Mountain and pacific, thats 202 7488001. We welcome your comments by text. Thats 202 7488003. Nd on twitter we are cspanwj your Facebook Comments are welcome, journal cspan. Org facebook. Com cspan. Members of congress, as we know, saying that the house will be back until may 4. Our capitol hill producer theted yesterday about white house plans, a 10 00 a. M. Conversation with the members of the house. At 11 00 a. M. , president hosting a phone call with members of the senate. Cnbc posting yesterday about the president s briefing and his indication that the u. S. Has passed the pico coronavirus outbreak. Peak of coronavirus outbreak. Host the report says that President Trump says the u. S. Has passed the peak of the infected asich has we mentioned more than 632,000 people in america. We will update those numbers for you momentarily. Heres what the president said yesterday in his briefing. [video clip] American Society is engaged and mobilized in a war against a invisible enemy. We must remain vigilant. It is clear our aggressive strategy is working and strongly working, i might add. New cases are declining throughout the new york metropolitan area. Washington, d. C. , baltimore, philadelphia, st. Louis, showing great signs of progress and new cases in houston and new orleans are the climbing. The battle but data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak of new cases. Hopefully that will continue and we will continue to make great progress. These incursion developments have put us in a strong position to finalize guidelines to states on reopening the country, which we will be announcing, talking about that tomorrow. We will be having a News Conference tomorrow. Sometime during the afternoon we will be announcing guidelines and we will be talking about and its very exciting. It has been a horrible time to see such death and destruction. Especially when you come out of what was the greatest economy in the history of the world. Never been an economy like what we have produced but i think we will produce it again and produce it again very fast. Host just update, worldwide numbers on the pandemic from Johns Hopkins university, 100 and 70,000 deaths in the world. Over 30,000ber, deaths nationwide. , noww york city approaching 11,000. Is the u. S. Ready to reopen . Thats a question for you this morning. Tony is first up in bradenton, florida. Caller absolutely not. We have tests of 1 or less. There are millions of americans untested and he wants to open the country. Are you kidding me . Whats going to happen to us as a country . Its going to multiply. That number, 30 1000 . This country will double or triple or worse, 10 times. Worse than 9 11, 10 times the 9 11. When it was a little bit more than 2000, this is not right. I think trump, he needs to go. We need to kick him out. Hes crazy. This report from nbc news in florida, a wealthy private community is testing every resident and worker for coronavirus antibodies and they say that everyone on fisher island, a private Luxury Community consistently ranked as one of the wealthiest zip codes in the u. S. Is being tested for coronavirus antibodies. New york, dominic, go ahead. No, it shouldnt be open. But i will tell you something else, new york never shut down. I left messages on cuomos phone, Chuck Schumer xfone. Why aint they closing the new york lottery . Everyone is playing their number. Plays . Africanamericans, spanish americans. You get a few irish and german guys, but the people that play the number, they refused to shut it down. Ago i talked to this old italian lady who plays her husbands number, he died last year. I havent seen her in two weeks. He saidthe guy and yeah, shes in the hospital. Cuomo never shut it down. The Convenience Store or eva data . Caller yeah, you go in there bodega . Caller yeah, six or seven guys are in there when you go in there. The guy behind the counter has a shield. I will tell you the truth, there are people who are gone because of that and i think the blood is on cuomos hands. But have a good day. All right. Bob, logan, utah. Good morning. The people before me said quite a bit. What i would like to say is that there are simple things that we can do that we are doing. When you go to the Grocery Store, i always put a mask on. All they have to do is have someone out there with a thermometer to see if i had a fever. Thats so simple. I have this brotherinlaw come back from italy. There was a test. They tested him with a thermometer. Host did they test them when they arrived in the u. S. Or when he was departing . The four onlled cspan how they test. They said that he would be tested thoroughly. They got off the plane, went over, rented a car and drove from new york to utah. They didnt have the virus. They were tested in italy and that was it. Just a thermometer on the head. It must have something, a little thing like that could be something. I would like to have people call their stores, do something. We arent quite ready to jump back into this. Weve got to get the economy back to work, i know that. Business leaders waiting and yesterday, the headline from wall street journal, they tell them that they told President Trump the testing is inadequate and that his Administration Needs to increase dramatically testing before the confident enough for be confident enough to return to work i will host is the u. S. Ready to reopen . Hello to pat in dallas, texas. Caller yes, good morning. Yeah, i think that i the end of the month, probably so. All of my family, they are working. My daughter and her husband have a commercial electrical business. They are working. An electrician. Hes working. My other grandson works in i. T. Hes working. My granddaughter works for whole foods. Im leaving people out, but everybodys working and when i go to the Grocery Store, im a senior citizen, i wear my mask and everybody else does. I come home, i put up my groceries and i wore she warsh my hands. I dont think we are totally ready to open up like restaurants and bars and all that, but at the end of the month i think we are ready to start working again. Thats my opinion. And thank you for letting me speak. You bet. Thanks for calling in. