♪ just imagine not being able to breathe. you can't even get out of bed without losing your breath. your body is achy, you're fatigued, you have a headache, you might have some gi issues going on, some nausea, your temperature is through the roof. so you go to the hospital and we admit you and we put you on supplemental oxygen and every single nurse and doctor or staff that comes in looks like an alien because we are dressed head to toe in ppe. you're probably scared, anxious and worst of all you are alone because we can't allow visitors on the covid floor. >> i think it's tempting for people to trick themselves into thinking that it can't happen to them or their loved ones because

it's just so abstract if you aren't witnessing it and the devastation that covid is causing with your own eyes like we are in the hospitals. >> we begin this show once again with sound from medical workers on the front lines of the pandemic. welcome to tuesday, it is "meet the press" daily, i'm katy tur in for chuck todd. we begin the show once again with the bleak situation facing the united states right now. we are knee deep in the first wave of cases according to dr. fauci and the president just proclaimed that the country is staying open no matter what. we are approaching 3 million confirmed cases in this country, more than 130,000 americans have died, a number which the president moments ago tried to frame as a major success. hospitalizations are surging along with cases. some cities are seeing hospitals at or near capacity.

just moments ago texas reported that it has broken 10,000 cases in a single day. hospitalizations in the state also hit a new record and testing capacity is clearly an issue right now. in arizona as cases and hospitalizations surge, the state says its icus are more than 90% at capacity. the federal government announced today it was trying to surge testing resources into several states. across the sun belt as cases rise hospitalizations are rising, too. in some cases rapidly. and now there are concerns again about shortages of personal protective equipment. the president meanwhile, continues to downplay and politicize the threat. at the white house this afternoon he said he will be pressuring governors to reopen schools in the fall. he baselessly claimed that democrats wanted to keep the schools closed to hurt his reelection chances and he tried

to frame this country's staggering death toll as a major success. even as he asked what the death toll actually was. >> now we're open and we want to stay open and we will stay open. we are not closing. we will put out the fires as they come out. i call them embers and fires and whatever you want to call them. i was going over numbers before with the vice president and if you looked at a million, two million, 2.5 million, those are all reasonable numbers to what we could have had right now we are at a number, as you know, far lower than that. where would you say we are today, mike? >> 130,000. >> about 130. so we are at 130 and we could be at -- we could be at way over a million right now and i think it could have been 2.5 or 3 million people. but now we are open. >> we should also note that new projections from ihme, a group at the university of washington

that has been frequently cited by the white house is now predicting that u.s. deaths will surpass 208,000 by november 1st. let's turn now to my nbc news colleagues, carol lee at the white house, steve patterson at phoenix and priscilla thompson in houston. carol, i want to start with you, the president is saying that we are going to reopen no matter what, he's claiming baselessly that the democrats want to keep schools closed, to politically hurt him. it sounds like the reality of this pandemic is not making it through the oval office. >> well, katie, it's a similar argument that we heard the president make just on reopening in general. early on when he was -- the focus was on the virus and then he wanted to shift to the economy and reopening, he talked about the reopenings in that same way, blaming democratic governors for not reopening fast enough, really putting pressure on state and local officials to

do what he wanted them to do, which was reopen. and you saw in his remarks today he praised governor desantis in florida who is saying all schools are going to open this fall, saying that that was the right decision, even though florida is one of the hot spots and they don't know where that state will be at that time, but the president, you know, really emphasizing -- he wants to really emphasize on schools, they're trying to broaden that as an issue that is also related to the economy in the sense that it would get people back to work, it's a mental health issue and making the case that they are going to do this as safely as possible and provide schools with whatever they need to reopen, but, again, he's -- as you said, very clear saying he was going to put the pressure on these governors to reopen schools as we've seen him do with churches and just generally state openings since this pandemic really began. >> you know, i'm wondering how that works when he says put pressure on governors. i know there are republican

governors who will be more willing to bend to that pressure, but when it comes to schools, i mean, everybody wants schools to reopen but they want them to reopen safely and you can't predict where we're going to be in september. there are a lot of parents out there and teachers and people who work at schools who are not comfortable with the idea of sending their kids back if it is not safe. this seems like if you want to make it just politics, because that's what where the president is taking it, a political calculation that is really risky. >> it is, just like his calculation that states should reopen very quickly was risky and there are some administration officials who are now saying rather openly that that was something that moved too quickly, the president, though, sees this as something that he politically advantageous, you know that he wants to, you know, basically say that the pandemic is on its way to going away and sometime soon, and this is all part of

