joshua sharfstein of johns hopkins speaking with us earlier.t to point out that according to governor cuomo in his daily news briefing, the death toll in new york is 10,056 after 671 people passed away easter sunday. , it is an improvement the first day under 700 in several days. this is bloomberg. ♪ erik: welcome back. with earnings season set to begin, investors have many questions about markets, credit, distressed investing. with me on the phone from los angeles's howard marks, the founder and cochairman of oaktree capital. in your lows -- in your most recent memo you said now is no time to be cautious or a time for investors to be defensive. how offense of should investors be? things are changing so fast nowadays, you are quoting from a memo that came out a week ago. when it starts with the word now, we are talking about then, not now. these change radically. clarify that what i was saying -- you had me on the program many times in recent years. generally speaking, i've been arguing that investors should have been tilting towards defense. p

sharfstein: certainly it is not safe at the moment. wonderful ballpark, but i think people realize their health comes first. right now that is not possible. what will happen i think is we will have to come and i like this analogy that others have made, maybe we have flipped off the light in our world kind of quickly, but when we turn it on it will be more like a dimmer switch. absent a miraculous treatment, we will have to move very slowly, making sure that we do not have cases surge so high that they put the system in jeopardy again. it will not be baseball games or football matches that will go first. it will be where more people , in particularly industries, probably not restaurants and bars. look at singapore, they have kept the number of things open and they have encouraged social distancing. they do not have large gatherings like sporting events. they have been using a very robust health response to keep it in check. but they recently had an increase of the have dialed up there social distancing. i think it will be most likely a

sharfstein: it is an incredible dedication at johns hopkins.e felt that this their calling, this is their responsibility. veryedical center has been supportive in terms of making sure there is protective equipment and all kinds of other mental health resources for staff. it is not just the doctors and nurses, there is a real sense of purpose for everybody working there. this is a moment in a way that many people have been training for, even if they didn't realize it at the time. tom: one final question if i could. the great fear that is out there is there are things here in new york, particularly in the bureau of queens that have been quite horrific. what is the ability of this virus to spread to secondary cities and tertiary locations across the nation? what is really remarkable to me is how so many people believe that what is happening there, meaning somewhere else, isn't going to happen here, meaning where i live. nobody should really have that sense of confidence. people felt like, well, if it is in china, it couldn't come to italy, if it w

francine: thank you so much, josh sharfstein. oil plunging below. texas intermediate right now, 13.06. that is extraordinary. stay with us through the day. lawrence kudlow later this morning. this is "bloomberg." ♪ beyond the routine checkups. beyond the not-so-routine cases. comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. all working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gig-speed network. because beyond technology... there is human ingenuity. every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond. ♪ alix: oil at a 21 year low. cratering demand, storage increase put pressure on oil. the white house and democrats inched towards a deal expanding the payroll protection program is business. is claimer for more funding ecb program as-- businesses clamber for more funding. welcome to "bloomberg daybreak: americas." it is monday, april 20. i'm alix steel. in the markets, oil is at $13. in about an hour, it erased a dollar of its value. a lot of it is t

sharfstein, you've also been talking about how testing is the first step but you need a first step oftion, quarantine going forward to make this work. >> yes. people are very focused on how many tests there are. what actually controls an infectious disease like the coronavirus is stopping the transmission from one person to another. so once somebody is found have the coronavirus, it's really important they're isolated, they can stay by themselves. that we're able to find their contacts and tell them to quarantine themselves. that's been the key in countries like singapore and south korea. it's not just they're doing more tests but following them up very aggressively. and that's the capacity in this country we really need to build quickly. >> dr. sharfstein, thank you very much for touching base with us today. >>> coming up next -- 10 million americans out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic. calls for another round of stimulus are getting louder but senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said that idea is a no-go. we will talk to speaker of the house nancy pelosi, what she thinks

sharfstein and dr. deborah cass. thank you very much. continued good health as you continue to treat the patients after having recovered from the disease yourself. we really thank you for what you've been doing. >>> and is there help on the way from washington? that's a big question today. democrats say that they are close to a deal with the white house that would add more than $400 billion to the paycheck protection program, also to hospital relief and other emergency needs. but if it passes this week, it will be a huge relief for struggling businesses like kim farrow's. she is the co-owner of a florida construction firm. she furloughed 14 workers after applying for the federal loans at eight different banks. the mother of seven is frustrated but hopeful that the money will come through. >> i don't sleep at nights right now because i'm just waiting for someone from, you know, the bank to email or just something, you know, to show that there's hope. >> one of the big loopholes in the program so far, loans going to multimillion dollar res

