U. S. Alone. The exact number as of this moment, 100,769. At this time, last week, the number of cases was just over 18,000. At least 1,573 deaths as of today. Last week, there were 241. Today, President Trump signed in executive order authorizing the secretary of defense and Homeland Security to summon service to active duty. And what else it could be doing, potentially, under biden administration. Vice President Biden will be responding to as many questions as possible over the course of this hour so lets get right to him. Mr. Vice president , welcome. Thanks for joining us tonight. Happy to be with you, anderson. Sorry for the occasion but happy to be with you. I want to ask first of all before we ghet et to viewer questions, how is your life and dr. Bidens wife life today . Well, like everyone else, our governor has a stay in place order. So were operating out of my home in wilmington, delaware. My day starts every morning when i have my medical team on the phone. We speak for anywhere from 20 minutes to to an hour. And they give me a brief like i have here laying in charts and everything. And how many deaths. How many how much has been done. How much have we been able to get done . Equipment we can be able to get to people. Et cetera. Then after that, anderson, i do a an equally long briefing with my economic team. A group of economists and folks who work with me in the white house. And we go over, in detail, what needs to be done, as well as what is actually being done. What the Congress Passed and what the Trump Administration has done, has not done, or is slow to do. Personally, i know your son beaus family lives very close to you. Oh, yeah. You cant see your grandkids, can you . Well, no, but i i every single day, i speak to all five of my grandkids. Either on the phone or i text with them. And and theyre all over but two of them, beaus children, live a mile as the crow flies from our home. And they come walking through the woods. There is a path through the woods and through a neighborhood. And we sit on our back porch and they sit out on the lawn with two chairs there and we talk about everything that is going on in their day. And talk about being home from school. And whos driving whom crazy. And so on and so forth. But at least i get to see them. And occasionally, jill and i live not far not far at all. We border a school. A large school that and we occasionally walk over and walk around the track by ourselves over there. Bring the dog along with us. But otherwise, im just doing the things like were doing with you now. And trying to keep abreast and trying to urge and how can i say it, cajole the president into doing the things that shouldve been done or could be done faster. Also, anderson, speaking regularly with the governors of the country. I spoke with the governor of Washington State today. The governor of michigan last night. The governor of pennsylvania. Et cetera. And i just so i know whats on republicans governors as well to see what there whats happening on the ground for them. I spoke with the governor of louisiana not long ago. I missed a call with him today. But my point is that trying to keep focused on whats happening on the ground. So lets get through some questions. Particularly about the the administrations response thus far. President trump has said repeatedly he wants the country or at least parts of the country opened up, as he said, as early as easter, which is just more than two weeks away. Cnn town hall last night, dr. Anthony fauci told dr. Sanjay gupta and i he thought that was aspirational. The Vice President used the same word today to describe it, aspirational. I am wondering what you think of the idea of opening up by easter, packing churches, and how long do you expect people will have to actually selfisolate . Well, look. Based on the data im getting from medical experts, they indicate to me that its more likely to be sometime after the 31st of may, into june, before wed be in that position. But nobody knows for certain. What we do know is that its a false choice to make saying that you either open the economy or everything goes to hell. Or, in fact, you take care of the medical side. You cannot make this economy grow until you deal with the virus. And we and that curve. We have an exponential curve of it going up. Increasing every two days. Doubling, lately, every two days. Or every three days. And so we have to deal theyre theyre one in the same. You cant deal with the economic crisis until you deal with the healthcare crisis. In the meantime, congress has acted and they moved with a 2 trillion package on top of the one they already passed. And its about managing. Getting that out to the people. Getting that out in the communities. Getting that distributed. Just just a few minutes ago, President Trump said that he is going to decide monday or tuesday on social distancing guidelines. He already indicated new york obviously would remain as it is. Bill gates said to sanjay and i last night that there should be basically a that a lockdown has to be nationwide for it to actually be effective. Its got to be across the country. For six to ten weeks. Do you think there should be a nationwide lockdown, even in states that havent seen a huge number of cases right so far . The answer is i watched you last