Social distancing guidelines earlier than it did. This comes as the New York Times reports that medical experts warned the Trump Administration about the growing threat of the coronavirus as early as january. Joining me now is cnns White House Correspondent john harwood and ron brownstein, Senior Editor at the atlantic. Thank you for joining us, especially than holiday weekend, appreciate it. John, you first. President trump is looking ahead to his decision on when to reopen the economy and how soon to do it. You know, hes called it the biggest decision of his presidency. He doesnt actually have control of how this is going to go down. Thats right. And, you know, he has said hes got economic advisers to listen to and Health Advisers and hell listen to his own gut. But im not sure how much choice he actually has, for a couple of overlapping reasons. First of all, it is one thing to blow off the warnings of Public Health officials when the danger is spreading beneath the surface, but is not visible to the American People. It is an entirely different thing after 20,000 people have died, this has been the dominant news story for six weeks and people are frightened. And with all the Public Health officials saying it is not time to relax those guidelines, from Anthony Fauci on down. Secondly, as long as the Public Health officials feel that way, the publics going to be alarmed. We showed 60 of the people in the cnn poll last week said they would not feel comfortable removing resuming their normal routines if they lift the guidelines at the end of april. And then, third, most of the Economic Activity in the United States takes place in these large american metropolitan areas that are governed and populated by democrats. And so the odds of trying to open up the economy, the odds of that blowing up in your face are pretty large. What i could see him doing is identifying a few places that are the least impacted and that have some testing and Contact Tracing regimes in place, and thats possible a month from now or several weeks from now that they will, and say that were beginning to open up. And sort of label it as the beginning of a thaw. But in terms of a wide ranging opening up of the economy, that does not seem possible right now. Ron, in order to get people back to work, you need data. That comes from testing, which is still a massive problem, whether he wants to admit it or not. How can the white house assess whether to reopen without widespread testing and antibody tests . Right. It would it would be the book end to how we got into this situation in the first place. The reason we had to use a kind of blunder bust Nuclear Level response of shutting down the economy and the society is because we didnt have enough testing to pursue a containment strategy of widespread testing and Contact Tracing of people who had the disease. And you would be in the same position coming out of this in trying to reopen the economy, if you cant test people on a broad basis. To underscore what john said, i dont think the president has the ability to reopen the economy. He does have the ability to cause a lot of confusion and sew a lot of division. If the president does on may 1st is talking about reopening the economy in any kind of broad way, it would put a lot of pressure on those republican governors, many of the republican governors, not all, but many of them, to follow along and we would be back in the situation where we were in the end of march and the very beginning of april, where you had republican governors and a number of these red states trying to reopen the economy, the blue mayors and county officials resisting that and enormous conflict between them to just quantify one thing john said, i work with the brookings metropolitan policy a couple of days ago, the 50 counties with most cases account for one third of all the economic output in the country and one third of the jobs. 60 million in all. The thought you could reopen the economy while those places are still buckling under the disease in any meaningful way is fanceful. You look at the millions of people who live in new york, l. A. County, you look at chicago and pritzker in chicago, cuomo here and then l. A. Gavin newsom. Gavin newsom, i mean, come on, yeah, that accounts for the biggest part of our economy. Thats not going to really happen unless but you could end up with a patch work again. Like we had at the but thats not going to help. Thats not going to to help. It is not going to help. It is going to put us back in the same confused curve we were in march. States pursuing different strategies and within states, enormous gaps between what the biggest metro areas were doing and the rest of the state were doing to the enormous frustration of the mayors who thought they were being undercut by the lack of guidelines in the communities right directly adjacent to them. John, this is something the president retweeted, someone who questioned faucis comments writing fire fauci, firefauci, okay, fine, the president added, sorry, fake news, all on tape, i banned china long before people spoke up. Thank you. It wasnt a ban. There were restrictions and there were a lot of people coming in. But, anyway, he hes amplifying the call to fire a man who most Americans Trust on this. What hes tweeting about banning china is really not accurate as well. So, what is going on here . Well, look, the president and his defenders have been painted themselves into a corner where theyre trying to deny things that are obvious. The as you said, the ban the president put on air travel from china was not a complete ban. 40,000 people flew in from china after that happened. And as