The strongest week since back to april. However, you have to put that in context. Two weeks ago was a lousy week in fact, two weeks ago the dow lost just over 1800 points, down by 1833 points last week the dow was up by 1821 points so that was a giveback for the dow kind of starting things over if you look at the other major averages, they got back much more ground than they had lost the previous week. Last week the s p was up 329 points after being down 195 the week before and the nasdaq was up by 983 points last week after losing 636 points the week before but again these gains this morning are significant ones they are adding to what we saw last week. Also, take a look at whats happening in the treasury market youll see that right now the treasury, the tenyear, is yielding 0. 812 so its stabilized after bouncing around quite a bit during the election and the election counting last week stabilized at 0. 812 andrew thanks, becky our top story this morning, president elect biden wasting no time getting to work, charting his transition after delivering a message of unity in his victory speech on saturday night. Meantime, President Trump continuing to vow a legal fight over the election results. And we get over to kayla tau shi with more on all of it kayla . Reporter well, andrew, in that unifying address on saturday evening, his first as president elect, joe biden thanked the black voters who saved his candidacy. He pledged to work for those who didnt vote for him. And he said that he would set to work immediately to address the coronavirus pandemic well, just this morning, the biden harris transition officially announced the members of that Coronavirus Task force it will be chaired by two professors as well as dr. Vivek murthy the Surgeon General of the Obama Presidency who was ousted 90 days in President Trumps term Agency Review teams will begin assessing their work as soon as possible and aides say rebuilding agencies like jus it is state and epa will be high on the list and implored the General Services administration to declare a clear winner in the administration so the transition can access millions of dollars in federal funding to aid in that effort. On the subject of orders reversing trumps executive actions, the statement says, while no decisions have been made about executive actions and no memo about the topic sent to the president elect, he has the same levers as all of his predecessors to address the crises facing the American People meanwhile, President Trump is set to go on pardoning and firing spree in his final weeks in office. Already we have seen several agency heads or deputy heads fired as a result of this. Those include Nuclear Scientist lisa gordon haggerty, Neil Chatterjee and bonnie glik was set to take over the usaid when her the head of that agency his term expired on election night. Theres a wave of firings. We expect also a potential firings for the directors of the fbi, the cia and secretary of defense and nbc news says that defense secretary mark esper already prepared his own Resignation Letter andrew kayla, in terms of executive orders that youve been reporting on and expecting, i think theres an expectation about reentering the World Health Organization, the paris climate accord, things like that but what are you imagining could be within the first couple of weeks on the executive order front . Well, you mentioned the top two, andrew. Those are sort of the low hanging fruit, reentering the paris climate accords, reentering the World Health Organization and restoring some of the funding there and also there is some discussion about potentially reinstating the daca program in a protracted legal battle with the administration and ending any restrictions on incoming travel from those muslim majority countries of course the covid pandemic complicates the travel picture with so many lockdowns happening in so many countries and restrictions from that are unrelated to those orders still in place from earlier this year. Andrew and then kayla, the other question i was going to ask about cabinet members and others you may be hearing as potentials how you think the president elect is thinking about that, especially given what may be a what likely will be a split senate but maybe not and how that might change the calculus about some of these people well, the calculus does change because the makeup of the senate is not entirely clear at this day because on january 5th youre going to have a runoff for the two senate seats in georgia. And so there could be a very razorthin margin for the Republican Party based on how that runoff goes. You know, there is an expectation that Mitch Mcconnell and joe biden based on their decades working together in the senate that they do have this sort of longtime collegial relationship from their time working as colleagues. And that there could be a potential horse trading relationship that goes on whereby perhaps biden would give mcconnell in one hypothetical example that was provided to me by an official that i spoke to, perhaps biden could offer Something Like a majority republican seats on the securities and Exchange Commission in exchange for the approval of the treasury secretary. So thats an example that was provided of a type of barter that could be struck in order to get some of these really important individuals approved as early as possible even before perhaps we know the full makeup of the senate. Kayla, read these tea leaves for me, over the weekend there was a report that gary ginsler a former member of the obama administration, ran the commodities Trading