night. And i thought bill gates was really insightful and i thought bill gates knew what he was talking about. I wish everyone could have seen that program. Why would we not err on the side of making sure we are not going to have a repeat . What happens if, in fact, we dont lock down across the country . We leave other places open we find out because we havent been able to test everybody that there is an upsurge and there is a new wave of coronavirus people acquiring coronavirus. And were back in the same in the same deal. Look. The thats why the Congress Went out and passed this legislation. We can make sure that people are not held totally harmless but held harmless as much as they can be. We should be getting money out to Small Businesses so, in fast, th they dont go under. And they can keep people on the payroll even if they are not showing up. We should be making sure were in a situation for example, i talked to one of the governors said and i said now the congress did a good job on unemployment. Theyve not only provided a better case for it but they laid out you get 600 above what you ordinarily get up to 75,000 income. And i said now are you now, you saw the bounce over 3 Million People file for unemployment. And i said you able to handle that . He said, well, no, ive gone went on and hired 200 more people. I said, you know, they passed a billion dollar piece of that legislation to allow you to be able to accommodate these changes. Has anyone explained it to you yet . Now, in fairness to the administration, it just got passed. But i hope what they do is what we did in another circumstance, which is an economic crisis, when we had a 900 billion recovery about the president asked me to handle. What we did, we had one place in the white house in the Vice President s office. I put together an entire team. Any governor, mayor, anyone could contact immediately, know where it was going. Know what the money would be. Know how it would get there, et cetera. There has to be management here. Thats really critical. It should begin right now. Just to be clear, if you were president now and again, you dont have access to all the information the president has perhaps but you said youve been talking to your experts. Would you go the route that bill gates is recommending, which essentially is would you recommend to governors as every state to essentially lock down in order for for a period of several weeks . For for the time being, i would, yes, because heres the point. And you talked about it last night, anderson. You dont know who doesnt have it. You dont know who doesnt have the virus. So a lot of people Walking Around looking like theyre pretty healthy. And they may very well have the virus and transmit it. So two weeks in what is going to be a long fight to deal with this is a small price to pay, especially since you can compensate people for the lost time now that, in fact, the legislation has been passed by the congress. Lets get to questions from viewers. Greg is a Real Estate Agent from california who recently tested positive for coronavirus. He sent us this question. When i got sick on march 18th, i called around to all the urgent cares and Emergency Rooms and doctors that i knew. And i was told that i couldnt come in and get tested unless i had severe difficulty breathing. I felt like i was in a thirdworld country without the ability to get tested. So i finally found an urgent care through the help of social media and i was able to get tested. And, two days later, i had my results. If you were president , how would you increase the availability of tests . Well, what i would have done in the beginning, is that making clear that we were going to need, all the way back in january, there was the Intelligence Community indicated that the this pandemic was on the horizon. I i wrote an article back in january 17 saying we should be prepared now and laid out the things i thought we should be doing then. Look. The only thing we know in these crises of pandemics is the only thing that you really make a mistake is going too slow. Going too fast meaning in providing the kind of help that is needed and planning for it is not a problem. I heard someone, today, i was in another show and someone asked me about, well, what happens if we make too many of the ventilators . We make too many of the test kits, et cetera. Thats a little like asking in world war i, we may make too many landing craft. Were going to have some left over so maybe we could make sure we get it precise. Get out now what can be gotten out now. Now. Now. And yesterday and last month and last week. And so im sorry you had to go through what you went through, greg, i really am. Its frightening. Its worrisome. But the tests are getting out more now. But they should be able to be available nationwide and that should have been right from the get go a objective of the administration. The president has been critical of of the administration you, president obama and you saying they inherited, you know, antiquated guidelines. And also, there are other experts who did warn after 2009 that medical equipment like life masks the masks were depleted after the swine flu outbreak. Should the Obama Administration have done more to prepare for future outbreaks . Well, we spent a lot of time. I was not part of it. Our