the New York Times documented this morning, something we already knew because we watched it unfold in real time, he was very late in dealing with this crisis and his administration has been very disorganized in dealing with this crisis. We watched in real time as the president kept saying, well, yeah, we got it under control, and stock market may be going down, but it is a big buying opportunity. All of those assertions by the president have been blown up. Anthony fauci has been vindicated. He was on television this morning saying, yeah, i guess if we had started social distancing earlier there would be fewer deaths. Obviously thats the case. There is no doubt about that. The only notable thing is that fauci was willing to say it. The challenge is the Trump Administration has gotten us into a position right now where there are very few good options and thats why the decision to reopen the economy is so difficult for him. All right, gentlemen, thank you, i appreciate it. I want to get to dr. Harvey feinberg, a chair of the Standing Committee on emerging Infectious Diseases and advised the white house on the coronavirus pandemic. Thank you for joining us, dr. Feinberg. Appreciate it and thank you for being here on this holiday weekend. Youve been behind a lot of research that has been guiding the white house on the coronavirus, like how to how it can spread through breathing and how it wont go away in warmer weather. What are you looking into now . Well, don, at this point were not actively looking at requests from the white house. But our committee is beginning to organize to look at medium and longterm issues. For me the most important question facing the nation today is exactly the question you have been discussing with your guests. How and when do we reopen the economy . And the key point here for me is we have to stop arguing about arbitrary dates, and start discussing the conditions that are necessary to safely reopen the economy. And there are three. Number one, we have to know where this virus stands in our communities. This is beyond diagnosis of individuals. It is surveillance in the community to detect new cases. Number two, we have to stand up the capacity in every community that is looking to reopen to be able to identify cases, isolate the patients, trace the contacts, and separate and quarantine those who are exposed. And number three, we have to get the new cases down to a sufficient level that we can act on that containment strategy. Thats not just leaving off hospitalizations and deaths. Thats monitoring new cases to where we can control and condition taken additional cases. Then well be in a position to start discussing how to reopen the economy. I could not agree with you more. I think that those dates are shiny objects to get the media and the American People to look over there instead of looking at exactly what the administration is doing and the failings of the administration. They know that they cant really put a date on when the economy can open up. So look over here, get the media talking about that, get the American People wondering if they can go back on that date or not, and in the meantime they are, you know, doing what they are doing over there, and the American People is not looking and the media are not looking at that. Thank you for saying it. I think youre accurate on that. Let me ask you this question. I want to get to the truth about testing here, okay. Thats the important part here. Does this country have anywhere near the testing that is needed to safely reopen the country and the economy . Today, the honest answer is no. But there are many, many tests coming up online and some of these are going to prove to be very useful and over the coming days to weeks, don, we will see a much wider availability of testing, particularly the Antibody Testing that is going to be so useful in the surveillance of our communities. And by the way, just because you cant today reopen a business doesnt mean there is nothing for businesses to do. Every Business Today should be asking itself what can we do to enable our employees and customers to be safer . How do we operate in a way that manages to keep people apart, that prevents large groups from being in the same place at the same time . Maybe we do have to start having masks, maybe we do have to take everyones temperature, maybe we do have to act to keep people at a distance that would be safer. If we can do both sides, the virus side and the economy side, im sure we can come through this safely as efficiently as possible but only with the time that the conditions allow us to do it. Dr. Fineberg, thank you. Our time is short because we have breaking news. We appreciate it, though, thank you so much. And here is the breaking news we have tonight. Dangerous and deadly weather including tornadoes striking parts of the south. At least six deaths are reported. Lets check in with cnn meteorologist tom seder. Good evening to you. Give us the latest on the deadly storms ripping through the south right now. It has been a crazy day, don. No one wants to see a Severe Weather outbreak, especially an outbreak of tornadoes. Easter sunday so we lost tom seder. If we get him back up, we will get back to him, but, again, these deadly tornadoes are ripping through really the south, striking parts of the south. So there we go, natasha chen joins us now, our meteorologist as well to give us an update. You can see it there on the south, from alabama to georgia as well. Also coming through louisiana. Lets go to natasha chen. Reporter easter weekend normally a time of celebration and renewal was instead solemn as the United States reached a grim new