An increase in cases. And john, that means that hospitalizations in several cities are up. Hospitals are at or near capacity. And this morning, the death toll is nearing 130,000 americans. Meanwhile, President Trump making a ridiculous and dangerous claim that 99 of covid19 cases are totally harmless. As dr. Peter hotez told us this morning, thats not true on any level, but the fda commissioner refused to say that this weekend. Im not going to get into whos right and whos wrong. Its a serious problem that we have. Weve seen the surge in cases. We must do something to stem the tide. Why wont the White House Coronavirus task force correct Bad Information . At the same time, the worlds top doctors are asking the w. H. O to acknowledge that covid19 is an airborne virus. Joining us now, cnn medical analyst, dr. Richelle wholinski and juliette kayyem, this is our massachusetts miracle panel this morning. Thank you both so much for being with us. Dr. Wolinski, you look at the statistics around the country. And lets stick with hospitalizations, right . Lets not even get into the discussion about testing. Is more tergs lesting leading t cases . We are seeing more sick people. Look at the increase of hospitalizations in texas. Thats the chart there. We just got fresh numbers from Miamidade County about hospitalizations there. They are upp 88 , hospitalizations are in just two weeks. Icu bed usage up 114 in two weeks. And patients on ventilators up 119 , in two weeks this is why i think dr. Hotez told us not even 45 minutes ago, we are in free fall this morning. Good morning, john. I believe we are in free fall. You see the footage of what happened this past weekend. And people are either naive to the influence of their actions or simply resigned to ignore it. I think we know at this point that weve had about 3 million documented cases in the United States. The cdc estimates weve had about perhaps ten times more than that, 30 million. But lets remember, there are 300 Million People in this country who remain susceptible and have been uninfected so far. And this virus is far from running out of people to infect. And until we change our behavior to prevent these infections, the infections are going to continue to soar. Juliette, you know, we were all so struck by what the fda commissioner told dana bash this weekend, in terms of not correcting when President Trump said the coronavirus is harmless. I mean, thats what he said, 99 . Harmless. And i understand that the people around President Trump are in this untenable position of not being able to speak truth to power. Weve seen it time and again. However, if we cant trust the White House Coronavirus task force to give us real information, i dont know where americans are this morning. Yeah, i dont know where they get Accurate Information anymore. In a crisis or a disaster, a leader needs to provide two things. Facts and hope. Thats all people want. They want to know what kind of harm am i in or could i be in . And they want to know a path forward. I think President Trumps statement about how people get sick or how many people get sick is consistent with how hes been since january. No effective way to stop the virus from spreading. No unified way to get us through this pandemic. And no realistic way to get us out. So all he has left is to say, theres not a problem. And the fact that the people around him dont correct him, i think, is just consistent with the kind of people that he surrounds himself with, and why so few of them are willing to speak out against him. Dr. Wolinski, what needs to happen today . Well, you know, i want to just echo what juliette said. There are two ways this virus can be harmful. This can be harmful because it kills people it infects. We know of the 50,000 cases this past day, a single day of this past weekend. Theyre young people, it could be 500 people who die from that. If theyre older people, it could be 7,500 people who die from it. Just from a single day of infection. So i think that there is individual harm that can be done by this virus, but i want to remind people that theres transmission that happens. So even if a person does not get harmed individually, they have the potential to infect two to three other people who will be harmed by this infection. So theres a lot of harm that could be done. I still very much believe we have to take the measures that are uncomfortable, draconian, to prevent this virus. We need hand washing, we need social distancing, we need masking. Juliette, that brings us to one of the therapeutics that has seemed to work, and thats remdesivir. But we hear conflicting reports as to whether or not were running out of a supply of remdesivir and whether or not hospitals will be able to get their hands on it. So what should be the answer here . This is once again a supply chain issue that the white house should have gotten ahead of. Remdesivir is available now for the patients who need it, which is the critical patients. But if it proves to be a successful treatment for those with lesser treatments, look, this is good news, right . Because while we all hope for a vaccine and wait for a vaccine, there is so much that we can do in between now and then that can save lives and protect people who may have longterm harms, because they get this. One of those, many of those, include, you know, masking and social distancing, but one is these treatments that are coming online. The white house could take control of production, once again, as weve seen, as