did masks become so political criesed? governor doug became emotional when pleading with americans to put politics aside. >> if someone is wearing a mask, they're not doing it to represent what political party they're in or what candidates they support. they might be doing it because they've got a 5-year-old child who's been going through cancer treatments. they might have vulnerable adults in their life who are currently have covid and they're fighting. if somebody wants to wear a mask, there should be no mass shaming. >> joining me now are dr. vanessa carey, the ceo of seed global health and also an emergency critical care physician at mass general in boston, and also rick stengel, former undersecretary of state during the obama administration. welcome both. dr. carey, first of all, how do

you as a critical care physician feel about the president not wearing a mask in public and not modeling that, in fact, objecting to it and turning it into a political thing, a ma cheese moe thing or a red-blue thing, i'm not sure what it is? what is so big about wearing a mask and protecting yourself, not only yourself, but other people and the health care community? >> so, thank you for having me on today. you know, it's been incredibly disheartening to see the mixed messages coming out of this administration about how to take on the covid pandemic. the reality is that the united states has about 1.6 million of the world's 5.5 million cases. we have also about a third to, you know, we have almost 100,000 deaths now in the world's 350,000 deaths. so we are not doing this right. and what i'd like to have seen would be a consistent, solid message about how to keep

americans safe, rather than sacrificing them. as a critical care physician who's been working in the icus at mass general where we've been incredibly hard hit in boston, i have been walking rooms full of people who should not be sick but were put in a situation because our country did not protect itself well enough and is not putting out constant messages. masks are very important, not only to protect yourself but to protect others in the community. and i think they've become politicized because we have a president who is basically told us that they don't need to matter or that they're not significant enough that even he needs to wear one. and i think it's very difficult for people to want to follow when they're not being shown a consistent message from the top. >> rick stengel, how did america, which has always led the world through every, you know, health crisis -- ebola comes to mind -- but going back decades -- how did america

become such a follower, so far behind? >> you know, it's a good question, andrea. i mean, we have always, we've been the gold standard in detection of disease and control of disease. but we have a scientifically illiterate president at the top who i think influences all of these doctors and scientists below to kind of ignore the data. like what we're talking about with masks. i mean, we've politicized the wearing of masks. we've politicized everything in this country. and i would argue that president trump has weaponized the wearing of masks. if i had to give it the most benign interpretation, it would be the people on the right who say that the mask is an imposition, it represents control and big government, and they want their freedom from that. and people on the left say this is the best use of government, to protect us, to protect other folks. that's the most benign interpretation of it. but trump, as i say, has

weaponized it to energize his base, to turn people against each other, to turn red versus blue, and that is really very, very dangerous. and if i have to go back to what the governor of north dakota said in that lovely speech that he gave, he ended it by saying, "let's show some north dakota kindness." wearing a mask is an act of kindness. it's an act of kindness towards other people. it's an act of kindness towards yourself. it's an act of kindness towards society. and as dr. kerry said in the great work that she's doing, that's what we need to do as a society, particularly on this memorial day, where people have sacrificed their lives for these values over our history. >> i would just say it's also an act of patriotism. dr. kerry, as the ceo of seed global health also, do you have concerns that if there is a vaccine -- and we don't have much time, this is a big question, though -- when we get a vaccine, that it won't get to africa, to some of the other countries that are less advantaged and need it most,

perhaps? >> i mean, i have a concern about every person on the face of the earth right now in the face of covid, be it here in the united states or abroad in africa where we see global health is helping to support building health systems. i just got a message from the government of sierra leone. our colleague works with the government of sierra leone, that they've just experienced their first death. their response, though, wasn't just, you know, how do we get a vaccine? their response was, we need to build up the entire health system. and i think we've seen that, whether we're talking communities in africa, where the health systems are very fragile and don't have the resources needed, you know, that covid is going to be a problem, but we're seeing it in this country. i mean, the thing that's been so disheartening to me here is that covid has exploited communities that don't have access to regular health care, cannot socially distance. our essential workers fall among the more poor in, you know, the united states. and what we're going to see is

