The white house with the nations top executives of the pharmaceutical industry as governments around the globe race to create a vaccine to combat the coronavirus. We are going to take you there when the president speaks. Should happen any moment. But as america sees its first deaths from the virus, six of them now, and Vice President mike pence says he expects many more cases in the u. S. , author of the coming plague Laurie Garrett is here. Shes been critical of the response of the World Health Organization. Shes here with her very latest threat assessment. And as americans opt to stay home versus eating out, the ceo of panera bread is here on the plans hes already making to fight a possible outbreak and reduced foot traffic at his chain of restaurants across the country. Plus, the world loses a titan of industry. General electrics jack welch put his indelible stamp on the American Economy with his legendary management skills. The executive who arguably was among the closest to jack at ge and nbc, bob wright, is here to share his memories with us. Less than an hour to the closing bell on this monday. Lets start the claman countdown. Liz all right. Yes, we are seeing gains of more than 500 points for the dow but the markets have pared most of the gains at least that we saw early this morning. We were up more than 800 points after Washington State officials confirmed in the last about 25 minutes that the number is now six. Six deaths due to the coronavirus. In a News Conference in seattle, Health Officials also updated the number of cases to 18. At one point, the dow was on track to close in the top four point gains in history with a session high of 843 points but we could still get there. Once again, we are up about 600 points at the moment. S p up 54. Nice move there. And of course, the component thats in all the major indices, apple stock, is spiking. This after dropping 12 over the past month. Apple is moving higher even as its widely viewed as one of the u. S. Companies most exposed to china, where the Health Crisis has interrupted factory production. Right now, apple is up nearly 6 . Its a hot buy. Oppenheimer raising its rating to outperform, citing the iphone makers resilience in managing supply chain and customer demand uncertainties because we know there are a lot of uncertainties now. I have a question. How many of you stocked up on Consumer Staples this weekend . Im guilty of that. I did that. Yeah. Look at these lines. This weekend, many of the stores and shares of them that you went to are now surging. Look at costco, up 7. 25 . Consumers snapping up groceries and cleaning products as they prepare to stay home versus eat out. Fears of the deadly coronavirus may trigger wider quarantines and event cancellations, propelling that name, costco, to, yes, the very peak of the s p 500. By the way, clorox is up 6 . Walmart, better by 5. 33 . Those names are not far behind on the s p 500. We should look at chinas online version of costco. Its benefiting bigtime. Shares of jd. Com surging to the top of the nasdaq after reporting Fourth Quarter revenues gained 27 year over year. Remember, this is a chinese company, as online ordering surged. That stock is gaining a very significant 12 . Lets flip it over to travel. We know the travel names have just gotten hammered and they continue to struggle here. Iag owns british airways. It says its canceling some flights to the u. S. So talking uk to jfk, due not of course to any coronavirus threat but reduced demand from the fears of travel. We can flip it to delta, as International Consumer group moves down 11 , delta is down just about half a percent. It has announced its delaying its summer Seasonal Service between new york city and venice, italy by a month from april 1st to now may 1st. This as ceos from american, united, southwest, spirit and jetblue are all set to meet with Vice President mike pence, that should be on wednesday. His office said he will be meeting with the heads of cruise lines as well on saturday in florida. Cruise lines continue to get hammered. We have norwegian down 7. 5 , carnival down 4. 75 , Royal Caribbean down 2. 33 . As the markets are rallying and it is definitely a rally, i want to draw your attention to some yin and yang calls when it comes to investing amid the coronavirus crisis. We have been waiting on one voice. World renowned economist noriel rabini to weigh in and he has. He says he expects Global Equities to tank by 30 to 40 this year. His advice to investors looking to hedge, put money right there in government bonds which he says are safer, even though that yield is falling once again by six basis points. The tenyear off the lows 1. 09 . He also says put it under the ma mattress in cash. On the flipside, an analyst is telling investors to jump back into the markets. His warning note implied investors to stop sitting on the fence after the abrupt selloff last week and tactically increase equity exposure. Look at those point losses last week, look at the one today, up 681 points in just the first three minutes. We tacked on another 86 points for the dow. Let me get to the floor show traders. All right. Tom, i will begin with you. With the yin or yang, which do you focus on and which investments are you paring with your stand . Friday when we were with you on the show, we said wall street is the only place when they hold a clearance sale, no one shows up. Today, they showed up. How we like to think about this, how we deal with dislocations historically is we take the amount of cash that we want to put to work and we put it in about five to ten different places. We are putting money to work in high quality stocks. Let me give you a couple examples. In one week, American Express fell 30 . You think 30 of people will use their card less than they did last year, next year . No. Thats extreme. What about pfizer . If we had a