francine: what is joshua sharfstein's social distance?to steer clear from people. -- joshua: i am wearing a mask if i think i will encounter somebody headed to the grocery store. i am also somewhat obsessive about washing my hands. bringing hand sanitizer, the usual. it is really a challenge to keep it top of mind. i think that challenge is getting easier. i think it will still be quite a while where we are going to have to change our routines. midas will start now. -- might as well start now. tom: wonderful update with johns hopkins university. we have plenty more to look at. cooperationbit of a with the doj which impacted the markets. there is a list of the markets we have been talking about. u.s. futures rising, european stocks rising. nothing too ugly out there. oil slumping. i would also look out for the fact that markets are taking solace in the fact that major economies are edging toward gradual reopening. it will be interesting to see. that is the theme across america. awill say, it is decidedly different monday morning then we ha

joshua sharfstein of johns hopkins. now we want to get a market check with kailey leinz. i checked, we were having a tough day in equities. kailey: we are having a tough day in equities, that's right. the s&p is down 1.8%. 2%.dow is down a full the nasdaq is only down about three quarters of a percent. not surprising that we are lower on the day given the fact that we are coming off of the best week in equities since 1974. maybe a little bit of selling off of that incredible rally. and this is one day before earnings season kicks off with j.p. morgan due before the bell tomorrow. companies have not been able to get accurate guidance, we are kind of going into it aligned, so investors may be pulling off risk positions ahead of that. when you look at the s&p 500, it is really a broad-based selloff. every sector is lower. the worst performing sector is real estate and financials, down 4% each. consumer discretionary is only down fractionally. energy, interestingly, is the second best performer in the market, due to the fact that you are seeing oil rallying today. wti is up a

sharfstein, the vice dean of the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health.berg, the founder of bloomberg lp and the parent company of this network, supports johns hopkins. meantime, a 2500 square-foot lab at uc berkeley has been turned into a facility to run covid-19 tests. joining us now on the phone is jennifer doudna, one of the coinventors of the gene editing technology, crispr, who has more recently been working on rapid response tests for covid-19. she leads this partnership between uc berkeley and the innovative genomics institute which has been the focus of this pop up testing lab. jennifer, talk to us a little bit about the testing you are working on so far, the progress you have made, and what the findings have been. jennifer: hi, and thanks for including me on the show. we have a pop up testing lab for covid-19 virus here at uc berkeley and the innovative genomics institute. the reason we put the slab in place was to address -- this lab in place was to address the urgent need to rapidly test people that have symptoms of this disease, but also to t

shery: johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health vice dean joshua sharfstein.test lines from president trump at the press conference on the coronavirus outbreak. saying he is close to releasing the plan to open the country. he said earlier he has ultimate authority on reopening the country, nothing governors that are forming a coalition in order to coordinate the reopening. the president saying hopefully they will reopen the country ahead of schedule. president trump also talking about the census bureau, asking congress for a delay of four months when it comes to the 2020 census because of the pandemic. saying the 120 delay request is not nearly enough and he will ask for a major delay in the census given the ongoing virus outbreak. the president also talking about validating antibody tests for this virus. we will have plenty more to come. this is bloomberg. ♪ haidi: the fed is stepping up big time with its package of action to fight the fallout from the coronavirus. fed vice chairman richard clarida told us his view of rates in the u.s. richard: we're going to

sharfstein, to both of you. wishing you all a good holiday weekend, if you can have a good holiday weekend. >>> joining us now is wyoming senator john morassio, the third ranking republican in the senate and medical doctor and joining us now from the great state of wyoming. thank you very much, dr. barrasso and senator barrasso. let's talk about, we know there are millions and millions of americans. we will talk about 17 million americans unemployed in the last three weeks. that's probably underreported. people who can get through the bureaucracy to file unemployment for jobless claims. at this point what can the senate do? we know there is a stalemate. democrats want more. they want a different allocation for these 250 million or whatever's going to be in this next unanimous agreement. there is no agreement now. are there any talks under way with the democrats? >> oh, there are talks that continue. i think we have to make sure this phase three works. when you take a look at it, you say what has worked the best?

sharfstein, you have joined a bipartisan group of scientists and former officials from different administrations in a letter to congress, saying in this next package, if there is a next package, despite objections from senator mcconnell to any next package, if there is a next package, that there should be a number of things that will improve testing, isolation, such as having hotels have a place where people can isolate once they get over an infection. what are the major demands or requests that you're putting to our congressional leaders? >> so, this is being led by the cms director under president obama and president trump's own fda commissioner. and the idea is that we have to be able to respond to cases in ways other than just shutting everything down. we have to be able to find people with infections, help them to isolate themselves, find their contacts, help them to quarantine. and that may require giving them a hotel room or even providing money so that they don't have to go out and work or get, you know, keep going out for food again and again. we have to treat this as a public health cr