I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by easter. Easter is a very special day for me and i see it sort of in that timeline that im thinking about and i say wouldnt it be great to have all of the churches full . I think Easter Sunday and youll have packed churches all over our country. I think it would be a beautiful time and its just about the timeline that i think is right. Today images poured in from across the country of what easter looked like in the age of social distancing. And clearly, they are nothing like President Trump hoped they would be. And now as the president eyes another benchmark, 19 days away, the Washington Post reports one of the biggest obstacles to the virus response is trump himself. Advisors spent significant time to manage the president and his whims from successfully dissuading him from seeking to reopen the country at easter to tempering his impulse to push unproven drugs as miracle elixirs and we have a window how we arrived at this point with millions out of work and a half a million testing positive in the u. S. Alone. The New York Times reports quote, by the last week of february, it was clear to the administrations Public Health team that schools and businesses and hot spots would have to close. But in the turbulence of the trump white house, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences. Here is dr. Anthony fauci responding to that report this morning. We look at it from a pure health standpoint, we make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken sometimes its not. But we it is what it is. We are where we are right now. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was on going and you started mitigation early you could have saved lives. Nobody is going to d g ting to. If we had right from the very beginning shut everything down it may have been different. There was a lot of push back about shutting things down back then. Obviously. And with that id like to welcome in my panel. We have politics editor for the daily beast sam stein and an msnbc contributor core rekareem. Sam stein, let me start with you. You were tweeting some this afternoon what we heard there from dr. Anthony fauci that under scored the point of the six by line piece this morning which is that there was resistance inside the white house to taking action earlier to fight this and we are now worse off because of it. Yeah, i mean, the common tension throughout the past couple months has been the Public Safety measures on one hand and the political expedient on the other. Trump has one eye on the economy and his election. Thats influenced a number of his decisions. Chief among them the decision not to push for an essential shutdown when Public Health experts were for it. Were still obviously behind the eight ball in certain areas but when we look back at this, thats the critical decision that was made which was the president ultimately decided that he didnt want to have the economic wreckage that came with shutting down the country. An Interesting Development that just happened is trump right before we went on air was tweeting something that called faucis statement to jake tapper fake news and included a hashtag called fire fauci which leads me to believe that he is continues to be skeptical that the Public Health experts are telling the truth and secondarily have his political best interest at heart. This could really forshadow a few crazy and Interesting Developments until the weeks ahead. That is something i think a lot of us are not necessarily ready to grapple with. If you look at polling about who Americans Trust to deal with this crisis, it is overwhelmingly Public Health officials and dr. Fauci specifically. I mean, there was another story from the times out this afternoon about even regular americans sitting watching these briefings asking where is dr. Fauci . Shannon petty piece, lets dig into what is going on tonight. Lets take a look back where he was when these dire warnings were coming out. This was late february and the Public Health team behind the scenes we now know from this reporting thats been laid out in the times and earlier in the Washington Post was pushing to try and take these actions. Here are a couple of the things that President Trump said first on february the 26th and then on february the 27th. Lets watch and then well talk about it. Were, you know, were at that very low level and we want to keep it that way. So were at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list so that were going to be pretty soon at only five people and we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. We have done an incredible job. Were going to continue. Its going to disappear. One day its like a miracle, it will disappear and from our shores, it could get worse before it gets better, it could maybe go away. Well see what happens. Nobody really knows. So of course, shannon, we do know that we have ended up in a much different place and we do know that the president has lately been listening to those Public Health experts or at least he did in terms of the reality as were sitting here on Easter Sunday and not back at work. What does your reporting tell you about the president s head space right now and who is winning this argument between the economic and Public Health officials . Well, there is a major push in the white house to get things up and running by may 1st to some extent. Maybe not the flick on a light switch and everything comes back with a big bang as the president has talked about a few times now but a reopening certain parts of the economy folks inside the white house are talking about if there are certain areas that havent been affected very much, if there are certain types of businesses that could come online, if theres targeted testing that could be done to get certain people back to work. So those are things actively being discussed at the white house right now. As you have pointed out, there has constantly throughout this process been almost like a devil and angle on the president s shoulder whispering in his ear and everybody can decide who is the devil and who is the angle but you have one side urging the president about the economic consequences to this and how white spread those are and the other side talking about the Public Health consequences. You played a couple clips from february and people are talking about jan. I remember the first week of march when the president was at maralago, staffers that weekend and the first weekend of march scrambling to almost carry out an intervention when the president got back from maralago to drive home to him, how urgent this was and how some action had to be taken. Were talking about in march and that weekend, the president , i was there covering him. He spent the weekend golfing and vie the Vice President was meeting with cruise line executives and the president s biggest concern then what would happen to the cruise passengers brought back into the u. S. . This has been a continued theme, push and pull and its going on now in the white house but i can say, yes, there are active conversations to try and figure out a solution. Its not just the president frustrated with the economy but 10 million plus people out of a job right now, too. So well definitely be getting guidance this week further on that. Yeah, i know. We absolutely need to make sure we dont lose sight of that reality, although, i do think the Public Health experts we heard from this morning are saying look, we still have to put at the end of the day Peoples Health and safety above all else. Kareem john pierre, Vice President biden wrote an op ed in the New York Times pretty straightforward, not a lot of flame throwing in line with his Overall Campaign message of attempts to return to normalcy but he makes some statements here. You know, first, we have to get the number