Governments slow response to deal with and prepare for the worst Global Pandemic in probably 100 years. Dr. Fauchi said earlier this week the lag in testing was , i fact a failing. Do you take responsibility for that . No, i dont take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. You said that you dont take responsibility but you did disband the White House Pandemic Office and officials that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what responsibility do you take to that and the officials that work in that office said that the white house lost valuable time because that office was disbanded. What do you make of that . Well, i just think its a nasty question because what weve done is and tony had said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing and when you say me, i didnt do it. Point of fact he did do it. His white house did it. Trump announced a set of probably necessary measures to cut regulatory obstacles to get testing up to capacity but as of today, the u. S. Still only tested 18,000 people total. Thats quite a bit up, almost double from last night but we are still way, way, way behind almost every other comparable nation in that regard. In fact, look at this. Trumps own former fda head, this is a Trump Administration official was calling for the actions like the ones being taken today to be taken six weeks ago and not in some private back channel, on twitter where anyone can read it. The rest of the showcase in the rose garden today appeared to be a bizarre and cynical attempt to pump up the stock market. Trump came out 30 minutes before the markets closed and proceeded to introduce and hype up ceos from who is who in big americans brands, target, walmart, cvs that saw stock markets skyrocket and promised google has 1700 engineers working on a website to facilitate testing and that appears to be a lie. They dont. Theres a Pilot Project from an Alphabet Company that might test out. Speaker nancy pelosi emp fiea sau e said testing, testing. The package includes two weeks of sick leave and three months paid family and medical leave, which is probably not enough, definitely not enough but a good start. They are at least tangible deliverables. The problem is that all the important stuff or most of the important stuff trump was offering today is essentially vaporware. Advertised but not in stores yet. Thats the stuff that matters. Like we need more tests. More ventilators, more cape b d capabilities to help sick people. They dont care what will be available. The virus doesnt care about salesmenship or p. R. So the Public Health crisis, the very real one in the u. S. And across the world continues to unfold. Things are severe, extremely severe. In the u. S. There are over 21 00 cases and 49 deaths. Oh we only passed the 1,000 case mark three days ago. Italy is probably the closest estimate to the trajectory were on. Today was italys worst day so far. Italy had 2500 new cases just today, 250 new deaths today, more than 1200 people died and these numbers are unnerving because it looks like if we continue at our rate, the u. S. May be in the same place. Here in the u. S. , state and local officials continue to fill the leadership vacuum left by the white house. So far 17 states closed Public Schools so has washington d. C. And los angeles and the nations second Largest School system. Well talk about that later in the program. They are rolling out horrible te mobile testing. Seattle has been particularly hard hit. The Washington Post reports one study at seattle shows quote under the worstcase scenario the number of active infections will exceed the number of beds by a large margin in the next two weeks. Here is the thing. We still just dont really know how bad things are because of the lack of testing, what epidemiologist call surveillance of the virus, but the state of washington that knows it has a very severe outbreak on its hands is taking dramatic steps to stem the bread of the virus. The King County Court postponed jury trials for a month. The seattle Childrens Hospital halted all elective surgeries, today governor jay inslee ordered all schools closed until april 24th. Glove knovernor inslee joins me. I know youre under tremendous pressure and stress there. Give us a read on how things are in washington right now. Well, theyre obviously extremely challenging. Weve gone from about 160 cases four days ago to 568 today. So we see right now this trajectory is troubling and extremely rapid and the demands that we be aggressive and bold and robust in our efforts to reduce the transmission rate. So today i did close all of the schools, Public Schools and colleges in the state of washington. Weve also now extended our ban on gatherings of people of any size across the state of washington and we did that to get ahead of this wave. Weve concluded we needed to do this statewide rather than county by county because of this very, very Rapid Transmission rate. So the thing were most focused on right now is building our Surge Capacity in our medical system to build the beds and particularly the ventilators. Im particularly concerned about the ventilator stock and looking for an opportunity to manufacture them much more rapidly so they will be there when unfortunately, we think well have thousands of people in need in the next several weeks. So i would describe this as very challenging but its like my dad used to say, when youre going through hell, keep going and thats what were doing in the state of washington. You just talked about Surge Capacity. Can you talk to me now, the big fear for everyone right now, part of the reason its shutting entire countries down is that you have happen in one of our areas like seattle, what would happen in italy or wuhan, the