Totally honest. Like the entire world flipped upside down. We will get there. Well get past it. Theres still a long way to go. Its good to see the numbers start to flatten. Those first couple weeks were a war zone. Thats not the case right now. We extubated my patient and its kind of exhilarating when we do it. Its happy. Thats what we cling to. Thats what i cling to. There is hope. None of my coworkers regret this. We are here to help our patients. Pandemic or not, were here. Stay safe, continue social distancing. Well keep doing our part. You keep doing yours. Kind of more of an uplifting open today. Everybody do your part. The medical workers on the front lines of this fight. Good evening. Im chuck todd on meet the press. Continuing the breaking coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. We begin tonight with the hope that we are finally going to get a concrete plan from the president to address the issue of coronavirus testing. But it is hope. Administration officials tell nbc news that todays briefing in roughly one hour is going to focus on testing. Which comes as experts, Business Leaders, members of congress and governors of both sides of the aisle have been repeatedly sounding the alarm that there has not been enough testing and in many of these states, most of the states they dont have enough equipment to make it so. The president disagrees and hes publicly pushing some states, by name, to reopen their economies despite yesterday telling those same governors that he wants them to call the shots on when and how to ease social distancing restrictions. The president is also feuding with the governor at the epicenter of the crisis in this country, new yorks Governor Cuomo. Well have more on that in a moment. While the president is obviously eager to reopen the country, no one feels comfortable reopening until they get more tests. Ahead of this briefing, the president again today signalled he was trying to wash his hands of federal responsibility saying, quote, the states have to step up their testing. He also took to social media with rallying cries to liberate michigan, minnesota and virginia. All of which are coincidentally potential key states for his 2020 reelection. And all of them coincidentally, have democratic governors. Again, none of them have tested even 1 of their populations and none have seen a sustained reduction in confirmed cases yet. Not in michigan, not in virginia either. As you can see by the data. Not in minnesota where protesters pushing to reopen the state were featured on fox news minutes before the president s tweets. Remember, criteria number one from the president s own guidelines is that states have to see two weeks of sustained decreases in cases before considering reopening parts of their economy. And as you can see from the data, states everywhere are still seeing cases go up. Even red state governors like texas is greg abbott are signaling theyre not ready to move as quickly as the president might want them to. Right now the number of confirmed cases totals roughly 700,000 with more than 35,000 deaths and as the president s task force warned, theres a number of undetected asymptomatic cases unless you test more people. Until you focus on a Marshall Plan for testing, the president is attacking Governor Cuomo. Including not being appreciative enough of the president. Heres some of cuomos response first on testing. The expression dont pass the buck without passing the bucks. Hes saying he doesnt want to provide funding to the states and he doesnt want to help on testing. I can tell you the states cant do it otherwise. If this testing doesnt work, thats a serious problem. Youre going to say after just saying this Monumental Task is up to the individual governors and the individual states, im providing no help. No assistance, no financial money. I understand that Small Businesses need the funding. By the way, i know that Airlines Need a bailout. But not the states. Why dont you show as much consideration to states as you did to your big businesses and to your airlines, right . As we look ahead to todays briefing, it seems all but certain that the president is going to escalate this fight. Heres more from Governor Cuomo responding to the president s criticisms. I dont know what im supposed to do. Send a bouquet after flowers. Hes being honest. Its up to the states to reopen. By the way, it was always up to the states. What are you going to grant me what the constitution gave me before you were born . Its called the tenth amendment. I dont need the president of the United States to read the constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the contusion before he said he had constitution before he said he had the power to open the states. Peter alexander is with us and heidi preis bill a is here. The president felt like a bystander. Yesterday he announces the guidelines and then hes like, okay, what are you doing states . Liberate this, liberate that with a clear political tingi to it. I assume that wasnt the intention of the Task Force Members yesterday. Its striking. A day after you hear from the task force with the guidelines that what set up by those medical experts here, it was basically hey to the governors, this is in your court. Now the president changing his tune and saying, hey you got to reopen to those states. On the issue of testing, consider the ricocheting opinions weve heerd on this issue from the president. A couple of weeks ago, i dont take any responsibility at all. A couple of days ago saying i have total authority on these topics and then again today as evidenced, try to put it in the lap of the states right now. Because this is really the fundamental vulnerability for this white house. They recognize it. Privately acknowledging this has been a serious problem. Speaking with allies of the president , former officials, they all agree to that right now. I spoke to a white house official late