Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. It is thursday, march 19th. Along with joe, willie, and me, we have White House Reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. Former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst, Steve Rattner is with us. So reports of new cases of the coronavirus in this country seem to be coming in by the minute. There are now more than 8,900 confirmed cases here in the u. S. And more than 150 deaths. The number of cases in the state of new york alone jumped 44 over the last 24 hours. Now close to 2,400. Thats more than double Washington State, which has the second highest number of confirmed cases. A top official on the White House CoronavirusTask Force Says the number of confirmed cases in the u. S. Is expected to dramatically increase over the next few days. At a White House Briefing yesterday, dr. Deborah birx urged americans not to overreact, noting that the spike will occur as testing accelerates. They were individuals who had been tested. Who hadnt had their specimen run because of the slow throughput. It is now in a highspeed platform. So we will see the number of people diagnosed dramatically increase over the next four to five days. I know some of you will use that to raise an alarm, that we are worse than italy because of our slope of our curve. To every american out there, it will be five to six days worth of tests being run in 24 to 48 hours. So our curves will not be stable until sometime next week. Well, you know, also, these numbers arent going to be stable for a while, willie, because whatever the numbers are right now, because there isnt testing ive had a lot of Health Care Officials say the numbers are probably six, seven, eight, nine, ten times the amount it is. If it is at 8,000 right now, chances are good you have between 50,000 to 80,000 americans who are actually carrying around the coronavirus. Of course, as weve been saying for weeks now, we cant map them. We cant track them. We cant make sure that communities are protected from them. Because we still dont have the testing. Thats what Public Health officials have been telling us on this show and elsewhere for weeks and weeks. T numbers you see on tv and read in the paper and come out of the cdc is not a reflection of how much disease there is in the country. It is a reflection of how much testing there is, and there is not enough. Well talk more about that. We had an official from Columbia University on yesterday saying theyre probably by a factor of ten higher than the numbers put out there. Were already seeing people who havent been tested flooding into hospitals. The capacity already strained in new york city and other places. Once these tests come in, and once we get more testing, as dr. Birx say, the numbers will go way up from where they are now. Jonathan lemire, testing is way off. We had supports yesterday of supplies running out that are needed for some test kits. Again, it is a colossally botched effort by the federal government. Were going to be talking about ventilators in a little bit, the crisis there. Our overreliance on testing parts and other parts from china. Also, how, again, were not going to have what the demand the supply that the demand calls for when these hospitals are overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. Theres a looming crisis here in terms of the medical supplies. Masks, ventilators, and so on. The demand is simply far, far outstrips the production at the moment. The president and the white house, theyre trying to step this up. Theyve been touting Public Private partnerships to get companies to step up their levels of production. Yesterday, the president invoked the defense protection act, which is a rarely used, 70year old measure, where he can marshall the private sector, to get better prices, mobilize them to this effort. We played at the top him describing himself as a wartime president. Thats how theyre viewing this. The people inside the white house likened this to a war effort. Some of the president s most senior advisers said it is going to take a national movement, akin to what we saw for world war ii, in order to do this. The president himself invoked that yesterday, although and we also, of course now, there is the political implication. The president thought, as of a few weeks ago, hed be running for reelection on a back of a strong economy. The economy is now gone. We seem to be staring at a recession at any time. Instead, theyre trying to rebrand this. Theyre trying to grab the moniker wartime president , suggesting this is a national moment. They want him to be judged on his performance here. One could argue that would be a failing report card at the moment. Theyre asking americans to be patient. To sacrifice, to understand that things are going to get worse before they get better. Mika, i want to sprinkle in here, waas we talk about the shortfall on products and safety equipment, this is guidance from the cdc to Health Care Providers that they sent around to hospitals. In settings where face masks are not available, Health Care Providers might use homemade masks, bandana or scarf, for care of patients with covid19 as a last resort. In the United States of america, doctors are used to use bandanas or scarves instead of masks because we dont have enough, or to rip apart gowns and sew together their own homemade masks. Thats where we are in terms of supplies. To frame this in 2020. In terms of supplies, joe, the masks could have been available. If we had acted early december, when we knew this was coming our way, when it was clear it was spreading around the world, we would have everything that we need. Maybe not complete on ventilators, but wed have a lot more if wed had a jump start. If, perhaps, the Pandemic Office hadnt been cleaned out with everybody fired. Thats what they do for a living, prepare. The president got rid of those people. Well, you look at the masks. You look at the gloves. Willie, you look at the other protective equipment. Most of that is made