medical system over run. Whats your capacity now in the icus . Do you have the personal protective equipment for health care personnel, the n95 mastks and ventilators and beds you need now . We have them now, just barely. The question is we want to make sure we have them in several weeks. Give you some sense of the scale of this. We have about ten, 11,000 beds in the state of washington at any one time but if this trajectory continues by early may, you know, we could need another 5,000 beds so you need a 50 Surge Capacity. Wow. Thats a fairly conservative estimate. So this is an enormous challenge. The good news is we have a good plan for this, but like any plans, we need to be flexible and we need to be really calling frankly for a lot of volunteers because not only do you need the beds, you obviously need the medical personnel, the physicians and the nurses. So one of the things were doing is looking to bring people out of retirement and bring people from other states so weve waived some of the licensing rules to get more of the practitioner and obviously, we need the equipment. Like ventilators, i think ventilators, if this continues unabaded will be the thing we have the most concern about. Thats why we as a state have gone out and looked at our ability to buy ventilators and not just rely upon the federal stockpile. I was a little concerned and weve had good cooperation from some of the agaencies and mike pence has been helpful to us. They waived rules to get our testing going faster. Theyve helped waive a few things for unemployment compensation. So some of these agencies are working well with us. I was a little concerned, i dont know if its accurate. We worked closely with, im concerned that we need a little more umph from the federal government to increase the ventilator capacity. Well be way too close to a critical situation if we dont acquire those quickly. Where are you on testing . You mentioned ramping up testing. You have a lab out front on this. Ive talked to a bunch of people over the past day that say in the epicenter of one of these outbreaks, in someways testing becomes just not a priority. People the priority is caring for the ill and you contract the virus if you contract the virus but thats what you got to do. Where are you on that scale . Well, weve been fortunate because we were ahead of most all of the states of building our own Testing Capacity in our state public lab. So in the early days, we did have adequate capacity to test the samples that were coming in in a timely fashion. Now we got set back a little bit because as you know, there was a glitch in the original kit sent from the federal government but we came up with our own system and we were in pretty good shape in that regard. Right now, we continue to be in fairly good shape because the turnaround time, i just checked on this this morning is from 28 to 24 to 48 hours. Were in pretty good shape. We want to continue to build that capacity both for diagnostic purposes and for demographic purposes to figure out where the hot spots are. But a lot of this is, you know, people have anxiety. They want to know whether they have the disease. We understand that. So yes, we should continue to build our capacity that is happening. We now are bringing in some labs and i talked to the Vice President the other day. He asked whether we could actually assume some of the federal responsibility for validating the new systems of testing that the private labs are bringing on and i think were going to be able to do that to help the federal government get that job done. We have enough excess capacity in our public lab to do that so i hope we can help out in that regard. So what i would say right now is my biggest concern is the medical Surge Capacity. Thats what were really focused on to not get in a situation where we dont have enough ventilators and people not being able to breathe. Thats what were focused on. You mentioned, obviously your state had one of the first indications of community transmission. There is dna analysis to suggest that the virus had been there for five weeks before it was discovered. Do you have internal modelling that lets you get a sense of the scope of what is happening independent of the confirmed cases which we know is not an accurate measurement of whats happening . Yeah. Yeah. We do have and were fortunate. Weve got some of the best gwinneg genetic doctors in the world and we have modelling that can take the known test and genetic situation to figure out where they are and do a projection of what you have Walking Around in the streets undiagnosed and were fairly confident unfortunately, its in the low thousands at the moment and if you do the projections on that, you know, we think this doubles every week and so if you assumed at the beginning of this week we had 1,000 or 2,000, that means by mid may, if you do the projections in a modelling, you maybe have 60,000 plus by mid may. And if you look at the mortality rates, youre talking about, you know, potentially 2,000 pa tall fatalities by mid may, and that doubles the following week. This is why we have to be so focused on building medical Surge Capacity in all its. You need the bed. You need the building. You need the personnel and equipment like venld ltilators. We assessed the capacity. The army corps of engineers can come out with dozens and dozens of beds. We may be calling upon the army to help us in that regard but even that will not be enough. Weve all got to focus on this nationally and one thing i would say, i would say any local leader, we got to put our shoulder on that starting tonight. All right. Governor jay inslee that was really informative and i thank you for taking time. You bet. Wash your hands. I will. I