These long lines of cars are outside a clinic austin in auste some people are here for their second or third time having been turned away before. This is in the capital of texas, one of the largest wealthiest most populated states in the country where not only is the case count rising, so is the number of people being hospitalized every day. Well talk to a doctor in houston where hospitals are operating near or at capacity. This is not from more testing. There are more infected people out in the community. In texas, its about 15 triple what it was in may. In los angeles, the Positivity Rate has doubled in the last month and this new surge has prompted state and local officials to take action. Cities in florida are closing beaches for the Independence Day weekend requiring people to wear masks. Governor of kansas enacted a statewide mask order and the governor of arizona reimposed restrictions closing bars and gyms and nightclubs and parks. New jersey seen the hospitalization rate plummet and positive numbers drop into the low single digits, even that state is slowing down plans to reopen and new york is considering doing the same. But all of this is proceeding state by state, sometimes locality by locality or one public official at a time. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell today. We must have no stigma, none about Wearing Masks when we leave our homes and come near other people. Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves, it is about protecting everyone we encounter. So there is that and it does mark a change and the Vice President this weekend who rarely lets the word mask fall from his lips preferring to say face covering, did it, he said the m word. If your local official in consultation with the state are directing you to wear a mask, we encourage everyone to wear a mask in the affected areas and where you cant maintain social distancing, wearing a mask is just a good idea. And it will, we know, from experience, will slow the spread. We know from experience. This is being toted by some as a sign of progress what he just said. Just think about it, how incredible that is. The man who allegedly heads the Coronavirus Task force grudgingly and haltingly encouraging people now to wear masks. If their local Officials Say they should, that seems like progress . After all these number of people have died, after all weve known and how long this has been going on, thats progress. After rarely wearing a mask in public for weeks and backing the president who doesnt wear a mask and lives like the Vice President in a biological bunker and everyone around them subject to temperature taking and testing and mask wearing now hes pretending to be responsible and suggests wearing a mask. Why dont you put on your own mask, mr. Vice president and keep it on . The only reason he doesnt. Hes scared about the president. This is the guy running the Coronavirus Task force allegedly, allegedly running what hes calling the whole of government effort against the disease. What whole of federal government effort . Oh, yeah, he did wear a mask at sunday services at a mega church in dallas which might count for something if it hadnt been at a mega church in dallas with a 100person choir many of whom appear in the upper age ranges not Wearing Masks, singing their lungs out spraying aerosol into the enclosed indoor space and people singing around them. This is where we are. Going to a manifestly unsafe event and wearing a mask some of the time is progress for the guy allegedly leading the federal effort against the virus. Perhaps by those same low standards, his words were an improvement at fridays first in two months task force briefing. We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives. Clearly someone wrote that statement, yes, its written to make headlines and yet, some states did do that but not enough and notice hes speaking in the past tense. This is the same virus months ago. It didnt vanish like the president predicted and didnt diminish into local brush fires. It the same deadly virus. The federal government and a whole lot of governors decided to stop giving a damn about it and the Vice President today defended the president holding big rallies in tulsa and phoenix and when asked a second time he rambled on for more than three minutes before abruptly ending the briefing. We do not know when or if there will be another briefing on his schedule for the virus task force. As far as the president is concerned, the picture that is plain to see compared to other parts of the world simply does not exist. Before i play you what his press secretary said today, i want you to look at this graph because its really telling. European countries are the pink line there. Were the green. We dont want to be that green line. They trended up, the European Countries about a month before we did. Remember the store ies about italy, how terrible things were in italy . Were italy. They came back down because a strong coordinated national measure. They were forced to stay at home. It was hard, it was devastating economically but it worked like it worked in other places but not here. Because we didnt have strong coordinated National Measures and we didnt stick with it. South korea never had a big bump, same virus. They had their act together on a National Level and testing and tracing and took it seriously. That was back when cases were low enough to get a handle on it. The u. S. Is the green line which plateaued and is now rising sharply. That is what failure looks like and thats where we are. Here is how he speaks for the president characterized the outbreak and mask wearing. Were aware that there are embers that need to be put out, but these signs of decreasing fatality, increased and enhanced therapeutics weve identified, dexamethasone and remdesivir and one other they are working, remdesivir reduces hospital time by a third. These things make us uniquely equipped to handle the increase in cases that weve seen. The cdc guidelines are there recommended but not required and the president would encourage everyone to follow the orders of their local jurisdiction and cdc guidelines. Embers she calls them. Ill say it again. 