that narrative. he also was critical of virtual learning saying computers can't replace campuses and criticizing education institutions that are thinking about going fully virtual saying they're taking the easy way out. i think what you're going to see from him is using the about you willy pulpit in the way we've seen in other instances for putting the pressure on for opening schools, but as you say, it's a real risk. >> steve patterson let's go over to you in phoenix, arizona, and let's start with the records that we are seeing in arizona as of just today. record number of current hospitalizations, that's 11 days in a row, 3,356. record number of current icu beds, six days in a row, 869, record number of ventilators currently in use, three days in a row, 544. also a record number of deaths today, 117. arizona is rising on that curve. what is the biggest concern for officials right now?

>> arizona is in crisis, katie, and the thinking is now among health officials is that we are days if not maybe weeks away from this state operating under crisis care, in other words, with the limited resources that are in the state now and the trajectory of this virus that pretty soon there's going to have to be decisions made about who gets treatment and who doesn't, solely based on those resources available. it is not political at all, it is not a grandstanding statement to say that a lot of the surge, the reason why we are in this current surge, is because of the lapse in the stay-at-home order back on may 15th. since that time the numbers are undeniable that there has been a spike in the cases and you can track it week by week and you see that in the first three months it took the state to get to 50,000 cases, that's taken two weeks for that other 50,000 to kick in and for this state to be beyond 100,000 cases. now we are in a situation where health officials are strapped,

hospitals are extremely worried with limited staff, 90% icu beds to capacity and -- but the real issue is not the people that are sick, it's the people who are not sick. the biggest thing that health officials in this state are worried about are asymptomatic patients and the biggest, i guess you would say, the biggest people that are spreading that in an asymptomatic way are people that are younger than 44. that segment of the population makes up more than 60% of the total number of positive cases in that state, so the health department is focused on targeting them and telling them that you've got to change your behavior or else things are going to get really bad really quickly, if they aren't already katy. >> let's underscore what you've said, we've doubled the cases in arizona by 100%, doubled them, obviously 100%, in just two weeks and that's directly linked to the reopenings and the president is saying that we're never going to go into lockdowns again, the country is going to

continue reopening. let's go over now to houston, texas, where we're going to find priscilla thompson. priscilla, there are local leaders across texas that are asking the governor to give them more autonomy so that they can institute stricter orders within their communities to try and slow the spread in texas. where does that stand? >> well, katy, texas today just reported a record number, we learned moments ago, more than 10,000 cases in the past 24 hours and that is why you're seeing a lot of these big city leaders requests that the governor grant them that permission to implement these stay-at-home orders. now, governor abbott has been very steadfast in saying that a statewide stay-at-home order would be a very last resort and he wants to see local officials using his current executive order and implementing that to its fullest capacity. he actually said this week he feels like another lockdown would, quote, force texans into poverty and so obviously still

an economic concern there for him, but at places like this, you know, these testing sites, this is a growing -- a very, very big concern, you know, seven hours after this testing site opened they are finally getting down to the last couple of cars to come through this line, but this line was actually closed off at 9:00 a.m. this morning when the site opened because there are already hundreds of people in line to be tested, many of them slept in their cars overnight, some of them with their children, in order to get a test today, katy. so it's a very concerning situation here as we look at the positive case counts and the hospitalizations. >> sleeping in your car with your kids to get a test. just consider that. priscilla thompson, priscilla, thank you, and steve patterson, carol lee, thank you as well. let's going to tom he think else by, he is the doctor for health security at the john hopkins bloomberg school for public health. i want to first get your take on what the president is saying,

he's down playing the virus, urging further reopening. what do you think? >> yeah, it's really not the right course to be down playing this virus. this virus hasn't changed. it's showing that it can do as much damage or more than it did in the early days of this pandemic in the u.s. back in march and april and we're seeing at this point almost 80% of the states in the country have numbers that are rising every day and if you look around the world you can see that there are more than 100 countries that have even or decreasing numbers of cases of this virus. it is possible to control this virus and have a society that works, but at this point we seem to be moving the other direction. we're trying to minimize it. too many leaders are trying to minimize what's ahead and i think we just need to be very direct and very serious about what we need to do.

