If we did the shutdown. He makes it sound like it was a different era where he was predicting 60,000 deaths. It was two weeks ago. April 19th he thought there would be 60,000 deaths. Were already at 67,000 deaths. The daily count of new deaths is stubbornly high. Its worth noting that this is without even knowing whether there will be any effects from the states around the country that decided to reopen. This is not a one size fits all pandemic. About onethird of the states are seeing a rise in cases. Thats in pink right there. Onethird are experiencing a drop in cases. Thats in the sort of green there. The other third in yellow. Flat. As we watch all of that, theres so much talk about the reopening around the country coinciding in many areas with gorgeous weekend weather. Parks and beaches in places like new york, texas, georgia and florida. Seeing plenty of visitors out and about. A packed weekend. In florida, today, much of the state will reopen. By the end of the week, more than 40 states will be partially open. Show you the scene in central park this weekend. Look at all the folks enjoying the gorgeous day. But prompting a warning from Governor Andrew Cuomo about false comfort. He reminded new yorkers of the climb in numbers does not a decline does not mean the virus is gone. The stayathome order remains in effect. They continue to raise hopes for a potential vaccine. The president now saying it could be here by the end of the year. Joining us now, dr. Sanjay gupta. And dr. Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Sanjay, i want to start with you. The president now says hes expecting 100,000 deaths from coronavirus. I want to play you some sound, not of three months ago, of things he said in the last few weeks. Listen. So were talking about maybe 60,000 or so. Thats a lot of people. But thats 100,000 was the minimum we thought that we could get to. Well be lower than that number. We would have had millions of deaths. Instead it looks like well be at a 60,000 mark, thats 40,000 less than the number thought of. 60 or he was wrong. Were already at 67,000 deaths. He was wrong. The death count is higher, sanjay. What im interested in is why is it so much higher than they thought over the last few weeks. Why is the number of daily new reported deaths so high . Between 1300 and 2,000 every day . Yeah. First of all, one thing ill say just going back a little further, theres been a lot of models out there. This imhe model out of the university of washington was a more favorable model in terms of overall projections. Its one that the white house glommed on to pretty early. I think people were surprised at that. There were other models out of columbia, models from the cdc itself that didnt look as favorable in terms of number of people who would become infected and sadly, die. Having said that, that model has changed a fair amount. Its been all over the place and has a wide range of some 35,000 to 150,000, i think, overall, projections in terms deaths by august. You know, its a variable thing. I think now its pretty clear that the country is starting to plateau at a much higher level than that imhe model and a couple of others predicted. Instead of having a curve where you have this apex starting to come down, we really are flat now at the country. This looks like how it is for at least a period of time. Theres lots of things driving that. Some states are coming down. Some states are going up. Here where i live in georgia for example, you can almost draw with a line since we started to reopen and the numbers of infections going up. I realize the new models dont take into account reopenings. Thats going to drive them up further. Were starting to see that as well, john. I think we can put up three different states. It varies so much by state as we look at where the numbers are going in terms of new treatments. You look at the 14day trend, in new york, its going down. Illinois, minnesota as we can see, increasing in both of those states. Dr. Shah, we heard from dr. Birx over the weekend who said the number was always between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths. She was saying that number they were looking at was with full mitigation. As we know, theres not i think it would be tough to say theres full mitigation across the country. To sanjays point, as were seeing more states open up, what does that tell you each looking at the estimate from dr. Birx . Well, thank you for having me and thanks for your reporting on this. The reality is the models have very wide ranges, 100 to 240 in one instance and what that effectively means is the actions we take now as a country in full National Form actually shape the outcome. And so the Rockefeller Foundation has suggested and put an action plan forward to initially get testing up from 1 million tests a week to 3 million tests a week. We think thats the baseline you need to safely reopen parts of the economy. By the fall, we believe you need 30 million tests a week in this country to allow the economy to function without having big recurrences and without pushing us to the high ends of the models youreer mentioning or well beyond that. I think the focus ought to be on not just how many deaths are there, but how many tests a week are we doing by state and whats the trend line . The trend line has been largely flat. Were now working with more than 12 states and cities around the country and bringing them together this week to invest in efforts to accelerate. Thats really a National Responsibility and needs to be much, much, much higher level testing than what were seeing so far. Im glad that dr. Shah brought up the testing. There were 700,000 new tests last week. Dr. Shah and the Rockefeller Foundation wants 3 million a week, 30 million by the