quarantine, pfizer makes this little pill that people could actually use if they are stuck at home for a long period of time. Pfizer fell 20 and its yielding over 4 . Its stocks like that. Big up days, green days, we sit and wait. This is a bottoming process. We will get them off slowly but surely. On red days we want to add high quality stocks that have come down more than the indices and on green days we sit and bide our time. In some sense you take advantage of the opportunity and are looking forward for red days for the long term. Liz luke, im interested in your because its all about the Central Banks now, although im not sure we should guide our investor audience not to totally pin their hopes on Central Banks, the fed at 2 30 p. M. Eastern on friday right before this show, jay powell had come out and said we will do what it takes. I think if we look at fed funds futures, we are probably still seeing 100 chance that we will see a rate cut in march, just a couple days from now, march 17th. Its for a half a point, though. Im just wondering, do you expect they will make an emergency meeting before then if this rally is shortlived but also, this is not a liquidity driven crunch at the moment. Its a feardriven issue. Yes, they may, by cutting rates, implore people to refitheir mortgages but wont necessarily make people go to a Football Game or some gathering. Yeah, its not liquidity, liz. I dont know, i mean, i guess it does a little, it buoys assets as the fed has done and they have been totally wrong about it for eight years. Thats not a political statement. Its about how the fed has been acting and they have been wrong. They pulled a lot of gains forward. Look at how big 50 basis points is in relation to what rates are now. I dont think thats going to help anyone say oh, 50 basis points, maybe i should go out to a concert with 10,000 people around me. Right . Im not sure what thats going to do. It might put a little more confidence in the markets, but i think we have to see how this thing plays out. I do think the way to go is stick with your plan, as hard as it is. Own dividendpaying stocks, own some volatility like we did, last couple days we have sold out of some of our volatility, bought some stocks and you know, liz, we have been saying it all last year. Vol is at an alltime low, own some hedges, own some volatility. Its still not a bad play. We dont know how this thing will play out. Liz listen to my next guest. Tom and luke, we appreciate it. 41 days ago, the World Health Organization hastily convened for an emergency meeting about this mystery virus that was quickly spreading in one chinese province. That afternoon, this is video from it, right before the claman countdown w. H. O. Chief announced the committee had decided it was only a china emergency, not a global one. We had a guest that day, i asked Prominent Health policy analyst and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett on the w. H. O. s refusal to call it a global crisis. Heres what she said. I dont understand why it is not. They already have evidence of it transmitting from one person to another to another, four generations down. They already have evidence that its widespread and they already have evidence that its spreading inside hospitals. Liz Laurie Garrett, author of the coming plague joins us once again. You were right. In hindsight, the doctor was wrong but perhaps he was just following that protocol of what is an emergency globally, pandemic, where you have mass spreading very quickly from one person to another. What do you think of how the World Health Organization handled that back then . I think they were very slow and reluctant to declare a Public Health emergency of international concern. I think that should have been declared much sooner. On the other hand, you can say what changed when they did make the declaration. The world bank is refusing to release pandemic relief funds to assist poor countries in preparing. They are sitting on this huge pile of money and they wont let go of it. We see donors have only put up about 100 million to help the World Health Organization fight this epidemic. Thats a rounding error in most corporations. And you know, you declare a giant emergency and you just dont see the kind of reaction from the world community, i think we are in a state of massive denial. You look at the markets and you say why did it tank last week, why is it up today . None of it makes any sense. The epidemic is just continuously steadily getting worse all over the world. Liz i would say, though, if im going to be in any country right now, i want to be in the United States. It feels like this administration is starting to really take this incredibly seriously. The president is meeting with pharma right now. Mike pence has been put in charge. He is updating, he was on this Network Today and he was very honest when he said i expect to see more cases and look, youve got Boris Johnson in the united kingdom, he said he expects to see a meaningful number of cases start to spike in the united kingdom. Peoples heads are not in the sand in some of these developed countries. What else should the u. S. Be doing . Well, the whole strategy that wlasd o was laid out last week in the second big White House Press conference, not that horrible first one, was a strategy that is akin to were in the castle, were pulling up the drawbridge and keeping the plague outside the moat. Liz thats a good thing, is it not . Except its already here. You are pulling up the drawbridge but its already gotten inside the castle. We already have cases in Community Transmission and we have at least 12 states today reporting cases. Heres the thing that people really need to focus on. We have tested as a percentage of our society, the fewest, the smallest percentage, of any industrialized country in the world. Liz who is doing the most, south