Transcripts For MSNBCW The Beat With Ari Melber 20200424 : v

MSNBCW The Beat With Ari Melber April 24, 2020

Vulnerable. And i truly do believe the day will soon come when we will heal our land and well be able to reopen america and put this great nation back to work. Thank you, mr. President. Thank you very much. Mr. President mr. President and that was the daily press briefing, a shorter than usual press briefing than we are used to. You heard from President Trump, Vice President mike pence. And the big headline today, the fda saying that it has approved the first athome testing kit by lab corps. So that is significant. You also heard Vice President mike pence saying 18 states are now showing a decline in cases of covid19. This is significant because this is really the first day that we havent had questions from President Trump from the media. Of course, these press briefings usually last for quite some time. The longest has gone nearly two hours. So this was certainly a shorter than usual press conference that weve seen from the president and the task force. Now, of course, it is notable because it comes on the heels of this controversy that weve been tracking throughout the day in which of course President Trump during yesterdays briefing mused about the fact would it be possible that uv lights that heat, that disinfectants could potentially be used to help treat covid19. Dr. Birx who was there with him saying that no, that is not a possible treatment. And now based on our reporting, we have learned that in fact really caught a number of white house officials offguard. During an event in the oval office earlier today, President Trump saying he was merely being sarcastic, so trying to walk back the comments in that way. But if you did look at his comments from yesterday, it didnt appear as though he was necessarily being sarcastic. I do want to bring in now some of our guests to discuss what we just heard from the task force, including dr. Lipi roy, who is with us. Dr. Roy, i believe oh, and we do have chuck todd. So chuck, let me first get your analysis of what we just saw and the fact that this was a shorter than usual briefing than were use, and there were no questions from this president , who has been under pressure all day. Well, let me flip the script back on you, kristen. Its clear they knew they shouldnt that he shouldnt be out there taking questions today, that they had to figure out how to put this to bed. Theyve got dr. Birx doing a fox interview with jesse watters, who is one of sort of the president s favorite people. So theyre clearly trying to do a cleanup here. But kristen, reemphasize. This president s single favorite thing to on a given day right now is go back and forth with reporters. What kind of effort do you think it took to rein him in and basically convince him not to take questions today . Well, look, i know there have been a number of meetings throughout the day. And so undoubtedly, the strategy moving forward has been at the forefront, and it took a robust effort, im sure, chuck. You and i have spoken about the fact that some of his top advisers have looked at these press conferences with some skepticism, not entirely sure that its the right tactic. But the president day in and day out has been at that podium and has taken questions from the press. And yet on the heels of yesterdays briefing in which again, he questioned whether or not it would be possible to use uv light, heat, these disinfectants to potentially treat covid19. And it has really been a controversy that he has been dealing with, that the white house has been dealing with. And again, based on our reporting, officials were really caught offguard when they said that. They nude immediately they started texting, wondering where did he get this information, why was he saying this . And they knew immediately this is going to be a problem. And yet it took until this morning when we got that statement from the press secretary, essentially trying to say look, the president has always said you should consult your doctor. But chuck, remarkable to see the Companies Like lysol and the various states that have come out and said we just want to underscore the fact that disinfectants should no instance ever be use d, injected in any way, shape or form. Chuck. Exactly. I want to get at the piece of news that was made there on the fda side of things. Dr. Bhadelia, from what you heard from dr. Hahn, theyre obviously speeding up some of this regulation to try to get some of the therapeutics on to the market. Should we have any concern about cutting this red tape . Especially on day when the fda had to put the brakes essentially on hydroxychloroquine . So, chuck, i think the issue of sort of the fda shortcuts applies to the test more so than therapeutics you. Actually have to go through the randomized control trials to really get an idea about the efficacy of the drug. The issue with the test is you can have a test that looks really great in the laboratory. It looks really great in taking samples of stock viruss or samples from patients that were donated to sort of test in those. But when you actually take a thats it has fda emergency use authorization and do a real life test drive, you try it out in patients, there is a ton of issues that come up with that clinical validation. And when it gets deployed at multiple medical hospital, medical centers, they actually then have to do their own validation against what they consider is the gold standard, which right now is the test were using, a lot of the genetic material, nucleicbased test that use the swab. So the issue has been in a lot of places validation hasnt really caught up. We dont know if a lot of these tests are going to be as effective as the fda hopes they will be. And the real life tests were doing while deploying the tests is going to be an interesting issue that comes up with the Antibody Test as well. Some of them do not seem to be as