address tonight on essentially our one-year anniversary of the covid crisis in this country. plus, this has been a year of disproportionate pain and suffering and loss for people of color in this country and now the road to recovery must confront those underlying issues and address the racial disparities, vaccine distribution. and as we mourn the 535,000 lives we lost we look ahead to the lessons we hopefully have learned and what they mean for a nation facing crises in education, food insecurity and economic turmoil, just to name a few. ♪♪ welcome to thursday, it's "meet the press daily," moments ago the white house announced president biden will be signing covid relief into law moments from now in the oval office. it was odd that he was going to

sign it tomorrow after he was going to speak in prime time. this makes more sense on the timeline, getting to talk about already having signed it for his speech tonight. this is a singular achievement for his first 100 days in the agenda. as we keep talking about, a year ago today, a freight train was essentially about to hit this country. >> we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. we have therefore met the assessment that covid-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. >> is the worst yet to come, dr. fauci? >> yes, it is. >> can you elaborate? >> we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now. >> we are moving very quickly. the vast majority of americans, the risk is very, very low.

>> and just look at how startling a year it has been in this country as measured by, well, every single metric you can come up with. infections, multiple sushlgs in cases, each one with more confirmed cases than the last. deaths, a tidal wave of suffering that's taken the lives of more than half a million people at a clip of a thousand a day. the surge in hospitalizations, which pushed our health care system beyond its breaking point in many states and regions and then there's the medical marvel, the safe and effective vaccines, one of the few right things we got -- we got correct in this pandemic. they're being dosed out at more than 2 million a day right now and that's growing. that is our lone success over the last year as we mark this one-year anniversary public officials say it appears the worst is finally behind us. here's president biden's chief medical adviser dr. anthony fauci earlier today on "today".

>> the virus is still very much circulating in the community and when it is, then you get the possibility of being another surge and that's one of the things we're concerned about. i believe every day as we get 2 million or more people vaccinated, and if people continue to abide by the public health measures we should be okay. there is light at the end of the tunnel. things look good but we've got to keep putting our foot to the pedal when it comes to public health measures. >> dr. fauci's cautiously optimistic comments come as joe biden delivers his first primetime address as president. a hopeful story to tell from the improvements of just his first 50 days in office. the address falls on the anniversary of former president trump's oval office address fi beginning of this pandemic. as much as president biden wants to look forward he's faced with a harsh truth that he's speaking to a nation that's suffered so much, in many cases unnecessarily, because of poor government leadership. hundreds of thousands of people are dead simply because of bad

leadership last year. president biden ran on defeating the pandemic, now he's halfway through his first 100 days with notable progress to show for it. it's a pivotal moment, both for his presidency and for us as a country on this one-year mark of the covid crisis. joining me now from the white house is nbc news chief white house correspondent kristen welker, and dan ball at the "washington post." so kristen, just a little -- this scheduling decision here, i'll admit i always found it odd that the plan was for him to sign this bill tomorrow after tonight's address. this seems to make more of a timeline sense here. >> reporter: it does, chuck. and i was just speaking with a senior administration official who gave us some new details about what happened here behind the scenes. we are told based on a conversation that my colleague peter alexander and i had that the reason they thought it was going to need to be on friday is because of the enrollment

process. they were expecting the bill to arrive here at the white house today. well, it arrived last night. the enrollment process went more quickly and so therefore the president is going to sign the bill into law today and then he's going to have a signing ceremony tomorrow, chuck, and i can tell you i've just gotten some new details about what that's going to look like. we can tell you that democratic leadership will be here with president biden. he'll be joined by house speaker nancy pelosi, a senate majority leader chuck schumer, as well as other democratic leaders, those instrumental in moving the legislation forward. and then we're told afterwards the president is going to hold a zoom call with people outside who were engaged in getting this legislation passed. of course, because of covid, chuck, they have to be careful about how many people they actually have here at the white house for that ceremony.

