So high. You want to cry just walking down the hallways. I think our tolerance has been less, our exhaustion has been greater, and our feeling of impotence is going to grow. Although weve improved, we still dont have an answer for it. We still dont know how to treat it. It triggers what people are supposed to do when they dont feel that sick, and with a majority, its hard to win. When people get sick, weve had two nurses die, two doctors died. Four hours ago i was putting in a chest tube in a nurse i had known for 34 years, putting her on life support, and you see that all these deaths are preventable. Theyre preventable. People just dont Pay Attention and thats extremely frustrating. That was dr. Ivan melendez of the Hidalgo CountyHealth Authority in texas. He was speaking with msnbcs morgan chesky. Im daly in for chuck todd. More than a thousand people now have died for three consecutive days in the uttse and the total deaths of this pandemic above 145,000, the total number of cases over 4 million now. 75,000 were confirmed just yesterday. As you can see, hospitalizations are at rates not seen since the spring, and deaths, while lower than the spring peak, are rising. The outbreak is being driven by multiple hot spots. This is the curve for cases, hospitalizations and deaths in florida. This is texas right now, and here you can see the situation in california, the countrys largest state. And this morning the coordinator of the white houses Coronavirus Task force said those three states are battling crises that are on par with what new york experienced. I just want to make it clear to the american public, what we have right now are essentially three new yorks with these three major states. And so were really having to respond as an American People, and thats why you hear us calling for mass aks and increa social distancing to really stop the spread of this epidemic. As Public Health officials like dr. Anthony fauci urge more states to roll back their reopenings, they are more in a state of what appears to be economic disruption. Financial relief is about to expire for millions of americans, and the next rescue package is being delayed by republican disagreements on capitol hill. At the white house, there is clearly a growing sense of anxiety. The president has been speaking nearly daily from the white house podium this week after aides reviewed some poor poll numbers which led to a negative shi notable shift in the president s downplay of this virus surge. It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better. Were asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask. People elected me to help and to protect. So i told my team its time to cancel the jacksonville, florida component of the gop convention. Reporter were you simply not convinced that you could keep people safe at the convention . I just felt it was wrong, steve, to have people go to what turned out to be a hot spot. But at the same time weve also heard the president this week say he believes that testing is overrated and that this virus is going to burn out. So where do we go from here, and what does the president do or say now . Joining me now from the white house is my nbc news colleague carol lee, Ashley Parker of the Washington Post and msnbc analyst. Thank you both for joining us. Carol, you heard dr. Birx say youve got multiple new york events that are playing out right now in these various states. We put some of these numbers up there. You heard the general encouragement to wear masks, the general encouragement for best practices there. But are there any specific steps, any specific policy steps that the administration is taking now or talking about taking in response to the situation that she describes . Well, look, one of the things that they havent fully addressed but that they are talking about, and as you mentioned there isnt a plan out there, is this issue of testing which has been the issue, frankly, from the beginning, but now theyre in a situation where you have people waiting days, if not more than a week, to get test results, and thats according to the experts, including those who work for the president , and its really creating problems in terms of being able to get a handle on the virus. Now, in terms of the president s tone and the shift that weve seen in the last week, this is a broad political reset or an attempt to do that. Weve gone from he had a campaign shakeup, now he is striking this new tone that hes been taking and its a real recognition, particularly on the convention announcement, that the virus is dictating his strategy here, that that is something that he has really resisted since the pandemic became an issue several months ago, and now were seeing him not only, according to officials, will he do these briefings but hes getting out to do events. Hes going to North Carolina on monday to a manufacturer thats involved in the vaccine development, hell be doing other events. Really, the hope is that he can stay as much as he can on message and reset here because they were looking at some really terrible polls and recognized that the president was on track to lose in november. So carol lee is mentioning the change in the president s tone this week, maybe a change in what hes going to be doing in the days ahead. Dr. Anthony fauci, of course, hes not been at the briefings the president was holding this week, but he addressed that topic of the president s tone this week. He was on fox news earlier. Take a listen to what he had to say. I think whats happening is youre seeing a resolution of a realization of the reality of whats going on, and i believe hes adjusting to that right now and acting accordingly. Im very, in many respects, positively responding to that because that will set a good example for the rest of the country. Ashley, i wonder if you could pick up on what carol was just talking about there, because this is a message, an approach to this certainly in public that the president has not really taken before. This is something he seemed very reluctant to do. Now, at least for this week, the message hes delivering on this is a little bit different. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on behind the scenes there, who he was talking to, what was being told to him . What could bring about such a shift here, at least in terms of his public rhetoric on this . Absolutely. And i think its first important to mention that this shift is coming basically six months after the virus first arrived in the United States. So this is a shift people would have loved to have seen, or they would have loved to have it been admonish admonished. There is a behavior they would have liked to see from the very beginning. Its happening now six months later. He was seeing polls about how poorly he was doing against joe biden, not just on the matter of the coronavirus but other metrics. The other thing is his team has been trying to get him to fully engage with this crisis for a while, and one thing they did was show him projections showing him the virus is now in red states where Trump Supporters live, and next wave of surges are expected in critical battleground states, especially in the midwest, and that means his base and or republicans. That also helped get him engaged. One of the reasons he wasnt able to get engaged early on, im told, people close to him say he does really believe in this sort of magical thinking. The president even this week when he was staying, quote, unquote, on script, he said twice in the briefing skproroom once in an interview that he thinks the virus will magically disappear. Changing his tone, they said, would have been a tacit admission that he was wrong. He hates to admit that hes wrong. And third, after he set up the Coronavirus Task force with mike pence as the head, he was sort of lulled into a sense of what was clearly false complacency that it was being handled and the virus is out of control. He has now come to the understanding that that is not the case and its hurting the economy in the United States and his political fortunes, and hes decided to, at least this week, stick to a script that others have told him to. Folks around the president , folks who are maybe the president s allies who might welcome the rhetorical shift hes taken this week, what is their sense of the question of how long this is going to last, because it just seems there are so many examples with this president where he will stake one sort of new position in public and then hes on twitter six hours later completely undercutting it. Whats the staying power on this . I think expectations are relatively low. This is a president who, even if he reads off a script for a while, he tends to shift back to where hes comfortable. The hope, in talking to people around the president , is he now recognizes he has to do this if he wants to win in november and that that will encourage him to stick to the script as much as he can. But, you know, people, whether its republicans on the hill or people in the white house, they know who this president is and that he struggles to stick to a script, so they dont expect him to do that entirely rk, but i w say the convention and his reversal there was seen as a pretty significant concession in the sense that this is a president who doesnt like to back down. While the writing was on the wall, hes now out there searching for a stage somewhere in the country to deliver a speech from rather than having this big pageantry that he wanted and moved his convention to florida to be able to do. So when you talk to people, they are saying if you look at this past week, they feel good about it, but to your question of whether or not it has any staying power, its really just a wait and see. All right, carol lee in front of the white house, Ashley Parker from the Washington Post. Thank you both for joining us. I really appreciate that. Joining us for a medical perspective active is dr. Gupta, medical pulmonologist. Dr. Gupta, thank you for joining us. Youve got dr. Birxs characterization today of whats going on as sort of a version of several new yorks from the peak. I guess its a twopart question. Do you agree with that characterization, and secondly, if so, are there specific federal i stress federal policy steps that should be taken here . You know, i think its worse than new york, because new york was ultimately new york was still localized to new york boo have people in these states not willing to wear masks, much less enforce them. So there is an uptick in cooperation in texas, florida and california, so i think its worse than new york. The president is talking about majority top tests now being made to americans, that its becoming the dominant form of testing. Thats just not true. As somebody who has been talking to school districts, to teachers, they want that type of testing. That equipment just does not exist. The president needs to scale that type of device, point of Care Technology and the detectors that you need to go with it, we need a moon shot on that. Hes talking about 15,000 going to nursing facilities. We need millions upon millions of those to really safely open up corporations, universities and school districts. And two, he should federalize a response that would allow him to deploy military assets. We were so ready to do that in ebola. Im a reservist in icu from the air force. Were just sitting around here. There are so many opportunities that could help florida, california, parts of texas now, but he needs to see where hes wrong and figure out where these capabilities would finally