Masters, golfs first major tournament of the year, its been postponed. The Boston Marathon has been postponed until september. Those moves following moves by major league baseball, the nba, even broadway, all taking their own precautions because of the outbreak. People understandably have a lot of questions this morning about their health, about their safety, about how their government is handling this pandemic. Were going to do our absolute best to answer those questions this hour. We have a team of doctors. We have the mayors of two of americas largest cities, los angeles and atlanta, but we start right now with the markets. Right now, as you can see, markets are up just a day after suffering the worst day in more than 30 years. Nbcs david gura is on the floor of the new york stock exchange. David, what are we seeing right now . Craig, markets are up, they surged when the market opened. Weve seen them fall back a bit as the morning has wornd up. Paying close attention to the secretary of treasury, steve mnuchin, who did an interview with cnbc this morning and gave comments on the heels of the enter u v interview, talking about what his conversations with lawmakers on capitol hill. Its clear hes the point person on the white house on coming up with a fiscal package designed to strengthen the safety net for americans as this Public Health crisis continues. Whats interesting, craig, is how he came out, talked a good book, talked about progress, echoed where we are in terms of the process. Moments later you had the president weighing in on twitter focusing not on fiscal policy, on creating that kind of safety net package but monetary policy, encouraging his fed chair to lower rates once again. As you mentioned at the top of the show, the president announcing hes going to have a press conference at 3 00 eastern. Dont need to point out to your viewers that the markets will be open. Thats an hour before theyre scheduled to close. Thats the narrative weve seen. Member of the Coronavirus Task force, members of administration who have said one thing, and the president comes in and says another or backtracks or corrects something theyve said. Thats what investors are watching for, one, whats happening on capitol hill with the package as it makes its way through congress and the other, what the president will say at the end of the day, focusing on the topic in the tweet, the coronavirus. David gura, well be checking in with you throughout the afternoon. Lets bring in two medical experts. Paul sachs is clinical director of the division of Infectious Disease at brigham and womens hospital, also an hiv expert. Phillip cabas is ep deem olt, professor of Public Health at hunter collegiate the suny university of new york also the author of dread how fear and fantasy have fueled epidemics from the black death to the avian flu. Just a bit of news coming in. The city of new jersey excuse me, jersey city in new jersey, the first known case there being reported right now, so not far from where we sit, another case of coronavirus. Dr. Sachs, ill start with you, for folks who are watching, folks who are listening on sirius satellite radio, in the simplest of terms, if you do not feel well and you dont know why and you think it might be coronavirus, what should you do . The most important thing is people stay home, take care of themselves and get better. Most of the time this is a mild illness. By taking care of your home and Getting Better spontaneously, you wont run the risk of infecting other people. The other thing to remember, all the rest of the rest to be viruses are still circulating. Even if you dont feel well and you feel like youre coming down with a cold or cough, it could be one of the regular cold viruses that are still out there. The message is stay home, take care of yourself, get better. Dont risk infecting other people. At what point should you go, should you go to the doctor or hospital . This woman in jersey city that were getting more information about, a 41yearold female in lives in downtown jersey city. She was proactive when she felt symptoms and initiated testing with her private physician were being told. The major advice i would give people is if they feel theyre getting progressively short of breath or cant keep up with their hydration or they feel like their illness is worsening remember colds are annoying but dont typically get worse over time. That would be the time to trigger medical care. Triggering medical care today means raising the question of coronavirus which means you should contact your provider, your doctor, your nurse and say youre worried you might have this. That would enable them to set in place testing and advise you to ke wear a mask in public or keep you separate from other people. Many places have initiated drivethrough testing so you can avoid coming in contact with other patients. Professor, testing, that seems to be the biggest part of this story. Dr. Anthony fauci, National Institute of health, runs Infectious Diseases there as you know. This is what he said just a few hours ago on morning joe about improving the Testing Process in this country. Well play it. Then well talk about it. I would think within a week were going to start seeing a real acceleration of testing. As we go two, three more weeks, it will be much, much more. I think were going to see a much different situation