Commission was going to be on that Transition Team advising president elect biden about some of these positions going forward. He was also a former banker at goldman sachs. What does that say well, i remember covering ginsler during the obama years during particularly the collapse of mf global he was extremely the critical of actions taken on wall street that sacrificed the money and deposits and accounts of people who were clients of these firms. That being said, theres been a lot of time thats passed in the last decade, and we havent seen much of him in the public eye and havent seen many Public Comments from him, so how his views may have changed in the last decade are not entirely clear. I actually reached out to him over the weekend and he did not respond about exactly how this transition is going to come together but the fact that you do have someone who is on one hand sympathetic but on the other hand extremely critical of wall street, it could go either way, andrew but i think people are taking note of even just the personnel appointment there that it will be something thats closely looked at. Kayla, President Trump hasnt conceded how do you think this transition will take place comparatively speaking to what we have seen in the past well, i think, becky, at some point it becomes inevitable that the transition officially would happen now, the General Services administration would be required to be the agency to declare the clear winner, and that would usher in essentially access for the Transition Team to meet with their outgoing counterparts to try to hatch a more fullyformed transition plan into access that federal funding i mentioned earlier. Now, without a formal concession, that the formal concession is what essentially would unlock that earlier on but at some point once these state calls become official, i believe it would become inevitable that gsa would have to make that call, although despite all the hand wringing among trump advisers over the weekend im still told as of last night there was no official plan for President Trump to make a concession right and some of these states dont actually confirm their results until december, right . Thats right. Specially in some of these states where we could have recounts you have North Carolina, which has a deadline to count votes until november 13th. And based on how slim the margin there is, unclear what could happen in North Carolina then you have several weeks for a recount in georgia so, and wisconsin. Even though as of last week, the Trump Campaign had not officially requested a recount in wisconsin so, yeah, it could be weeks before we get some of those official results but well keep doing the math and seeing where the math leads us and then finally, cay larks before we let you go, when you go back to 2000, and think about that transition period, how short was it in terms of when bush was able to begin my understanding was they all began their transitions actually pretty quickly and there was a lot of back and forth. Yeah. At that point, andrew, there was a lot of back and forth. But it was a very different political environment at that time i mean, i think that the margin in florida was so thin and there was an agreement on both sides that they wanted that Legal Process in place and that that was the right thing to do. And so there was sort of an agreement between both campaigns that that was the direction that would provide the clearest result there is clearly not that this time around with the two campaigns obviously having very different views about what happened, what transpired during the election and how many votes do truly separate these candidates in some of these critical states. Kayla, thank you for helping us through this this this morning. Appreciate it. Talk to you very soon. Becky . When we come back, more than 700,000 new covid cases were reported in the United States over the last week dr. Scott gottlieb joins us next on the surge and how the Biden Administration could approach the pandemic. And later, new Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will join us on the rapid spread of coronavirus in his state talk about measures he might reenstate. Squawk box will be right back. You can go your own way its time you make the rules. So join the 2 Million People who have switched to xfinity mobile. You can choose from the latest phones or bring your own device and choose the amount of data thats right for you to save even more. And youll get 5g at no extra cost. All on the most reliable network. So choose a data option thats right for you. Get 5g included and save up to 400 dollars a year on the network rated 1 in customer satisfaction. Its your wireless. Your rules. Only with xfinity mobile. Breaking news this morning out of president elects joe bidens Transition Team officially announcing key members of its covid19 Advisory Board tasked with dealing with the pandemic an setting up for a rollout of the vaccine leading the board is dr. David kessler and dr. Vivek murthy coronavirus cases in the United States are soaring fivestraight days with more than 100,000 cases a day for more of all this lets bring in dr. Scott gottlieb and serves on the boards of fierz and alumina. Thank you for being here good morning. Lets start just talking about how many cases we have right now, how this is spreading and where. Well, look, its really spreading everywhere were seeing acceleration in the number of cases across the United States. Werelikely going to be over 100,000 cases in perpetuity right now and deaths start to rise were seeing that already. And