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the cdc and fema have created a plan to reopen america. One of the authors on the piece is with us. Good morning, thank you for being with us. Happy to be here. That report they write about three areas. Low, medium, and high areas of mitigation. What does that mean in terms of implementing reopening in the guest so, they talk about these categories of mitigation, places where the virus never spread significantly. In those locations the document says you can we open sooner. Moderate mitigation is called for in the former hotspots that are sort of now transitioning to better control. And then significant mitigation, meaning measures that still have , ise pretty strong recommended in current or emerging hotspots. The overall document describes the various guidance that should be undertaken for each one of these communities. But for different settings. For schools, for workplaces, for restaurants and bars. Its general guidance. Every locality and jurisdiction will have to decide for itself whether it has met those conditions and whether they should implement. Again, it is always up to the locality. Host the plan promulgated by the center for Disease Control and conduct and prevention. And you have a link for that in your article. Does this mean that cdc will be the lead agency in implementing the plans . Or are these guidelines for other agencies and, obviously, state governments to implement . Well, i think we might be jumping the gun a little bit, this is the Public Health response of a master plan as far as i could determine. There are eight parts in the overall plan. And a cdc response and Public Health response is only two parts of it. So, whether the ultimate deciders in the white house decide to go forward with this will be up to them. Is that this is what the Public Health agencies were tasked with coming up with, what they produced and what they set up and it has been looked at by the Coronavirus Task force members but ultimately what gets decided is we dont know. Plan does the cdc stipulate how much testing has to occur in order for an area to be an area of low mitigation . To reopen more quickly . What is the guidance on testing . The guidance on testing as part of the plan. You really need to scale up testing. They talk about phases. This is for a phase the reopening. The first phase is to prepare the nation to reopen with a Communication Campaign and Community Readiness area that is supposed to take place from now until may 1. And then from now until may 15 you really have to ramp up manufacturing of test gets and personal protective equipment and increased emergency funding for what we call contact tracing. New casesacking down of people who are infected, finding out who they were, who their contacts were, who could have potentially been exposed, isolating the infected people and quarantining those who may get infected. Its a very time intensive, laborintensive process. We wrote about that last week. There is no National Strategy for that. Some states have already begun to do it on their own, like massachusetts. The third phase would be gradual reopening. Ramping up testing is key to just about everything. And you know its not anywhere close. Host Angela Merkel this week said they meet theyre planning to start real putting parts of German Society next week. Has the cdc or the u. S. Garnered any ideas or Lessons Learned from the ways that countries korea, oury, south reopening phases of their society to reopen and our plan, in the cdc plan . You know, i hope they would, but it has never been publicly articulated, so we dont know. I would hope that our smartest Public Health anchors would be looking elsewhere, but this plan doesnt really mention that. It doesnt give any dates for reopening but it specifies that it shouldnt happen before may 1 and it also said that anytime you do any kind of phased itsach of reopening, going to raise significant risk of resurgence of the virus. So, they say you have to meet for conditions before any reopening can occur. They go through them and they are all kind of common sense things, right . Incident of infection being low. A good system of surveillance, meaning tracking the increase of the disease. You have to have a Public Health system that can rapidly surge people to react to any new increasing cases and you have to have enough hospital beds and staffing to scale up in case you have another surge in cases. Sun, you can read her report and more in the Washington Post, at washingtonpost. Com. Thank you. Questions for you, is the u. S. Ready to reopen . 