than we saw just a few weeks ago. What gives you that confidence that it is now changing, that a week from now anyone who walks into a hospital or goes to see a doctor can get a test for coronavirus . Im not saying anyone and everyone. Im saying its going to be markedly improved. What has changed is theres been a major involvement of the private sector. So by implementing this wider testing, professor, is that enough to stop the spread of this virus . Enough to stop the spread of the virus, no. You dont stop the spread of the virus with testing its an airborne virus. Its going to spread. I trust tony fauci a lot. What hes saying is we will know more once theres more testing. Here i want to second a point that dr. Sachs just made, that the people who get sick with this virus almost almost always have a not very serious illness. That doesnt seem to be well understood. 80 or 90 of people who get sick dont get so sick that they need serious intervention. That message isnt getting across. So more testing will tell us more about just how many people have mild illnesses. I hope that will be reassuring because one of the big problems were seeing now is this what seems like a panicy response. Do you think that the response to the coronavirus so far has been an overreaction . People respond the way they respond, and its hard to say to people calm down. Its hard to say that when theyre your family members and when its the American People. I see two reasons for this. One, and im going to take a moment to criticize not just nbc but all the media. When the media as well as the government make the dow jones average into a leading indicator of the health of the american republic, the dow jones average falls and people flip out. So thats bad. Its not the leading indicator of the health of the republic or the physical health of the population, and we ought not do that. Secondly, theres been, as youve been reporting, a real dallasft. Worth of leadership here. The white house is hopeless. Fauci has been great, but then he gets secondguessed or even negated by some other commentators. What distinguishes this epidemic from others which i covered in the book in dread, epidemics are always a story. Theyre never just about how many people get sick, how many people die. If that were true, wed be doing something about the epidemic of deaths from gunfire in america. 30,000 deaths a year, but you dont hear people calling for the elimination well, you hear people calling for that, but you dont see congress ap eighting 8. 3 billion to end that epidemic. Epidemics are about something that grabs people in power, an mates people in power. Whats different about this epidemic, thats historically true. Whats different about this one is for the first few months and in the u. S. Until only about this week, the epidemic has been led by the information and the people who should be taking responsibility have been just playing catchup. Dr. Sachs, the criteria for testing right now, it is limited, to say the least. Where can people get these tests . Whats the process for testing . So the criteria for testing right now, at least the official criteria are that anyone any clinician who thinks its medically indicated can order a test. The difficulty has been the supply and the access to the testing. But as dr. Fauci mentioned this morning, we fortunately are going to see a huge improvement over the next couple weeks, very much involvement of the private sector, private laboratories, hospitalbased laboratories are developing their own tests. In addition there will continue to be testing through the state department of Public Health. The testing criteria should loosen up. Right now most places are focusing on the sickest patients and health care workers. Additionally were going to be able to test people who just, for example, need to know whether they have a positive test because of potentially exposing others. Using this kind of identification even of milder cases can help contain the epidemic. Dr. Sax, i want your take on the question i posed to the professor as well. School districts shutting down. Sporting venues closed for the foreseeable future, cancellation of major events. Do you believe the response so far has been appropriate, or do you think that weve gone too far . I think its the appropriate response. Its much better to be overly cautious than to play catchup in these situations. Many have referred to the flu epidemic as to how this kind of policy can lead to a slowing of an Infectious Disease because some cities canceled events and other cities did not. The cities that didnt cancel the events had more flu cases. What were trying to do is the social distancing, which means reducing the number of secondary transmissions that happened in the community and that way we can flatten the peak of the epidemic and not risk overburdening the situation. The first case of covid19 related to travel in san antonio. Lee ann, theyre close, her words, not mine, close on this coronavirus legislative package. What more do we know about that . Thats what he said when she left the capitol late last night and thats what she said this morning, they are close. What we know is she huddled with leaders around 9 15 where they went through the legislation and she got signoff from them. We know she spoke with secretary mnuchin twice already this morning. These are