Administration Spent a lot of time working with the incoming Trump Administration. Laying out exactly what could happen with a future pandemic and that they were likely, not unlikely, to occur. That that it does not pandemics dont, you know, get stopped by walls being built. They they cross borders quickly and easily. And and there are a lot that we did do. We set up an office within the white house directly to stay focused on this. In the president in the white house to deal with pandemics. And the first thing this president did maybe not the first but very first but he eliminated the office. Took it out of the office. In addition to that, when we were talking about, early on in this crisis, we i said, among others, that, you know, you should get into china. Get our experts there. We have the best in the world. Get them in so we know whats actually happening. There was no effort to do that. He he didnt put any pressure on xi. I guess because of his trade deal, which wasnt much of a deal. And, in addition to that, what happened was we had one person in country who was working, he pulled him out of the country. And so i just dont think he has taken this seriously from the outset. And and, now, anyway, i just dont think hes taking it seriously. Let me ask. If you become president , last night bill gates said that for for several tens of billions of dollars, which is certainly a lot of money but not a lot compared to the bailout thats just been passed. For several tens of billions of dollars, we, scientists, the desi scientific community, could set up processes by which the amount of time it takes to bring out a new vaccine would be drastically reduced from 18 months to a year, that you would have a much more robust system in place for the pandemic. Is that something you would pledge to do as president . If you saw me sitting watching you, you saw me going, yes, absolutely, positively. Let the scientist. Let the scientists have sway. Let them move. Lets use supercomputing. Lets use the capacities that bill gates talked about. And it would be worth every single penny that was spent. I mean, this is seemed to me it was a no brainer. And i the answer is, yes, absolutely positively. All right. This is question submitted by sherry. She is a speech pathologist from el paso, texas. Heres your question. Why is it that some rich and famous can have covid19 test and get results in 24 hours . But the poor, elderly, like my father, who has been in the houston hospital for over a week who was tested on march the 19th, cannot get their results in a timely manner . What is wrong with this picture . We have not focused on dealing with what needs to be done from the outset. And thats when, you know, look. We talk about the ability to have tests. We can get results very quickly. Im not a scientist but they tell me that that can be done. But what we have to do is we have to invest the time and money in getting them those those tests set up and made. Scientists put them together. And what were not doing is were not doing that ourselves now. And what were doing is we should be using the defense production act to do whatever we need to do. Whether its the parapidity wit which testing has to take place to get a result. To actually getting the test done. To investing in whether or not you have protective gear for our First Responders, doctors, nurses, et cetera. We should be doing and what we finally did, i guess that he finally took my not my i advised but other people did, too using defense production act to produce ventilators and General Motors is now going to be doing it. Now, i found it interesting that if you notice, every time he disagrees with anybody, whether its he says now he hoped General Motors was going to do the right thing but they didnt. I forget exactly how he characterized it. He said but what do you expect . I know the kpachairman of that company. Or when he talks to governors, he says be careful when you talk to that governor, theyre not very good. Or calls another governor a snake. This is not personal. It has nothing to do with you, donald trump. Nothing to do with you. Do your job. Stop personalizing everything. He says that governors he says that governors should be appreciative. Is that how government is supposed to work . I didnt think that was how its supposed to work. I thought the federal governments supposed to do their job. The federal government. Dealing with a federal national problem. And, look, one of the governors and i spoke to when they called and asked for help in terms of masks and other things. The president allegedly told her that, no, you take care of yourself. Thats not my responsibility. I forget the exact phrase used. You heard it repeated again that were not the delivery service. Whatever the phrase he used was. So this governor went out and got local manufacturers to agree to go ahead and i think it was masks. Make these masks. And they did. And then along comes the president and he outbids the state that had went ahead and did what he told them to do. Outbids them and he takes the masks. I mean, this is theres supposed to be cooperation here. I mean, this has nothing to do with politics. And it really it really doesnt. It really doesnt. Were going to take a quick break. 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