202 7488000 four eastern and central time zones. , mountain and pacific. You can tweet us cspanwj. This 1 host lets hear from robert in syracuse, new york. Good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . O pure family is doing good in saying safe and staying safe. Thank you very much for that. Caller the economy in the virus, right . Im a Business Owner upstate. I see people going to the Grocery Store. Half of them are covering their face properly. The other half are not. You have to wear something on your face. You have to act as if you could be a carrier of the virus, ok . Half the people protecting themselves, the other half are. This man called about the numbers and hes a far right wing idiot. If its on anybody, its on the president and the white house. I want to tell you this about the economy and why we should be open. First of all, we could be using the virus to boost the economy. Small Business Owners that dont have a lot of walk through the door population and traffic, yeah, they can start to open, like the lady down south with her family of electric company. Companies that dont meet a lot of people daily with a regular job, they should be washing their hands regular and reopening. Restaurantsgs like and the traffic in the shopping malls, they should not be open because obviously there are a dont people that still want to protect themselves. The other thing i want to bring up is this stimulus package, ok . We know now, my feeling is that the Trump Administration and mnuchin, they are screwing up all these paychecks out to the small Business Owners. Its all messed up. People are getting declined. Why does he want to push the economy so fast . The democrats tried to say that half 1ot have just trillion in your own pocket to do with what you want without any transparency. They tried to fight for transparency. The stimulus package and they gave up. They let trump have his way. He has always money that we have no idea what hes going to do it. Seems to me that they dont want to pay out the other money they have already approved to give to the small Business Owners, ok . Last thing i want to say, this is very important. Why are we bailing out these huge profit leaking companies . Hotels,se ships, the these Companies Like the universities all have cfos and investment planners. When times are good they are making huge profits on wall street. And then all of a sudden the times are bad and we have to bail them out . These other people that crashed the markets and made the profits and the rest of the middle class that cant protect their 401 k get hurt. When the markets rise back up like after 2008 and the financial crisis, they are the first ones to ride the way back up and make more profits. We have to learn by mistake. Ok, robert, new york. Also jerry in new york. Real quick one. Very simple. Want to reopen the economy . Withan track these people their iphones and the red hats. Come out of the rally, wait a few weeks. See what happens, no one gets infected, open up everything. On twitter, zach about the Small BusinessLending Program tweets the last update from the Small Business administration. Hear from sheila, next. Go ahead. Guest am i on . Host you are on. Go ahead, sheila. Caller i dont think were ready to open. Last saturday, im an elderly person. My neighbor, they came and got him. Hes in the next apartment here. They came and got him at 5 30 on saturday morning. And the ambulance took him. Close rightre so here, i think i might have it, too. I heard on the news this morning that trump wants the Senior Citizens to die. Int sheila, have you been contact with your doctor or a medical professional about your condition . Caller yeah, i got an appointment on may 5 to see my doctor. Previously,ointment but they canceled it. The what did they say in meantime for you to do . Did they indicate that you might be a candidate for testing, anything like that . Caller yeah, but im afraid. Ive never been so scared my whole life. Company. Insurance i got a 24hour nurse line. Host what have they said . They suggested you get tested . Caller yeah. But i dont drive, of course. In carrollton, georgia caller i cant even get anybody to take me to the store. I went there last tuesday to the Grocery Store. None of the employees in their had masks. Host whereabouts is carrollton, georgia . Are right on the alabama border, about 50 miles from south of betterk, i hope you get and i hope you get medical treatment. South dakota. Rom Smithfield Foods in south dakota is the largest coronavirus hotspot in the u. S. Helped asvirus team the 180 new, 80 of covid19 cases are employees of the Meat ProcessingCompany Update on thatis plant in sioux falls. [video clip] 518 employees have tested positive. 126 close contacts of those folks have tested positive as well. The number hospitalized has but we have seen a handful of people hospitalized from that particular population. We do not have any confirmed deaths, yet, of anybody in the smithfield population. We will report and keep those numbers updated as we go along. Know that thewe cdc is planning on visiting and from what we understand it is tomorrow that they will visit the plant. What is their mission in terms of visiting . What are they going to be doing . Asked the cdc to come in and help provide Technical Assistance to the team that includes the state health of siouxt and the city falls and smithfield. They have brought in a team of experiences have from all different kinds of outbreak scenarios, including places that deal with animal health. So, they will start tomorrow morning with a two or of the facility and will look at the operation. They call it from trunk to truck. From the time that they bring in animals to the time that a product is leaving the facility. They will look at every single process. Look at the workspace. Look at the way people can be protected and the ways smithfield has put what they are working on right now. They will come out with recommendations for what needs to happen so that can be a safe workplace moving forward and we can ensure that employees can come back to work and be safe and do the critical jobs that they do. We are optimistic, its a collaborative effort. We think its going to be very, very good to get that facility back up and running area running. Host south dakota, one of the states without a statewide stayathome order. The governor of the state was asked why there wasnt an order at a News Conference yesterday. [video clip] be fore will we need to a state shutdown, for you to make that decision . We need to look at the other states that have done that and what