We still have no idea how Many Americans are Walking Around with this virus. The biggest message from the president today, the states should be handling this, as he put it, speaking on behalf of the federal government, were a back up. He says the states should have had more equipment and ppe already on hand. He said they should have been on the open markets just buying before the pandemic. And he repeated for good measure nobody had any even heard of Something Like this. Today he took a shot at saying out loud what he wants the truth to be going forward. Today he said the federal government acted early which is not true. They did not. Here we are widely considered to be months behind, and we just became the first nation on the planet to mark 1,000 deaths in one 24hour period. Today, the number of known cases around the globe went past 1 million. 243,000 of those here in the United States were, again, because of testing. We dont have reliable numbers. Over 5,800 souls have died. In the past 24 hours, 29,000 new cases and over1,000 new deaths. As for the economic toll, today we learned that last week 6. 6 million americans applied for unemployment benefits. Total of 9. 9 Million People are out of work right now. The number of people out of work is now a number greater than the individual populations of over 40 states. The white house today tried to reassure americans that relief checks are indeed on the way. This money does people no good if it shows up in four months, and we will deliver on that promise. So its a matter of weeks, not months. Quickly is a matter of weeks, not months. As were seeing images of americans waiting in lines of food banks. Jeff bezos gave 100 million to struggling food banks around the country. There is no question that for millions of our fellow citizens, two weeks is too long. And people without direct deposit will have to wait as long as are you ready for this five months to get their checks. Today at the white house, we also heard a warning from dr. Deborah birx who earlier this week revealed sobering data about the virus and its deadly potential. This afternoon, she sounded the alarm about the effort to contain this outbreak. I know youve seen the slope in the United States versus the slope in italy. And we have to change that slope. We have to change the logarithmic curve that were on. We see country after country having done that. What it means in the United States is not everyone is doing it. So, were only as strong as every community, every county, every state, every american following the guidelines. This is really a call to action. Not everyone is doing it because a ton of states out there still dont have stayathome measures. Amid the surge in cases, state and local officials are struggling to try to help hospitals dealing with those severe shortages of equipment and ppe. States are bidding against each other and competing with the feds out there on the open market. This morning the president posted this about state official who is say theyre not getting enough help from the government, quote, some have insatiable appetites and are never satisfied. The complainers should have been stocked up and ready long before this crisis hit. New york governor andrew cuomo, whose state has nearly 100,000 cases, the most in the nation, today made plain just how dire things are. If a person comes in and needs a ventilator and you dont have a ventilator, the person dies. Thats the blunt equation here. And right now we have a burn rate that would suggest we have about six days in the stock pile. Later this afternoon at the white house, trump pointed to his efforts to respond to the crisis while also seeming to blame governors for not being prepared. I directed secretary azar and acting secretary wolf to use any and all available authority under the defense production act to ensure domestic manufacturers have the supplies they need to produce ventilators for people with covid19. On top of the 3,000 beds were providing to the javits center, the department of defense is adding another 48 icu beds. Governor cuomo has asked that this facility go and its a big beautiful facility be converted to a covid hospital. We have two other facilities likewise asking for it. That would be in louisiana and also in dallas. And well be doing those. I think the federal government has not only acted early but acted quickly, professionally. What happens though when states are bidding against each other . They have to work that out. What they should do is they should have long before this pandemic arrived, they should have been on the open market just buying. There was no competition. You could have made a great price. The states have to stock up. Its like one of those things. They waited. They didnt want to spend the money because they thought this would never happen. Thats how that went down. And we mentioned this earlier. Rare sighting for the press corp. In the west wing, first time we saw trump Senior Adviser and soninlaw Jared Kushner at the daily briefing. Tonight the New York Times reports some Administration Officials say his work with the task force has added confusion to the response. Today he spoke about his assignment as laid out by his fatherinlaw. The president wanted to make sure we have the best people doing the best jobs and had the right people focused on the things that need to happen to deliver for the american people. The president also instructed me to make sure that i break down every barrier needed to make sure that the teams can succeed. President was asked about what other measures the u. S. Might take in the future to keep the virus from spreading in the u. S. Like more extensive bans on people flying into this country. We have more bans than anybody. We have bans when bans werent fashionable at the beginning of this administration. Weve had bans long before people thought of bans. When i did china, it had never been done before. I was the first to do it. According to what i read in all the papers this had never been done. This is a