Because they cant contradict the state law. So its true, so the local official can say its the governor, blame him. Its true. And it will stop us from doing something thats counterproductive, and it will also stop us from getting into a dispute between me and the local government where the net message will be to the people theres disagreement or confusion among government. And this is not the time for confusion or disagreement among government. So the state laws govern, i get the local political pressure. Blame the governor. Its the truth. And the state laws cant the local laws cant counteract state laws anyway. And to this political pressure, this is a quote that i think people should take to heart. When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then they ceased to be free. Hamilton Edith Hamilton and Edward Gibbon in the history and decline of the fall of the roam anticipate empire. When the freedom they wished for most was freedom of responsibility, then they ceased to be free. We have a responsibility today to ourselves and to others. Theres a codependency and mutualality among people in society that is more clear and distinct than we have ever seen it. You sneeze, i get sick. You knees,sneeze, i get sick. It is that close a connection. You have a responsibility to act prudently visavis other people. Because youre not just putting your own life at risk. Youre risking my life and my childrens life and my parents life and you dont have that right. You have to act responsibly. And to advocate for total irresponsibly, its all be irresponsible, no, not here, not now. Any questions . Governor, can you talk about how that will dovetail lets try another new first and a new normal. We dont need to speak each other. I will answer your question and let each person ask a question and then well go on to the next one. Governor, specifically is Michael Bloomberg providing funding . Are you giving him the power to hire people . And mayor de blasio talking about his own effort to do tracing and testing. How will the two things overlap . They will all be coordinated. Citys efforts coordinated, nassaus effort, westchesters effort. They will be hired independently. New york city employees, westchester employees, city and state employees. But it all has to be coordinated. There is no tracing that can work within one jurisdiction. Michael bloomberg is leading some coordinating councils . Let me just finish. Can you not trace someone within the boundaries of new york city because once the person goes outwhere side of new york city, now that would be a westchester person. I live in westchester, take me. I lived in westchester. I worked in new york city. New york citys going to trace me . How . Im in westchester, thats a different county. You cant trace me. Well, well go trace people in westchester. Then westchester will say thats my resident. Dont come in here and trace my resident. All right, lets forget the jurisdictional fight and political, local fight. Well coordinate everyone. This is a monumental undertaking. Whos going to do it . Were all going to do it, cities, state, nassau, suffolk, jersey, connecticut. How do we do it . I dont know. Weve never done it before. Michael bloomberg will design the program, design the training. Hes going to make a financial cont cont contribution also. Put together an organization that can help hire the people because we have to expand this number tenfold. And get this all done like this. This has to happen. You dont have months to plan and do this. You have weeks to get this up and running. Super ambitious undertaking. And mayor bloomberg will help coordinate the entire effort. We will be working with the state. Im working with the city and the nassau and suffolk and jersey and connecticut. Sorry. I dont know the financial contribution is. Does anybody know . Its a fourth of 10 million. But what mayor bloomberg is doing through the program at johns hopkins, which he funds very heavily, their Public Health program, which is preeminent in the country. Hes helping us define the components of the Contact Tracing program and they in partnership with us are creating an online curriculum to train the tracers, recruit them to perform the background checks and then were going to coordinate all of the counties and also with new jersey and connecticut. Safe to say a quarter Million People infected, are you planning on Contact Tracing that cohort as well, the quarter Million People that are already diagnosed . You will trace as many positives as you can. As the testing number goes up, that number of possible people to be traced is up. The implication of your question is right, wont you be identifying more positive people than you could possibly ever trace . Yes, i believe thats true. I dont care how big of an army you put together. You now have, lets take your number, 250,000 people tested positive. How do you start to trace 250,000 people . How many people do you need to trace 250,000 people . Thats why its an extraordinarily impossible task, and you do the best you can. Do we have the resources considering the state is so trapped, 10 billion, 15 billion hole. Quarter Million People, exponentially, look around this room, there are 30 people in this room, if one of us are infected, the Contact Tracing spirals out of control almost immediately. Yeah, look, Contact Tracing, life is options. Going forward, how do you educate yourself on reopening . Well, we need data. Where does the data come from . The data comes from testing. You have a hard database of hospitalizations. You can look at the hospitalizations, and they will tell you how many people got sick enough to go into the hospital. Thats all it tells you. You dont know how many people were infected. You dont know what is happening on the infection rate spread. All you know is the hospitalization rate. So testing