Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Major League Baseball did not even make it a week before they had to cancel a game because of a krocoronavirus outbreak in th midst. The story of what happened is the story of americas utter failure to deal with this p pandemic that has killed nearly 150,000 of our fellow americans. You might remember back on march 11th, right, we had not quite shut down states yet, lots of schools were still open. There was supposed to be a regular season basketball game. Fans were in the stands. The game was about to start. And right before the tipoff, one of the jazz players tested positive and the game was canceled. Later that night, the season was postponed indefinitely. And then tom hanks announced he had the virus and then the nation basically shut down and then the before times were over. Four months later, we have not had sports for an obvious reason. You cannot safely crowd thousands of people, not to mention the competing athletes together and watch a game in the middle of a pandemic. But all these other sports leagues have a lot of money on the line. I mean, they have every single financial incentive to figure out a way to play and broadcast what their play is and to play safely. For months these sports teams have tried to figure out a way to make it work. The nba announced a plan to resume their season in an isolated zone in orlando called the bubble. The National Hockey league announced a similar plan. Major League Baseball worked on a similar plan of their own. Rob manfred telling the new york times, we cannot be the one sport that doesnt figure out how to play. The league created all sorts of protocols to make it work. They tried to cut down on travel, so there is a reduced travel schedule. There are, of course, no fans in the stands. Its bizarre to watch a game under those conditions. In fact, theyre piping in crowd noise to sort of give you the sense there are people cheering. Here is the Pittsburgh Pirates manager arguing with the umpire while both men wear masks. Look at that, putting it on to get down there. Here is chicago cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo jokingly giving the milwaukee runners hand sanitizer. Theyre getting results within two days, unlike the rest of america, where it is often taking two weeks. The league has nearly limitless resources, and every single incentive to figure out how to play safely and give fans sitting at home a product they can make money off of. But with less than a week, one week into the season, two games are postponed tonight. Because as of now, over a dozen, yes, you heard that correctly, over a dozen Miami Marlins players and Staff Members have tested positive. The marlins played a game in philadelphia against the phillies, despite having three players learn sunday they tested positive for covid19 just two days after a fourth player learned of a positive test on friday. And then earlier today the marlins learned at least 7 more players and 2 coaches tested positive. So now this team is stuck in philadelphia quarantining. The philadelphia enquirer reports with some players just tested positive and with some waiting for their test results, the players decided to vote by group text message to play the next day. Team officials or League Officials probably should have stepped in to make that call, dont you think . But thats par for the course with the american response. Like Texas Governor greg abbott opening the bars in his state and then chastising people for going to bars. Look, whether you like baseball or not, whether you care about sports or not, this is a business that has everything going for it, every resource it needs, every incentive to open safely. And their plan has basically not survived First Contact with the virus. And the reason for that is that they are trying to pull this off in a country with a raging outbreak. I mean, heck, the white house, the most tested workplace in the country with the resources of the entire federal government keeps having people test positive. Today was National Security adviser robert obrian. This is the fundamental problem we have been discussing for months. You cannot play a game of catch in the middle of a forest fire, at least not for very long. The epidemic is not under control in the u. S. , and any attempt, no matter how ingenerous to create normalcy amidst it is very likely to fail unless the epidemic is controlled. This is not just a story about baseball. This is a story about what is happening across the country. I mean, major League Baseball went through a planning process not that dissimilar to what my kids school is going through right now only with more resources at their disposal and a significantly smaller population to deal with than, say, new york city Public Schools and baseball already had a problem on its hands. What do you think is going to happen when people try to go back to work in the fall in Large Office Buildings . Or big urban School Districts, especially underresourced School Districts where theyre not going to have access to testing . A place where, say, a bunch of teachers could get it, get tested and still not know for 7 to 10 days. And thats not even to mention all the other disaster areas we know about, county jails, state and federal prisons, nursing homes, ice detention facilities. Here is the thing. It is not impossible to contain the virus. It is quite possible, actually. Other countries have done a much better job. But it is not possible to ignore the virus and then come out with some plan to get out there and play ball. Pretend you can have a normal life as the virus wages across the country. Here is what Washington National pitchers Sean Doolittle said bt it earlier this month. Were trying to bring basketball back in a pandemic thats killed 130,000 people. Were way worse off as a country