in china. Right now, of course, weve been having a trade war with china for quite some time. You wonder how, in the United States of america, in 2020, the most technologically advanced country in the world, the most medically advanced country in the world, that in our country, we do not have the basic necessities to take care of the American People because the government didnt prepare. We dont have the safety equipment. We dont have the respirators. We dont have the ventilators. We dont have the testing. You know, whats concerning is that we keep hearing this talk out of the white house about what they may do. Right. But, you know, you talk about how the president invoked this defense act yesterday. It was established in 1950. He later suggested that he would start moving and doing things if the situation got worse when it was needed. Well, its needed right now. It is worse. It is a ship that turns very slowly, and there are going to be thousands, at least thousands of americans who are going to die because and medical professionals whose lives are going to be at risk because we are acting like were a thirdworld country. Telling our medical providers, our best and our brightest, the people on the front lines, who are going to be performing t ii triage, to rip off a piece of their gown and use it as a protective mask. Thats what they are doing. Some are instructed to reuse those masks which, of course, violates every protocol that medical and Health Care Providers ever learned. Reuse them. To your point about the president , when he invoked the defense production act, he tweeted out, well only use this in the worstcase scenario. I hope we dont need to. As you say, we are there. It is the worstcase scenario. We need to produce ventilators and respirators. We are there. Also, a stark warning for younger americans. New data from the cdc shows all adults, not just the elderly, are being hospitalized with the virus. A new report shows adults between 20 and 54 years old made up 38 of hospitalizations here in the u. S. Dr. Deborah birx said millenials are especially affected. There are concerning reports coming out of france and italy about some young people getting seriously ill and very seriously ill in the icus. We think part of this may be that people heeded the early data coming out of china and coming out of south korea that the elderly or those with preexisting medical conditions were at particular risk. It may have been that the millennial generation, our largest generation, our future generation that will carry us through for the next multiple decades, there may be disproportional number of infections among that group. Joe, this immediately calls to mind those spring break scenes of the packed beaches in the state of florida, which still have not been closed. These are from a couple days ago. Theyre still out there yesterday. Some of the bars are closing. The beach is not. Kids on spring break. In fairness, the messaging from the white house and from others, even from the medical community, was that this hit elderly people especially hard. 60 and over, those more vulnerable. What dr. Birx took pains yesterday to make the point, this is not just an infection. This is not just a disease that hits the elderly. It comes for young people, as well. Well, as were learning, as were hearing from people who have who are suffering right now from the coronavirus, you can see that it impacts people very differently. Sometimes you cant predict how it will impact a person. A person may seem healthy but can really field the symptoms of coronavirus, while another may not. Joe, the spike in testing results that we are bound to see, as dr. Birx has put out there, to tell us not to overreact, i actually think that information is going to really make it real for the young people who are still congregating, when this is clear that the entire country needs to stay put and stay separate. The young people are the weak link here. Theres also theres a lag. Every number you see today is a lagging indicator. The numbers you see today are the people who got it three weeks ago. Right. The numbers you see today are the worst and ten other people have it now from that person. Yeah, from that one person who has been going around for three weeks, who may not have been exhibiting signs of this. You have to multiply that number. Just the science. Steve rattner, you add those numbers up and, again, nobody knows, i dont know, the cdc obviously doesnt know, the government doesnt know, but medical professionals i talk to say if you look at a number like 8,900 cases, chances are good that the real number is 90,000. If we were testing like south korea, the number would be probably increased tenfold because those 8,900 people have been spreading it around for the past three weeks. And because we dont have tests, like the president said, if you want a test you can have a test he said that several weeks ago. Because were not like south korea was on this testing, then Health Officials know that number is exponentially higher. It is going to keep spiking straight up until we have the tests, until we have the wherewithal to map this out. Quite frankly, until the government decides to tell everybody to go home and lock down. Theres no question about that, joe. The number of cases is far higher than what youre seeing in the reported results. You hear stories all the time about people with symptoms, who feel bad, whatever, who go to their hospital or are turned away because they dont meet certain criteria for being tested. It seems they are slowly getting to a better place in terms of having on drivein testing and things like that. We are a lot closer to italy in our response to this than we are to south korea and china, which have both been exceptionally effective at not just testing but figuring out how to lock down people, marshal all the abilities of the government. Weve been a step behind. Yup, we have. Steve, you have a couple of charts for us that put the market hemorrhaging into Historical Perspective. Also, well