record, more than 21,000 confirmed deaths related to the coronavirus. The most of any country in the world. Earlier today, the nations top disease expert acknowledged more could have been done. You could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and started mitigation earlier you could have saved lives. Obviously if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. Reporter President Trump continued to defend his administrations response, putting the onus on states to lead in fighting coronavirus. He tweeted sunday, governors, get your states Testing Programs and apparatus perfected, be ready, big things are happening. No excuses. The federal government is there to help. We are testing more than any country in the world, also gear up with face masks. But it is that very equipment and tests that local leaders have been pleading for. Were going to need a lot more testing. Really, really widespread testing. Were nowhere near that now. This is what our National Government should be focused on first and foremost. Reporter the question of testing came up last monday at a White House Press conference. Were the federal government. Were not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing. You should say congratulations, great job, instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the questions. Reporter tests are crucial in figuring out when we can all resume normal life. It is not going to be a light switch that we say, okay, it is now june, july, whatever, click, the light switch goes back on. It is going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak that you already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced. Reporter nevertheless, President Trump is weighing whether to reopen the country by may 1st. Im going to have to make a decision and i only hope to god that it is the right decision. But i would say without question it is the biggest decision ive ever had to make. Reporter as most of the nation remains at home, any light at the end of this tunnel may feel far away to the millions who celebrated passover and easter through a screen. Translator this is not a time for indifference. Because the whole world is suffering. And needs to be united and facing the pandemic. Reporter natasha chen, cnn, atlanta. So there is tom sater now. I gave natasha chen a new job there, saying she was a meteorologist. I thought she was going to talk to us about the weather coming through. Tom sater joins us to talk about the line of storms moving across the south. What do you know . Been a terrible day. No one wants to see a tornado outbreak on Easter Sunday or any day for that matter, especially with everything we have been going through, the lockdown situation and everyone staying at home. A lot of families are frightened. 95 million americans under the threat of tornadoes from areas of texas, louisiana, mississippi, arkansas, and sliding all the way across georgia during the darkness of the night. Let me show you the radar picture again. We have two waves going on here. See the pink, thats the latest in a tornado warning. Off to the left of the screen, thats the secondary batch. Notice the orange boxes, those are severe thunderstorm warnings. The secondary batch moving through Central Arkansas not too much tornadic activity, but Straight Line wind damage. But earlier today, after a tornado made its way through monroe, louisiana, moving from the western part of the city to the east, we had significant damage, over 250 homes damaged, injuries there. Blocking down and shutting down i20, arcadia area. Then we had a tornado. If you see the bottom of the screen there, we got 18,000 who live there, collins to the west, 2500. But it was the town of baskville that took a direct hit, not once, but twice. Extremely unusual to have two super cell thunderstorms picking up debris and tossing it everywhere. Thats where were getting reports from the Sheriffs Department of catastrophic damage and with that the fatalities. Now you see the rain moving out. In indiana. You get to dalton in georgia, thats another warning. We could have that new one north of birmingham. Significant Power Outages around birmingham and the suburbs to the north. In yellow, theyll continue into the midnight hour. The tornado watches in red now extend into north georgia and eastern tennessee, south and north carolina. This is going to continue to move through the darkness of night, terrible time, don, when everyone is at home. I cannot stress this enough. If you live in georgia, the carolinas, even northern florida, please make sure your cell phones are set to get alerts of emergency services. Emergency notifications must be on because you could be sleeping when we have this tornado activity continue into the wee hours. Tomorrow, it will stretch up across the eastern seaboard. We have a level three out of five. Today was a four out of five. Tom sater, thank you very much. Farms destroying millions of pounds of fresh food because they say they cant sell it. Ill speak with a farmer who is plowing tons of food back into the ground, even though thousands of people across the country are lining up at food banks. This piece is talking to me. Yeah . So what do you see . I see an unbelievable opportunity. I see bestinclass platforms and education. I see awardwinning service, and a trade desk full of experts, available to answer your toughest questions. And i see it with zero commissions on online trades. I like what youre seeing. Its beautiful, isnt it . Yeah. Td ameritrade now offers zero commissions on online trades. Allstate hcatastrophesing custofor 89 years. 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