>> i'm guessing those would have been the republican mayors and perhaps republican governors that under normal circumstances would have been at the signing ceremony? i'm thinking the mayor of miami, the governor of vermont, perhaps? >> i think that that is a very good way to be looking at this and they haven't given us specific details but chuck i think you hit at the heart of this. they are going to want to show that somewhere there is some support for this within the republican party because of course this is legislation that passed without any republican support. and so now the work begins of trying to explain this and sell this to the american people while they're waiting for those direct checks to go out so we know that president biden, vice president harris are going to be hitting the road to do that next week and we were just told that they will have a joint event in the later part of next week, chuck. >> that's very interesting there, all right, kristen welker, helping us look forward here a bit but dan, i want to look backwards. this is a day that we are also

reflecting on the totality of this year. and i want to play something dr. fauci said about the role -- essentially our politics played in making this pandemic worse than it should have been for this country. take a listen. >> one of the things i keep harkening back to, that you can't run away from, is that we had such divisiveness in our country that even simple common sense public health measures took on a political connotation when people, you know if you wanted to wear a mask you were on this side. if you wanted to stay in and avoid congregant settings, you were on this side. it wasn't a pure public health approach. it was really, you know, very much influenced by the divisiveness that we had in this country. >> look, dan, we're still seeing it. the republican attorney general in texas is threatening to sue the democratic mayor of austin over masks right now.

you can't help but look at this death toll, look at the aggressive way that some elected leaders, starting with former president trump, quite a few republican governors, essentially attacked the public health suggestions and the public health officials and contributed to a worse outcome for us. >> chuck, you know, it's interesting, this is often described as a wartime effort to try to defeat this terrible virus and yet we've never fought a war in which we've been divided red versus blue, republican versus democrat. it was a shocking aspect of how this turned from, you know, an effort to stop this and have all americans involved in it into a political war and a culture war. part of the culture wars that define our politics today and it certainly has contributed to the suffering of people and to many of the deaths that were probably

needless. and as you put your finger on it, chuck, the former president was responsible in large part because of the way he directed or did not direct this and the way he undermined the science, the scientists, the experts, the public health experts and it is part of the legacy when we look back over this past year of what did go wrong. >> right. is this -- you know, dan, is this a reminder, how divided we ended up being after this pandemic? and here we are, at the -- we're sort of at a point where it looks like we may -- we may win, okay, we may finally win this battle over this -- with this virus. and yet we're not looking -- you know, it's still despite these efforts. i guess i look at it, do you now

conclude, dan, that nothing can bring us together? if we couldn't come together to battle this, you know, for the forseeable future how do we bring us together to be on the same page on anything? >> chuck, it's a great question. i mean, this is bay far the largest issue that the country has faced over the last two decades. that might have brought the country together and, in fact, it did not and in some ways drove the country farther apart. you can start back with the 9/11 attacks and the country rallied certainly but within a year we were back to more divisive politics. the election of barack obama in 2008 gave us a moment when people, i think, thought the country could come together. we learned very quickly that that wasn't the case. this was the biggest challenge of all in the way that it disrupted and killed so many people, and yet we were not able to come together. you know, i don't want to say we can never overcome that but i don't think that there is anything on the immediate horizon that suggests we're

going to be able to do that. >> all right, so let's do the reality check for this west wing and for president biden and what he pursues next, dan. you know this is the atmosphere. you see what it is. do you continue to try to keep your promises or do you take a break and pursue a tough on china bill as a way to see if you've got a shot at either toning down the temperature of the culture wars here for a few weeks, but see if there really is a bipartisan group of folks to work with on an issue like that, that's supposed to unify the left and the right? >> perhaps. i think that the administration is still trying to figure out the sequencing of what comes next. they've got -- you know, they've obviously got major campaign promises and priorities, you know, immigration, and they've got a serious problem on the border at this point that they have to deal with beyond his hope of trying to get legislation passed. they've got the issue of