talk about how we respond. What do you have . Look, first of all, i think every day that goes by, the economists get more and more pessimistic about what were looking at. We are now looking at it is not a question of whether were going to be in a recession. It is not a question of whether we are in a recession. We are in a recession. It seems to be unfolding as a recession of really historic performances. A number that came out yesterday, i think, that stunned a lot of us, was a forecast from jpmorgan. Theyre looking now a week ago, they were looking at 3 or 4 down gdp. Now, 14 to decline in the second quarter. That would be a historic record by any measure. Weve never had a decline in quarterly gdp, at least since the depression, of more than 10 . You can see the magnitude of the decline. If you look here at what happened in the great recession, about an 8 decline in the worst quarter. Jpmorgan is projecting well have a jump up in the third quarter, as people get back to work and start spending the money theyre not spending. That sort of presupposes that on july 1, everything is back to normal and were spending money and doing stuff, which seems a little hard for me to imagine. If this happens steve, if i can interrupt for a second, these forecasts have been overly optimistic every day, as you roll over the past several weeks. Were hearing from the best and brightest medical minds that, actually, it doesnt just go away one day magically and daffodils come out and people start jumping up and down across meadows, throwing thousand dollar bills at jpmorgan. Itll be, from what we hear, a rolling virus. We may hit a peak. It may go down, then it can pop up again. Then it goes down, then it comes back again. Thats what this is going to look like until we have a vaccine, according to a lot of medical professionals who, of course, say this isnt going to be a blizzard. This is going to be a long winter. That is an important point, joe. People, in their heads, think, well, if we do social distancing, maybe shelter in place for three weeks, life is going to be fine. Thats not at all and we spend a lot of parttime listening to Public Health experts because we have to invest money on what they say. Its not what you hear. You hear of this flattening of the curve, which leads to the same number of people being infected, just over a long period of time. Before i get to the stock market, let me try to translate the gdp into real numbers. What you are starting to see are massive applications for job insurance around the various states. Give you a couple of statistics. In connecticut, in the first three days of this week, there were 30,000 applications for Unemployment Insurance. They typically have 3,000. In massachusetts, they had 19,884 applications for Unemployment Insurance. In the entire month of february, they had a little over 17,000. In illinois, they had 41,000 applications on tuesday alone for Unemployment Insurance. Normally have 4,500 over two theys in days in a normal period. Gdp is an amorphous concept for many americans, youre looking at massive increases in unemployment and massive declines in the real industry. Car companies are shutting down. Service industries, of course, are shut down all over america. Getting back to this question of how the virus unfolds, joe, this is not like a play at which you have an inter mission, then everybody comes back and finishes the play. This is more like the tin man in the wizard of oz, who gets caught in the rain, sits there until somebody unsticks him. We can talk about the stock Market Reaction because yesterday was another bad day. Yesterday brought the stock market all the way back to where it was when donald trump was inaugurated, almost exactly back to where he was when he was inaugurated. We can all talk about trumps role in this and so on. What this represents, this is the steepest, fastest decline in stock market history. Its down 32 from the peak. It has taken less than a month to get there. To put that into Historical Perspective for you, in the great recession, it took a year for the stock market to fall as much as it has fall been this country in one month. Without getting too political about it, i think there is a piece of this that certainly relates to leadership. You can track it literally to when the market feels washington is on top of this, when trump feels he has his act together. Market, okay, we can deal with this. Then he says stuff that freaks people out or they dont understand, doesnt sound like he is taking it seriously, and it bose the othgoes the other w. You have a piece of real stuff going on and a piece of leadership going on. Were just in act one of this. Act two is when the hospitals start to get jammed, mika. We see the lack of supplies. Our Health Care Professionals dont have the supplies they need to keep them safe. Then they go down. The possibility, the very real possibility, certainly not saying this to disturb anybody, but this is the reality we seem to be facing. With Health Care Professionals not having the Safety Supplies they need, then our Health Care Professionals go down, and suddenly, an overtaxed emergency room and an overtaxed hospital, an overtaxed Health Care System collapses. So this situation, lets hope the social distancing, lets hope governments shutting down interaction between people, lets hope that stops that emergency from coming. Again, theres a threeweek lag on everything thats happening. I think even if we shut the country down tomorrow, or even if we shut the country down today, the threeweek lag is still going to hit us. It is going to be felt most acutely in the hospitals, in the emergency rooms, where we dont have basic equipment. Well, to stieffeves point, market is responding to leadership. If he seems strong, like he knows what he is doing, perhaps itll respond differently. Here is what the market is looking at. Are we depending on social distancing to solve this crisis . Do we really think all americans, including the tens of thousands of young peop