31 states are seeing rising cases. Those arent embers. If thats an ember. I dont want to see what she calls an inferno because thats what this is. As we know now, the president is done with it. No matter what state and local officials are saying and doing. How many times do you hear the president and what she said urging people to wear masks if local Officials Say so . Alex aczar, his secretary of health and Human Services said quote the window is closing unquote when it comes to stopping this surge. He might have said the same four months ago when the window really was closing. But the president is too busy saying other things. When you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, thats a pretty good job weve done. Now aczar says the window is closing. He said nothing then. Cnn chief medical correspondent sanjay gupta and dean of the National School of tropical medicine at the bailor College Baylor college of medicine in houston. She thinks people engaged in Wishful Thinking and summer would come and everything would be fine like the president said would happen. Its stunning to me when you see the graph of where the European Union are and where we are and we are on the same trajectory on the same path and they got it right and we didnt. I mean, its just about leadership. No doubt. I mean, because you do see that we are all humans. This virus is the same in terms of how it behaves in humans around the world and those lines do tell a story. Tomorrow, anderson, will be six months since the World Health Organization first heard about this mistysterious pneumonia cluster. We had 10 Million People around the world who have become ineffected and 500,000 people who have died. A quarter of those numbers are here in the United States. The concern, obviously, anderson, as bad as those numbers are when you start to see what is happening in some of these states around the country and ive talked to officials on the ground today in these places, there is a real concern the numbers will increase. I think thats significant because this is like a it starts to Gain Momentum and then its no longer growing. The bigger concern, you mentioned italy is why was the fatality rate so high in italy near the beginning of the epidemic . Because of the incredible strain on the hospital system, right . There were people who couldnt get in to get care and some who died preventable deaths and some called stupid deaths, absolutely unnecessary and preventable. That the a real concern. Peter is here in houston. Hou houston is obviously on the cusp of Something Like that where people may not be able to get care. They could be saying my loved one is having shortness of breath, they need to go to the hospital and they may be told look, keep them at home as long as possible. Were not sure we have room now. Thats not the position we want to be in. Dr. Hotez, i know youre talking about operation cake and eat it. Can you explain what you mean by that . Well, what i mean is we are seeing this incredibly scary rise in the number of cases exponential growth in the large metropolitan areas of the southwestern part of the United States. So phoenix dramatic rise, austin, san antonio, dallas, houston and there seems to be no end in sight with those projections. So potentially in houston, we could go from 1,000 cases a day to 4,000 cases a day if the model is right and eventually no Health System could be able to accommodate this and we are not really seeing a lot of federal guidance. So in terms of how to respond and what we heard for instance from secretary aczar over the weekend is they are providing fema support and ppe and that sort of thing but in terms of a strategy, a road map for how to handle this, thats what im so far not hearing. Maybe its there behind the scenes but im not seeing evidence of it. So the states in some cases, even the counties are on their own across the southwestern United States, and how do you handle that very aggressive rise . So far most of the governors have in the been willing to do that full lockdown that was so successful in new york and in the northeast back in march and april so theyre trying to see if they can do this surgically, meaning, just close the bars or 50 restaurant and encourage use of masks or in some cases, mandate masks but stop short of that full lockdown and my point is whats the evidence that that will work . Have they been looking at epidemiologist models, working with the scientists . We see the impact of these surgical strikes, whether theyre going to have a reduction in the number of cases. And that i havent seen. So what theyre trying to do is trying to keep the economic opening going hoping that these surgical measures are might also work. Thats what i meant by have their cake and eat it. Its a noble cause but is there any evidence for it . Is there any sign that will actually work . Thats what i havent seen and were gambling with a lot of lives especially one of the unspoken parts of this story is im pretty convince that most of these cases or a lot of these cases and deaths that will follow over the next three weeks are happening in low income neighborhoods. So African American populations, hispanic, latino populations, native american populations and thats why i use that term humanitarian catastrophe because were not proetecting our vulnerable populations and the deaths that will lag and now were understanding better the permanent injury from this permanent lung injury, brain