infrastructure, which could provide some coming together between republicans and democrats, although there are a lot of issues that divide them on that topic. they've got climate change. there is more consensus on china in terms of getting tough but again i think that there will be divisions on that as to exactly what to do. so i think that they have to sort these things out and it will probably take a little bit of time and the next -- the next big fight that they have absent it being on china, they're going to run into the same problems they ran into on the covid bill, but they're not going to have reconciliation to get them through it. >> kristen welker, last word to you. do you get a sense, infrastructure, immigration, election reform voting rights, china, what path do they pick next? >> chuck, i've spent just about every minute of every day trying to figure that out and i just put that same question to the administration official with whom i was speaking and they're still not giving any indication.

what we do know obviously china is something that has been a key focus here behind the scenes and as you point out it's an area where there may be room for bipartisanship. infrastructure is another one. it is hard to see if they put another bill forward without any republican support how that does not undercut the president's promise to try to move forward in a many of bipartisan way and to try to unify this country, frankly, chuck. >> kristen welker and dan ball, great way to get us started. thank you both. one constant through this entire year of this pandemic has been the push and pull and debate over restrictions and lockdowns. what started as 15 days to slow the spread at the federal level turned into mask mandates, capacity restrictions, lockdowns of various lengths that were instituted at the state and local levels. one state that opened up quickly was florida, which never had a statewide mask mandate, lifted all of its public restrictions

in september. their republican governor and now potential 2024 hopeful ron desantis has been eager to celebrate that policy and contrast it with other states. >> florida got it right and the lockdown states got it wrong. >> there aren't a whole lot of floridians who are itching to move from florida to lockdown states. but there are thousands and thousands of people who are seeking to leave the lockdowns behind for the greener pastures here in the state of florida. >> our own terry sanders has been covering the pandemic all year in florida and he joins us now from fort lauderdale. look, one of the biggest, i think, misconceptions that a lot of folks like governor desantis and others who rail against quote/unquote lockdowns is that a lot of other states were a lot more open than he wanted to claim. they just -- those states had mask mandates and things like this. but i guess let's start with this, the question's going to be, ron desantis versus gavin

newsom, florida versus california, and kerry i know you've been looking at this in terms of who got it right. what's the answer? >> reporter: well, when you do the compare and contrast of the tale of two states let's once again show the difference of the republican governor in florida and the democratic governor in california with what the restrictions were. in florida no mask mandate. as you noted in california mask mandate. restaurants, florida, no restrictions. california, capacity restrictions. and then let's look at the two disneys. in florida, disney world, open, in fact, next week during spring break already sold out. in california it is still shut down. so if you want to look at the numbers on a per capita basis you can see it's almost the same in terms of covid infections. we have in florida one out of 10.97 people who had coronavirus. one out of 10.93 who had it in

california. but there's another way to look at it. the l.a. times looked at it and said if california had had florida's version of very relaxed restrictions, basically no restrictions, then an additional 6,000 people in the state would have died. but if you reverse it around, and florida had been under california's tight restrictions, 3,000 fewer people would have died. we put this question about the numbers to a non-political person in the medical community, dr. marty. this is what she has to say. >> if you just look at the actual numbers that -- you cannot make the case that we are better than california. unfortunately not. >> but the governor's been doing that. he's been saying florida did it right. didn't shut down. california and other states shut down, and look at the success in florida. but you're saying the numbers say something else? >> i'm just giving you the raw

numbers. as they are these are the values from the center for disease control, and you're looking at twice our population, but not twice the confirmed cases, and not twice the confirmed deaths. and a lower testing positivity. so -- >> a lower testing positivity -- >> those are the numbers, those are the real numbers. >> so this has been a public health debate but also a political debate and chuck, you know it best, so much of the political debate has been over the economy where shutdowns were a huge economic crushing situation. and political decisions were made. >> but kerry, i think there's one other thing i'd introduce into this comparison. the major metro areas in florida did try to have tougher standards than the governor wanted, whether miami did, palm beach, broward, orange county.

