inglesby: no, this virus isn't going to go away.ver time we will learn to live with it and will be able to reduce the risk of transmission, but it's going to stay as a background problem in the country and around the world until we have a vaccine. hopefully as we develop medicines, maybe more quickly than a vaccine, that will help us in ways to diminish the impact of the virus, but this virus, we are mostly around the world, almost all of us are subsector but to it as far as we know at this point, so this virus has a long way to run. we don't think that more than a small percent of the country at this point has been infected, so most of us are still susceptible to this virus. >> chris: what about the argument you hear from some people, look, the people who are dying from this virus are seniors, people over 60, people with underlying conditions. so just quarantine them -- or you know, have them isolated and let the rest of the people go back to work. what that work? >> dr. inglesby: so, if you add up the number of the people in the c

inglesby, how important is it to diagnose early and get real medical help?i think this is very important. this can cause inflammation of blood vessels, and ultimately can be life-threatening. so i think parents who have any suspicion of kawasaki's, any of these symptoms that dr. sharfstein just mentioned i think should have a low threshold for calling their own doctors and getting -- [ inaudible ] >> and dr. sharfstein, also, the public health implications of opening too early. we're seeing in south korea, which was heralded around the world for its aggressive control of the outbreak when it first happened, now seeing a hotspot in seoul, south korea. they have traced it to one man who went into a nightclub on may 2nd and infected at least 84 other people through contact tracing. what are your concerns about the way the white house is moving to reopen and encouraging states to reopen when they haven't even met the first cdc guideline, which is two weeks of infection rate going down? >> right. well, i think the south korea example is a good one because we're n

inglesby, thanks for starting us off with your expertise on this. much appreciated. >> thanks for having me, chuck. >> joining me now are two state officials central to making decisions about when and how their states should reopen. dr. scott harris is the state health official officer for the alabama department of health, and dr. joneigh khaldun. thank you both for joining, and so, i want to start with you, dr. harris, since alabama's doing a lilt more opening right now than michigan, although compared to some of your southern neighbors, i would argue you guys are being a bit more cautious than others. but tell me the metrics you used that gave you the confidence to advise the governor at beginning some phased in reopenings. >> sure, so we have followed a number of metrics like i think most states have, including the white house plan for reopening. the gaining criteria i'm sure you have talked about many times on the show. they're certainly part of the things we have considered. we have not fully satisfied all of those criteria, but we felt good ab

inglesby, welcome back to "meet the press." i want to put up on screen a breakdown of the curves, a regional breakdown, because i'm curious to see how this impacts how we should view where this virus is right now. there's clearly not only a flattening but a bending of the curve downward in the northeast, but in the south and west, it's a plateau, and in the midwest, it's just starting, we hope, to plateau, because the curve was actually continued on an upward trajectory for most of the week. looking at it that way, what does it tell you where we are when it comes to this virus? >> well, i think overall, the good news for the country is that the overall top line numbers are trending down on average over the country. but you really have to look at the state level and regional level to understand where your own state or your own county lies in the whole story. as you said earlier, there are some states that are still having increasing daily numbers of cases. some states that are flat, some states that are going down. you really ne

inglesby mentioned the fact of how many people you test, and w.h.o.if you're testing to a point where more than 10% of the people you're testing are still coming back positive, you're not testing enough of the 33 states, 12 of them have rates above 10% when you look at icu capacity, of those 33 states, eight of tht their head room for icu capacity. when you talk about contact tracing, there's a hopkins study that says we need 100,000 contact tracers and npr did a study of all of the states, 41 states responded and said we have about 7.6,000 contact tracers and we're looking to hire 36,000 more we're not there in terms of capacity or it's a patchwork where some states are potentially doing it better than others so my fear as it is with a lot of public health folks is insuring that states meet those capacities before they take the risk of putting particularly the vulnerable among our communitie, minority communities >> let me ask you the question this way over the last two months, in the medical community, what -- have we learned enough and with the new