that those countries that don't have full health systems are the states that will get hardest hit when all is said and done. so the reality for me is, vaccine or not, we need strong health systems everywhere around the world. health security is individual, global, national, all security. and we have to find a way forward. i do worry very much about distribution networks of vaccines, because you have to have strong health systems to distribute vaccines well. and i think looking at equity issues, whether it's abroad or in the united states, it's going to be a real issue because we're seeing it play out all the time, every day just in where covid infections are happening. and so, as we look to putting a vaccine out there, it's going to be critically important that we think about how we deliver vaccines to these communities that are the most vulnerable, the hardest hit, and how we get a vaccine up and out in an equitable way to protect all. and in the meantime, we need to wear masks, we need to social distance, we need to be responsible citizens. i find it very poignant that we are looking at 100,000 deaths, you know, on memorial day, a

time when we return and honor those who have served this country. and i think we're looking at a new kind of sacrifice in this country right now, and it's very painful. >> dr. kerry, rick stengel, thanks to both. and we'll be right back with a report from beijing. stay with us. be right back witha report from beijing. stay with us now is the time for a new bath from bath fitter.

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coronavirus, it is also more nationalistic, cracking down on democracy advocates in hong kong and accusing the u.s. of pushing the world's two greatest economic powers, quote, to the brink of a new cold war. this as the white house now accuses china of downplaying the covid threat. for the first time, wuhan's chief virologist is speaking out and denying that the virus originated from their lab. joining us now, nbc's janis mackey frayer in beijing. janis, what is the chief virologist saying? >> reporter: well, she's saying that these accusations that the virus somehow leaked out of the lab in wuhan are, quote, pure fabricati fabrication. she said they didn't actually receive a sample of this new coronavirus until the end of december, she said. so, they, like everybody, didn't know until then that the virus even existed. so, how, she said, would the virus be able to leak from a lab when they didn't actually have it? also curious is that today we heard for the first time from a

lead researcher here known as batwoman. she's done extensive research on bat coronavirus, and she said that she believes that this is becoming far too politicized, that she doesn't think that science and politics will mix well together at a time when cooperation is needed. now, the head of the lab also confirmed that they do have three bat coronavirus strains, live strains, on site there, but none of them are a match to the one that is currently sweeping through countries around the world. but what this does is it's another step for china to try to combat these accusations, that the lab in wuhan is somehow to blame. this is a theory being peddled by donald trump andpompeo, but the foreign minister is saying if the u.s. continues to accuse china in this way, it

will push relations to the brink of what he called a new cold war. andrea? >> thanks so much, janis mackey frayer in beijing. and coming up, the pandemic has really changed the way many of us experience memorial day, but not the tributes to the fallen. next, webeijing. next we honor their honor and service over generations of combat in foreign wars with harry smith. stay with us. you're watching msnbc. when you shop with wayfair, you spend less and get way more. so you can bring your vision to life and save in more ways than one. for small prices, you can build big dreams. spend less, get way more. shop everything home at wayfair today.

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the coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on america's veterans, many losing their lives to the virus after surviving wars. nbc's harry smith remembers our heroes. >> every may, members of the u.s. army's historic old guard place american flags at each of the more than 228,000 graves at

arlington national cemetery. it is a memorial day tradition. this sacred place first used as a burial ground for casualties of the civil war. and it is from that war that the tradition of decorating the graves of those lost in battle was first begun. and why for decades we called memorial day decoration day. in the 1950s and '60s, most every town no matter the size held a parade. the vfw, and american legion marched along and hailed by all. the memories of world war ii were still fresh and lord knows people were proud of the job done and thankful for those who came home. yet, every mindful of those who did not and even more mindful of the families who still mourned, a faded gold star in the window. wars since have been fought in

korea and vietnam, the gulf war, afghanistan, iraq. as still more americans lost their lives serving their country. serving, service. what cannot be lost on memorial day is the idea that people in uniform, they do what they do to, yes, serve their country, but what they do is also in service to us. so head to the beach. keep your distance. light the barbecue. and remember if only for a moment that since the beginning of the revolution more than a million americans have given their all in service. >> our thanks to harry smith. thanks to you for being with us. our gratitude to all of those that serve. craig melvin continues our coverage after a break.

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and a good monday afternoon to you. craig melvin here. thank you for joining us on this memorial day. right now, our country is approaching another grim milestone. there are more than 1.6 million known cases of coronavirus. more than 98,000 americans have died so far. on this memorial day, cases are still surging in spots around the nation. it's happening as president trump remembers those who paid the ultimate price for our