fall. Thats a huge disparity, but sanjay, its important to bring up, because my experience this weekend and i think the experience weve had over the last few days this discussion about whether the country should reopen is over. The country has begun to reopen in so many places. So the discussion now is how were going to do it and how to protect ourselves in that process. In testing, that needs to be a huge part of that. If were reopening, why do we need the testing so much, dr. Gupta . Yeah. Theres two things ill say. One is we are starting to reopen. But, again, i take no joy in saying this. There may be a point where we have to close things down again. Weve seen that in other countries. I think its fair to say, you know, as tough as it is to say it, many places were reopening prematurely. I think people are taking victory laps and its too early. Sadly, the truth. Testing is critical because we talk about two phases. Containing the virus and mitigating the virus. Right now mitigating, slowing it down is what weve been trying to do for the last few months. What we hope to do on the backside of this, is put the virus into a box again as dr. Tom frieden has said. The way to do that is through testing. What rajiv has said, a certain amount of testing is necessary to figure out exactly what that right amount is. Its frankly tough to know. When we interviewed bill gates the other day, he said at some point do we have kiosks and point of location sort of testing available, do we even have athome testing that have been validated, that could really expedite things as well in terms of reopening. Perhaps. Were not there yet. By the way, when you do the math on that, its higher than what the Rockefeller Foundation is projecti projecting. Theyre saying 20 million tests a day. Thats 600 million a month. That means every american is tested every 14 days. They say, look, we do have the capacity to that. Go to the institutes and the University Labs and commercial labs and say could you do this many tests. They say we have machines, we have 400 machines that can do 750,000 tests a day, roughly. We can do this if we need to. If we can get the raw supplies and that may be what we need. We may be a country that has to test on a regular basis. Most americans getting out in public. That would be a step towards opening and staying open. Keeps coming back to the conversations we have. They tend to come back to supplies. Difficulty to getting supplies, the supplies that are needed. We saw dr. Cuomo talking about the sevenpart partnership. Seven different states who arent going to compete against each other. Not just ppe but when it comes to testing and medical equipment. Dr. Shah, how much could partnerships like this and this focus on a supply chain help to ramp up the testing . Well, actually, this is a key to unlocking more testing in this country. As sanjay mentioned, about 2 3 of Molecular Testing capacity resides in University Labs, small labs, Research Labs that are urnt currently underutilized. We have the capacity. The question is can we get the supplies . Rockefeller Foundation Group includes Industry Leaders and scientists. When we talk to companies, theyll only be able to scale up manufacturing if states ban together as theyre doing in the northeast and frankly place much larger and much more longterm purchase orders, especially from the august to december time frame to give the companies a few months to let their manufacturing in order to get to the 30 million tests a week. Sanjay is right, we need a whole host of new technologies, some of which look promising. Including point of service test not guilty particular. In order to have the volumes we need, we need states to come together and make larger purchases. The foundation is actually working with those states to provide financial credit guarantees and other tools that would help them project that market demand. But this is a very fractured industry that works on shortterm purchase orders. Were not going to get there without Real National leadership on this particular issue or a Public Private solution which were trying to put forward. Dr. Shah, dr. Gupta, thank you both. New overnight, President Trump claims that u. S. Intelligence officials did not brief him about coronavirus until late january. But reporting from cnn and other shows, that he was warned about the virus threat weeks before restricting travel from china. Cnns john harwood live from washington here with the latest. John, let me play you the sound from what the president claimed last night. Listen. On january 23rd, i was told that there could be a virus coming in. But it was of no real import. In other words, it wasnt oh, we got to do something, we got to do something. It was a brief conversation and it was only on january 23rd. He says the 23rd. We knowh azar had a conversation on the 14th. He was briefed by intelligence before that. John, whats going on hee here . Whats going on is that the president moment to moment is trying to justify what he has done and make himself look like he has not been negligent and make the situation in the country look better. This is a Common Thread of your previous discussion with doctors gupta and shah about death counts. When the numbers were lower and the models were shifting down, he said look how successful weve been, only 50 or 60. Obviously the numbers raced past that. He said maybe it will go to 100,000. But it would have been 2 million if i did nothing. We know that dr. Red field was notified on january 3rd. We know from our colleagues at cnns reporting that on january 3rd in the president s daily brief, this the threat of the pandemic was mentioned. We know that dr. Azar subsequently called him. He wasnt particularly interested in azar called him. When we