>> i just want to put that last graphic that we just had up on the screen showing -- and i think it's important to dwell on this -- showing the curve of the eu, the curve of australia, the curve of canada going up and coming down. and then you look at what's going on in the united states, we went up, came down a little and now we are shooting back up. how much of that has to do with the federal government? >> well, i think it's an interaction between the federal government and state decisions and the decisions of individuals. i think we're seeing in many places that governors did open too early or open parts of their economy too early. i think they were encouraged to do that in some cases by national leaders and i think it's time for people to step back and say we know more now, let's reconsider those decisions, let's get back to a place where we're flattening the curve, decreasing case counts and this -- i agree with what we said before, this is completely

apolitical. this is just what public health interventions will work to decrease cases in the country. >> there seems to be some complacency among the population that even as the case count rises, the death rate is not rising at the same time. dr. fauci was warning of that complacency. what's he worried about? >> i think two things. the first is that many of the cases we've soon in the last couple of weeks are in younger people and we know that younger people do better than older people, but younger people don't live in a bubble. younger people are interacting with older people and people are underlying medical conditions all the time. so he's worried and i'm worried, many people are wore creed that it's a matter of time before the virus spreads in the younger community and then again spreads back into the older community or to people with underlying conditions and they will have a much tougher time and a higher -- a higher mortality rate and we're also worried because it's a lag. it's a lag between the time that

people are diagnosed to the time they get hospitalized, they get -- they have to go to the icu and possibly die from this disease. so i think this -- a rise in deaths could follow in a couple of weeks and we shouldn't presume what we're seeing now will predict what we see at the end of july. >> we're also seeing something right now that is frankly confusing. we're having some of the same problems we had back in march, a shortage of testing, a shortage of personal protective equipment, a shortage of icu beds. there is a concern in some places that there is a shortage of medical staff. how are we in this situation again? >> well, i think the problem is that the increasing numbers are driving both testing and ppe requirements. if our numbers had continued to go down, if the curve had continued to fall, we were getting into a better place, less people needed to be tested, less doctors and nurses needed

to be in crisis mode, but now with rising numbers we are seeing a pinch again in many places in the country in both testing and ppe. and the other problem is that there really isn't any kind of national dashboard that the public can see where we can see what the ppe levels are around the country, where we can see what diagnostic testing needs. we need more visibility into the supply chain and how fast masks are being made, how fast n95s are being produced and that's something i think the federal government could do. >> doctor, thank you so much for being with us today and lending some of your insight. we appreciate it, sir. >> thanks so much. and ahead we're taking a closer look at the tough decisions school districts, universities and parents are facing. we touched on this a moment ago, but let's go into it further and what might school -- going back to school look like in the fall? plus trump's message of

division, it helped win him the white house in 2016. some of the people closest to him are saying racist rhetoric won't help keep him, though, in the white house in 2020. ♪all sh ♪we ain't stoppin' believe me♪ ♪go straight till the morning look like we♪ ♪won't wait♪ ♪we're taking everything we wanted♪ ♪we can do it ♪all strength, no sweat to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. [grunting noise] i'll take that. universities and parents are won't help keep him, though, in universities and parents are won't help keep him, though, in ensure max protein. with nutrients to support immune health.

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welcome back. racist and divisive rhetoric are part of what fueled donald trump's rise. now as polls show him trailing joe biden, he's going back to that 2016 playbook. two sources close to the president tell nbc news he's, quote, going with his gut, trying to rescue his campaign by tapping into the perceived anger and resentment of his white supporters. some of the people closest to him are expressing frustration, two senior white house officials tell nbc news that they think stoking racial divisions is a mistake. joining me now is ayesha roscoe, white house romper for npr and kimberly atkins senior news correspondent for wbur and an msnbc contributor. kim, i want to start with you.

