hi, everyone. i'm nicolle wallace. 3:00 p.m. on the east coast. 12 noon out west. brian williams will be back with us tomorrow. we begin with the headlines at this hour. the coronavirus has now killed more than 156,000 americans. but according to an internal government document obtained by yahoo! news, the cdc predicts more than 180,000 americans could be lost by the end of just this month. another 4.7 million americans have been sickened. this comes as white house coronavirus response coordinator dr. deborah birx admitted what we have known for some time that the pandemic is indeed widespread in urban and rural areas and different from what we saw in march and april. former fda commissioner scott gottlieb says this virus could

make a resurgence in the northeast the first epicenter of the pandemic. >> i think there's a lot of infection around the country, hard to keep the virus out even in the northeast, hard for that part of the country not to get receded and you're seeing rotate through different parts of the country. >> there's also a stark warning out today from the world health organization, the agency says that despite hopes for a vaccine there will not be a silver bullet to stop the coronavirus and that it will be a long road back to normal. it will also be a long road ahead for the millions of americans hurt by the economic damage from this crisis, the trump administration and congressional democratic leaders resume talks today on a new pandemic relief bill days after expanded unemployment benefits for millions of americans expired. we're also keeping an eye on tropical storm isaias which is forecast to make landfall in the carolinas tonight and move up the eastern seaboard over the

next couple of the days. more on the storm and the relief bill negotiations this hour. zblrjts the east coast isn't alone if dealing with the combination of the pandemic and a natural disaster, california's trying to contain a wildfire in the mountains just east of los angeles. as that state deals with an increasing number of coronavirus cases and deaths. nbc's steve patterson joins us now from boueaumont, california. every policymaker's nightmare and more anxiety of the citizens of the great state of california. >> certainly anxiety when it comes to people who live in this community, also think about the firefighters they're trying to battle something that's burning, you can see it over my left shoulder, close to 30,000 acres, they have had to evacuate close to 8,000 people in this area, getting people into the shelters, they all have to do

that following the same social distancing guidelines that we all do, which means those people coming into shelters have to be screened, they have to have their temperatures checked. if shelters fill up, they have to segregate people. as far as the firefighting operation overall the trucks in this area, it's nothing new, what changes is when you're back here at base camp you've got guys that are going 12 hours every single day, they've been trying to knock this thing down for 24 hours straight over the last few days, they've only gotten a 5% containment on it and when covid is such a huge piece of the puzzle it's hard to cycle people in and out of the fire zone and harder to get rest when you have to socially distance back in camp, you'll see most everybody is wearing masks although it's very difficult when you're on the fire line, the temperature's nearing 100 degrees and it's more like 120 degrees on those

fire lines. people are worried about getting back into their homes and you have this virus which has now caused more than 500,000 cases in california, a state that keeps breaking its own single-day death toll, now it's done that five times. lot to worry about in california. i will say that the hospitalization rate has fallen, the seven-day average as far as when you look at the positivity rate has fallen so there's some progress when you look at the state overall. you have to california regionally because some regions are as big as an entire state the central valley, here at riverside, cases have exploded and it doesn't help when you have something like this, this is just the very beginning of the fire season here in california. nicolle? >> it sure is. nbc's steve patterson reporting for us from beaumont, california.

as the pandemic continues to worsen the, the race to develop a vaccine is intensifying with hopes that it could be ready by the end of this year or early next year. new reporting on how scientists involved in the effort are already worried about facing pressure to provide an october surprise that could help president trump. joining our conversation now are two of our good friends "the new york times" white house reporter annie karney and dr. anne rimoin. take me through this front-page story that's at this point in terms of the trump reporting that trump would want to end science to his political desires, but in terms of what he's willing to sacrifice including the credibility and sort of the sanctity of the vaccine itself, it's a stunning

report from you and your colleagues. >> thank you. this was outlining some of the fears that scientists and researchers working on this, the name kind of tells you the whole m.o. of this inning, operation warp speed. the pressure of a deadline to have something in october 2020, that there's a desire to have something to announce if not distribute before the election and part of -- it's not that this outlined if bold letters by the white house or the president, there's so much overlap in this white house that the conflicting desires are impossible to ignore, for instance, jared kushner the president's son-in-law is overseeing the entire campaign, he signs off on every ad buy, he's also part of a small board who oversees the vaccine effort and he's constantly asking about

