Preserving life. A virtual ceremony was held online so that those who survived the war might also survive this. Contrasting science as well in how the commander in chief chose to conduct himself in this moment as a selfdescribed wartime president. Today at fort mchenry in maryland reading prepared remarks he sounded like any other president on any other memorial day. As one nation we mourn alongside every Single Family that has lost loved ones, including the families of our great veterans. Together we will vanquish the virus and america will rise from this crisis to new and even greater heights. Well, that was at 5 past 12 00 in maryland. At 2 23 in twitter, the president called congressman and lam an american fraud. Over the weekend in tweets and retweets he mocked the looks of the weight of three prominent women, other remarks that dont bear repeating. He continued to push the baseless Conspiracy Theory about someone who worked for Joe Scarborough and he played golf, the same thing he attacked president obama for during the ebola outbreak. He clearly now sees the virus as a state for itself. The latest plan attesting continues to largely put the burden on individual states. Experts say voicing doubts, the executive director of the association of Public Health laboratories telling the New York Times when it comes to obtaining the supplies needed to do that testing, which has been a huge problem already as you know, said, quote, you cant leave it up to the states to do it for themselves. This is not the hunger games. Lets hope not. Then again, the president , as you know, has already weighed in quite clearly on the subject, setting the tone as far back as march 13th. Dr. Fauci said this week the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing. Do you take responsibility for that . And when can you guarantee that every single american who needs a test will be able to have a test . Whats the date of ha . 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 and were now in very, very strong shape. Keeping him honest back when he said that, it was hard to figure out whether he was merely ducking accountability in retrospect or also going forward. Today the answer seems clear. The president is leaving responsibility to the states while also tweeting the credit for any success belongs to him. Meantime, hes not telling the truth about conditions in those states. Tweeting yesterday, quote, cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the country. Well, in fact, sadly according to the data from Johns Hopkins university, new cases are going down in just ten states. The theyre rising in 18 and Holding Steady in 22. In other words, in 40 out of 50 states, Coronavirus Infections are not declining. Now, it would be good to report tonight that they are, but that sadly is not so. New deaths are declining slightly. The blue dotted line there is the fiveday moving average. However, because weekend numbers tend to be under report and had upward corrected later, this is a threeday weekend, its hard to draw any conclusions much less definitive ones as the president has. You wont hear this president or his administration reminding those states where cases are rising that under the cdc guidelines, and the guidelines that the president and the Coronavirus Task force once backed, that was just a couple weeks ago, they shouldnt be reopening. Hes doing the opposite, though. In fact, teeting this morning, quote, transition to greatness, get ready, it is already happening. Thats the language against what every Health Official says including ones on his own task force is creating the final holiday contrast. Side by side, two different americas this Holiday Weekend when it comes to the coronavirus. In one you see empty beaches, people keeping their distance wearing masks, being cautious. In the other, even in states where cases are not dropping, there are people packed together throwing caution and perhaps viral particles to the wind. And in the middle of all this the president has been threatening to move the august Republican Convention out of charlotte, north carolina, if the states governor does not in the president s words, quote, guarantee we will be allowed full attendance in the arena. Talking about thousands of people from all 50 states packed into the arena in the middle of a pandemic. For more now on the state of the country this memorial day, were joined by cnn chief political analyst gloria borger. And an epidemiologist and Infectious Disease specialist host of podcast simply epidemic. What do you think of doubling down on the sporesponsibility o testing on the states . Do you think this will turn into the hunger games scenario of states competing for resource ands supplies yet again . Anderson, i think the federal strategy is no strategy and abdication of responsibility to the states. Weve already seen a hunger games, lord of the flies kind of scenario previously involving ventilators and other personal protective equipment. And i think were going to see this continue. You know, i think there just needs to be more leadership and more role modelling from the federal level which were just not getting right now. Gloria, given all we saw and heard from the president this weekend, i wonder what message hes sending to the americans about the virus and where we stand in the fight against it, because it is this strange double speak. He talked about, you know, others playing both sides, whatever that meant. But he seems to be making both sides of the argument. On the one hand through his Coronavirus Task force, they put out these guidelines about how states should reopen, but then hes undercutting it immediately and continually, and that seems to be where his focus is now. Well, hes undercutting it, and then not paying attention to it, and then when he orders states who have reservations about churches opening to reopen saying im going to override you, which by the way he has no power to do, the message is things are normal. Everything is back to normal. Im out here playing golf. Im not wearing a mask. Never mind the warnings from dr. Hahn at the fda or dr. Birx that everybody has to be