how would that have factored into this comparison? >> reporter: because there are so many variables, you are correct. i'm in broward county, i see people walking here without masks but there are still suggestions to wear masks here. but just this week the governor of florida has said that the counties like broward that held businesses responsible and fined them for breaking the local rules, that those fines will never be collected. the state has ruled there will be no fines. and even though the counties gave them fines they don't have to pay them. it's free and clear. and as you know some people just ignored the county rules and moved forward, even though there were inspectors and police who came in and said you couldn't do it. so, you know, a lot of variables. but when we compare state to state it's kind of interesting to see that there are two ways to look at it. >> yes, it is. >> absolutely. kerry sanders, i'm old enough to remember when conservatives used to advocate for local control,

not top down. anyway, kerry sanders in south florida for us, still ahead on this special edition of "meet the press daily," we're expecting to hear from president biden as he officially signs the covid relief bill into law at the white house in a few moments. take you there live when it happens. to close, twist until it clicks. tide pods child-guard packaging. riders, the lone wolves of the great highway.

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welcome back, more than 2 million people are getting vaccinated every day. in fact we had nearly a 3 million vaccination day the other day, more than 95 million people have received one dose of a vaccine and nearly a quarter of the entire adult population. the cdc has data of people who have received more than one dose of the vaccine, more than 65% are white and about 7% are black, and about 60% of the u.s. population is white and 13% is black. according to a recent "new york

times" analysis the vaccination rate for black americans is half of that of white america and the gap for hispanic people is even larger. morgan radford is in new orleans are some members of the black community say the pandemic has done more damage than hurricane katrina. morgan, it's frustrating to cover in this respect. we hear all the right things when it comes to vaccine equity from the government, we've heard all the right things from the medical groups and from local leaders. yet it hasn't mattered whether -- it hasn't mattered who is in charge of a city or a state. these inequities continue to show up. do we have a good answer? >> chuck, you nailed it. it's an incredibly frustrating thing to see play out on the ground. i think that comparison to katrina says it all. nearly every person we've spoken to on the ground has made a comparison to the effects of covid and the effects of

katrina. the reality on paper the effects of covid has been far worse. 8 times the number died from covid compared to katrina. and unemployment numbers, at the height of unemployment is worse after covid and during covid than after hurricane katrina. what you're seeing is that both of these catastrophes have been playing out on the ground here and they're preying on people who are the most vulnerable. black people, and low income. this is a city that's 60% black but we're overrepresented when it comes to covid deaths and 27% of the city is living below the poverty line. the question is, what do officials do it about it? they all say they're going to prioritize communities of color when it comes to the vaccine but they're also dealing with challenges in getting people to crust the vaccine. take a listen to one family we talked to yesterday, and nearly half their family died from covid-19 in a matter of three weeks. >> i literally talked to my mama

the day before she passed. we were on the phone and we were having a conversation and she told us, she was like i love you. that's the last conversation i had with my mother. >> do you think that ultimately you will? >> i will ultimately, but i'm not at this particular time. i'm like really scared to take it. i'm scared because i don't want to leave my family that i have here. i'm scared something's going to happen. >> so that last exchange you heard, chuck, that was about asking that woman if she was going to take the vaccine. and, chuck, i mean, that kind of says everything. this is a whom wo lost half her family but says she's still not sure she's going to take the vaccine. when i asked the dean of public health here at tulane, i said why is that? he said look, this isn't just about hesitation with the vaccine itself. this is about hesitation with government. this is a government program that came out about warp speed which underlined the speed but not the accuracy and they said, you know, how can black people, it's not about the vaccine, black people have had experiences in every day of their life dealing with government officials who don't