what are we going to have by october? not lost on anyone that he has two goals here -- one, have something to save lives and to get his father in law re-elected. very anxious about what's really at stake here for the president. >> annie, it's remarkable. i imagine as sort of appalling as it who sees that comingling of jared kushner in the government and on the campaign it's even more appalling to scientists. doctor, what are the dangers of a vaccine being -- the race for a vaccine having this overhang of pure politics? >> it's very dangerous. in science, we try to e limb fate any kind of bias when we

look at data and we interpret results, that's literally the way scientists operate is to reduce the amount of bias and to be able to just look at data with nothing else influencing how we interpret it. the fact of the matter is, we need to completely separate science and politics, the politicalization of science is going to be something that history will judge us for in the future. i cannot imagine when we look back on what happened during this pandemic, in our history books, in our science classes, this will be the main point, the fact that we politicized masks, a basic public health measure, it just doesn't seem possible, the same thing as politicizing wearing a seat belt and not texting when you're driving or secondhand smoke, we're just

talking about basic public health here. and to politicize a vaccine is very dangerous considering how fragile our public acceptance of vaccines are in the first place. we're heading down a very dangerous road that should be stopped immediately. we're seeing a lot of the scientists on the task force starting to talk frankly. >> annie, i want to read you more of what's becoming a shakespearean saga between dr. fauci, who should have his energy focused on the pandemic and people suffering, and the president who's increasingly obsessed with his appearances and his popularity. donald trump seeming to react to dr. fauci's pronouncements and tweeting that on the topic on our cases it's because how great

our testing is, he wrote, wrong, we have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country. 60 million. if we testedless there would be less cases. how did italy, france and spain did? now, europe sadly has flare-ups. the problem with this is like saying if i don't get on the scale i haven't gained my ten covid pounds. the death toll should tell him all that he needs to know regardless of what that test number looks like, where does this denial get affirmed? where is the feedback loop for constantly putting out disinformation about testing? >> i mean, this is dr. fauci's said specifically the rise in cases can't be accounted for the rise in testing. no one from the white house has answered the question, more testing equal more cases. what do you say to more deaths? no answer to that.

the feedback loop is emphasized by the people around trump. an entire dossier on dr. fauci, it's a rivalry that we have seen played out in terms of dr. fauci's popularity and it's just -- this is just a trump thing. like, you would think that he would want to martial popularity to reflect upon himself, that's not the way he views the aides around him who get attention. we saw over the weekend the white house officials attack nancy pelosi for her comments she made questioning dr. deborah birx and saying, it's irresponsible to undermine the public health official at this critical time. tweets like this from the president make it very difficult for them to mount that argument without getting it thrown back

at them. one other thing i wanted to add on the october surprise is that all this part of the same story, even if there's a vaccine to announce by october, the scientists get there without political cam pressure, the people i talk to, that that's not necessarily going to be enough for the president to win re-election, people in focus groups talk about getting their relief checks on time, seeing a coherent strategy that the president has that makes them think that the president handled this pandemic well and if that's not there as a groundwork, just simply announcing a vaccine in october is not going to dramatically change the record he has and the impression that voters have of did this president successfully manage the pandemic in this country? stand alone without everything

else not going well it's not showing in the focus groups that's enough to tilt the scales for him completely. >> our thanks to annie karni and our anne rimoin for starting us off on this monday afternoon. parts of the atlantic coast are bracing for hurricane conditions as a tropical storm bears down on the carolinas. plus the senate returns to work. later, new york governor andrew cuomo calls donald trump's response to the pandemic the worst blunder in history. he'll join us later in the hour. stay with us. hike!