weve complained about before, when it came to masks and torre goods we were talking about when it comes to the defense production act. The white house could take charge of this treatment and test it on patients who are not chronic. If it proves to be a successful treatment, that is good news. That is a way to live with the virus. Thats what we have to understand. We have to live with the virus, work around it, manage around it, until we get a final solution, whether it is a vaccine or its that the virus sort of loses its potency. But, you know, this is something that can white house once again could get ahead of and seems to not have. Dr. Wolinski, youre hearing from colleagues in texas, they cant get their hands on the drug, or as much as they want, at least. I certainly am. I see three problems with remdesivir right now. One is a single manufacturer is making it, gilead. Two, it is that we are going to run out. I think you cant look at the number of cases that are happening right now and not anticipate a shortage. And three, last week, it was priced at over 3,000 for a fiveday course for a drug that we know costs 6 for a fiveday course to make. So hhs has the power and the patent rights to this drug. I think we need generic competition. I think that we need more Companies Making it, so we have enough drug for the people who need it and so that the price can be driven down so that people can afford it. Juliette, that leads us to what happens next. And that is, september is around the corner. I hate to say it, but it is. All parents want to know, are our kids able to go back to school in september . And you have studied this, you have looked into it. And you think its a risk thats worth taking . I think i have a piece coming out in the atlantic this morning. Obviously, everyone sort of has woken up to this and the debate about why do we open bars and not schools . Schools are hard. There are some jurisdictions that are going to be able to have some inperson schooling for our kids. Im talking about k12 now. Thats because theyve brought the numbers down, massachusetts is one of them. And full disclosure, i helped work on that. Rhode island is another. New york is potentially another. So we will see a hodgepodge of solutions in the k12 realm. I cannot see how texas right now is able to do it. How it wont go almost fully, if not fully remote. So this is the kind of sort of, you know, the kind of recovery that was absolutely unnecessary, had we taken seriously three months ago the need to stop the spread, the need to flatten the curve, and to focus on getting our kids back. Not just for them and all the challenges that theyre facing, but of course for working parents and for staff and teachers to protect them. So just like weve seen before in the last couple of months, were going to have a hodgepodge of solutions on the k12 area. Some countries have done it well. Others, admittedly, have opened and have closed like israel, so it is not going to be consistent for parents. You need to get your head around this. You need to plan for the likelihood that your kids are home for part or a significant amount of the time in the fall. What strikes me in this discussion, as we talk about kids, younger kids going back to school, i spent some time this weekend with a senior, who i may or may not be related to. I mean, a senior citizen, a 77yearold man, my dad. And you look at whats happening around the country, dr. Wolinski. And if youre a senior or youre a kid who wants to go back to school, youre looking at these 20somethings at these pool parties and bars and youre saying, what are you doing to us . What are you doing to us . Youre making it so these kids cant go back to school. Youre making it so our 75yearold parents cant leave their house. This is a real issue. And i think there are a lot of people right now deeply offended by what theyre seeing. I would wholeheartedly agree with you. And i would say, you know, we saw in certain areas in the northeast that were hard hit by this early on in march that if you are diligent in, you know, complying with masking, with complying with a slow, phased reopening, that you can sort of contain this. And in other areas of the country, they just have not had the same stamina or care to go ahead and do that. And i would wholeheartedly agree with you. I have several children who want to go back to college, and they are outraged as theyre looking at the footage. Dr. Wolinski, juliette kayyem, thank you both very much this morning for all of the information. Thank you so much. Also new this morning, a cnn investigation finds Health Authorities in florida, a major hot spot for the virus, as you know, often failed to do the Contact Tracing which is considered key to containing any outbreak. Lets get the latest from senior medical correspondent, elizabeth cohen. What is this, elizabeth . Reporter alisyn, good morning. The white house describes Contact Tracing as a core state preparedness responsibility. The cdc says it can effectively break the chain of transmission. You find the cases, you ask who theyve been in contact with while contagious, and then you tell those people they need to quarantine. So we looked at florida, which is of course now the nations number one hot spot. And heres what we found. We talked to more than two dozen people who had covid, 27, to be exact. We found that only five of them had received Contact Tracing phone calls from Florida StateHealth Authorities. Only five of them. Now, the part of the problem is that florida should have more Contact Tracers. If you compare them to the standard of the National Association of county and city health officials, they are missing thousands of Contact Tracers. Theyre not alone. Only seven state have enough Contact Tracers when you look at the standard set by that group. But the problem is that florida is in a particularly bad situation. Over the weekend, they set a record, not in a good way, they set a record for the number of covid cases on saturday. 