than where we were in march when we shut this thing down. And, like, look at where other developed countries are in their response to this. We havent done any of the things that other countries have done to bring sports back. Sports are like the reward of a functional society. We cant just have virus fatigue and think its been four months, were over it. This has been enough time, right . Weve waited long enough. Shouldnt sports come back now . No, there is things you have to do in order to bring this stuff back. Thats as good a 40 seconds on the american response to the virus i have heard from anyone. Sports are a reward of a functional society. Thats correct. If you take the right steps, you can have baseball. Look at south korea. They have their first case of the coronavirus the very same day we had our first confirmed case. In south korea, they worked fast to deploy an overwhelming force. They shut down their society and they contact traced relentlessly. They have had around 300 deaths total. Fewer coronavirus deaths in four months than the u. S. Has every single day for months stretching out into the future. That is what success looks like. And that is why yesterday south korean baseball fans were able to attend games in person while the american baseball season hangs in the balance. Joining me now is former s secretary of health and human services, former governor of kansas. Lets start on this basic notion here, which is all different parts of society have been tasked to solve a very difficult problem, which is how to do what you normally do while the virus rages. Is that a solvable problem . What does the experience of baseball show us about whether that is, in fact, a solvable problem . Well, chris, i think you laid out very well whats going on with baseball, highly skilled athletes, more money than any school, any office building, anybody else has, a big incentive to give back. As you say, its been four days since the league reopened and now we have a real crisis with a team with 14 players and coaches in quarantine. We have no idea whats going to happen in philadelphia because of their close proximity in the game. And we also have at the same time, and again this is sticking with baseball for just a moment, eduardo rodriguez, star pitcher for the boston red sox, who is out because of the ongoing injuries he suffered from having been a covid victim. 27yearold athlete in the prime of his life. I mean, this is serious stuff. So we have a failure at the national level. We have never had a national plan. You described south korea very well. We have never had a plan about how we are going to first shut down and drive the virus down and then reopen when the virus is down at a controllable level and you can test and trace and contract and then isolate. We have never done that. So what were seeing people talk about a second wave, we are still very much in the first wave. A thousand deaths for the last four days in florida where the marlins are, you have an 80 increase in hospitalizations since the 4th of july. We are in as serious a condition as this virus has ever been in. And now the push is lets put our kids back in school and lets have College Students return to campuses all over this country. And i think its an incredible recipe for danger. Im glad you mentioned college campuses. I was just with a college kid yesterday and talking about returning to school. The first thought i thought of mlb is like College Dorms . Major League Baseball cant keep testing, all this money. Obviously they have a difficult problem. People have to travel. There is clubhouses. People are in close proximity during the course of the game. But what hope do College Dorms have if major League Baseball has this problem a week in . Well, and i happen to take that very personally. I live in lawrence, kansas, the Wonderful University of kansas is here. There are 18,000 students enrolled. And they have basically been gone since the middle of spring break. I can tell you all over this community there are people who are very apprehensive because kids not only will be moving back into the campus but they will be going to grocery stores. They will be, you know, sharing the takeouts. They will be interacting. And, so, its a very precarious situation. But in dormitories, how kids eat in those settings. How do they have a system figured out i think for classrooms. But as you said, were in a situation where the athletes at the schools can get tested pretty rapidly and football started and suspended. There have been soccer that started and suspended. The kids will not have that access to Rapid Testing, so youre going to have potentially people roaming around campus for days and days on end not knowing theyre active carriers of the virus. Yeah. And on a final note, this really shows how important Rapid Testing is. I mean, this happened this outbreak was allowed to spread in the one to two to threeday gap between testing and results that major League Baseball has, which is very rapid. I mean, i have friends who have been tested recently, and its taken 14 days to get results back. At that point the testing means nothing. It doesnt do anything to prevent the virus. Thats right now what the testing backlogs look like. Well, you are absolutely right. In most cases, if you have a test that takes anymore than about 48 hours, it is useless. When but talk about putting kids back in school and every parent, every child, every teacher in the country wants to engage in in person learning, but they want to be safe. If you cant have a test back in a 7 to 10 day period, you could have a teacher in a classroom for weeks at a time. You could have kids interacting with other kids. I mean, this is a very precarious situation. And, you know, we dont have any plan once we gather kids like major League Baseball. Whats the threshold to shut