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as if a pandemic isn't enough we're tracking another crisis happening today along this country's atlantic coast, tropical storm isaias, about 59 million people in hard-hit florida, all the way up to maine, are under some kind of tropical alert today. officials have issued hurricane warnings for parts of the carolinas where the storm is expected to make landfall tonight with hurricane-strength winds. states further north are watching closely and preparing for possible outages and flooding all while dealing with a pandemic which will make evacuations and recovery all that more difficult.

bill karins joins us now. tell us where this storm is heading and what you're seeing. we lost bill karins. we're going to try to get him back for all of his great information but we're lucky now to be joined by former fema director, under president clinton, he oversaw federal emergency management for the southeastern region which includes north and south carolina and florida. tell us how this storm looks to you from what you're seeing now and what sort of prop ratiepara you would advise. >> the sad part this is not as major of storm in a lot of ways, it's alternating between a tropical storm and a category 1 hurricane. but it does carry with it storm

surge and that's always dangerous. and some inland winds but not as much. however, it's happening at a particularly bad time. that being the covid-19 pandemic. so the kind of things that you would advise states and local jurisdictions to do are going to be a little bit different because it's very risky to try to cram everybody into a public shelter because of the virus. so alternate provisions have to be made and this is only a category 1 storm. >> john, i worked for a florida governor and the greatest danger during a hurricane was usually people's unwillingness to evacuate and i would imagine that unwillingness is only

heightened when a prospect of heading to a crowded shelter could present the risk of contracting covid-19, how do you deal with that? >> that's an accurate observation, i think the people that are being asked to evacuate are all asking themselves, do i want to put myself and my family at that level of risk by going to a public shelter and being exposed to a number of other people, particularly in those areas where the virus just seems to be concentrating, where you have hot spots, i don't -- i would think that would be a number of people that are going to try to sit this one out. that becomes dangerous. if they sit this one out when they're told to evacuate by local emergency management then a subsequent storm that's much larger and more intense than this and think, i didn't

evacuate for the last one so i should be safe for this one that's the b risk. >> i want to ask to our conversation, my colleague bill karins, john is talking a about this storm is really dangerous because of what we've been talking about, the fact that it's coupled with a global pandemic that makes evacuations maybe something that people are a little reluctant to heed, tell us about the storm, where it's heading and where the warnings are at this our. >> nicolle, that was our fear going into this hurricane season, what happens if we get a big one with mass evacuations up the east coast, this storm is going to impact all of the eastern seaboard over the next 36 hours, beside florida which it has already bypassed, if this was a category 2, 3, we would have huge headaches of where people are going. we're thankful that this one stayed a weaker storm, still problematic and still a lot of issues up the coast, we could

have power outages and they'll maybe have to relocate. also, before the forecast, think about the restaurants, the tables outside, try to sneak by and get by and winds from 70 to 80 miles an hour going all the way up the eastern seaboard. our thoughts are with them there, the restaurants are going to be impacted highly. the latest, new update from the hurricane center, 5:00 east coast time, you can see, it looks like the center redeveloped to the east, they'll shift the forecast a little bit east, instead of landfall over myrtle beach, closer to the north/south carolina borders. it's expected to become a

hurricane later this evening. it's now moving north at 13 per hour. 116 million americans are included in tropical storm warnings, hurricane warnings, we have roughly 330 million people in this country, that's a little over 1 out of every 3 americans is going to be impacted by this storm. from georgia all the way to boston that area of red, significant wind damage and storm surge that's where it will happen between myrtle beach and wright wrightsville beach. closer to wilmington where we get that landfall. the restaurants and people losing power, this storm doesn't weaken that much. 65 mile per hour winds near richmond. as far as the timing goes,

here's the max winds, of course myrtle beach and wilmington will get the brunt of that. tomorrow evening, look at new york city, predicted wind gusts up to 67 miles per hour, that could do significant damage. higher elevations, the berkshires. we could see significant power outages from this storm. 54 million people also could deal with some flash flooding. this storm is moving pretty quickly, nicolle. i'm not so concerned that we'll see a huge amount of flash flooding, seven inches of rain in a short period of time from d.c. to richmond including areas around albany, we could see some isolated problems, thinking about every storm is different, and now with covid, anything that's been outdoors, set up

temporary, that's not going to deal well in these winds. >> bill karins, i so appreciate you thinking about i think what's minon the minds of peopl people are barely hanging on and if you're in the restaurant industry you're so dependent on the weather to be good enough to move your business outside. it's really important. >> and nicolle, you have children, too. i have kids that 8 to 10 years old, if i lose power for three days and i lose wifi. >> stop. >> i'm going to lose it. >> my colleague -- bill karins, a pleasure to see you. john, we're grateful for your time and your expertise. thank you both so much. when we return -- millions

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