got news about the january 23rd briefing and his point in this Fox Town Hall last night was to say, well, it was said in a matter of fact way. It was not presented as an urgent priority. This is the president simply trying to avoid blame for a response that 2 3 of the American Public says was behind the curve. Any discussion about what happened in january neglects or diverts from the question of what actually happened in february, which was where there was an incredible lack of action on behalf of the federal government that may have contributed to the situation were in today. China, this is something were also hearing from the president. Theres no question that china wasnt transparent about this from the beginning and has a lot to answer for here. But the u. S. Administration and now were hearing from mike pompeo continues to say things without evidence, blaming china for perhaps a lab accident that created this. So listen. I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in wuhan. Do you think they intentionally released that virus or it was an accident in the lab . I cant answer your question about that because the Chinese Communist party refused to cooperate with world health experts. U. S. Intelligence has the answer. Which is to say even if it came out of the larks they say it was accidental. Theres no evidence it was deliberate or man made, per se. An accidental lab release is Something Else. Why are we hearing so much about that now, john . Well, i think because we dont know what exactly happened, whether it actually originated at that wet market or because you have those Research Facilities in wuhan, whether or not someone was doing research on this virus and accidentally let it out. The administration is trying to redirect blame from itself on to china. Theres no question that china was not transparent and china may have had lax safety protocols at these labs and an accident may have been what caused it to come out. The issue for the United States, though, of course, is how we responded once this happened. Thats the issue for the entire world. And the administration has taken a consistent line of trying to direct blame at china, trying to link joe biden, President Trumps november opponent, to china and i think thats what pompeo was doing yesterday. There was ambiguity in his response because he seemed to be saying two contradictory things. I interpreted what secretary of state pompeo saying it was not deliberately created but it might have accidentally escaped from the lab. Whatever china did do and whatever theyre responsible for doesnt absolve what the United States didnt do or is responsible for going after that. John harwood, thanks for being with us. Appreciate your time. A new statement from the president which i think concerns history professors around the country. How he compares himself to president abraham lincoln. Has he been treated worse than lincoln . Thats next. Ok everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. Whoohoo great tasting ensure with 9 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, and nutrients to support immune health. And nutrients to [anthony] hey mama, whats up . [mama] im confused. Confused about what, everything ok . Yeah, i only see one price on my phone bill. That doesnt sound confusing mama. Youre on tmobile, taxes and fees are included. Oh come on, theres always extra fees not on tmobile mama. Why cant all my bills be like this . I dont know mama. Bye mama, love you. Anthony . Umph at tmobile, taxes and fees are included. And right now, when you switch your family, get 4 lines of unlimited for just 35 a line. I came across sofi and it was the best decision of my life. 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Starting may 11, enjoy free access to the best shows and movies from favorites like hbo, showtime, starz and, for the first time ever, hulu and peacock catch the show someone on twitter says is omg cray, exclamation mark. Dont look at me. Or the one with the character with the eccentric name. whispers to himself oh, so thats who offred is. Hi. Even the one thats inspired all those memes. There they are everyones got a show to recommend. Get ready to watch the best for free during watchathon week. This morning, it is important to read your history books all the way to the end. Overnight, in an interview stanld literally in the shadow of the lincoln memorial, President Trump compared himself to abraham lincoln. Listen to this. We said lincoln, nobody got treated worse than lincoln. I believe i am treated worse. Joining us now, president ial historian, executive producer of washington and the author of leadership in Turbulent Times and also the author of team of rivals about the administration. I have read it twice both times to the end. Oh, yea. In a macro sense here, at the end of the book, lincoln is assassinated. How can any president in a macro sense be treated worse than that . Its an incredible statement when you think about t you cant compare the time either. Yes, its true the country is splo split now in a partisan way and we have a divided media. We were talking about a civil war with abraham lincoln, a north and south with entirely different interpretations of what was going on. Let us never think were going back to such a period of time. All president s are upset with the way the press treats them. Its part of democracy. Thats what churchill said. He said democracy, its not perfect. Its not all lies. Look at the other governments weve tried. Its better than them. You need perspective and humor to look at this. Even if youre just limiting it to press treatment of president s, how does the treatment that President Trump receives compare to that with which lincoln received . Well, lincoln would have been argued b