careful now, really careful about the way we reopen and the way we behave on this Holiday Weekend. The president s message was im in charge. Things are great. Things are back to normal. The economy is going to get popping pretty soon, so not to worry, we have it all under control. Which gives people, i think, a certain permission to say, well, if hes not wearing a mask, i dont have to wear a mask. If hes out there playing golf not wearing a mask, not worrying about the pandemic, well, okay, fine. Thats good enough by me. And that is a mixed message, anderson. Doctor, what about the testing sanders laid out in the report that testing 300,000 people a day focused on those likely to have the virus is sufficient for containment . Does that make sense to you . I remember bill gates being on our town hall a couple weeks ago talking about the 200,000 tests a day figure that the administration was using, and he essentially said thats a phony number because it takes days for many of those tests to get results. And by that point the person very possibly has interacted with any number of people and potentially spread the virus. So what is the point of that, that, that old test . That number is nowhere near enough. Its just a pretty quick math. If you say you want to test everybody who comes into the hospital, which is what were doing right now, call a ruleout when you come to the hospital to make sure you dont have covid, thats already about 100,000 tests a day. Then you talk about testing everybody in the nursing home, both the residents and the staff maybe twice a month, so every incubation period. So thats another 150,000 tests a day. And then you have people working in meatpacking plants, people who are frontline workers, doctors, nurses, emts, not to mention people who have symptoms and people who have been exposed. So those numbers are more like a million tests a day, anderson. A million tests a day, but i mean, is that a realistic number that one can actually do and get results in a timely manner . Well, i think with the event of what are called antigen tests, this is the third kind of te test thats come out for the proteins of the virus. This is a much quicker, simpler, cheaper test that does promise to help us scale this up. Its not as sensitive as the pcr test which were the first tests to come out, the test for the genetic material. But if youre talking about repeat testing people on a fairly frequent basis, you know, once a month, twieflsce a month depending on the setting, that probably is sufficient. But we need to be scaling up that capacity dramatically right now. Gloria, it does seem its an awful thing to think about, but it does seem like there is such a clear obvious political calculation by this white house, by this president on battling this virus. I mean, it seems like it is being seen through political terms. Obviously just his focus on churches reopening. I mean, you know, he has not had a track record throughout his life of being a big attender of churches and, you know, obviously everybody wants religious institutions to be able to open and function and people be able to express their faith and gather together. But its the idea that, you know, he is the person pushing this when its really not up to him. Its just one of the more obvious political kind of considerations hes making. Sure. Sure it is, anderson, throughout all of this weve seen the president who wants to take responsibility when its good for him, such as saying i think churches need to reopen. This is very important. He said churches are essential and he wants that to reopen. When it comes to taking responsibility for testing as we were just talking about, for getting enough swabs for testing, from the beginning of this, getting enough p. P. E. , et cetera, hes like, well, thats up to the states. Its up to the states. And so in terms of reopening, if the states do it well, hell take some credit for that. But the governors are the ones there left saying, wait a minute, it is as you used the phrase before, the hunger games. It is the hunger games because we have to compete against each other. And why didnt you use the defense production act from day one to help us . So we didnt have to compete . New york doesnt have to compete against oklahoma or what other state or so the governor of maryland didnt have to go to south korea to get what he wanted. So it is the president who says, wait a minute, your responsibility when it could fail, but my responsibility when hes giving the political message, which is im a cheerleader. Things are going to get better. Things are great. Here i am out on the golf course. I personally dont want to wear a mask. Its a personal decision, so, you know, thats up to you. So it is clearly political for this president who, by the way, was tweeting liberate states with democratic governors who were worried about reopening too quickly. If that isnt political, i dont know what is. Dr. Gander, when you see the states reopen, theres several states that have reopened that have not seen an uptick in cases which people look at and say, look, that state, there hasnt been. Obviously were looking at the numbers, cases rising, 18 states falling in ten, Holding Steady in 22 states. What do you say to people who say, look, the economic damage being done is worse than the medical issues . Well, i think one issue that has not been clearly communicated to the american public, anderson, is why testing is so important here. So its actually twofold. Its both for Public Health and for the economy. So from a Public Health perspective, we want to know who is infected right now, and we want to separate them. We want to isolate them and offer them treatment. We want to separate them from people who are not infected so we can break chains of transmission. So we dont have ongoing transmission. Secondly, if you think about it, do you want to go get your haircut or see your dentist when your dentist or your hairdresser might have covid . Where if we had more regular testing of everybody, something that the former chief economist of the world bank has proposed, the idea that i would see my dentist and i know hes been