will give you, first of all, more data on how fast the infection is spreading and how fast its spreading where. Youre going to get a very Different Number in new york city than you are in buffalo or the new york country or albany. Okay, that will inform the reamal reopenings. And then what youre trying to do to the extent possible, the whole concept of testing tracing isolation, not just here, but every state is talking about this, to the except you can, when you find a positive person, trace it back and ice late. Well, if you wiped up wind up w population, lets say we wind up with a 10 infection rate in the state, or in the city, thats, you know, a Million People in new york city infected. How can you possibly trace a Million People . You cant. You do the best you can. But for every person you isolate, jesse, thats one less person Walking Around infecting another ten people. Isnt there an argument its endemic already . Even if it was just 10 , some estimates said it might be 50 or 60 . How much money could this possibly cost, and where is that money going to come from . If it was 50 , 60 , you would be at a different issue point. If you were at 50 , 60 , you would be arguing with what is called herd immunity. That would be dont do anything. Thats like sweden and brazil. Let it go. Whoever gets infected, whoever dies dies. And then the Critical Mass of population is infected and whatever happens happens. Its not going to be 50 , 60 , and that strategy, some countries have adopted, a lot of people die with that strategy, which is a downside. But its not bgoing to be 50 , 60 . My guess is about 10 about now in the high infection areas. Its a guess but i would guess 10 downstate Single Digits upstate. You never really, we never have an understanding of this virus. And i want to know what were doing in terms of convalescent serum . Maybe dr. Zucker is better at handling this one. Youre right. Dr. Zucker is in a better position to answer. On the question about the serum, we are working on this. There are patients who received this within some of our hospital questions. The data, were still waiting to hear about the clip cal results from that. Thats moving forward. The more people we have that end up possible and recover, the more serum will be available and more information we will have on that part. On antibodies, the regeneron corporation has been looking at this issue and were speaking with them. Theres data to suggest the use of antibodies may be beneficial based on how they were used for other conditions where they end up with the same kind of response with whats called a cyta storm where their lungs are damaged as a result of infection. There may be a relationship here and were working closely with them on this. Considering the vaccination level went from the low 70s one day and overnight to the mid90s, it was a dramatic turn of events. And that was part of the monoclone antibodies. And its not in this state. You shared so i thought i would. I wanted to let you know, is there a shortage of this monoclone monoclone . Is this something that happen to be developed . Is it readily available . There are two Different Company thats have been working on it and that has been given to patients across the state who have this already, and the monoclonal antibody, theres specific therapy for that. Thats also in not really experimental but has been provided to those who are ill. Contact tracing, are you interested in moving that upstate to do tracing and also will there be an announcement with respect to nursing home infections today . Yes. Im going to make the nursing home announcement tomorrow. Its in the works though. We wanted to talk about this today. What was the first part . Tracing is going to be done statewide and testing has to be done statewide. Testing does two things for you, remember. Being the rate of viral infection spread, so you have a calibration on the reopening. And second on the Antibody Testing, one of the upsides is you find people who have antibodies so they can contribute for the convalescent plasma by donating their blood. Joseph . You talk a lot about reopening businesses upstate. How about opening schools . It seems like in recent days you suggested that thats becoming increasingly difficult. Is it unlikely that schools will open before fall . When you say my opinion, when you say youre not going to open schools, you may as well say youre not going to open businesses because the two are connected. I dont know how you really open businesses without opening schools. You want me to go to work, hallelujah. What do i do with my kids . So the two to me are very connected. The school year is up in june. To say were not going to open businesses until june, im not there yet. I dont think people are there yet. This is a situation that changes week to week. So lets get the information week to week. Lets get the data and then well make a determination plus we will try to coordinate with jersey, connecticut, other states. So lets get the data. And in the meantime, schools will not open until we say schools will open statewide. Period, new paragraph. Opening schools is very difficult. I would not open a school unless we know that the schools were disinfected, that they had a protocol Going Forward to disinfect the schools, that they had a protocol there would be a certain amount of social distancing and prospective personal behavior in the school. That is a very, very big undertaking. What about schools on a regional basis, can you do that regionally as well . Open some schools in some parts of the state where the infection rates are lower . Theoretically could you . Yes. Can you say north county schools are going to open with all of those provisos, yes, you could say that. You could say you can open north county schools having nothing to do with nassau schools and westchester