i get so many mixed messages when i talk to them those on the trump campaign about what donald trump should be doing. would they like him to be retweeting someone screaming white power, no, they don't think that's a good idea but they concede letting trump be trump worked in 2016 and they think that trying to persuade him to do otherwise is fruitless. what are the conversations that you're having about what he's being told and advised by those around him? >> i think that's exactly right. this is not a circumstance where the campaign or his advisers are coming up with some grand plan to double down on this message of racial grievance. donald trump is not a politician. he came from the business world. he doesn't make decisions by having, you know -- looking at polling and floating things by focus groups. he governs by his gut. that's the way he's always done things. and the more embattled he

becomes, the more blow back he faces, the more he retreats to his gut. the best example of this was sharlts vel, of course, where he listened to his advisers at first to give a stronger condemnation of white supremacy than he originally gave, did not receive the response and the accolades for it, and then retreated completely back and that's how we got the very good people on both sides comment. this is an extension of that. he retreats to his gut where he is most comfortable in making that messaging. it's not necessarily that he believes that he will attract more people with this. he believes that it's right. he believes this is the correct approach and, therefore, his base will come along with him. so it's not too much an appeal to his base, it's appeal to his instinct and assumption that the base will follow through. >> that is such an important point and i think it's not made often enough which is donald trump is moving to somewhere where he's always been. ashley parker actually made this

point yesterday on the show talking about the full-page ad calling for the death of the central park five, starting his political career on birtherism, the racist trope of birtherism or conspiracy theory of birtherism. what's going to be different in 2020 from what happened in 2016? have the times changed so much in four years that running on racist politics is no longer going to work? >> that's an open question and we really don't know how much things have changed. it does seem like the ground under president trump is shifting a bit. i mean, you have mississippi taking the confederate flag off of their state flag. you have nascar banning confederate flags and you have president trump even while all that's happening not, quote/unquote, according to press secretary kaly mca thenny

not taking a position on what nascar did or taking a position on the confederate flag. so it seems like there is movement, but president trump is not moving in that direction. he is leaning back where he's comfortable, he's leaning back to what he knows and that's leaning in on this, you know -- these kind of issues, whether it's the name of sports teams or making denigrating, you know, nicknames about native americans and elizabeth warren. this is what he knows and i think he does feel like it worked for him in 2016. >> well, i'm wondering, maybe you've just answered this question, but i will ask it. who is he talking to when he tweets about nascar, this tweet in particular, has bubba wallace apologized to all those great nascar drivers and officials who came to his aid, stood by his side and were willing to sacrifice everything for him only to find out that the whole thing was just another hoax, that and flag decision has caused lowest ratings ever.

nascar doesn't have the lowest ratings ever. nothing was a hoax. they did find a thoos, they just said it was there because i guess of it a pulley for a garage. it wasn't bubba wallace who reported it, if i understand it correctly. ayesha, who is he talking to with that tweet? is he just talking to himself as kimberly was alluding to a moment ago? >> i mean, i certainly wouldn't say that he's not talking to his instinct but i think that he -- i think there is a base for that and there is a base for that grievance and that kind of white grievance that he's playing to. i think that that is something that feels like -- that he feels like he can talk to his base who feels maybe put upon, feel like the country is changing and changing too quickly and feels like they are being demonized and feel like they have a champion in president trump. he wants to say i am standing, you know, in the gap. you're being attacked and i'm your protector and that's who i

am as president trump. >> what was so unique about donald trump when he won in 2016, kimberly, was that his base was with him no matter what. there was pretty much nothing that he could do that would sway his base. so he could move them wherever he wanted to, frankly, he could have opened up with infrastructure or anything and his base would have moved with him. he had such control of it -- over it. what we're seeing now, though, is that he's losing to joe biden by double digits which has to mean that some of those people that voted for him in 2016 are no longer supporting him, at least as of now according to the polls that are out there in july. so i wonder does he -- is the strategy figure back to 2016 everything is going to be fine? is there a sense that he can't even appeal to a broader audience even if he tried? >> well, i think there's a false reliance on his very high

support within the republican party, which is very high. it hovers in the 80s and 90s pretty consistently, but what you had before in 2016 were of course independent voters, voters who are not necessarily card-carrying republicans who voted for him, including voters who had previously voted for barack obama who came along with him. as the republican party becomes more trump a if i had for lack of a better word, becomes more solidly in support of donald trump it's also shrinking and you're also seeing a lot of independents and a lot of people in suburbs changing their views on everything from black lives matter and, of course, they're being affected by the coronavirus. this is a referendum on that, too. you're losing it will. so even though he has solid support from this one aspect of the electorate it is really unclear if that's going to be enough this time as it was in 2016 to get him over the hump