hospitalizations go up i think this week well hit a Record Number of hospitalizations in the country 55, 56,000 right now will probably eclipse the totals of 60,000 hospitalizations and 11,000 people in the icus. Those are big numbers. The challenge is that its spreading really across the entire country its concentrated in the midwest and up midwest, the great leaee region what youre liking seeing epidemic across the entire country and starting to see the states take more aggressive steps. Utah announced a statewide mask man dit and suspending certain High School Sports my home state of connecticut announced limited mitigation steps closing restaurants at 9 30 and going suspend certain High School Sports youll see more states step forward with targeted mitigation to slow the rate of spread. In fact, you have an op ed in the wall street journal today that says the Biden Administration should look to the states to find ways to fight this is that a suggestion that some of these measures being taken should be enforced across the country or do you think this is best practices well, i think theyre best practices and can sort of guide a National Plan. If you want to implement more federal action, look to the states that had success. So weve had stateled efforts and we have seen states do very effective things connecticut and massachusetts, two states i helped advise rolled out enormous amount of testing on most days massachusetts one or two in testing in the nation. P maryland put in strike teams in Nursing Homes that worked closely with lower income neighborhoods where people didnt have access to all the opportunities of testing and getting good care. So they focussed on those neighborhoods and got resources into them and testing into those neighborhoods. So, if you look at what the states have done, theres been some successful models for how to slow the spread, how to address some of the hardship imposed by covid i think if you were looking to formulate a National Plan you should look to what states have done successfully. Scott, i will tell you, its a little surprising this far into the pandemic that even some states that have taken aggressive actions still dont have great testing plans on friday, i was trying to get a test for my son because of an exposure at his school the pediatrician wouldnt test him because hes asymptomatic. Youre in a position where you have to go to an urgent care and stand in line with a lot of people who are symptomatic if you want to get a test like this which seems more dangerous to begin with shocking to me that its that complicated this far on. Well, this is the challenge theres a lot of tests available but theyre not well coordinated. Some states have good testing plans in place where they allocate the tests to different needs and different locations out of different locations other states arent so well coordinated. And theres really no National Plan with respect to how tests get allocated to states and get used within the states so there is het gentlemen nayty as you go from state to state the kinds of tests available in the states so it sort of youre short on tests but theres really a lot in the marketplace thats the unfortunate thing in certain respects a lot of antigen tests its hard to access in a lot of states because its hard to find the places that will take the sample were going to be speaking to the governor of new jersey a little later this morning and he made noise that later today is expected to announce potentially some rollbacks of some of the things hes opened up to this point, not entirely sure what that is. You dontthink that lockdowns are necessary or are the things that well be relying on from here what should we be relying on more heavily well, its not that lockdowns, stayathome orders wouldnt help reduce the spread more quickly and we see europe now reaching for those i dont think the support is here to do that among the people so i dont think youre going to see the Political Class implement them but you can avoid a broad stayathome orders, broad business closures if you take targeted steps so i think we should have mask mandates at a state level and should be enforced in places where you have rampant spread and take targeted steps to close certain activities and close certain settings where we know spread is occurring. Congregate settings indoors, restaurants and bars and large gatherings, celebrations should be put on hold while we get through this this will be the most difficult period of the pandemic we will get through it there will be more opportunity on the other side of this as we get into 2021 to have therapeutics and potentially vaccine more widely available to mitigate this in 2021. The hardest months are really the next two or three and we need to take targeted steps to slow the spread. You see Health Care Systems starting to get press right now. The reason to do the mitigation is slow the spread enough so the Healthcare System can keep up with the infection rising burden on the Healthcare System that should be worrisome across the country right now. Dr. Gotlieb, how critical is it for the Trump Administration to work with the president elect during this transition period and could you see you talked last week, for example, Vice President pence reinstating the Covid Task Force or being more active could you see him break with the president in terms of trying to work with the next Administration Early given the crisis that were in yeah. I dont think it would be a break with the president i would think that the president would support the Vice President getting more act