listen to them, dealing with medical professionals who don't listen to their aches and pains and queries and take questions seriously. people of color have an experience everyday of dealing with government people that they can't necessarily always say is positive. that's where he says the hesitation is coming from today, chuck. >> sadly not knew, either, this is generations of black americans have had plenty of reasons to learn to distrust what government tells them. morgan radford, thank you. joining me is the president of the american nurses association. he participated in a vaccine trial that helped vaccine hesitancy in communities of color. they're holding a day of remembrance for health care workers who lost their lives fighting this pandemic. earnest, there's a number of things i want to talk to you about but first just the impact on the medical community and on nurses in particular, can you try to put it into words of just how hard this hit frontline

workers? >> chuck, this has hit frontline nurses very, very hard, we know that only 500 nurses gave the ultimate sacrifice while caring for someone -- they contracted covid directly after caring for someone who had it. we know that over 3,500 other health care workers in the united states also gave the ultimate sacrifice. and that is -- it's really something to, you know, to reflect on and to think about. you know, nurses meet the challenge every day, but, you know, they gave the ultimate change. >> i want to play for you a mashup. throughout this pandemic we asked various frontline medical workers to share their experiences. so this is just a sampling of the experiences various nurses shared with us about what it was like on the front lines. here it is. i want to ask you something on the other side.

>> everyone describes all the critical care, like a war zone, because that's what it looks like. >> i felt really kind of beat down this weekend by work and by just the situation and the heaviness, the impact of all of it. >> my team is fearful and at the same time fearless. >> the last three months has been exhausting. one nurse is not enough for one patient. that's how sick they are. >> our staff and supplies and our resources are not infinite. >> we have been continuously dealing with covid patients, having to deal with losses, having to deal with patients just transforming their whole life significantly. >> i am over it, just like you guys. but i continue to do what i do because i love my job and i love being a nurse. i wouldn't change it for the world. >> the question i have is, morale. after this. are you concerned about people that will leave the field?

you know, it was not an easy time. they weren't treated well in some places. it didn't feel as if the health care for some frontline workers were taken into account. it would be understandable if you saw some people decide maybe this field isn't for me, how concerned are you about that? >> i'm very concerned about that. you know, we just released a study yesterday that showed that nurses are completely overwhelmed. they are still feeling overwhelmed. and they're extremely tired, both mentally and physically. and what we have seen is that for a lot of the younger nurses they are, you know, thinking about not necessarily leaving the profession, but perhaps going into another area within the profession itself. but, you know, the video clip that you just showed me it rings true to what i have been hearing all year when i have spoken with nurses that, you know, they've risen to the challenge but it also has been extremely exhausting for them. and we need to do something to

address the -- not only the physical fatigue but also the mental fatigue that these nurses have been meeting over the past year. >> during the introduction i noted that you participated in a vaccine trial in part because you anticipated early on that vaccine hesitancy would be an issue, particularly in communities of color. we've seen some evidence of vaccine hesitancy in frontline workers. how have you been trying to tackle that? >> we have been trying to tackle that from a number of angles, mainly educating nurses or making sure that they get the education that they need to understand how the moderna and the pfizer vaccines work because they are -- you know, they're different than, you know, when you talk about vaccines and nursing school or whatever they are a different type of vaccine that perhaps a lot of nurses may not be familiar with how they work. the other is, of course, with

the new j&j vaccine coming on board as well. it's another way. so we find that by educating them, or, you know, letting them get information from trusted sources, helps to move them from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine competency. using people such as myself who have participated in the clinical trials that can talk about my own personal experience is one thing. but, you know, there are still some other reasons why some nurses, you know, choose not to get vaccinated. it could be because of their own personal health that they may have. they may be immuno compromised or whatever, that could also make them more vulnerable, or potentially vulnerable if they were to take the vaccine at this particular time. >> earnest grant, the president of the american nurses association, appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective, sharing particularly on this grim one-year anniversary. thank you, sir. >> thank you, thank you for having me.