when it comes to the electoral college, he's betting that it is but that's very much an open question based on the polling that you referred to and that we've been seeing. >> he won by narrow margins in some key places in 2016 so the people that we should be looking at are the fringes, those trump triers, those ones who took a chance on him, not to mention those who just didn't come out in 2016. ayesha roscoe thanks for joining us, kimberly atkins, thank you as well. ahead i'm going to talk to the superintendent of one of america's largest school districts who has been ordered by his state to open schools. but first, if it is tuesday, someone is voting somewhere and today that somewhere is delaware and new jersey. primary voters are headed mostly to their mailboxes instead of the polls. in addition to watching how the expanded vote by mail goes we're also watching a couple of progressive challengers who more moderate democrats in northern new jersey. and new jersey's second district five democrats are vying to take on democrat turned

republican congressman jeff van drew. he made headlines back in december when he switched parties. van due is also facing a gop primary challenge. and delaware home state of joe biden the only race on the ballot is the presidential primary. we will be right back. we will be rhtig back.

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welcome back.

while state and local leaders as well as school administrators, teachersers and even parents grapple with when and how to reopen schools, president trump is making it clear he believes classrooms should be open in the fall. as we said at the top of the show the president today praised florida officials' decision to order all schools open in the state to reopen -- all schools in the state, i'm sorry, to reopen this fall and warned other governors that he would pressure them to do the same. >> we hope that most schools are going to be open. we don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. i think it's going to be good for them politically so they keep the schools closed. no way. we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools. >> with me now is robert runcy superintendent of broward county schools in south florida, the sixth largest school district in the country. robert, thank you for being with us. are you ready to reopen your schools in the fall?

>> well, what i can tell you is that the present moment given the conditions in the state that we are in in florida i don't see a path for us to open all of our schools 100%, similar to how we existed before we closed our schools for the coronavirus pandemic. the executive order that was issued yesterday by the governor and our commissioner of education, yes, it directed school districts and school boards to open schools five days a week in august subject to the advice and counsel of the florida department of health and local public health officials. however, they provided flexibility for districts who cannot open fully to submit what they consider an innovation plan on how to reopen schools. we are going to select to provide an innovation plan because we will not be able to open fully.

we will open in a way that gives our parents options that also protects the health and safety of our students, our teachers, our employees and provides the best quality of education we can deliver given the circumstances we are in. so we are in the process now of surveying our parents to determine which of four options they will have when we reopen school. one is 100% virtual e learning online, number two is a hybrid staggered model where students will come two to three days a week. third is face-to-face, 100%. coming every day. and finally we have a virtual school we call broward virtual school. those are the four options. so far we have responses in more over 83,000 of our students and 37% of them are opting for the hybrid model, about 33% are

indicating that they desire to go full-time every day and about 26% indicate that they will select virtual e learning at home 100% of the time. so we're going to let the data drive where we end up. >> when do you reopen and, two, it sounds like you're saying even though all the schools are going to be ordered to reopen you are able to submit plans, i guess, to the governor's office that mean that your reopening might not look the same as a reopening in another county. >> that's correct. south florida which includes miami-dade, broward counties, palm beach counties, we account for the majority of covid cases in the state of florida. so our region is going to have to be treated very differently than how you would look at schools that are in the panhandle. so given that recognition, yes, schools will open in august, our

scheduled date is august 19th, but the big question is what does that look like, right? we are not going to have 100% of our school, our students, coming to school every day. that's not how we're going to open. we're going to open as smart as we can because we recognize that we are in a separate environment. you cannot open your schools in a vacuum from the context of what's going on with covid in a broader community. so in that perspective i would say that opening schools is a community responsibility, it is everyone's responsibility. we need to be diligent in terms of adhering to the guidelines that are out there, folks need to practice physical distancing, this he need to wear a mask and we need to have robust testing and tracing in our community to create an environment where we can maximize the opportunity for our kids to be back in school. you cannot restart this economy