schools. Yes, theyre two totally disconnected and you can argue you can make those as isolated decisions. [ inaudible ] because once you say were moving towards reopening, one of the first integral pieces is business and school and then transportation, right . You need those three gears to turn at the same time. You cant turn the business gear, which is intermeshed with the school gear, which is intermeshed with the Public Transportation gear. You turn one gear, you have to turn all three gears. Karen . And good day, everyone. Im Andrea Mitchell in washington, continuing our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Here are the facts at this hour. With the death toll now rising to almost 45,000 people in the u. S. , a grim warning from the director of the centers for Disease Control telling the Washington Post a second wave of the disease next winter at the same time as the yearly flu season peaking could be even more difficult than what we are going through now. One study from veterans hospitals about the antimalaria drug President Trump has been touting for weeks had disturbing news. There were more deaths than those given the drug than those who did not receive it. Although the study has not yet been reviewed by other scientists. Mayors in South Carolina and georgia are condemning decisions by various states governors to reopen nonessential businesses in georgia. Those include beauty salons, gyms, tattoos and massage parlors before communities have even met the white house standards of having two weeks with declining covid19 cases. Moments ago new York Governor Andrew Cuomo announcing former new york city mayor and president ial candidate Michael Bloomberg has volunteered, along with johns hopkins, to create and pay for Contact Tracing across the state of new york. He also said he had a productive meeting with President Trump at the white house yesterday and the plan Going Forward on testing. Nbcs ali vitali now joins us from columbia, South Carolina, where the government announced schools will remain closed the rest of the school year. Whats going on there . We know the mayors of South Carolina, many are objecting over the decision of the state governor. Andrea, you just hit the nail on the head here. Theres a lot of mixed messaging when we take in tandem what we hear from the state government, local officials. Just to break it down, federal officials put out from the white house the opening guidelines, they said states considering reopening should be seeing a downward trend of new cases over the course of 14 consecutive days. Translate that here in South Carolina, thats not the case. Nevertheless, the republican governor here is saying hes allowing beaches to reopen, as well as preevousviously closed l stores. So Small Businesses are allowed to begin getting back in business. All of that coming against the backdrop of local officials like the columbia mayor here who told me being pros business right now also means being pro Public Health. Hes against the republican governors decision to reopen or start reopening South Carolina at this point. And it brings me to the place were at right now, britains in columbia is one of those businesses weighing whether or not to reopen. They erred on the side of reopening their doors and are doing that with several cautions in place. One of the owners told me shes excited to start seeing they are employees, who are like family and excited to start seeing other people in the store. At the same time she wants to do it as safely as possible. They have a magic number on their door right now from the Fire Department that says 18 people is the maximum number of people that can be in this store at one time. So social distancing is maintained. Andrea, one other thing i would point out, amidst the mixed messaging, Governor Cuomo just said this, to him opening businesses and opening schools are joined themes. Here in South Carolina thats not the case. In the last hour, governor mcmaster said while hes allowing beaches and some retailers to start opening, schools will not be reopening, leaving people to sort of wonder where the line is between whats safe and whats not. And how to take care of their children if the schools are closed and theyre due back at work. Indeed, its a real problem another problem. Thank you very much, ali vitali. Ben johnson joins us now, the mayor of savannah, georgia. Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for being with us. We heard from the mayors of atlanta and augusta and albany. Real concerns the governor did not consult or have his staff consult any of the mayors about their local situation before this sweeping order to open businesses across the state of georgia. Yes, and thank you for the opportunity. We were absolutely blindsided. We were very clear even from the white house guidance that there was a defined formula to be able to phase people back in to some sense of normalcy. We realize here in georgia that we have not met the 14day threshold. We realize here in georgia that we were still increasing cases daily, here in savannah, chatham county, we had eight new cases in the last 17 hours. So we didnt check any of those boxes. Certainly we were not prepared for this. I think its just a very, very dangerous decision that affects the lives of people that i swore to serve. And have you been able to talk to anyone on the governors staff or governor himself in the 24 hours since the announcement . No, as a matter of fact, we have not spoken with the governor since this has begun. Amazing. We realize obviously were all concerned about the viability of our state. Were all concerned about the viability of our Small Business community. But we have to be very clear where the data is at this point. Georgia has the 14th highest infection rate but at this point were still the seventh lowest testing rate in the coun