we are waiting for president biden to sign that covid relief bill that will happen any moment now and we will bring you that signing live. up next, we're now going to dig into the lost school year and how america's children and teachers can move ahead. former education secretary and former head of the chicago school system arnie duncan will be here. as we go to break sign of hope is hope for vaccinations numbers rise. grandparents are getting a chance to reunite with their little loved ones. >> i've been dying to hug those kids. especially our little 3-year-old. she was only 2 when this started. i'm sure every grandparent has felt this way. it's like, we've been out there, you know, in oblivion, just so separated from the people we love. every day better. with 5g nationwide, millions of people can now work, listen, and stream in verizon 5g quality. and in parts of many cities where people can use massive capacity,

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in nearly a decade. so no matter where you want to go, snhu can help you get there. visit snhu.edu today. welcome back, the covid relief bill, president biden is signing today, includes more than $120 billion to help schools reopen safely but even as schools reopen or repair to do so for many this year feels like a lost year. students could wind up losing five to nine months of learning as a result of covid, for students of color, six to nine months loss but nbc's a hema-ellis says the true toll could take years to understand. teachers have considered leaving the profession, or taking a leave of absence due to covid. 60% enjoy their jobs less and

59% say they don't feel secure with the safety precautions their schools have taken in response to the pandemic. i'm joined by education secretary under president obama. he was a superintendent for the chicago schools. and arnie, i'm just thinking about -- i'd like you to put yourself back in that slot. and what superintendents i think are dealing with right now and how to deal with these separate challenges. challenge one, you have teachers that want to leave. challenge two, students you can't find them. some haven't shown up for remose classes, others parents put them in private schools, funding impact. start with those two challenges, how do you tackle it and what do you tackle first? >> it's extraordinarily difficult, destructive year. natural disasters have morphed into mandate catastrophe the.

i want to thank superintendents who i talk to across the country on a witness. teachers, principals, custodians, bus drivers, mechanics, everyone who's worked so hard during this unprecedented time, truly heroic work. i want to thank parents and students. nobody was prepared for this. it was brought out in some cases, the worst in us, but in many cases the best in us. it's unbelievably important work. how do we think about moving forward? here we are today a couple different strands we have to think about. yes, we have to support our teachers and our principals and keep them working and listen to their challenges and their trauma and their fears and pay attention to that. but we also to v to work with students in a couple different ways. first, i've been pushing hard for a national tutoring initiative. we have a six month sprint between now and the fall to get students ready academically. we can't afford to have them start that far behind. secondly we need to continue to

open thoughtfully and carefully and wisely, and basically every time we hear from the cdc, it's actually more and more encouraging news, that when there is strict adherence to guidelines and safety protocols schools really can be open safely. third, to your point, we have probably 2 million to 3 million students who haven't been to school at all in the year. we can't afford to have a lost generation of students. can't be solved by technology via zoom. we have to talk to families and bring those students back in. and finally we have to meet all the needs of our students. yes, academically but socially and emotionally. an amount of trauma from the pandemic, from the isolation, from families losing jobs, from george floyd's murder, that trauma is huge. and so for me i talk about four things, students learning, students growing, students healing, and students playing. we have to work on all of those over the next six months. >> all right, i want to focus on student -- this tutoring

initiative you're pushing, in a perfect world would you like to see either this summer or next summer be mandatory, almost, where you had a year round school as a way to give those that need extra help extra help? >> i don't know if you have to be mandatory, chuck, but it has to be available to all and the reality of it is we have a small percent of students that maybe accelerated academically, who learned better in this virtual world but that's rare. tens of millions of students, tens of millions are behind and, again, we can't start to fall with that many behind. i would love to say you get physically, virtually hybrid, all of the above, millions of students being tutored by hundreds of thousands of adults. recent college grads, retired teachers, whatever it might be. we know that high dosage tutoring is wildly effective and helps students catch up. we need to do that right now. with a real sense of urgency. >> you know, in the world of ncaa sports every single student

