. >>> i'm steve patterson in michigan where tonight officials warn the state's health care system could soon capsize amid a nearly five fold surge in covid hospitalizations since just last month. >> this is like standing on the beach and watching the hurricane slowly roll toward you >> reporter: we were granted exclusive access inside beaumont hospital's covid ward. here they have treated more coronavirus patients than anywhere in the state even the front line workers aren't immune. >> i was very sick it was pretty intense. as a nurse, even i was a little scared. >> reporter: hospitals throughout the state are understaffed and overwhelmed with cases and hospitalizations doubling every two weeks. >> how can i help you today? >> reporter: downstairs hospitality worker erin fuson has the heartbreaking task of telling family members of covid patients they're not allowed to visit now she is facing that same heartbreak. her dad contracted the virus. >> every day is different. every day is scary >> reporter: erin's father is frustratingly close, right on the other side of this door, but althou

steve patterson is in battleground, michigan, one of those states we have not been able to project yet. steve, you've been up all night talking to folks. what's the sense on the ground for, "a," how long it will take to get any resolution and, "b," which way it might be going? >> reporter: first of all the first thing made abundantly clear is michigan was never going to be decided on tuesday night. that's been made clear from the secretary of state to city clerks to township managers. the rough estimate coming into the week we wouldn't have anything clearly verified by about friday. that's been pushed forward because of the diligence and staffing up of workers push to get these ballots verified. the crush of absentee ballots coming in that tuesday night was never realistic for the state of michigan. and michigan has already shattered records. the secretary of state saying probably 5.2 million votes cast overall when you look at the total picture. michigan workers have never dealt with anything like that adding on to the 2.5 million in-person votes. that's for a number of reasons. first

steve patterson, nbc news >>> when we come back, a remarkable friendship built mile by mile. >>> there's good news tonight about unlikely friendships and the two extraordinary boys achieving their goals by crossing the finish line together. tethered by a common goal -- >> there's some gravel don't trip >> reporter: -- and a passion for running -- >> go rebel! go paul! go boys! >> reporter: paul scott and rebel hays can navigate almost any cross-country course paul, a freshman at west fork high school in arkansas, is legally blind. but with rebel's help and a lot of determination he's become a successful cross-country runner >> people are surprised sometimes because they think that if you're blind you cannot run so i have proven that it can be done >> reporter: rebel, an 11-year-old in nearby fayetteville, has always loved running so when west fork was looking for volunteers to help blind runners, he answered the call to action. >> i just wanted to jump in because it makes me feel good when i help people >> come on, paul, you can do it! >> reporter: the two pairing up for the past three y

steve patterson now on the rush for the real deal. >> reporter: with thanksgiving now in the holidayp the mistletoe, take advantage of the cyber deals and, of course, pick out your tree. >> every year is an argument on what tree should we pick a little fatter, a little taller >> reporter: the tree shopping season starting early this year. customers at this fir farm in new york are spending a little green of their own this year. >> just having the real tree makes it warm and cozy. >> reporter: owner barbara pratt says demand for real trees during this pandemic season is way up. >> we have a lot of new customers that have not visited us in the past there's a lot of people that are looking to get outside of their homes. >> reporter: across the u.s. more people are looking for the real thing, not an artificial one. >> honestly, i'm not sure that any of us could have predicted that it would be this busy. >> reporter: some from the comfort and safety of their own car. last year more than 20 million real christmas trees were sold in the u.s now in the middle of a pandemic, experts say that

steve patterson, i was watching you yesterday in detroit. there was some concern among democrats about the levels of turnout in detroit. what are you seeing today? >> reporter: i've been speaking to democratic party officials. there's a lot of what i would call cautious confidence at this point, although there's still that shell shock in their voice because of what happened in this state back in 2016. michigan went to trump by the slimmest of margins. less than 11,000 votes. so there's been a renewed focus on trying to focus on areas that didn't turn out like democrats wanted in 2016. one right here in metro detroit. detroit specifically. there's been a big get out the vote campaign specifically targeting urban voters in the city of detroit. despite that, the city clerk has been projecting about a 50% turnout in the city. that is a lot fewer than what was originally xched, her original projection. it's just a few points from what happened back in 2016. i feel like we've been on the phone with her every single day, trying to track her down. s

that's where we find steve patterson.teve, i know that the last few weeks new mexico's governor has done a flurry of new mitigation efforts. there's been sort of an all hands on deck i've noticed. has it had any impact? >> reporter: yeah, this is a now full-blown reversion to the stay-at-home order. what we saw similarly at the beginning of spring, basically if you're not an essential business you're not open. if you're a restaurant you've got to figure out takeout. if you're not going outside for any reason that's not emergency related or health-related, you should stay inside. and that specifically does pertain to the timing of this perfect, as you mentioned, to the thanksgiving holiday. they want people to stay indoors. they need to alleviate the stress on the health system here. is it having an effect? it's kind of too early to tell. it's day three of this. just to give you an idea of the timeline in which we may see an effect, i mean, this went into effect on monday. by tuesday as you mentioned record number of hospi