accurate has one would hope. Well, let me stick with the Antibody Test. There has been two sort of fairly robust efforts where Antibody Tests have been tried to try to figure out what was the real spread, if you will, both in new york and in california. What do you take away from those . And does that how confident are you in those two studies . So the big concern with Antibody Tests are that you dont want them to say that someone has been exposed to an infection when they actually havent been. You dont want it to be a false positive. And you dont want it to be a false negative which you dont want it to say someone has not been exposed. Its less of an issue. If someone finds out they havent had the disease, each if theyve had it, they may not change their behavior. If someone thinks they may have had it, it might change their behavior thinking theyre immune. Thats why it becomes a big concern. For the individual, the issue is telling someone if they get a result one way or the other, right now the question were face, we want to test our Health Care Workers with the Antibody Tests. We dont know what to tell them. We dont know what to tell is it Accurate Enough to say yeah, you actually were expose order you are immune, because then there is the whole issue of even if your test is truly positive, are you immune, because the science, were still learning about the science of that. Here is how its helpful. Its helpful when its used at Large Population levels in random sampling, like new york city did when it looked at people who were coming into grocery stores. Because it matters a little less. You might be a few percentages off, but it gives you some sense of the population prevalence. You industrial to take wit the same caveats that there might be a whole bunch of tests that might be off on what theyre telling you. If you do that across multiple areas, it gives you an idea of what places are finding greater activity of transmission. Its not as useful of the individual. But for Public Health, it helps with planning, as long as you use wit the caveats. If you do it over time, it shows you the trend of how many people are getting exposed at what rate. Kristen welker, we saw the president again and the Vice President again try to spin the testing as a positive, as a success story. There is a lot of disconnects at times with these briefings, but thats among the bigger ones is that it continues to be how much of this is just the insistence of the president that he just not acknowledge that testing has been a trouble spot for them . Oh, i think thats a large part of it, chuck. I was just on the phone with one of the president s republican allies last night in congress who made that point, that it would have been more effective to acknowledge at the outset look, we were behind when it came to testing, and then they wouldnt be playing this game of catchup both literally and in terms of the messaging. Today you saw the Vice President out to the fact that 5 million tests have been taken and given so far that is certainly significant. But it still accounts for a very small part of the overall population. And you still have governors who say look, we need a broader strategy here at the National Level. And frankly, we need more equipment to carry out these tests, equipment like swabs, for example. The president looking to potentially invoke the defense production act to try to give the states more of that equipment, those critical supplies they need to carry out the tests. But so far that has not yet happened, and its not clear when the states are going to get those additional supplies. So this continues to be at the heart of the issue. And chuck, just look to dr. Fauci on thursday who gave that interview to time and said look, were not where we need to be when it comes to testing. That put President Trump in the position of having to answer for those comments yesterday. When he was asked about it, he said well, i disagree about those comments. I think thats one of the problems, the disconnect in messaging is why the daily briefings are potentially problematic for President Trump, to do them on a daily base circumstances chuck. Well, look, like i said, the fact that he seemed to at least take advice today to say you know what . Maybe limit the number of questions you have, perhaps its his own way of acknowledging that yesterday didnt go well. With that, im going pass the baton to my friend and colleague brian williams. Brian, i believe the baton is yourself. With that the analysis of Kristen Welker and chuck todd, that this is exactly what weve seen today on this very fraught day for the Trump White House when the president suddenly ups and disappears from the Briefing Room, Vice President in tow. Lets bring in ben collins. He covers disinformation and information and extremism and the internet for us at nbc news. His latest report is on facebook ads and conspiracy theorists have been pushing bleach consumption and uv rays as a cure for coronavirus. Ben, you cover the wild west in effect. So tell us for how long this stuff has been kicking around and what your level of surprise was to hear it from the Briefing Room yesterday. Yeah, i was surprised to hear it directly from the president s mouth, but the idea of ingesting bleach is not a new thing on the internet, especially on the fringes of the internet. In the last year its taken off. There is this thing called miracle mineral solution that is now being targeted by the doj. Theyre going after people selling this stuff on the internet. As of last week. And what is this stuff . Basically its diluted bleach. Last year people had been ingesting it or giving it to their kids because they believe it cures autism. Is there any proof the president knows about any of this . No. We do know he doesnt really use the internet. Its probably likely he doesnt know about it at all. But when people are already drinking bleach and a guy comes around to say