this afternoon who said that next month they will have significantly more tests. I asked why those tests werent available until now. This person pushed back and effectively said that a lot of those tests and the testing kits already exist in the states insisting its the governors problem that they havent done a good enough job keeping track of where the tests are. This individual suggested that right now at least their goal is to focus on making sure that everybody who has a symptom can be diagnosed, can get a test in the weeks ahead. The bottom line of this is that none of it, chuck, obviously resolves the issue that exists now. Now several months into this process, thoes tests arent there. Peter, this may be an unanswerable question. What is the phobia with the president and the task force about having responsibility on ramping up testing . Nobody is expecting this to be easy. Nobody was expecting one governor to handle it and one state. Its not a criticism if the federal government has to be the force here, yet it does seem as if the white house has decided any talk of testing is an admission of failure. Why dont they just embrace the fact that this is hard and lead . The president claims total authority on the topic he doesnt have authority. On this toing where he does have authority, he controls the defense production act. In the words of the governor, he could invoke that and help us get the tests we need. The president has done nothing. This is classic trump. I dont have to tell you that. Its clear to anybody watching right now about things where he thinks he stands to gain. He likes to take credit on virusrelated issues. On things like testing, where there are problems, the president likes to put the blame elsewhere. Its something, i think, ultimately the federal government is their hands are going to be forced here when you talk to these governors. Let me bring in heidi przybyla. I know youve been talking to experts. The scale of test and weave been talking to other experts too, the amount of tests that are needed and the amount of tests weve conducted, its a wide gap. I mean, basically 1 of the population and theres some people think you have to test 1 of the population every week. Chuck, were nowhere near there in term of where the epidemiological experts, as well as the Health Disaster experts are saying to nbc news. That number that you just cited, the 1 , would have to at least under the most conservative of estimates double to triple. That is the most conservative. A lot of the experts we talked to say it would have to be in the tens of thousands per day. So what is happening here . Number one, there is a Global Supply chain shortage of these kits as well as the swabs, the reagents. The kits used to extract them. Number one, we got in late, in line late for those items. Number two, the federal government isnt setting the goals. As you heard peter say, he said significantly more. Were still not being told what is the goal . Okay, states, heres the percentage of the population that you need to be testing in order to know that you have an epidemiologically significant sample size and youre getting reliable data on the testing, what the numbers are in terms of the spread. You look at the countries doing a good job of this, germany, south korea. Theyre doing that at a federal level. Lower sacks on i, you got to the scaling, dr. Birx yesterday was asked, what does the percentage have to be . How many tests need to be put out there for us to be confident whether this is spreading. Its still out there. As soon as you lift the lid, for example, like new york, you could see another big surge. Secondly, chuck, is the Contact Tracing. That is something that were just not doing. It wasnt part of the guidelines. That is essential if you look to countries like germany and south korea. If you talk Contact Tracing, very labor intensive. Again, that might take something bigger than one state can handle. Both of you, thank you forg getting us started. Let me get a perspective from Ohio Governor mike dewine. I think ill be speaking to him in a couple of days as well. Fw governor, let me start with what we picked up on. Somebody ive quoted a lot, i love that first quote she said, before pandemic begins, everybody thinks the sky is falling. After a pandemic is rolling, everybody acts why you didnt act sooner. That gets smarter and smarter every time i read it. What is your Testing Capacity have to be to make you feel comfortable opening the state . Well. Our testing is increasing, chuck. But its not increasing nearly fast enough. We want to do a lot more testing. You know, we try to drill down every day when i get a report where we are. The reagent that was mentioned a moment ago is a problem. Weve got hospitals chomping at the bit. Theyve got the capacity to do it. But they get the reagent is literally rationed as it comes in. We need some help probably from the fda to wide theres companies, theyve got some things coming online. A reagent is one problem. The other problem is when you get out into the field for the people doing the swabbing. Many times they dont have a swab. What we did in ohio, Ohio State University and our Health Department got together, formed a group and theyre working every day to get more swabs out. Theyre doing it, the liquid that goes into the tubes and all those things, that is starting to work. Were making progress. Were not where we would like to be, certainly. This reagent issue, is this something you think if the defense production act were invoked, we could not have a rationing situation . You know, im not an expert on it, chuck. Im not sure about that. But i just know what our hospitals are telling us. You know, they would love to go full blown out and they could do that. But it is a reagent problem that literally is ration to them every week. That limits every day how many tests they can do. Since its a huge we can talk about its not all of