11,434 new cases in one day. That is more than new york was at its height. Also on saturday, the state set also had 18 deaths in one day. So concerns about Contact Tracing in florida. Alisyn . Elizabeth cohen, thank you very much for all of that reporting. So President Trump is planning another Campaign Rally, as he tries to change the story from surging coronavirus cases to confederate statues. Is it working . 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This after delivering another divisive speech over the Holiday Weekend. Joining us now is cnn political analyst, david gregory, and cnn political commentator, bakari sellers. Great to see both of you. Bakari, President Trump really what am i i didnt even talk about your book, my vanishing country. There it was. Apparently, the vanishing book. It just disappeared from the screen without alisyn even talking about it. Why didnt i lead with that . Bakari, are you surprised by how much President Trump really likes those confederate statues . He really supports them and wants to protect them. Heres a moment of his speech on fourth of july. We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample on our freedoms. Your thoughts, bakari . And david will have to chime in here, but when youre running for a second term, if the only thing you have in your cache of things to run on is keeping up monuments, them youre really not in a good position, at all. Its weird to me that the president of the United States always finds retfuge under the shadows of the confederacy. I dont completely understand that. Were having a reckoning with the history of this country right now, and i will take that battle over the confederacy with the president of the United States any day of the week. And were not trying to erase our history. We know we cant erase our history. But what we are trying to say is we dont have to live under the shout shadows of the confederacy anymore. There is no reason for us to have a ben tillman statue up nor South Carolina or john c. Calhoun statue. It makes absolutely no sense. And for the president to want to relitigate this because this is his only winning issue means that the economy is not doing well, that over 100,000 people have died during a pandemic. Hes all out of ideas and the only things he has left are culture wars and statues. I agree, in substance, with bakari, but i have a slightly different view about its potential effectiveness. I think president s do run on fear. And they run on reelections based on fear. And i think what the president is doing, and if you look at his language in these couple of speeches over the Holiday Weekend, he mentions confederate monuments, but he makes it bigger. His use of the term indoctrination goes to this larger argument about liberal orthodoxy, about indoctrination of young people, about erasure of the past and the kind of intolerance in this moment of racial awakening and equity turning into shame. And i think that has the potential to resonate with some. How big that some is, i dont know. Because i think were in the middle of a National Moment thats bigger than anything ive seen in my lifetime that is a bipartisan moment, for sure, that is transcending or moving into major institutions, beyond politics, into corporations. So i think his argument is narrower and narrower, but it is a version of what we saw in 2016. One of the ways he got evangelical voters, for example, is in a way saying, look, people are saying youre a bigot. You know, because you dont support gay rights. Well, youre always going to have a place with me. I think thats what hes going for. And the power of definition could be important. You may be absolutely right. It may resonate with some. The question is, with whom or how many . And does it in any way extend the base . And the other thing, bakari, its not the pandemic. Its not this issue, which is affecting millions of americans, including in states like texas and florida, South Carolina, arizona. States the president absolutely needs to win. A couple of statistics that jumped out to me today, the New York Times did a deep dive into the Racial Disparities in the pandemic and people of color are one third three times more likely to get infected with coronavirus and twice as likely to die. And those statistics are related to what the president is saying, because it may indicate why theyre not going to land, land the way his rallies might have the way they would have otherwise, because people know whats going on in the country. People do know whats going on and people are directly affected. Everyone knows someone everyone watching this show knows someone whos been hospitalized with covid19. Everyone. So this pandemic is touching us in a way that the president sumply wants to ignore. And to davids point, thats interesting. I mean, i think that the president of the United States, his base is going to be the same. I dont think the president of the United States will lose his grip on that 35 of america. And ive always t