of cases down and there needs to be wide spread and prompt testing and third, make sure the hospitals and Health Care Systems are ready for flairups of the disease. Do you see evidence . Those are not politicapolitical. Those are basics. Every expert says these are the sole laugss s to solution to get the country back to work. Is the government focused on these and the president . That testing piece sticks out in particular as an area where we keep hearing you can get a test but the evidence simply isnt there. Look, kasie, trump failed at every level of this crisis when it comes to preparedness, he failed there. When it comes to response, he failed there, and wanting to open up the country by may 1st is incredibly dangerous and deadly and that is against every nearly every expert out there who have said it is not time. We need to put Peoples Health ahead of the economy. And when you talk about, you know, opening up the country and look at countries who are like south korea is opening up their country but there is one thing they have that we havent done very well, which is testing. And that is really our original sin if you think about how this has gone by the last several months is the testing. We keep getting haunted again over that one thing that we just havent gotten right and its because of the president of the United States and the thing about this, too, he was warned in january. He was warned in february by his own policy advisors and he ignored it. Were at tens of thousands of people in this country alone who are dead and if you think about opening up this country after may 1st, there are parts of this country who will not reach their peak until after may 1st. You had the mayor of d. C. Who was on this morning and said theyre not going to reach their peak in d. C. Until june. That is a long ways away so look, we have to focus on Public Health right now. We cannot i understand the economy. I get that. But we have to be making sure people are healthy and people are safe before we can go down that road. All right. Shannon petty piece thank you for your time tonight. Well have much more conversation coming up. 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Com people first wide spread anti body testing may be a key factor in the effort to return the american way of life to something resembling normal. Scientists are rapidly trying to refine a blood test that determines whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus. In los angeles, 1,000 people were tested for those antibodies over the last two days. Thanks to a study conducted by usc and Los Angeles County. Joining me now is dr. Paul simon, the chief science officer for the Los Angeles County department for Public Health leading the l. A. County team working on that project. Dr. Simon, thank you so much for being here tonight. I know there are so Many Americans who are waiting on every development in the research that you and others across this country are doing in this critically important work. We explain where we stand from your research in terms of can we actually identify these antibodies . Is it reasonable to think this is something that could be widely available soon and can people who felt they had the coronavirus, can they feel confident going out into the public they cant get reinfected . Well, let me first start with our study. As the earlier speakers mentioned, were actually operating in the dark right now. We have very limited information based only on those who have tested positive for covid19 with the pcr test. Most of those folks quite ill. The anti body test will give us a full scope of the epidemic in Los Angeles County and across the country because it measures whether someone has ever been infected with the virus. So its an extremely important tool for us in Public Health but to your question, i think for individuals, as well, i think it provides useful information. It will allow someone to know whether they have been infected in the past, whether they do have anti body based on what we know about other infections, we think they will have some protection from that anti body. There is a lot of Research Underway now, though, to fully understand how strong that protection will be and how long lasting that protection will be. I think a lot of people are probably worried in terms of their ability to have faith that these tests will not only be rolled out widely but will actually work. We know that it was bottleneck the test for coronavirus here in the u. S. Was bottlenecked inside the cdc. How is it working in the development of these anti body tests . Is it something now you feel confident that youll be able to roll out if you have the opportunity . How involved is the government or not in what you guys are doing . So i feel comfortable well be able to roll out the tests as far as surveillance purposes. Whether it will be able to be rolled out on a scale to allow millions of americans to be tested remains to be seen. There are many tests coming to the marketplace right now. I think our big concern is a variable quality. There is not a lot of oversight as these tests get rolled out. Were very concerned that there may be false positives and false negatives and when youre dealing with an infection that despite its severity remains limited to probably a relatively small percentage of the population, even a small rate of inaccuracy in terms of false positives can very much misled individuals. We dont want people to be tested, have a positive result and then believe theyre protected but in fact, because it was a false positive turn out that theyre not protected. That could be catastrophic. What can you share about the study youve been doing . Are you getting a sense the spread is more wide spread . We look at it and make sure we fully understand it. Many more persons have the infection is apparent based on the standard diagnostic covid test. In los angeles 9,000 have been reported with it. I think it will show many more thousands will have had it but i dont want to give specifics until we look at the data more carefully. And very quickly, doctor, do you think well find once we have a wide spread anti body testing there were problems with the covid19 tests . I know anecdotally a lot of people ive spoken to who maybe they live in the same family and two people are sick, one gets a positive test, one gets a negative test. It doesnt make sense to anyone. I think there is concern about the accuracy of those tests. Will your anti body screen be able to give us a window into that . Unfortunately, no test is perfect. There are concerns about the anti body tests and like wise concerns about the pcr test. I think the pcr test potentially is very accurate but the specimen needs to be carefully collected. I think when we do see false negatives, its often because the swab wasnt inserted deeply enough to get an appropriate specimen to test for the virus. So i think overall in the pca test is pretty good but no test is perfect. All right. Well, we are certainly really appreciative of the work that you and your colleagues are doing. We have so much riding on it. Dr. Paul simon, thank you for spending time to explain what you guys are doing. New york is approaching a grim milestone. The state is now approaching 10,000 coronavirus related deaths after its deadliest week of the pan dedemic so far as em ev ems and Fire Department are struggling to keep up with 700 employees testing positive themselves and with close to a quarter of the work force out sick, front line workers are averaging more than 5500 ambulance requests a day and a new 911 call every 15 seconds. Joining me now is president of local 2507 uniformed emts, paramedics and fire inspectors. Thank you for being with us tonight, sir. I want to start by first of all, expressing our deep appreciation for down and everyoyou and ever repre