without it. >> i'm sorry for interrupting, but hhh -- hhs secretary alex azar is saying that we can reopen schools safely. just to save time i'm going to read you a portion of what he said. doing so involves social distancing, wearing face coverings and practicing good personal hygiene. you were talking about facial coverings, you are talking about social distancing, but you also just mentioned contact tracing and testing. those two things are not up to where health experts say they need to be in order to adequately track the virus down there in south florida. do you have an expectation that that's going to change? do you need that to change in the next month before the schools reopen? >> yeah, we do need that to change because we need our community situation to change. we are currently under -- on phase one, where, you know, bars are being closed, beaches,

restaurants. so there's still a significant issue in broward county and that has to be addressed for us to move forward. >> robert runsy, thank you so much for joining us today. go ahead. >> yeah, and so, you know, what i would -- what i would say is that you have to -- you've got to be able to create an environment where we can reopen our schools and when i hear that we can just open schools, those folks don't understand what it takes to run a public school system. so we can't just manufacture teachers. if we are going to create safe and physical distancing and adhere to those requirements in our schools, then if you think about it we've got to reduce the density in our schools, which means we've got to spread out our kids, use ancillary spaces, but if we do that we have to find teachers for those rooms.

teachers that we don't have, so at some level this is not a capacity issue, it's a resource, it's a people issue and so there are a lot of components that need to be managed in order to make this work. this is going to be a very difficult and heavy lift for school districts all across this country and the last thing i would say is that we need federal funding, a significant infusion into our school systems. we partner with the council of the great city schools, we have written to congress, we've said they need to appropriate at least $250,000 for our school systems that serve over 50 million students in this country in order to be able to stave off significant cuts and budget shortfalls that we anticipate because of what's happening in the economy. >> so many different factors at play and just mentioning the number of teachers who are needed in order to come back to teach all those kids and making sure that they feel that they are safe when they go back to

school. such an important point. robert, thank you so much for joining us today. and ahead we're turning to the challenge of reopening higher education, plus the latest on the trump administration's new directive that could force international students to leave. national students to leave. i have the power to lower my blood sugar and a1c. because i can still make my own insulin. and trulicity activates my body to release it like it's supposed to. once-weekly trulicity is for type 2 diabetes. it's not insulin. it starts acting from the first dose.

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welcome back. as we were just discussing the question of how students are getting back to school in the fall is at the top of pretty much everybody's minds. colleges and universities of course have a different set of challenges than elementary and high schools, including now a new rule from the trump administration that international students here on student visas will have to leave if their classes move online. nbc's gadi schwartz has the latest from the university of southern california. >> reporter: yeah, katie, it's interesting what we're seeing happen here at usc. this is a place where a little while ago they were trying to get students to come back to school, the plans at the beginning of the summer were to

try to return things to normal as best as possible. they were going to have a hybrid where a lot of the classes would be online but a lot would be in person, and then things started to change. then we started to see these spikes in the coronavirus cases here in los angeles, the positivity rate of now 10% and so the number of online classes increased and the number of in-person classes decreased significantly. the school telling students they would rather they live off of campus and now we've got the latest from immigration and customs enforcement saying that there could be a big issue with international students coming to school or international students possibly being deported if their classes were all online. which is possibly the case here at places like usc as well as harvard. so here at usc the international student population is 25%, so that is a massive pool of people that could be impacted by this visa situation and so now you've

got students wondering if they may have to transfer to a different school. and on the local level, lausd is looking at the same thing, they are looking at whether or not students will be coming back in the fall but they don't have the luxury of having them live off of campus for the most part they have to figure out what they're going to do with meals, they have to figure out what parents are going to do with child care. so the difference between the two right now is that at the university level there's a deadline, july 15th is when those universities have to make a decision as to how many kids or how many students they will have in the classrooms. on the local level k through 12 they have got most likely until august, possibly september to make up their minds and as we see it right now one of the big indicators that they are looking at is to see what happens after the fourth of july weekend. they want to see if there is another spike in covid-19 cases and they're going to take that and factor it into the decision when it comes to how many students they will let back into

their classroom. katy, back to you. >> gadi schwartz in los angeles. thank you very much. coming up we will speak with a health official in mississippi where coronavirus cases are starting to overload the hospital system in that state. , weeds are low down little scoundrels. draw the line with roundup. the sure shot wand extends with a protective shield to target weeds precisely and kill them right down to the root. roundup brand. trusted for over 40 years.