that school down again . What are the guidelines and criteria to say that school shouldnt meet in person anymore . And i havent seen that articulated at all. Thats a great point and something clearly missing from major League Baseball because they played a game they probably shouldnt have. Always great to talk to you. Thank you very much. I want to now bring in jason starks, senior Baseball Writer at the athletic. He coauthored why did the marlins play baseball on sunday. Maybe lets start with the answer to that question. I have been following your reporting throughout this pandemic on the major League Baseball plan. As the details come out theyre voting by group texts that the manager basically said we never thought of not playing, how did this happen . Yeah. Its really quite amazing, chris, that from what we can gather no one seriously discussed the idea of not playing that game. Now, its not quite as simple as to say, the marlins had a group text and decided to play. There were conversations with major League Baseball. Major League Baseball was monitoring all these developments. What we were told at the athletic is that because no one else had tested positive, no one else had displayed symptoms, that there was no reason in their mind to not play, to cancel that game. Look, we have always wondered how many positive tests would it take to shut down a team . I mean, now we know. Four was not enough. 11 is not enough. Major League Baseball says there is a reason that every team has 60 players in its pool. We anticipated this. So the marlins are not playing tonight, right . The phillies and yankees not playing tonight. But major League Baseball views this as a shortterm shutdown, not a longterm threat to the season. Well, and that gets the point that theyre committed to this. There is two things here so striking to me as allegories for the larger american way of dealing with this is once you create your own incentives, essential essentially, that were opening, were doing it, which is what we saw happening with governors and policy. There is a certain force that you dont want to close back down. And i think were seeing that in action in major League Baseball. Yeah, we planned for this. Were going to keep going. Thats 100 right. Look at what happened in the three weeks when teams were in this summer training camp. We had multiple instances where a team didnt get its test results back and said, its not safe to even practice. Now the season starts and very similar types of uncertainty, plus positive tests, and, yet, the season goes on. Right. Its really fascinating to watch this, isnt it . There was a time when people in major League Baseball talked about the idea that they could be a model for how society could do this. How society could get back to some semblance of normalcy. Frequent testing, tracing of positive tests and constant monitoring of this situation. Now were seeing a situation where they have done all that and, yet, we have a team with 11 positive tests. Well, and on the testing front, i mean, again, it does illustrate how important testing and tracing is, right . If you want to contain the pandem pandemic, thats what you want to do. Everyone with the resources is doing that. Major League Baseball players are getting tested for it every other day. The question is, is that enough to prevent outbreaks . And, i mean, were kind of getting a lesson, right, which gives you both answers. No at one level because you have got over a dozen people test positive. At least we know that now and not a week or two from now. Let me illustrate the dilemma. On friday a player had been tested on wednesday. The next set of positive tests came in sunday from players who were tested on friday. Then there was another wave of testing. That was the positive test results we got today. Players on both the marlins and the phillies, the team they played over the weekend were tested today. Theyre awaiting more results either tonight or tomorrow. But we know the incubation period is three or five or seven days. So just because many players come back with negative results doesnt mean they have not been exposed and have not contracted this virus. And, so, if there are a number of negative tests, baseball is going to try to play and keep on playing. But this is really their worst nightmare, is the rapid spread of the virus within a team, and then the offshoot of that is the potential spread to other teams. Yeah. And also lets not forget there are people working in those hotels and those facilities and i hope theyre getting tested as well. I have been oddly trance fixed by this because it is such a problem and mlb put a lot of thought and resource into it, but it is not going so well. Thanks so much. Chris, thanks for having me. Tonight, the republicans have finally produced a rescue package that includes much less money for unemployed americans and much more money for a trump hotel boondoggle. Bernie sanders is here with reaction next. Your doctor about biktarvy. Biktarvy is a complete, onepill, onceaday treatment used for hiv in certain adults. Its not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights hiv to help you get to and stay undetectable. Thats when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. Research shows people who take hiv treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit hiv through sex. Serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. Rare, lifethreatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. Do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. Tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. If you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. Common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. If youre living with hiv, keep loving who you are. And ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. If youre living