tested in the past two weeks, that would make me feel a lot more confident about going out in public. So testing is really key to protecting the Publics Health and the economy. Theres a picture from the ozarks were showing there. Gloria, dr. Gander, thank you so much. The next guest Silicon Valley executive writing extensively and influencially about the pandemic. His reading has been essential for me and many others. He can be seen on youtube and how tightly countries have locked themselves down, how well theyve done in slowing their outbreaks. Hes tomas. Great to see you. You describe a hammer and a dance. What happens if some states continue to observe strict guidelines or at least stricter compared to what other states are doing, which is the hammer, while the others start what you call the dance as we saw this weekend, a lot of dancing has begun . That only works if travelers going into the state that is doing all the right measures can be quarantined. So alaska, hawaii, for example, have been doing that, and enforcing it. Everybody that goes into these states are get into a twoweek quarantine. Many other states have rules like this, but theyre not enforcing it. A state like california that has been aggressive on the hammer and wants to dance, but is getting a lot of people from outside and theyre not being quarantined, then all of these efforts have been worthless. How do you see big picture whats happening right now in the United States . We are seeing one of the only places in the world where the highest level of sovereignty decided not to use its power. That hasnt happened in nearly every other country in the world. As a result as we were saying, the states are left to fend for themselves, but they dont have all the power so that other countries have. One of the key ones that other countries have is the one of closing their borders. Can a and so this is something there is precedence for. Some states dont care as much as others. I think the states that really care about should consider that, especially just quarantining all the travelers that are coming into their states. Is that even possible . I mean, for a state like new york or, you know, i dont know, for any state. Is it really possible to close their borders and quarantine anybody who comes in . It is possible. Snats ha some states have it easier than others. California, their neighbors have few cases. California is really easy. Hawaii and alaska, they might want to quarantine people coming from airports. Obviously for states like new york, its harder. But weve done this in europe. Germany, for example, czechoslovakia, all these countries are very interconnected. They have a lot of people coming back and forth in the states and they close the borders. Part of the reason for locking down was to give the Health Care System sort of time to space out the cases and not be overwhelmed and not collapse. Has that actually worked . So moving forward were seeing all these places reopening. If there is a huge a ground swell now of cases, what happens . Yeah, so, there are really two goals, right. One is to prevent them from happening in the future. I think were in a better position now because at least were alert. Were testing much more. There is a massive we can see that coming. We are in a better position in that regard. The problem we have is that going for that strategy, which is mitigation, might end up with what we call herd immunity. It means that we dont go for a lot of people being infected all the time, but over time they accumulate and accumulate and accumulate. By the time 65 of the population has been infected, you have in a country like u. S. A million to 2 Million People dead. So that is the issue that states like california, like hawaii, like idaho, like alaska want to avoid if we can crush the curve and really get the cases to a minimum until we have a vaccine or treatment, we can reopen the economy safely and without all the death and sickness burden. If there is i mean, if the vaccine takes longer than people think, herd immunity, how long would it take to get herd immunity and yeah. Yeah, no, i think the best country that has explored this is sweden. Sweden said, were going to be cautious, but were not going to close a lot of places and schools. They asked people to stay home. What they said in the beginning was there is no way to stop this. And by may, around 25 to 50 of our population will have had this anyway. It turns out they did a test of antibodies, the ones we were talking about before around the beginning of may. They were expecting 25, 50 of the people infected. They found 7 . So that means they are ten times they need to multiply by ten the number of infected to get to herd immunity. Its not going to be fast. Its going to take a long time. And during that time people are scared to go out. They dont want to consume and the economy is penalized instead of taking the hit early on aggressively and then once the cases are controlled, opening up much more with much more confidence. Obviously the death toll in sweden is more than any of the neighboring states around it. Youve already written about thats right. Seeding and spreading. Can you explain what you mean by that . Yeah. So, the two keys there, right, is you dont want first if youre doing a dance, youre controlling the cases in your state. First you dont want people to come into the state and seed new cases. After that you dont want them to spread into the state. So there are some rules that you can follow to do that. Like, for example, for travelers, if you quarantine them for two weeks, all of them, then suddenly your seeding is much lighter. And then the spreading, we now have good understanding of what works and what doesnt. For example, you were talking about churches. Its really not that minor. Its not that churches open or close. The issue with churches is a lot of the spread of the coronavirus is perfect for churches. It spreads really well in places that are contained. A lot of people are together for a long amount of time, singing, talking and touching, right . Thats why theres been so many outbreaks in churches. The solution should not be