conversations that have been going on constantly over the past couple days. And we also know that House Republicans are meeting as well. Lead are mccarthy is meeting with his leaders to also run the traps on the legislation as well. Where do things stand now . We are extremely close, but there is no deal just yet. Lets get back to what this legislation does just for a second, craig. What it does, it expands family leave, paid leave for families and for people who are sick. It expands unemployment insurance. It provides free testing for people who need to be tested, and it also expands some Food Security programs. But were in these last final moments, craig, where that are very frenzied. These moments are tense because theyre so close, just inches or millimeters away from the deal. But its also where things could completely explode. So were waiting cautiously. Democrats seem pretty confident that there will be a vote today. Leigh ann caldwell on the hill, keep us posted. Thank you so much. Lets bring in democratic congressman max rose of new york now. Congressman, what are you hearing . When do you expect a vote . Thank you so much for having me. Im not going to prognosticate about when a vote will be, but i can tell you it has to be as soon as possible. Our number one priority has got to be addressing this Public Health crisis, but in order to address that crisis, we certainly need this fiscal stimulus pack cac which expands the security net, ensuring that every american has access to this test for free and that nobody continues to go out into society when theyre feeling ill due to their economic insecurities. It is absolutely vital and we are working in a bipartisan manner to achieve that. You made a big push for access to testing, wrote this letter to the fda and cdc. You wret a letter with republican congressman tom reed urging those agencies to take additional action to approve more testing in new york. Absolutely. Have you heard back . Yes, we have. Just today fda approved several things as it pertains to new york. One, it approved for roche, a private equipment manufacturer, approved and certified its system for Automatic Processing of covid tests which will dramatically increase the number of tests that a lab can process on a daily basis. It also enabled individual laboratories to directly apply in new york state, to the new York State Department of health to certify that they do manual tests. We have to take a moment, though, to lay out for the American People what it actually means when were talking about tests. There are two things. The first is the reagents. Those are the supplies for the laboratory tests. Thats what everyone is referring to when theyre talking about test kits. We have several million of those available right now which is not nearly enough. Then we have the capacity of our Laboratory Systems where were woefully behind on that and were only now building up to Automatic Processing which will allow us to do 10x the number we can do with manual tests. We have to make sure we skate to where the puck is going. As more and more laboratories get approved for Automatic Processing, what well then have to deal with is a crisis of an undersupply of reagents. That has to be our focus now. We need millions upon millions of these reagents, not just in new york but around the country, and it is the responsibility of both the Public Sector and the private sector to Work Together to achieve that. The mood there on the hill, what is the mood . There have been a number of your colleagues who have selfquarantined. I would imagine youve come into contact with some of these folks. Are you at all concerned that youve been exposed . I think that Everyone Needs to operate right now with a heightened level of concern, certainly were seeing an expansion of telework. Obviously the universal message that if youre feeling even slightly ill, you should be staying home. I can tell you that is the sentiment here on capitol hill. But theres also the sentiment that we have got to address this crisis as quickly as possible and not allow Party Allegiance or bickering to get in the way of that. The American People need action. They also need us to apply a wholeofgovernment approach at the local level. I can tell you in my own Congressional District just in a few hours well have all of the local elected officials gathering together with Hospital Executives to figure out how we can do Everything Possible to address this Public Health crisis. We are seeing members of congress on both sides of the aisle leading back home as well, and that is just as important. Congressman max rose of new york, thanks for your time, sir. Thank you for having me. An intervention in the west wing. In just the last 15 minutes we learned President Trump will be holding a News Conference at 3 00. Well go live to the white house for the latest on that. Up next, expert guidance on how two of this countrys largest cities are dealing with the crisis. Ill talk with Atlanta MayorKeisha Lance Bottoms and san franciscos Eric Garcetti to talk about the unique steps theyre taking in their cities. With chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting so when the day arrives, youll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye. When you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. 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