be put to good use. The one area that jumps out at me, when you look at these individual states right now, florida, for instance, which is comparably sized to new york populationwise, i think a little bit bigger. The death rate in florida, while climbing, is still a fraction of what new yorks was at the peak. I think there were 110 deaths in florida yesterday, a number right around there. In new york at its peak, that number was up about 780. How high do you think the death rate in a state like florida is going to get here . Is that going to get up to where new yorks was . Steve, a death rate is a lack of an indicator. Its likely infections that occurred about a month ago, we think. Thats number one. Number two, weve gotten better. There are about 33 of individuals that are lucky enough to get a high quality icu bed end up dying, 37 end up dying. Remdesivir, the president loves to talk about remdesivir, icu beds. Both of those are in short supply. Its not like you can will icu beds and respiratory therapists and icu nurses at the flip of a switch. Thats why you need this stuff ready. You need states to remove license restrictors so people can descend on florida to help that are accurately trained. If we get lulled into a sense of complacency, what im worried about here is that death rate climbing because we dont have governors like governor desantis, governor ducey saying, how can i make sure my hospitals are adequately staffed . That number has been climbing and peaking in places like florida and texas, so if you have hospitalizations climbing, their likely to keep climbing unless you get policies in place now. Thats the reason im asking. If you have spreads at the level of these case counts we currently do right now, the possibility is does that go even higher. I guess what im asking is, given what you learned the last few months, given whats learned about remdesivir, and i understand what you say about getting that in position to help people, but weve heard things about remdesivir. Ive heard things as simple as putting patients on their stomachs instead of their backs likely hurts them. I guess my question is, what is the capability right now in terms of reducing the death rate . Im glad you asked that, steve, because there is no magic bullet. We have no data to say remdesivir is actually saving lives. Could be, but we have nothing we can say with confidence. Putting them on a belly, it takes a village, steve. It takes four respiratory therapists and a dog, and most people dont want the dog there, but it means staffing and it means having the beds to make sure you flatten that death rate curve. You need personnel. It takes a lot here. Thats my concern, that theres no magic bullet, no pill you can take, no ventilator you can build thats going to solve this problem here. Its going to require Human Capital and its going to require forward thinking on the part of Health Systems to shut down their elective procedures, even though i know thats what helps to keep the lights on, to say, hey, we need that surge capacity. These are the questions that health places are concerning themselves with, and thats why it might give temporary pause to say, oh, i might actually be doing a good job, but its going to lower us into a sense of complacency. Dr. Vin gupta, thank you for the time. Coming up, enhanced unemployment benefits, but there is no guarantee on a health bill. Jacksonville, florida no longer hosting the National Republican convention which the mayor says leans democratic in the president ial race. vo the time is coming for us to get out and go again. To visit all the places we didnt know meant so much. But were all going at our own speed. At enterprise, peaceofmind starts with our complete clean pledge, curbside rentals and lowtouch transactions. 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Plus, x1 also includes peacock premium at no extra cost. This baby is the total package. It streams exclusive originals, the full peacock movie library, complete collections of iconic tv shows, and more. Yup, the best really did get better. Magnificent. Xfinity x1 just got even better, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. No strings attached. And i said we ought to take another look at it in july. Its now july and were in the process of developing another proposal by Senate Republicans which will be announced on monday, and then well be sitting down with the democrats to see what we can agree to do Going Forward. Welcome back. That was Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell just a few hours ago. By the time we do see the Senate Republicans plan on monday, millions of americans could be facing eviction with a federally mandated moratorium on evictions expiring by the end of tomorrow. More than that, outofwork americans could be on the brink of losing that 600aweek bonus. That was on top of the unemployment payments. That was set to expire by the end of next week. Time is running out on getting something passed. Joining me now, senator chris coons. Youve got these deadlines looming, youve got disagreements here. It would appear even among republicans the prospect of legislation being agreed to by both parties by the end of next week when this Unemployment Insurance expires, what do you think those are, those prospects . Well, steve, this is just a moment where the Republican Leadership and the senate is demonstrating that theyre not able to govern in the best interests of the American People. Weve got 30 million americans relying on that extra 600 a week for unemployment benefits, weve got a third of all americans who missed their july housing payments, whether rent or mortgage. And weve had months to get this done, months. The House Democrats passed the heroes act two months ago that thi