want to bring in congresswoman alicia, democrat from michigan and former cia middle east analyst and assistant acting assistant secretary of defense under president obama. So my understanding is here is my understanding of the play. A deal was struck between nancy pelosi and Steve Mnuchin now everyone is waiting to see in the gop caucus if the president tweets a thumbs up so they can vote for it . That is my understanding. Yeah. That were literally waiting to see sort of white smoke from the white house via tweet and then until and unless we see that tweet, were not going to have a vote from the republicans. They dont want to vote until they see how he thinks about it. To be clear, this has been negotiated with the Trump Administration. Nancy pelosi negotiated with treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin in the president s administration, is that right . Thats my understanding. I was in with the speaker yesterday when she had to be interrupted to take secretary mnuchins call. I know theyve been working this really hard. I hope were on the brink of a deal and i hope it works tonight. What do you think of the package . I mean, listen, i think, you know, this would be the second package that weve done in a week. The first one that we did 8. 3 billion was just to sort of get going on research for a potential cure but really for treatment. Which hopefully could come in a couple months and start pushing out some of the equipment that we know everyone needs. Today the bill that were looking at is really about just some relief for families, particularly workers who are furloughed or not being able to work. Making sure there is worker compensation. Making sure there is family leave and sick leave for people who dont have it. Just allowing people to do the basics that cdc is asking them to do and then well have to do a third package, honestly. Well do something my guess in the next ten days about the economic recovery but the package to me is something thats important because we want to feel that were moving out on something. People need we just heard the governor, you know, Washington State is leading on this and youve heard him, what he needs, that takes money. We want to push it out tonight. So the schedule is everyone is waiting around in the capital and if the president tweets approval, then you can waive the rules and move it quickly to the floor and vote for it but no one can leave until the president tweets that he likes it . Yeah. I mean, were waiting to be called to the floor. Its not the first time. It wont be the last time but that is what we are doing. You said Something Interesting because my next question is will you get another bite of the apple here . You said there will be a third package. I worry when i speak to members there is mismatch of peoples understanding of the scale where this might end up and the scale of where it might end up. How are you thinking about it . Who are you talking to to get your head around as a member of Congress Might period we might be entering into . Sure. So maybe it because im a former cia officer and pentagon official, i really believe in r early systematic prudent planning. Our governor in michigan took some very dramatic action. I thought that was extremely prudent to close all schools, declare an emergency very early before we had even a dozen cases in the state. And what she was trying to do is stem the flow and the spread of the disease so that were not in a situation that poor Washington State is in now. Im talking to her. Shes calling regular meetings with the delegation but informative for me today, i got on the phone with 75 leaders from across the district, fire chiefs, sheriffs, just everybody and we went through i talked about the appropriation that we did last week and whats coming down the pipe. But then also what were trying to get done today, more importantly heard what they need from us. It mirrors what you heard from the governor in Washington State. Testing, testing, testing. Particularly for Health Care Workers and First Responders, they want to know they will be able to be tested if they need a test. They also are public serve vanlvanl serve vanents and dont want to infect because because they cant get ahold of a test. Equipment, ventilators and in michigan, masks, gowns, basic stuff. So our governor is working really, really hard and asking us to advocate at the federal level. Then of obviously, we have a problem with child care. Schools are out. We have a problem with businesses. Weve been talking about how well get Small Business administration loans to folks who are seeing a repeat of 2008 and cant last more than a month in some cases without taking in some kind of money. So theres stages to this. And i think the most important thing ive heard to be honest is people are looking for real clarity in leadership. Again, from my time at the pentagon, just be clear, be consistent, take action, move. We want to see you moving and compassion. Have empathy for what people are going through on the ground. Thats what people are looking for is a firm clear hand. Final question and its a question on politics, which are not the most important thing here but everything you do is political. Youre in a swing district. Youre a freshman member of congress. My sense from talking to you is that this is not a tough vote for you. Like, this stuff is not tough for you in a political sense right now. You right . There might be votes that are tough. This is not one of them. No, getting assistance out to our states and local authorities, no. I mean, thats not a tough vote and i got to be honest with you, i am deeply invested in the success of this administration on this issue. Right . We all should be. Im not going to