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patients. according to data released today, hospitalizations reached a new record high. some icus including the one at the university of mississippi medical center have reported that they are at capacity. even as eight mississippi state lawmakers have tested positive for the virus. mississippi's governor took to social media day to blame the rise on protesters. that is a claim mississippi health officials have since refuted. joining me now, dr. thomas dobbs, mississippi state health officer. dr. dobbs, thank you very much for joining us. the case numbers are on the rise in mississippi as we just said a moment ago. the hospitals are warning that they're going to be overloaded. what is happening in terms of reopenings, rolling back or any pauses in your state? >> well, certainly we're extremely concerned about the lack of availability of hospital beds and icu capacity, and today

we released a public health order limiting elective procedures that need scheduled hospitalization in mississippi counties where we have a specific lack of access to care in jackson, which is basically our biggest medical market. today we actually have four icu beds across the whole city as far as like our major medical centers. so that's a real concern. certainly, we want to watch closely about what we can do in the different communities. we have chosen a targeted approach county by county and we'll look at that again as far as restricting social gatherings and mask ordinances. we have been encouraged to see different cities engage on their own and buying into the benefit of that. >> are you acting quickly enough? your numbers are on the rise and there have been all sorts of studies that have shown if new york, for instance, did the closing down, even a week earlier, or two weeks earlier,

thousands of lives could have been saved. >> you know, the closing thing, certainly would be extremely helpful. what we've seen and where we see in our outbreaks have been around the wholesale abandonment of the rules as they exist now. we have a lot of restrictions that people aren't following. it is still essentially against the law to have a gathering of more than 20 people indoors without social distancing or more than 50 peoples outdoors without social distancing and we've seen it across the state. it has been a phenomenal challenge for young folks, 18 to 29, has taken over as the number one age group in mississippi as far as new cases. so it is really this sort of reckless behavior we're seeing in the community that's driving not only numerous outbreaks throughout the state. also, you know, widespread community transmission. but also we're seeing it leak back into our nursing homes. we reported 44 deaths today as a

massive increase in total deaths than we've had in weeks. >> if they're fighting the rules, acting recklessly, is it trying to make the rules more strict? you're saying they're not abiding by the rules as they stand. would it be better to say, everyone has to stay home and make it clear, there are no gatherings that you can have that are safe or legal? >> that's a consideration. we really have to have buy-in from local leaders to enforce these things. we're not seeing a lot of. . even if it is a stay-at-home order and people are not willing to follow it, it is useless. if we would do the simple things, masks, stay-at-home when you can, we would see this diminish. but unfortunately, we're seeing that our population has lost patience and a large portion have gone not only back to normal but more active than they

were even before. some of our metrics show people are more active than this time last year. a horrible challenge. >> why don't you think your population cares? >> you know, some parts of the population do care. we don't have a good unifying message across all government. i think that would be help ffl we had standard messaging. i think even some of our strong messaging around masks hand really translated the way it should. different voices, at the federal level or the local level are not following what is public health science. even at the public health level, i don't think we've done a great job having a unified steady message that people can really embrace so that they understand how important some of these simple things really are. >> yeah, when you deviate from a message, people will listen to

the message they want to listen to. thanks. so for joining us. we appreciate all of your insight into what's going on down there. thank you for joining us. we'll be right back. >> thank you for having me. we'll be right back. >> thank you for having me now is the time to support the places you love. spend 10 dollars or more at a participating small business and get 5 dollars back, up to 10 times with american express. enroll now at shopsmall.com.

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that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." in the meantime, "the beat" starts right now. >> hello. welcome to "the beat." as we come on the air, america is reeling from the spiking coronavirus and donald trump's administration and his campaign are taking it from all sides right now including from his own family as trump's niece unloads on her uncle as a lying, cheating failure, an absolutely scathing new tell-all book. meantime there are other key trump allies firing their own warning shots. as to the coronavirus, one of the most prominent americans to first contract it speaking out now. tom hanks cutting through so much misinforma