has been given an extra year of eligibility. i sort of want to -- how can we have that mind-set for students under -- that are not in college? meaning, you know, some parents might decide, you know, fourth grade didn't go so well. maybe my kid needs fourth grade again or can a public school system be nimble enough to say, boy, in our 100 fourth graders in school "x," half of them are ready for fourth grade and half of them need this, can you be flexible to start a third and a half grade as a catch-up, or is this asking too much of our public school system? >> no, it's a really, really important question. i think you're exactly right. but i want to be clear. i don't want to mandate we hold students back. i want to use the next six months to accelerate students so we don't have to. today, san diego, san francisco announcing very comprehensive summer programs, academic

enrichment, tutoring, summer camps, other things. if we get to that point in july and august, we need to be flexible in how we think about this but i want to do everything in our power to help students enter the fall comfortable and confident academically, socially and emotionally. >> by the way, this missing student issue. how much of a financial impact could that be on school systems that rely on funding per pupil basis. >> it's been underreported and all the interest in media attention has been on reopening schools and that's critically important but this is as important if not more. we can't have a lost generation of students. as you well know, every school district is funded on a per pupil basis, if you have 10% or 15% of your students who have literally disappeared to your point it absolutely has a

significant financial impact but much more importantly for me, what are those students doing? we can't afford to do that in our communities, in our country. so we have to go find them, we have to figure out all the stresses and trauma families are dealing with. disappearing from school is a symptom of the problem. help resolve the issue, bring them back starting not in the fall but starting right now in march. >> right now is for sure. arnie duncan, i'm glad you pushed that six months of tutoring. it's clearly something we've got to get everybody ready for the next year of school for sure. arnie duncan, good to have your perspective and expertise. president biden is expected, you've got it, president biden is expected to sign the covid relief bill any moment now and when that moment comes we will bring it to you live. usaa app and said, “that was easy.” usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa.

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welcome back, meat packing

and processing plants were some of the very first coronavirus hot spots in this country in south dakota hundreds of workers at a plant has -- workers at the plant never did enact safety measures to protect them. early outbreaks in multiple states caused meat prices to temporarily skyrocket. grocery stores had to limit how much meat a customer could buy, throw in the restaurant closures and meat not divvied up in the right way for shipping. workers at these meat packing plants get priority, states like south dakota are prioritizing other groups and some workers feel ignored. joining me now is mara barrett with more. this was one of the first places that seemed to explode with the virus, and then we found out meat packing plants everywhere, just by their nature of how

physically close the labor force is, we've had a year later, has the industry improved safety standards and has the industry improved its processing in a way that we don't have food disruptions again? >> reporter: well that's the goal, chuck and to paint a picture, now that we have some of the numbers, one study found that back in the spring nearly 1 in 12 covid cases originated somewhere in the country at a meat packing plant and that's because these close quarters that you mentioned, look at the parking lot behind me, it's full, 3,700 people work at this plant alone and while the company has stepped up and provided masks and barriers where they can, and hand sanitizer workers tell me sometimes there isn't hand washing stations available and social distancing still isn't possible but right now the onus is on the states and how they're prioritizing vaccinations for people in these working conditions like you said the cdc recommending that they should

have priority but south dakota is actually waiting until after teachers and even funeral home workers before food processing workers to get the vaccine. i spoke with sandra who's worked here for 15 years on the ham bone line and she even got sick back in april and she says she's really concerned about the safety of her co-workers on the floor. here's some of our conversation. how does that make you feel that the state has pushed the priority so far down the line? >> ignored, they ignore us. they don't care. they don't care in the beginning of the pandemic. and they don't care right now. because if we are priority, they give the vaccine. but when they keep ignoring us like that, we feel alone. if it is needed, keep this place running you have to give us the vaccine. >> reporter: i did reach out to the south dakota health department to get their reasoning behind how they laid out these priorities but they didn't get back to me on