spend time criticizing donald trump. Do i love everything hes doing . No. Am i invested in him succeeding because thats how well get through this . Yes. Thank you very much. Thanks. Everyone wants to know where is americas trajectory with the coronavirus headed . How long will this last . Well talk to the experts where we are compared to the countries that have gone before us and where were going next. E gone bd where were going next noises noises its the easiest because its the cheesiest. Kraft. For the win win. You work hard for your money. Stretched days for it. Juggled life for it. Took charge for it. So care for it. Look after it. Invest with the expertise of j. P. Morgan, either with an advisor or online, through chase. After all, its yours. Chase. Make more of whats yours. [happy irthday music] dont get mad, put those years to work with e trade. If you have moderate to severe psoriasis, Little Things can become your big moment. Thats why theres otezla. Otezla is not a cream. Its a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. With otezla, 75 clearer skin is achievable. Dont use if youre allergic to otezla. It may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. Otezla is associated. With an increased risk of depression. 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We can only estimate based on what is happening in other countries further ahead of us. From john hopkins it looks like things wont pan out like singapore and japan. We can hope to end up looking like south korea but if you take a look at italy, that purple line there, it seems like were tracking close to their trajectory or other you aeurope countries. Today we got a preview of what of the leading experts in the country dr. Fauchi is anticipating. These kind of things generally run out in a few months, hopefully well make it several weeks, eight, nine, whatever weeks. I cant give you a number because it depends on how successful we are. So to be clear, eight, nine weeks, somewhere around there if thats an estimate with a huge range, hundreds of thousands of cases. Here with me now to talk about the best estimates of where we are, dr. Ian lipkin where he and his team have been working on an improved test for covid19 and Senior Writer on infectious diseases, a must follow during this period reporting on the coronavirus outbreak. Let me start with you, helen. Where is your sense in the folks youre talking to about where the u. S. Is on this trajectory compared, say, to other countries . You know, chris, its very, very hard to estimate that because theres been so little testing done here. The sense of how much spread there has been taking place in the United States is just not clear. Obviously, the numbers that exist are not the true numbers, but how deeply into the United States the virus has taken route and at what level it is transmitting is still unclear and its going to take awhile until more testing is done before we have a better sense of that. You know, weve heard from the president today and ive been hearing this increasingly from folks in the docks ators a hospitals testing isnt the priority. They want to get people they want to sort of get the folks that need care into their hospitals and icus. It seems like you really cant fight this without it, is that fair to say . I think thats fair to say and i agree with helen. I dont think we know where we are. There are many, many people either asymptomatic or have mild disease that dont come to the attention of the Health Care System and they are potential sources of infection for sometime to come. Testing is really critical in containment and the other type of testing that weve not done yet at all is testing for evidence of previous infection, which requires antibodies. Were trying to diagnose people right now who have active infections. But if we really want to know the mortality rate, we have to know the denominator and without anti body testing, we wont have that. Means all sorts of people who presumably over the last two weeks or longer than that in Washington State who had it, it was not that serious for them, they didnt get hospital ieszizd tested are fine but we dont know that all that happened because they havent been tested for antibodies. In addition, we have lots of other respiratory disease circulating. We have influenza and other vie v russ. We try to detect the presence of this virus but others because some of those have specific therapies and one of the conversations that the governor of washington was having about access to equipment, ventilators is very important because we have drugs that can be useful in treating influenza. Helen is the lag time between action and the fiveday period and terms of the drama of the curve and people have to take the speeds and greece announced it seems like there is less than being trns miing transmitted yo work earlier and earlier. I think people are moving in that direction. You have to be careful with that. Some of these lockdown measures cant be sustained forever and you have to time them appropriately. You want to take measures before the virus really gets out of control as it did in italy for instance. You really are hurting your economy. Youre hurting families who may lose wages and you may undermine participate in these actions if they feel like theyre doing it for nothing or cant sustain it. Good point. It also points to the problem thats coming up in china which is what happens you were in china and what they had to under take to bring control unthinkable in the u. S. Total surveillance, they are slowly opening back up. How do you think as epidemiologist do they contain it has that happens . Theyve done a good job and have demonstrated to us how you can bring this under control. I