korea . Right now, south korea and w. H. O. Is starting to roll out 100,000 people to be tested in iran. But we have only still tested, you know, less than 5,000 people. Liz you had another book you wrote that was a huge winner of many awards, betrayal of trust and you argued that globalization has in essence really messed things up, that globalization, no person is really safe from superbugs, epidemics or biowars because of that. Then you talk about how its affecting businesses and companies. We are looking at a rally right now for the stock market. Again, last week, the fear was very palpable. Today, not so much. But we have ruptured supply lines, we have all kinds of problems with travel, 40 billion wiped out on the impact of sars in 2003. Will it be around that for the coronavirus . Whats your best guess . Oh, its more than that already just for china. Liz globally you think it will be . I have seen estimates as high as more than a trillion. I think it will be massive. Because one of the things, its very hard to focus on in the moment but you can see it going out on the Event Horizon is that supply chains are being disrupted in ways that are going to be permanent. Companies are already saying gee whiz, this is our second time or third time going through a mess like this in china, lets move that production to mexico or lets move it to vietnam. Liz thats what President Trump had wanted in the first place, back during the trade war. One last question. A lot of people are rushing to costco and other places. I personally hit four stores just looking for some hand sanitizer, couldnt find it. Should that worry people . Or can they just use clorox wipes . You are an expert here when it comes to this kind of stuff. I say no to masks. Im speaking to general public, not health providers. No, dont wear masks. No, dont use the hand sanitizers. Wash your hands with soap and water and hot water. Learn not to touch your face. Its a really hard thing to learn. Stop grabbing at your eyes and unconsciously touching your face because whatever is on your hand is going to go to your face and be transmitted and infect you. Liz Laurie Garrett, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Liz author of the coming plague. When we come back, we remember csuite titan jack welch, one of the men who knew the business legend best. Former nbc chairman bob wright is here. The claman countdown coming right back. Pay for what you need. What do you think . I dont see it. Only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Its a masterstroke of heartache and redemption. The lexus nx. Modern utility for modern obstacles. Lease the 2020 nx 300 for 359 a month for 36 months. Experience amazing at your lexus dealer. Lease the 2020 nx 300 for 359 a month for 36 months. [ fastpaced drumming ] some people say thats ridiculous. I dress how i feel. Yesterday i felt bold with boundless energy. This morning i woke up calm and unbreakable. Tomorrow . Who knows. Age is just an illusion. How you show up for the world, thats whats real. Whats your idea . I put it out there with a godaddy website. Make the world you want. Liz breaking news, folks. We are now up 713 points on a very significant rally day for the Dow Jones Industrials, back above 26,000. We are at 26,110, on heavy volume. Volume is 25 above the onemonth average so this is theres a lot of oomph. People are getting their shoulder behind this rally at the moment. We should talk about the Business World today. Mourning the loss of the legendary jack welch, who transformed General Electric in 20 years at the helm from 1981 to 2001. We bring in former nbc ceo and president bob wright, who took over at nbc the year jack welch started as ceo of ge and the year ge took control of nbc. But bob, im so glad you are joining us. You were head of ge finance and it goes years back that you had met jack. Yeah. Way before that, i met him if 1973 and i was hired by his organization, in other words, he was ceo of a business that was going gangbusters in massachusetts, looked to be one of the strongest businesses ge had had. I came in as a lawyer and he turned me into a businessman afterward. This guy was something special. He was the most competitive person that i have ever met and ever worked with. Liz i bet. You witnessed an epic meeting at one point. I remember reading in your book between ted turner and jack welch, you were right there, and it was dealing with trying to strike a deal on cable and talk about what happened. Ted turner, of course, ted certainly an icon among leaders, too, but began barking like a dog. What did you take away from how jack welch handled that . We were trying to buy turner. Turner, we were in a hotel, Ritzcarlton Hotel in atlanta, in a suite, just the three of us to have this discussion. So jack was said okay, i can deal with, you know, you can come with us. He said i got to be on the board. Jack said i dont know about that, you know. He said but you certainly can be a major executive and everything. He said well, no, i have to be on the board and jack failed to do this, that or the other thing and so jack was starting to get like he was starting to get tough and the other guy was getting tough and im sitting there saying this is going to kill my deal here, this isnt going to work. So all of a sudden, turner says you know, im a brilliant executive but i know im a different person, i know im unusual. Jack said youre very unusual. Youre too unusual to be a member of my board. Liz what is the number one thing you learned from jack welch . Well, he grew up poor in massachusetts and he grew up without any family. I mean, you know, the family had no money and he worked summers and everything. He was always very smart but he was extremely, extremely good at sports. He loved to have sports around him and he played all sports in high school. I remember all this because i alw