lena nguyen.ely this during the past two town halls and the response was overwhelming. we'll do another one this coming thursday night from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 eastern. if you want to send our video questions, please do. let's get to the questions we have tonight. matt arnold from dallas, texas, has a question. matt, go ahead. >> hi, guys. just curious, has anyone or could anyone get reinfected after recovering from covid-19? >> great question. doctors? >> yeah, so there was some reports of this early on that maybe some patients have recovered from the coronavirus infection and then become reinfected. you know, it doesn't seem like that's actually likely. that may have been just a problem, like with a patient that we talked to, anderson, who still had coronavirus in his system, some 28 days now, i think, we talked to him thursday. it's more likely to be something like that. typically after you develop an infection like this, it's kind of like getting vaccinated. you should actually have some immun

lena nguyen. former baltimore city health commissioner and doctor, first, what do you think about this? we see the british prime minister boris johnson testing positive for coronavirus. no one is immune here. >> that's exactly right. no one is immune. we are all potentially at risk and i think it's a reminder to all of us to take coronavirus extremely seriously and i wish prime minister johnson the best. i think he's also in announcing he has covid-19, also giving a model for everyone else about what to do about the importance of self-isolation and also, about talking openly about his diagnosis. >> so tell us what you're seeing. you're an e.r. physician. what you're seeing in baltimore and what you are watching in new york that you think is coming your way. >> well, we're seeing the scenes from new york and we know that what's happening in new york is probably, almost certainly going to happen in many other parts in our country, and it just is untenable. and really, unimaginable. i mean, i could n

lena nguyen, emergency room physician and former baltimore city health commissioner. great to see both of you. dr. nguyen, give us a status report of what's happening in emergency rooms in baltimore right now. >> well, here in baltimore in the d.c./virginia region, we are waiting for the storm. this is still the relative calm before the storm but we know that storm is not far away. we hear and see the reports of our colleagues in new york. we're seeing what's coming their way in michigan, louisiana and we know that our met poll tar area juice likes areas across the country are not that far behind and this is why. these are things that we were predicting for a while. we know we urgently need supplies. we need personal protective equipment and we need ventilators. we know what numbers we need and we really need the federal government to be pulling out all the stops now, because of now is not the time to be delivering us supplies we need. what are we waiting for? are we really waiting for things to become so bad that they resemble new york and it becomes a true emergency

lena nguyen, what do you think, how much hope should we put into this drug to fight the pandemic? >> we should have hope. there are treatments being tested, and i'm glad we're proceeding with urgency to test all these. i agree with and appreciate dr. gupta's reporting. there are medical, legal, scientific, ande ethical standards for a reason. we don't want to give everyone reason to think everything will be fine and maybe they don't need all these preventive measures when there's a treatment, when there's not actually a treatment. i'm concerned about the run on these drugs. hydroxychloroquine is used for patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. those patients are reporting they can't get their medication anymore because other people are going out there to try to hoard this medication, thinking that it's somehow a magic pill. so there are all these societal effects when the president says something that's not yet based in evidence and science. >> sanjay, let me follow up, when do you think we might see some real results from rigorous drug trials as far as these two drugs are c

lena nguyen, emergency physician and former health commissioner for the city of baltimore and dr. patel, internal medicine physician and msnbc medical contributor. dr. patel, where do you see the pandemic tonight in the united states and what can we expect in the numbers as we move toward the weekend? >> thank you, lawrence. i hope that the numbers do not increase as dramatically as some had predicted. i mean, we were thinking that anywhere from 40 to 60% of the country could be affected. so you can do the math there. but i will tell you that these numbers, 1,000 new cases alone in new york city today, that is just the tip of the iceberg and a lot of it has to do, lawrence, as you know, with the fact that we're actually testing people. so not only are we seeing them sick in hospitals, but you're saying wide spread testing starting to slowly ramp up. so i hate to try to limit just a number but this is exponential. this is going to go into the tens of thousands in a matter of days. >> let's listen to what peter alexander asked the president today about the way people are able to get

lena nguyen, professor at george washington and emergency physician, dr. michael osterholm, and yam each alcindor, white house correspondent for the pbs news hour. dr. nguyen, your view on all of the above. >> i don't know where to begin. with president trump and the comments that he's making, i want to know where are the data, and why is there such a profound disconnect between what he's saying and the reality of what people are experiencing on the ground. we're seeing hospitals that are overcrowded already. we're seeing health care workers that don't have basic equipment. we're seeing patients dying, numbers of cases escalating. we don't even know where the peak of this epidemic is. it seems like we're talking about building houses and actually this forest fire is still raging. we don't even know what is the extent of the fire. so we really need to focus on helping hospital capacity, and developing testing capacity too, because otherwise we have no data. how can we make decisions if we don't even know what's going on? >> yeah, and i think testing is very

lena nguyen, former health commissioner of boston and president of planned parenthood. she is now with george washington school of public health. gene sperling, director of the national economic counsel in the clinton and obama administration. he helped work on crafting the obama stimulus, responding to a different set of national problems not unlike we've seen unrolling these past few days, and eugene robinson from "the washington post." this is unfortunately a time where each of you brings so much to bear. i can start with gene sperling on one of the largest market crashes since '87. i can start with eugene robinson in washington looking at coronavirus, reshaping the entire presidential race. but i'm going to start with our doctor here with me on set. what is the nature of this public health crisis today as americans heard the president give his view of it last night? >> this is the relative calm before the storm that we know is going to be coming. we just heard the mayor talk about what's going to come to seattle and this is what's going to come all over the country.

lena nguyen and former rnc spokesperson tim miller in northern california where the lockdown we just talked about is taking place, plus "new york times" economic savant. dr. nguyen, let's stay focused on the most urgent elements of this story and those continue to be the concerns about whether or not we have the capacity to handle what is about to come in terms of equipment, in terms of hospital beds, in terms of icu units, not just in places like new york and california, but particularly in those places. tell us what you're seeing right now in terms of that question and what you're hearing in the naked kind of alarm on the part of people like governor cuomo that we're not, in fact, ready. >> we are not ready. our projections have shown we were ready for a mild outbreak, but not a moderate outbreak. in looking at the numbers from china, from italy, it does look bleak. it looks like we're headed towards this rapid escalation phase where we'll be shortens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of icu beds and we're not going to have enough supply. we need to increase supply of these