understand that its very difficult to lockdown an entire city. On the other hand, people there wear masks and gloves and take this very seriously and social distancing was something that the community adopted there and this is something that we need to move to, as well. And one of the points that helen was talking about in terms of anticipating where the virus how the virus spreads and so forth as you mentioned, the incubation period is five to seven days but that means that people may be asymptomatic and spreading the virus. So its very difficult to contain this. My expectation is when were down, were going to find that there are probably 50 to 100 times more people infected than we ever thought were and thats going to drive that mortality rate down. But given the number of people who are infected, there could still be a substantial burden. Today helen, the cdc times acquired cdc internal modelling projecting worstcase scenarios. What is your sense of how much modelling is being done and how wide the variation and how experts are expecting this to go is . Everybody who could model is modelling. Theres almost an epidemic of modelling. Of course, its very useful and appropriate to be doing that. I mean, models are models and they can only be as accurate as the information you put into them. So you may remember before or during the west african ebola crisis in 2014, there are models that came out early that turned out to be fortunately wildly inaccurate. You know, models are useful tool but theyre not always going to be correct and all the modelers will tell you that, as well. Dr. Aian lipkin and helen, thank you. Making time to massage Donald Trumps ego. What it means for Decision Making next. T means for Decision Making next. Proof. Proof i can fight moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. Proof i can fight psoriatic arthritis. With humira. Proof of less joint pain. And clearer skin in psa. 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Its a very bold move and this has always been a bold president. You bought us valuable time by taking that strong action, mr. President. The unprecedented action. Thank god he took that action. Once again, because of the unprecedented action. Strong action. It was bold. It was unprecedented action. Mr. President , from early on you took decisive action. You were brave, it was unprecedented but you protected the american public. Can you reassure there is not a shortage of ventilators and icu units. Thats why the president took bold and decisive action. No answer about the ventilators, just the president is bold. This could be spun away or drowned in sheer propaganda but the virus doesnt care how much mike pence praises Donald Trumps leadership and right now we dont know where the virus is. Well have more on that ahead. E is well have more on that ahead. A clear plan for retirement to help cover the essentials, as well as all the things you want to do. 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Failures and misstep by the federal government led us to a unit to where we are doing less testing than any other comparable nation. Joining me is dan diamond, very indepth reporting on the federal governments response. Trumps mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis. Dan, its a great piece and youve done great reporting about this. Take us back a few months ago. What were the early missteps how the white house and the president helped proactive or not proactive they were in going at this . Well, i think it depends how far back you want to go. The starting point for me, chris is in january. Secretary alex aczar, the Health Secretary did become alarmed about the spread of this virus in china. He tried to take that message to the president but the aids around president trump, some of them who dont like aczar, aczars own standing had fallen in the administration, some of them thought this was not going to be a president ial priority. So try to steer him away. By the time the secretary debriefed the president , which was mid january, it was around the same time that the first patients were being discovered in the United States, people who had returned from china, that could have been a moment for urgency, for administration to really put all of the resources that we now see the Trump Administration doing. In that moment in january, really for much of february, too, the urgency just wasnt there, which Public Health officials had said privately this is a shame. China bought the world time with its significant measures to lockdown its population. China made lots of mistakes, too. But by seeing the explosion of cases and knowing what was coming, the u. S. Had time to get ahead, time that was not used to its best advantage. You said this in an interview with terry, you said the president attached rosie scenarios fixated and conveyed to staff low numbers were better politics for 2020. What do you pamean by that . The president and his teamkn this virus could be devastating to his campaign. President trump has been able to run ahead of many problems because of the success of the economy. This threat, as weve seen in recent days, this Public Health threat is an economic threat. The president s team did not want to put out notes of panic, did not want to alarm the public perhaps unnecessarily so there was a lot of wishful thinking. A lot of hopeful talk and some efforts to try and pierce that bubble just didnt get through. Now its interesting to talk to some of those officials today, chris, because everyone swears they knew this was a problem. It was just someone else around the president who didnt want him to know but the president himself focused so much on the numbers and the case count. I was writing a story