injuries. Sanjay, you know, again, i dont understand, early on administration referred to this as a war, as a mobilizing against, you know, an invisible enemy coming from overseas. If thats the case, i mean, in any war if we had the kind of National Leadership that weve had to defend from incoming invasion of any sort and the leaders said it would be up to the states to figure out what the best defense is on a state by state basis, that would be unacceptable. I dont understand why, you know, were sort of sitting around four months into this and sort of shocked, shocked that this hasnt gone away. Yeah, and anderson, it might be worse than that. Like even the not even the federal versus the states but just this idea that maybe this was sort of minimized. We buried our heads in the sand for awhile. Yes, absolutely. The entire month of february was lost. Entire month. I mean, when youre dealing with the contagious virus like this and you lose a month, were now getting an idea how wide spread this is and the reason were learning how wide spread this is at the end of june is because we werent testing for this. When we look back on this, there is a lot of failures, no question. Somebody asked me today name a success. I had to scratch my head and think about it. If there is one success in certain places people have risen up and done the right thing but for the most part its hard to name a success. When you look at the map you just showed, i think of that as the human body and peter was talking about surgical strikes. If that were the human body near memorial day you can say there is focal decide in various places. Maybe we can attack the localized disease. No longer. There isnt anywhere on that map im not worried about, even the places in the beige and green because every place is vulnerable now. For all the staying at home and sacrifices people have made and done extraordinary things about the country, those efforts will be squandered by the places that arent doing it, just as we said they would back then and thats what people were worried about back then. Sanjay, thank you. Dr. Hotez, tank you. Florida where localities are closing beaches but the governor is often hard to pin down. Well speak with a top official in the Florida State government speaking against him. Reporting on what absent a pandemic would be a lead story and russia has been paying a bounty for killing american troops in afghanistan, which the president claims he wasnt briefed about. Well talk to a former president ial briefer whether that claim holds water. Youre first. First to respond. First to put others lives before your own. And in an emergency, you need a network that puts you first. That connects you to technology to each other and to other agencies. Built with and for first responders. Firstnet. The only officially authorized Wireless Network for first responders. Because putting you first is our job. The state of florida recorded more than 5,000 cases of coronavirus today. Cities and localities are announcing Holiday Beach closures and mask wearing. The latest in jacksonville where the National Republican convention because he wanted a no mask packed hall and Charlotte North Carolina wouldnt tolerate. When asked today whether he would over ride that jacksonville mandate a spokesperson for ran desantis said the government has not given thought to that. Consumer services nicky freed. What do you think that jacksonville will redwier masqu indoors . Is it warranted . If its warranted there, why not the rest of the state . Well, youre exactly right, anderson. Thank you for having me on tonight. Florida hit 32,000 new cases since friday. And youre seeing a lot of our local governments step up and mandate the mask wearing and for awhile even the mayor from jacksonville said it wouldnt happen. He put that into place today. Who knows if its going to actually stay in place for the rnc. He could actually over ride it before hand. Thats why i called the statewide and local government cant over ride it as the rnc comes to jacksonville but certainly, with these upticks in cases and not just upticks in cases but the skyrocketing Positivity Rate, im not surprised we here in the state of florida where we are today and looking for ron desesantis be engaged and take his head out of the stand and realize we have a Health Care Crisis that needs leadership at this time that we havent been seeing from him. Why do you think hes not doing something statewide . Would it make a difference if the president urged everyone to wear masks which the white house is saying the president believes people should listen to local officials . Thats exactly the case. Here in florida we need permission from President Trump before we do anything. That includes closing down or state. I called upon the governor to close down the state three weeks prior to him doing that. He only did it once. The white house gave him the nod. Same thing with opening of our state. You know, we had a very methodical plan of opening the state with data driven points when you are supposed to open it up and he abtropened it with ze enforcement. When you have this arbitrary opening, people thought we had Mission Accomplished. We went on a competitive news cycle and basically declared victory that we flattened the curve until which time the white house gives him the permission to do anything, youre not going to see leadership from Governor Desantis. So far by our tally, Governor Desantis has blamed the virus on young people partying and longtime care facilities, migrant workers, the media and increased testing like the president. Hes blaming everyone but himself. Himself. Yeah. I mean, why do you think he pushed to open so hard simply, obviously, there is, you know, very legitimate economic fears about that state and every state and peoples livelihoods. I