nbc news correspondent steve patterson is in pasadena for us tonight. steve, god to see you.re people in california reacting? >> well, alicia, i think it's equal parts understanding and contempt. understanding because the messaging has been so strong that this is not about making life harder. this is specifically aimed at reducing the enormous stress on the health care system here. hospitalizations shooting through the roof in the state of california, up 80% over the last two weeks. here in l.a. county, we saw hospitalization rate of about 200 per day last week. it's now 300 per day. the threshold that was set to meet this new stay-at-home order was 4500 new cases over an average five-day period. we're at 4700. elected officials, experts didn't expect us to be at this number this soon for at least another month. so we're in a dire situation here when it comes to the hospital. contempt i think for the fact that you see similar sized counties where similar sized outbreaks and not similar sized stay-at-home orders. and then if you're focusing on small businesses, particularly in

ayman, back to you. >> steve patterson live in california.>>> before we go, our favorite stowaway is back in the wild. rocky, rockefeller the owl. she was named after the rockefeller chris maz tree because that's where she was found, inside of it. she made the three-day journey from up state to new york to midtown. she was trapped inside the branches of the tree until she was discovered. the nice folks at the ravensburg center nursed her back to health. she was released last night in the forest. a little good news for anyone following that story. happy to see rocky back in her natural habitat. >>> thanks for watching this hour of "msnbc live." up next, more news with my friend craig melvin. we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. hello is friendly... hello is open... it's welcoming... everything we want to be when helping people find a medicare plan. so if you're looking for yours, say hello to hellomedicare... ...a one stop shop for medicare plans, ...including a range of unite

steve patterson with an up-close look at democracy in action there. good to see so many volunteers in the basement there. steve, thank you. chris, thank you. cal, thank you. >>> republicans in texas want to throw out more than 120,000 ballots. in fact, they are in court as we speak. we're going to go to houston, where the votes in a traditionally democratic area could be tossed out. >>> also, less than 30 minutes from now, joe biden set to speak in cleveland. right now, democrats are facing what one strategist calls, quote, crippling fear. we'll dig into all of it in our special election kovrcoverage. election week here on msnbc. with subaru, you get kelley blue book's 2020 best resale value brand, 2020 lowest 5-year cost to own brand, and most trusted brand for six consecutive years. no wonder kelley blue book also picked subaru as their 2020 best overall brand. a trusted brand and a proven value. it's easy to love a subaru. get 0% apr financing for 63 months on select new 2020 models, now through november 2nd. before money, people tools, cattle, gra

joining me now from albuquerque is nbc news correspondent steve patterson. a dire situation continuing to unfold in that state. what is the state trying to do to alleviate stresses on the health care system in all of this? >> reporter: well, a few things, but i can start off with telling you what i saw on the way to come and talk to you, which is a billboard on the highway overpass telling people to socially distance. a billboard a few blocks away in town telling people we're in this together. my phone battery is probably 50% because of all the tweets from the governor and the senator and the health department trying to all break people of this fatigue that has set in across the country, as we enter into a period that may be more dangerous than when we weren't fatigued. i can tell you, new mexico can't afford it. the health system is taxed. you mentioned the daily records, the positivity rate. the spread in the community right now is unmitigated, and health officials are doing all they can to battle back against this. part of this, though, from the state is

steve patterson, i want to talk about business. last night i was in times square. i went to a souvenir shop that normally sees 500, 600 people. yesterday they had three customers. santa fe normally gets 2 million tourists a year. than they survive without them? >> yes, but that's going to mean a lot of pain and a lot of tightening. what it means is there are thousands of seasonal workers who live in this area waiting on a phone call that aren't going to get one and that's even if there is a magical reopening. this state is heavily reliant on winter tourism. last year the state was estimated to take in $563 million in ski tourism alone. that's just skiing. when the season was cut short due to covid, the spring season, an estimated $17 million in direct revenue was lost. that was a $70 million hit to the state of new mexico. all of this made exponentially worse by the timing because there is this small window, about a 14-day window, where the majority of the business comes in. we spoke to the director of ski new mexico about just that and the impact it's having on th