and he came out and did a press conference at the cdc where i felt like he scooped my story and said i dont know if i want these patients to come off a cruise ship because i like the numbers where they are. That message in public is what hes also reiterated in private. Meaning, there is a message from the top we dont want high numbers and high numbers are what you get if youre testing adequately and properly survei surveilling the disease and so the president has been sending a public and vie visprivate messa saying i dont want to know, y basically how many cases we have. The message changed between the prime Time Oval Office address and rose garden comments today. The feeling from the top this could have been a message of we need to find every single case in the country, we need to make sure every base is covered, the steps that have been taken recently could have been taken weeks ago but the belief was that the Border Control strategy, which the president attached to it lines up with some of his other thoughts on national security, that was seen as sufficient and working. Right. There wasnt much of an effort to go beyond. He said we closed the border, we closed the border. Obviously we didnt because there is cases from wuhan ending up in the u. S. It was not airtight. You get a sense when you listen to him announcing the european travel restrictions, thats all you need. Build a wall, shut it off but the virus got here anyway. Viruses dont respect walls that much. I think that Public Health officials and ive talked to enough would say the china moves were understandable. This was a mysterious virus. It may have slowed things down. The you aeurope moves are less obvious. Its clearly spreading in the United States. What is complicating is we didnt let our European Partners know. They were offended and upset and there are major corporations that would help us fight and test the virus. We need to partner and get supplies from europe in the weeks and months moving forward. So its a moment where there are obvious things that need to be done but some of those things are politically very difficult and until recently, the president and his team were hesitant to lean into them. Dan diamond has been doing great reporting, as always. Thank you for being with me tonight. Thank you. There is a real and genuine debate when to enact a city wide or statewide closure. Should everyone do it or is that a case by case basis . Well talk to experts about that next. Basis well talk to experts about that next now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. 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Com go your own way yoall this grass. All this mulch. All these projects to do. You need a tractor that can do it all right. You need the 1 selling subcompact tractor in the u. S. The versatile kubota bx series. Doprevagen is the number oneild mempharmacistrecommendeding . Memory support brand. You can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. Saturpain happens. Aleve it. Aleve is proven stronger and longer on pain than tylenol. When pain happens, aleve it. All day strong. We are now seeing widespread School Closures across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. As of right now a number of states, major cities have already either closed schools or will do so beginning next week. Those statewide closings are every school in the state. A lot of other School Districts remain open, including new york city where there is a large number of cases of the virus, and that has people asking why. Its partly because closing schools is a torturous decision for local officials. New york city has more than 100,000 students that are homeless. Those kids depend on the citys Free Lunch Program among other things and there are Health Care Workers and First Responders here in the city who send their kids to public school. Today the cdc issued some very belated guidelines on School Closures after basically everyone had made the decision. It still remains a very vex issue. Here to talk about whats the best policy, president of the American Federation of teachers. Doctor, let me start with you on the epidemiology side of this. What are the pro and con cases for closing schools . As you said this is a very divided issue even amongst ourselves. Ive talked to epidemiologists on either side of this. This one splits people. For me i tend to be on the side of lets close the schools because, we know kids are not dying from the disease, from the data at least that we have, but they are getting infected and they are infectious, and they can infect other kids who will take it home to their high risk grandparents or high risk parents in those high risk categories. Children are notorious super spreaders of germs of all sorts. Ive got three. Right . This is no different from that. I tend to lean in the corner of we need to close the schools. Make the argument on the other side. On the other side of closing the schools. Of keeping them open. Keeping them open. Unless you close them all at the same time, then were going to just be in a cycle of getting it, the other School Getting it two weeks later, the other school going to get it three weeks lalater, et cetera, it ha to be all or none. Where is your union on this . So we are in the middle of that agonizing debate amongst ourselves. Imagine youre torn. Were totally torn, so at the beginning of this last two weeks, we were like this is a last resort. This is a last resort. We got 2 million kids nationwide who are homeless. We have 31 million kids we feed every lunch, you know, 12 million we feed breakfast. All the work we do in terms of health care. Half the kids in the country already come in with trauma. All the things that bill de blasio and