the problem. Its part of the problem. Right. You had said youve laid out some ways that you may a very soft opening. Release of the steam valve, if you will a little bit. I assume youre like every other governor ive been talking to. Youve got Health Officials in one year, Business Leaders in another ear and youre trying to strike that balance. What is your biggest fear about may 1 . Is it opening too much or opening too little . Well, thats a good question. Were going to try to do some of the businesses that weve classified as essential, with the exception of a product that they produce are not much different from ones that weve not allowed to open. Were going to look at some of those that have not been allowed to open, let them open. Weve learned some things in three or four weeks. Weve had companies doing a bangup job as far as safety. I talked to a friend of mine, eastern part of the state the other day, i hadnt talked to him for a while. Hes got a tile company. He told me took him five minute to tell me the safety things theyre doing. I asked him how many people its a pretty big company. I said how many have come down with covid19 . He said to our knowledge, nobody. So hes had some luck, no doubt. There are also we can do these things and so taking what weve learned and then trying to expand the businesses that are doing that is important. Because if you just look at the Public Health side, a down economy is not particularly helpful for Public Health. Its not helpful. Our suicides go up, depression goes up. All kinds of bad things happen. We got to get the balance there. It seems that you have another challenge. On one hand, you acted early. You flat end your curve early. You sort of kept this at bay. It also means there are parts of your state that have gotten through this really well. Some of those counties are going to say, hey, governor, love ya, we want to open everything up, but they perhaps border michigan that has its own outbreak. How are you going to manage that those counties that sit there like on one hand they havent theyre doing well. On the other hand, theyre awfully close to some bigger outbreaks in southeast michigan. Well, one of the challenges as you know is people can have this and never know it. They can become big spreaders. Because we dont have the robust testing, some of the counties that dont have high numbers, they could have a lot of people Walking Around with that. This thing could take off very, very quickly. Quick story. Our prisons. We have like other states, problems in our prisons. We started really testing and my director told me this morning, she went into one area and over 100 people and 39 of them tested positive, not only positive. But 39 of the people that tested positive had absolutely no symptoms. No symptoms at all. Checked them every single day. Theyre taking their temperature, theyre checking them, doing everything they should do. 39 of the people who are positive had no symptoms. That is a scary thing. Thats something that bothers me. Its we tell the public every single day, you got to assume that the person youre talking to or close to has these. You dont know if they dont. Governor, youve faced a few protesters this week, the president earlier today on twitter seemed to encourage some of the protests. Not in your state. He did it in michigan, minnesota, virginia. Not with you. Look, politics is i get that. Is the president doing this to other governors, do you think that harms your ability to keep the state keep the state safe if you feel as if politics is being used to sort of force your hand . No. No. You know, look protesters are protesters. We believe in the first amendment. They have a right to be out there and a right to demonstrate. I grew up in yellow springs, a community in southwest ohio where we had protesters literally every weekend. Look, thats fine. Theres no problem. Were going to do what we need to do and what we think is the right thing to do. Do you wish the president wouldnt be involved in it . Well, look, the president is aspirational about wanting to open and you know, he expresses, i think, what most americans think. That is hey, we would love to get back. Wed love to get people back working. We all feel that way. You know, the white house is, frankly, whenever ive called them, theyve been very, very helpful in dealing with specific problems that we had. Governor dewine, youve, i think one of the more outspoken, one of the more aggressive on this. I appreciate you sharing your views with the public. I think its important for people outside of ohio to hear what youre up to. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Coming up, the reality of the reopening. Italy takes its first steps out of lockdown. What lessons could we learn from them . Plus, what are the next steps really going to look like and how normal will the new normal be . Plus, potentially promising information about a coronavirus treatment. Not a vaccine, but boy, it would help. Chicago ok, so, magnificent mile for me i thought i was managing. My moderate to severe Crohns Disease. Yes until i realized something was missing. Me. You ok, sis . My symptoms kept me from being there for my sisters. Flight boarding for flight 2007 to chicago. So i talked to my doctor and learned. Humira is for people who still have symptoms of Crohns Disease after trying other medications. And the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief. And many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections. Serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. Tell your doctor. If youve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if youve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections. Or have flulike symptoms or sores. Dont start humira if you have an infection. Be there for you, and them. Ask your doctor about humira. With humira, remission is possible. 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