. >> reporter: nbc's steve patterson with all the effort. >> reporter: the school district putting on probably its biggest day of handing out free meals to families in need that they've ever had they've done a lot this year 80 million meals are predicted to have been handed out by the school district in a year. that's huge for families who need it. they have to give out more meals today because they're not able to put this on tomorrow and the next day they're not going to have -- they didn't have this on thanksgiving they're not going to have this during the weekend so they need to have families that have access to breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next three, four, five days so that was the extent of what happened here. 63 distribution centers. again, over a million meals, maybe closer to 2 million. when it was all said and done, families so thankful to be able to put thanksgiving dinner on the table this year, thanks in large part to the people of the lausd. i spoke to the superintendent. he said as long as there's a need, they'll continue to put this on, sustained by local food

with me now, steve patterson and morgan chesky. steve, i want to start with you in albuquerque. know how health professionals are trying to get a handle on this. >> they simply can't sustain this. and i mean that quite seriously. they can't sustain another stream in breaking the daily case count, hospitalization rate and death toll over a sustained amount of time. i don't mean long-term, i mean yesterday they can't sustain it. hospitals are reporting, most of them, most of the major hospital carriers in the state say moe of their hospitals are at 100% icu capacity. they've had overflow setups and can move around patients to different systems. a lot of the systems are working together. it's not sustainable. you look at the community spread j the positivity rate is through the roof. again, health care workers are in a situation where they're dealing with a dire set of circumstances. this is a more curl state. so they have a much more limited set of options. for instance, in a lot of surges we've seen in the pandemic, they've been able to outsource patients to places like texas and

unimaginable, untenable and out of control steve patterson is outside a hospital in royal oak, michigan, where leaders say exponential increases in cases has created a health crisis. steve? >> reporter: michigan is cycling the bottom of the bowl this state has set seven of the highest daily case counts it's had this week alone. hospitalizations have jumped up 259% in the last five weeks. in the next two weeks, that number is expected to double detroit public schools has just shut down in-person learning the governor says today in things don't improve rapidly, that all options are on the table. meanwhile, front line health care workers are doing all they can to battle against this behind me is beaumont health system, the largest health system in this state they've treated more covid patients than anybody else they are focusing on keeping people off intubation, keeping people out of the icu, using new treatment techniques to do that. it's a very large halt system. they're okay now but they're extremely worried about what the next few weeks and even days looks like at this point i spoke to

joining me is steve patterson live for us in pasadena, california. thank you for joining us on this. how bad are things there on the ground in l.a.? what prompted the county to make such a drastic decision so quickly? >> reporter: those two things are intertwined but to put it plainly things are bad. the virus as different piece in the spring and the summer we saw a lot of surge in urban and suburban areas but now it's all corners out state. hospitalizations jumped some 80% in the last 2 weeks. here in l.a. county the threshold for that new order was a 5-day daily average case count of 4, 500 case. we are at 4,700 cases for 5 days and way over where we should be. the prediction the numbers out right now we may have been hiting sometime in mid-december. but as bad as it is on the street, as bad as it is for the general public it is much worse in the covid wards, the hospital wings really across this state. we were seeing last week 200 hospitalizations per day in l.a. county. that number is now more like 300 and could quadruple into next week and thing

what about the lodges there and elsewhere, and the apreski draftkings steve patterson is in veil >> reporter: no lifts, to skiing, no nothing this said is locked in a desperate battle with a surge of cases overwhelming the health system, meaning we are in a full reset here in new mexico meaning the ski industry here unlike several other places across the country operating in a limited fashion, the ski industry here at least for now is in a complete shutdown. which means local workers that are seasonal who want a call to come back to work aren't going to get that call it means the tourism industry for the state of new mexico is in great jeopardy because of how much money it takes in for winter tourism last year it cook in 263 million in ski tourism alone when the season was cut short in the spring they were estimated to lose about 70 million dollars. we spoke with the executive director of ski new mexico to ask him about what this means particularly when we are focused in on this holiday season and the revenue loss they could be facing >> to say how much it is going to impact us would be depe

steve patterson in detroit. this is joe biden speaking with voters. he has made an election day trip to pennsylvania. he is live on the ground. in a minute we'll have a split screen shot. trump is visiting campaign strappestrap staffers in virginia. he may talk. we're going to live in this moment live, but talk and joe biden making his final pitch to voters in all-important pennsylvania. >> yeah. it's no surprise that on the day that he might assent to the highest office in the country, an office he's sought most of his adult life, that he comes home to scranton. and no surprise he's started here at a carpenter's union hall. it's been the right working class voters, many of them union members, that she's visited time and again over the years through his years as a senator and now looks for them to vote for him to help him win pennsylvania. drew was inside. he was inside for 40 minutes with you. tell me what he had to say? >> it was a privilege to have him here. he said that the unions are the backbones of america and he is going to rebuild america wit