terrible thing to do. Four weeks later they were all saying lucky we did it. Meanwhile House Speaker nancy pelosi announced new select committee with subpoena power to scrutinize the response to this pandemic and the administrations management of this new gigantic 2 trillion economic rescue package. Democratic congressman jim clyburn of South Carolina will be its chairman. This afternoon trump had this response to the speakers move. Its not any time for witch hunts. Its time to get this enemy defeated. Conducting these partisan investigations in the middle of a pandemic is a really big waste of vital resources, time, attention. And we want to fight for american lives, not waste time and build up my poll numbers because thats all theyre doing. Meantime, the navy captain who sounded the alarm about the spread of covid19 on board his carrier, the uss Theodore Roosevelt, has been relieved of his command. Well have a discussion on this story a bit later on in the broadcast. The pentagon also confirming tonight that as death tolls skyrocket, fema has requested 100,000 body bags. Its a very real problem in cities like new york that theyre being forced to confront. Behind me is the sight that some park avenue residents are waking up to this morning. Let me describe it to you. There is at the end a tented walkway that comes out of the back of len nix hill hospital and it goes to this refrigeration truck. That truck is a temporary morgue. Just a few minutes ago we were listening to the generator hum here just off of park avenue as it waits for the bodies of covid19 patients to come. With that, lets bring in our lead off Discussion Group on a thursday night. Sam stein, politics editor for the daily beast, dr. Venn gupta. He specializes in treating respiratory illnesses like covid19. Hes also an affiliate, assistant professor at the university of washingtons department of health metric sciences. Also with us shannon pettypiece, veteran journalist, senior White House Reporter for us at nbc news digital. Doctor, i would like to begin with you. Ive covered my fair share of hurricanes over the years. Were always driving in as others are driving out, and there comes a moment where the Emergency Operations director says to everybody if you didnt get out, there is now no more time for that. Stay in place, batten down. Is that where we are with this pandemic . Can any affected change now affect the outcome other than some kind of strictly enforced lastminute social distancing . Thanks, brian. National lockdown was needed two months ago. Certainly now it would be playing catch up. So, the answer to your question is absolutely. But you need to stop with the mixed messages, with the nonevidence based lack of definitive consistent messaging that we keep getting from the white house whether its now we need the general public to fashion their own masks to protect themselves when they shouldnt be going out and sheltering in place to maybe we should use hydroxychloroquine on patients with covid19 in the absence of evidence. The only thing that we know works to stop and mitigate this disaster is a national lockdown. Its worked here in seattle we think. Theres compelling evidence nationwide that fevers are actually declining from some of the technology that were seeing going live. So, lets double down on the evidence, what we know what works and stop doing things that we dont have any evidence to support. Im glad you raised the subject of masks. We had the president kind of riffing on masks for the last two days, telling us from his standpoint that maybe some scarves are better. And then just this evening the mayors of our two biggest cities, new york and l. A. , are telling people if you go outside, put something on your face. Yet silence, crickets, from the official part of the government that would lay out such a thing. And citizens have been asking for weeks should we wear these things or not . There is no compelling evidence one way or the other that putting a face mask fashioned at home is going to protect you. Some evidence suggests maybe it does. Other evidence out of china, it doesnt. No conclusive evidence. So, people want to make their own face mask at home, by all means, no ones going to stop you. But heres the concern. Is this going to be an off ramp from lets not consume precious ppe that youre highlighting which is a desperate need for Health Care Workers. What we dont want to mixed messaging causing people to purchase surgical masks, other ppe. We can restrict it to homemade masks, fantastic. Do i think that in practice is going to happen . Who knows . This is so confusing and the messages change every three days. We need consistency and we need evidencebased policies now in the national lockdown. Shannon pettypiece, youve heard the doctor. We see you in the daily briefings. Is there anyone who is willing to admit that a national audience, just to the conversation we were just having, is getting inconsistent misleading information and often, again today, straight up misinformation from that podium . Well, i mean, you could see the inconsistency as dr. Gupta is talking about in this briefing today. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes of inconsistencies. And at times the people on the stage contradicting each other. Take the issue of face masks. You had the president when we asked him about this every day this week is there going to be a recommendation on face masks. The president recommending people wear a scarf and saying that in some ways the scarf could be better than a surgical mask because it is thicker. Maybe the doctor can address that. But i dont see doctors wears scarves in the operating room, so im going to think maybe a surgical mask is a bit better. But they dont want people going out and buying surgical masks so the president is talking about scarves. A moment later you had dr. Birx almost contradict that saying we dont want to give people a false sense of security. We dont want them to think because they have a mask or scarf on they can go out to a restaurant or hang out with their friends. So, just in a breath you have them contradicting each other. Jared kushner you had come up to the stage and talk about this dataoriented process they have for allocating resources yet at the same time talking about an anecdote from this week where instead of using data it was a call from one of the president s friends in new york that caused him to distribute a large bulk of n95 masks to new york City Hospital though a phone call from a president s friends gets you masks doesnt necessarily sound like this thorough datadriven approach he spent so much time talking about. Its very confusing and its confusing for us sitting in the room. Its confusing for me sitting there and ive sat through every one of these this week. So, i can empathize with everyone at home whos confused and not to mention scared at this point. Sam, lets talk about jared for a second. He said today this crisis has been revealing to him in terms of which elected officials are good managers. I for one am happy to have his sound judgment at work here and i know i speak for you, correct . Well, that comment was revealing in its own right. This is a spotlight put on everyone in a executive role and clearly to his point some are passing, some are failing. I dont know if hes selfaware he may have been talking about his own fatherinlaw in this instance. Look, in terms of Jared Kushners involvement, im not opposed to bringing in someone like him to help organize a crossgovernment response. But someone like that should have brought in probably a month ago. Remember ron klain was criticized because he didnt have the experience as an Infectious Disease doctor, but thats not what was needed in that moment. What was needed was someone who understood how government works. I think jared may know that. The problem jared is having is some of the things he said was nonsensical. For instance talking about the National Stock pile saying it wasnt really meant to go to the states in need. It was meant for the federal government. I cant contemplate when you would use the National Stock pile ventilators for some sort of broad federal but not state by state use. Hes playing catch up and this brings us to the larger point which i think is the underlying issue which has been the administrations response. One, theyre playing catch up and two theyre only thinking one day or one news cycle ahead. The stuff they should be doing a month ago theyre just getting around to and the results are cataclysmic. Doc, i have a rather ghoulish question i must ask you. Were asking experts like you for things like peak dates. We know theyre coming. Reference my first question. Are we looking at two will the peak date for known cases be different than the peak date for deaths in this country . I think thats such a good question. And what we do know is im going to cite the intel that we already have. That intel suggests that the peak dates are going to be spike in death by april 15th. Thats when the university of Washington Institute for health metrics. We know thats going to occur. Thats been corroborated by other evidence out of harvard. So, we have great intel. Theres great evidence. Theres great modeling, so we should be prepared for it to the extent we can. Unfortunately were playing catch up. So, why are we doing off ramps on ppe . It doesnt make any sense. We should be encouraging a national lockdown, saving ppe, not looking for ways in which maybe people are going to feel like they need to get their own surgical masks. The reckoning is going to come in a few weeks for all forecasting models we have out there. Doctor, thank you for bravely continuing in the dark. Doctor, shannon, sam, provided everybody can still hear me, thank you all for starting us off on thursday night. Coming up we have some of the best minds on both health care and the economy. First up the person joe biden told us he would choose to lead his Coronavirus Task force if he were president. And later, theyre the business of they are the business and employment backbone of our country. And right now theyre struggling to survive themselves. What has been done, what needs to be done to help this nations Small Businesses as the 11th hour just getting under way this thursday night. Tting under way s thursday night nowadays you do more from home than ever before. The xfinity my account app puts you in control with Digital Tools to give you the help you need when you need it. Get fast and easy answers with personalized help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Change your wifi password to a phrase thats easy to remember. Even troubleshoot your services on your own. Were working to make things a little easier for everyone. Download the xfinity my account app today. Like rock, reggaeton, alland techno. Get ready for the drop. Wait for it. Wait for it. Come on man hit me wait for it. Just do it already one more time yeah. Ron klain, the white house Ebola Response coordinator during the Obama Administration, was joe bidens choice when i asked him a few days back who he would want to lead the coronavirus response. So who better to talk to about what were witnessing right now . Ron klain, veteran of the white house, is these days informally advising the biden campaign. Hes also the cohost of a new podcast about the coronavirus called epidemic. Ron, on the off notion that you would be named tonight, right now, special master in charge of this and i mentioned at the top its quite confusing to name just one person whos in charge of this effort what would you insist be done right now . Well, thanks, brian. And, look, i think the most important thing is for one person to be put in charge. I mean were on our fourth coronavirus coordinator in the past five weeks in the trump administration. First secretary azar, then Vice President pence, then dr. Debbie birx, and it appears today now Jared Kushners in charge. So you cant run Something Like this with a constant change of leadership at the top. And, you know, i th