ben gupta, an msnbc medical contributor. also joined by my old friend dr. irwin redletter director of columbia university's national center for disaster preparedness and an msnbc health policy analyst. irwin, i will start with you. it's sort of flabbergastingwith insignificant, we as journalists are meant to take this kind of nonsense but the idea that this imperial study came out in march, suggested he had not heard of it before and had he not done anything 2.2 million americans would die and he was told by people to do nothing and ride it like a cowboy. irwin, this is nonsensical but it costs people their lives when the president comes up with stuff like this. >> yes, so it is hard to know what to react to, you know, just against the accusation that the governors are somehow misleading the country by what's needed. it's the governor, i mean it's the president department of health and human services that up to two weeks ago was saying that the country would knee three billion, with a b, three billion, with a b, face masks for the stration of this pandemic.

ben gupta, thank you both for sharing your expertise with our viewers today.ope we can tap into that again soon. and good luck to both of you. thank you both. >> up ahead, italy's death toll is surging despite the country-wide lock down. how long can we expect this to go on in the united states and are we doing enough social distancing? you just heard from two doctors there who believe we should do more. i'll talk to virologist joseph fair with some answers. let me tell you, i can tell you where he stands on this. and be sure to watch the networks of nbc news tonight. my colleague, lester holt is anchoring a special prime-time event on the coronavirus. we'll have the latest on the pandemic and expert analysis and advice. we know you have a lot of questions out there and we hope to answer some of them tonight. so watch tonight, 10:00 p.m., nbc, msnbc, and nbc news now. meanwhile, we'll be right back. k when we face adversity, we find a way through it. it's about taking care of each other. it's the small parts that make a big difference. at chevy, we promise to

ben gupta, from washington medical center, nbc news medical contributor happily.into context. is this a prediction, a forecast, a guess? >> i think my colleagues at the institute of metrics and evaluation have done us a great service and the government should feel the same way an act accordingly. these are forecasts, best predictions using the latest modeling techniques from an organization that models this day in, day out. other types of population statistics. they're the definitive source. if i was the trump administration, i would look at the projections and say these are the places i need to put ventilators, they give the estimates at the state level. as an icu doc, caring for patients last night, if i was a hospital administrator, i would want visibility on these types of numbers. if we don't fill this shortfall soon through the defense production act and other potential avenues, we're going to see 81,000 death number become a reality pretty quickly. and that's from university of washington, showed we'll see icu bed capacity filled up. surge capacity all but