tom inglesby. is director for the center of security at john hopkins bloomberg school of public health. he testified before congress today. dr. inglesby, thank you so much. appreciate you joining us. sources are saying the president is questioning whether coronavirus deaths in the u.s., if they're being inflated. i mean, that puts him at odds with dr. fauci, who seems, you know, pretty upset. he seems pretty upset with him. does that trouble you? >> well, i think there's pretty compelling evidence that the number of deaths from coronavirus is probably an undercount. we have statistics year to year which -- which show how many people typically die in a given week in america. and if we compare that number of people who have died this year as compared to last year starting in march, going through april, you can see that the numbers are substantially higher this year, and in addition to that, we actually have diagnostic tests on the people who have died, for the most part. and for others, very compelli

inglesby from johns hopkins university.o congressman is texas ready and able to do more testing. >> yes, i think we are. but you know, i also hear a lot of skeptics from around the nation. i understand that just in the last few days dr. birx on the white house team has had issues with the cdc numbers. when you look at the numbers for deaths from things like pneumonia, those numbers are so low this year compared to other years. does that mean that deaths for pneumonia have just vanished or are things being coded as covid deaths? i don't know the answer to that. but i know there's a lot of skepticism out there. testing is a great thing. we feed to increase it. what we absolutely need to do is get the economy back at it. we've got to get people back to work. people can't afford to feed their families, they're worried about paying bills, rent, mortgages. we've come to the point where civil disobedience is becoming accept abilitable because people fed up. they want to get back to their normal lives. people are tired, myself incl

inglesby, thanks for your time.y appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to get the latest now. wisconsin supreme court today struck down the state's stay-at-home order in a 4-3 decision, ruling it unlawful and unenforceable. the governor there is tony evers, and he joins me, now, by phone. governor, i appreciate you joining us. this is new information that's just coming out just a short time ago. so you just put out a statement s saying that republican legislators have convinced four justices to throw our state into chaos. do you think this decision is going to cost lives in your state? >> well, it's certainly not going to help. that's the bottom line. we were in a good place, don, as a state. the people in wisconsin are the ones that should be very upset. i'm upset. but we've worked really hard to stay at home and do all the right things around social distancing, and so on and so forth. we established high-quality gating criteria, and we've met most of those. recent marquette poll shows us that 69% of th

tom inglesby.et's get right to the numbers because we keep hearing los angeles county, it's going to be extended, the stay-at-home orders, they're told not to freak out. always good advice. health experts warned us yesterday that the death toll is probably going to go up and be higher than we thought and that if we open up too soon, that we do it at our own peril. what's your best advice on when and how states should start to reopen? and i realize it probably varies from state to state. >> yeah. it really does vary at this point because some states have seen a pretty marked decrease in case numbers over the last month. some states are really still seeing a rise in cases on a day-to-day basis. it's like a patchwork around the country. the four things that states should have in place to lower the risk of reopening is two weeks of declining cases, a health system that can really care for more people if they get sick, widespread diagnostic testing available for anyone who has covid symptoms, and then a

inglesby, welcome back to "meet the press." i want to put up on screen a breakdown of the curves, a regional breakdown, because i'm curious to see how this impacts how we should view where this virus is right now. there's clearly not only a flattening but a bending of the curve downward in the northeast, but in the south and west, it's a plateau, and in the midwest, it's just starting, we hope, to plateau, because the curve was actually continued on an upward trajectory for most of the week. looking at it that way, what does it tell you where we are when it comes to this virus? >> well, i think overall, the good news for the country is that the overall top line numbers are trending down on average over the country. but you really have to look at the state level and regional level to understand where your own state or your own county lies in the whole story. as you said earlier, there are some states that are still having increasing daily numbers of cases. some states that are flat, some states that are going down. you really ne

inglesby mentioned the fact of how many people you test, and w.h.o.if you're testing to a point where more than 10% of the people you're testing are still coming back positive, you're not testing enough. of the 33 states, 12 of them have rates above 10%. when you look at icu capacity, of those 33 states, eight of them have already hit their head room for icu capacity. when you talk about contact tracing, there's a hopkins study that says we need 100,000 contact tracers and npr did a study of all of the states, 41 states responded and said we have about 7,600 contact tracers and we're looking to hire 36,000 more. we're not there in terms of capacity or it's a patchwork where some states are potentially doing it better than others. so my fear as it is with a lot of public health folks is ensuring that states meet those capacities before they take the risk of putting particularly the vulnerable among our communities at risk. so nursing homes, prisons, minority communities. >> let me ask you the question this way. over the last two months, in the medical