specifics, but saying they're confident in the way the vaccine rollout has occurred. another thing that sandra mentioned, i asked her if you don't feel safe coming to work, why do you still do it? she noted so many co-workers are immigrants and need to us and this is how we can stand up for the country and make it better for them by putting food on americans tables. all of that going into this and they're also still saying they feel ignored. >> we did note that south dakota did not priority, there are 12 states ta did prioritize meat packing workers. south dakota, in fairness has been a outlayer on quite a few of the covid recommendations that come from the cdc, not just in this instance. turning now to the continuing issue of food and security.

the u.s. department of agriculture says they will continue to offer free meals to children through summer 2021. that means even after school is out of session. a year when food insecurity reached unprecedented levels. in cities across america food bank lines grew to hundreds of cars. many seeking food assistance for the first time. for many that food insecurity will continue as life returns to normal. in a report this week that estimate that one in eight americans are likely to experience food insecurity this year including one in six children. food insecurity is another area of inequity that has been heightened by the pandemic. joining me now is the founder of "share our strength." so bill after a year, what did we learn from this experience that if we apply forward that

can lessen the pain and security for our next snatch really disaster? >> i would say that while ten years of progress and reducing hunger has been reverse, what we learned is that this is a solvable problem in the united states. we have no shortages. and your lead in about the usda extending flexibility through the summer, one of the things we learned is the ways that we need to feed kids and families, the flexibilities that were created during a pandemic for the first time ever enabled us to feed kids in ways that we never could before. you used to have to feed a child at school. now you can send a child home. it used to be one meal, now it

can be multiple. we had a lot of flexibilities. we can finally connect kids to the food they need. >> i was just going to say that if we only tackle -- look, we don't want children to be hungry how do we take this, you know, we were able to go through the school to go through these families, what about when you can't find the hungry people via the school system? how do you feed those folks? >> some of the things in this panel, the american rescue plan, increases in the snap benefits. what we used to call the food stamp program. increases in benefits for women, infants, and children. and the child tax credit that is

estimates to reduce child poverty will help not only families but funds and money directly into the pockets of low income americans. that would have been -- you follow politics well enough to know that a couple months ago that would have been unthinkable. now people said we have got to do this. the pandemic and the race equity issues help people understand they have to take these head on and they have to get resources to these families. >> what did you learn from various food banks around the country as they had to come up with alternative ways to find food. the meat backing plant, that was a cascading effect of food distribution. it left food desert issues, but is there new best practices in

food banks that could make us help some progress. >> i think it's been more a matter to get food to people rather than making people come to the food. in a pandemic people have not wanted to leave their homes. we saw things like buses, instead of picking kids up, they would drop food off at the corners where they used to pick kids up. food banks have been involved in providing those types of resources and getting food out to people where they need it and retro fitting the infrastructure of not just food banks but public school school systems so they could feed people in new ways and we will continue to do that even after the pandemic. >> it does sound like, if we're now essentially being able to go

to the areas where we know the folks who are hungry and bring the food there, i mean, i don't want to sound pollyannish, but this sounds more solvable than ever. >> yeah, the public policy support is there, there is a generosity of donors, and the learnings that help us get to people. everywhere else in the world it is war, famine, or drought. it is what our campaigns are about, our partnerships, and everybody is comes together now to seize this moment and see if we can fix hunger in this

country. it could be solvable. >> in some ways, a simple solution, bring the food to them, don't expect them to come to you. bill short with the a hopeful update to end on. thank you all. but that moment is now likely to be covered by my friend, katy tur, after this quick break. af. [triumphantly yells] [ding] don't get mad. get e*trade. the sun is incredible. it makes our lipton tea leaves better. which makes the smooth tea taste better, and time together even better.

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