others saying about the impacts, particularly in terms of what happens with parents and staying home, that was why it is a last resort, but this is why we are now leaning towards where the good doctor is and where the 36 epidemiologists who sent bill de blasio a letter this week said because if you dont have the testing, you dont know who has the virus, and then you have kids and families that are kids going cross city, cross state, all this other stuff, and since you dont know where the vector is, you can be contaminating, contaminating, and so what weve tried to do weve worked in new mexico, were working with illinois, were working with michigan, is how do you create feeding centers . How do you create online . How do you create child care . Plan this, which is what new mexico is doing all this weekend, what michigan is doing all this weekend. So tell me about that. They want to try to squaur the circle here, which is we have kids who need school, who depend on school to get fed. Whose parents depend on us for watching their kids essentially, but we want to close the schools. So theres some middle space . Yes, for example, governor grisham in new mexico, grab and go lunches, trying to figure out with Presbyterian Hospital or Health Association how to do some feeding programs there, how to do some child care programs there. Denver Public Schools, k through 18 have a feeding program. The usda is going to pay for all these things. In l. A. , theyre figuring out Family Resource centers, 6 00 a. M. To 6 00 p. M. So whats going to happen in new york if god forbid theres a cluster that all of a sudden shows up in the bronx or shows up in brooklyn, and then people are going to immediately say we got to close the school tomorrow. And you havent had the plan. I see your point. What im saying is what youre seeing all across the country now, ohio, michigan, illinois, people are spending all weekend long, people spent thursday, friday, all weekend trying to plan, and then you have the cdc thats now said, okay, you have to close for eight weeks. Which go ahead. I was just going to say, you know, this is not a decision we take lightly to make these kinds of recommendations, right . This impacts people in every facet of life, especially the low income strata. Its agonizing. The other thing is you get to the point, theres two points here, one epidemiological and one a sort of social safety net. The epidemiological point, i remember talking to an epidemiologist a few weeks ago who made the point if you dont scale up testing you will result to blunter and blunter social distancing. What you actually want to do is see exactly where the virus is so you dont have to do things like shut everything down. Exactly. Thats where we are right now because we cant see it. You said the keyword, social distancing, and unless everyone social distances including children, it doesnt work. The other part of this is which is what we saw in south korea and in china. So the other part of this from a policy perspective, it looks like the president has tweeted his approval. If you were with us at the beginning of the show, a deal worked out between pelosi and mnuchin, waiting for the thumbs up tweet from the president. We just got the thumbs up tweet, which means that will pass. Paid family sick leave, emergency medical leave. Absolutely em pertive. Part of the issue here is all of these policies are detached. If ohio closes the schools, like good luck parents who have jobs. Like, unless were doing everything possible, were i know, but theres i mean, youre totally right, but what i want to give some props to nancy pelosi and rosa delaura and all of them because they have been listening to all of us in terms of how to get these policies kind of connected. In this process youre saying. In this process because if you look at their bill, we kept saying you have to increase snap, you have to deal with the public charge issues. You have to increase medicaid. We have to do all this stuff because if schools are closed, if parents have to stay home, they need that right now and the enhanced unemployment right now. I think we have a precedent for this too. To give an analogy, hurricane katrina, hurricane sandy, fema has the power to issue direct funds to people to cover rent, food, day care, et cetera. Thats doable now presumably if we have enough money put aside for that. I guess final question, you know, theres a workplace aspect to this. All of your focus has been on the children and families, which is good, but obviously youre a union leader, and you have workers, and those workers are on right and i total concurred. Last night. Who obviously theres real concerns there. That must be another part of this. Your teachers are going to get sick. Its not just our teachers. We are the second largest nurse union, so this whole notion, and look, if i sound angry, i am. Im not a scientist. I listen to the scientist. How the heck did we not have testing . How do we not have a stockpile of n 95 respirators . What happens to the ventilators, and so whats happening is everybody is scared. The fear has now joer taken the fak, b fact, but all of these processes need to be in place. Thank you both for making time. That is all for had this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Thanks, my friend, much appreciated. Thanks to you at home for joining us in this hour as well. In the year 1996, i was 23 years old, go ahead, do the math, yes, im that old. Im like dirt. But in 1996, i was 23 years old and honestly kind of a mess, but i did have a real mission in life. I was working as an aids activist, and i had been for the previous like six years or so, six or seven years or so, when youre 23 thats a pretty big chunk of your life