doctor tom inglesby. >> thank you again for the peopl opportunity to speak with you all today. i have been amazed at the on ability of the american people to practice social distancing onon the kind of crises that we have seen bee in china or italy, andn new york city. the fact that we have been able to avoid that kind of crisis around the country is a testament to leadership, the american, people and the sacrifice people have put inin over the last few weeks. we have seen other country succeed in controlling the virus. they rhaven't been able to eradicate it but they have been able to temperate dion and a resume v actions closer, back towards normal. it won't be normal until we havee moving in that direction. we've also see some stateserstat drive their cases down to single states, they should be a model for the rest of the country and we should try to what they have been doing as best as we can, so wed can all move in that nodirectio. this will be a marathon, not a sprint. i think it will be very important for us to work together in a bipartisan way, in a multi government way

tom inglesby of johns hopkins in house testimony today. >> isolation and contact tracing have been crucial that have gotten their covid epidemics under comparatively better control. much but identifying a high risk of getting infected and intervening to stop that chain of transmission. if we fail to contact trace effectively we'll continue to have new cases appearing in completely unpredictable ways. numbers and places. and our epidemic will grow more quickly. >> joining us once again tonight, dr. james hildreth, the president and ceo of maheri medical college, an infectious disease expert. dr. hildreth, when i hear about contact tracing and we keep realizing that we don't really have the people to do this, those estimates of you need at least 100,000, what in your view do we need for effective contact tracing and what are the challenges assuming we do have the personnel to do it? >> first of all, lawrence, thank you for having me. i'm happy to be with you. contact tracing is essential just as all the other guests have said. it's going to be challenging in some communities because technolo

tom inglesby last night, the infectious disease expert from hopkins.t was interesting how it could be reasonable to start thinking about opening up. but you want to do it logically in areas, for example, states that don't have a lot of infections. vermont, montana, alaska. if you'll do that opening up, do it carefully. you need enough testing to know what's going on. and you also have to have enough boots on the ground and public health officials so if you notice there's an infection to isolate the person, figure out who their contacts are and do all the standard public health measures we've always done over the years and that are tried and true. >> it all boils down to the testing, jon. one question if you need one question answered to better understand the virus, what is it for you? just the one. >> it's the question that we don't know is going to be asked tomorrow. seriously. every day there's something new that comes out. a new problem. problem smelling, problem with clotting, a problem we didn't predict. the problem here is we don't even know the

tom inglesby. has been home to essential covid-19 tracking and basic information resources throughout this global pandemic. doctor, welcome. >> yeah, doctor, thank you so much for being with us. and, more importantly, thank you for all the great work you and johns hopkins has done from the start. i -- i -- i see, in a tweet, that you mentioned, on march 1st, the united states had 100 recognized cases. two months later, we have 1.1 million recognized cases. we need to respect the high capacity of this virus to do harm in the u.s. until we have a vaccine. and you, also, said that we still need to remember that we are just in the beginning of this pandemic. explain, if you will. >> yes. the point i was trying to make there was -- was just to say that the virus that we're dealing with hasn't really changed since the beginning. in fact, if you look back over the last month, most of the illness and death that's occurred from pandemic -- from covid, in this country, has been over the last month. we really

tom inglesby from the johns hopkins school of health.nd clint watts, nbc news national security analyst as well. be sure to tune in to "meet the press" at 8:00 a.m. right after this newscast. coming up in about 30 minutes from now we will talk to nbc bay area political analyst larry gerston for our weekly segment, looking at what the pandemic has done to our local and state budgets. >>> now to a less invasive covid-19 test. santa clara county health leaders revealed the new test on friday. we told you about it yesterday morning. it's a nasal swab that you can gently use yourself. the new test is rapid. it doesn't hurt, we're told. you can perform it all on your own. it will come in addition to traditional testing already being used. one idea among others is to make sure those most at risk of contracting the virus in their daily lives get the testing regularly. we spoke with the head of santa clara county's testing task force. >> we really want to test people who are at continued and will be at increased risk. so i think one of the larges