hey, ingesting bleach can in some way cure coronavirus or worse, taking it intravenously, thats where it gets dangerous. Weve already seen this in iran. In iran, in just march alone, 600 people died of this false miracle cure involving rubbing alcohol, which is the same thing. That was shared through Text Messages on the internet. So there are real problems with this. That you know, although it seems silly to us, dont drink bleach and all this stuff, it seems like a meme, it could be a real problem if people that are already sort of halfway down that path go all the way. And well youre talking, we have a box in the lower righthand corn other telephone screen reminding folks we have an interview upcoming in primetime tonight with bill gates who was also our guest during last nights special on testing. He has been the unfortunate recipient of some of the more virulent rumors on the internet, again, your specialty, that not only did he invent and launch this virus, but the vaccine he will eventually help bring to market, he hopes, contains and correct me here its a liquid tracking device that would be injected into people . Yeah, look, its not supposed to be a smart Conspiracy Theory. It is certainly stupid, and youve probably seen it on facebook and probably seen it forwarded to you through an email address from friends who have been forwarding this stuff all your life. But there are consequences at this point. Basically the large scale idea is 5g towers are strengthening the coronavirus, which was implanted by bill gates. And this was all a large money making scheme by the Gates Foundation to make sure everyone in the United States got vaccines. Now if this sounds like ridiculous and overthetop premise, its because it absolutely. But the danger here is theyre using infrastructure thats been around on the internet for a while. Theyre using antivaccination talking points. Theyre using their facebook pages. Theyre using their instagram accounts, and theyre taking those things that have existed for years and years, and theyre turning that into basically like a warehouse and a Clearing House for the worlds sort of dumbest information. But some of the stuff that comes out of these dumb conspiracy theories sort of pervades. You might not believe the whole thing with 5g towers and bill gates and all this stuff, but at the end of the day you might be more skeptical of vaccines at the end of it and thats the whole point. Is to get people downwind, theyll catch the very end of the Conspiracy Theory and theyll believe that to be legitimate because theyve flooded the scene. All it takes is one or two marginal celebrities to throw their support behind it, ask a leading question on instagram or twitter, and indeed in the uk theyve been fighting arson at the base of 5g towers because the rumor has run rampant be a these are the source of our suffering. Ben collins, again, my condolence for the area of the internet youve staked out as your beat. Thanks very much for spending a few minutes with us and explaining all of it. With us a physician we saw just minutes ago, dr. Thnahim bhadel, an Infectious Disease specialist. Thanks for coming on our special last night. When you hear the math, doctor, were a nation i think the estimate starts at 327 million give or take on any given day, that weve tested 5. 1 million, a number put out there with pride today by the Vice President. What do you think . So, i mean, i think when you talk about you can put out numbers without the actual context, right . And there is two issues to this. The first issue is thats still not enough because as you heard from doctors who have been on your show and others, we need to meet two or three times as much from a study from harvard that was released earlier this week to really get a handle on things. But the other thing that belies that, its not just the testing kit. I feel like i say this all the time. If you have enough testing kits, thats not it. There is a whole pathway how a person gets a test to getting a result, and that includes a Health Care Work were personal protective equipment, which despite what they said at the hearing, were still facing supply chain issues as we look forward to the next couple of months of potentially having an increase in patients if we have a second peak or Something Else. The other is you need the swabs for the current test that most places are using. You need containers. You knee reagents and laboratories. And in different situations and in different labs. Those are the things that are the limits to running the tests. Its not just the test kits. And so a lot of those things are actually things that are manufactured at the National Level and that need to be ramped up, that need to be provided. And so even with all of that, were getting to just the minimum. If you really want to get a handle on how big the problem, you want to test large swaths of the population, particularly to answer the question of the denominator, how many people actually have this disease. And we still dont know that. Also, doctor, we saw in days past the president came in to the Briefing Room and pronounced the country past its peak. And yet when you look at the level of reporting that i see, and im sure you see, you see people using terms like platt p plateau. Yes, off their alltime peak. But sneaking up again on a daytoday basis, this is the danger, of course. And as it seems to almost move west with the time zone, its moving into rural areas where on a per capita basis, especially with hot spots like pork processing plants, this can really run an area ragged. Right. My experience has been with outbreaks, that outbreaks and how they play out is a function of how many people are vulnerable to that disease, which of course all of us are because this is a brandnew disease. But also, the resilience of the Health Care Systems in which those unfortunately those

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