It was awkward. But now, in the spring of 2020, Something Else about the trailblazing biography of irelands young Prime Minister has been brought to the fore because this week he has gone back to work as a doctor. The Prime Minister of ireland went to medical school and worked as a doctor, as a general practice physician in ireland for seven years, before he left the medical role and went into politics. Now as ireland confronts its coronavirus epidemic, theyre currently over 6,000 cases and over 200 deaths, the Prime Minister himself has reregistered on the medical roles with irelands Health Service, and he is now spending one day a week working as a doctor, assessing suspected coronavirus patients in ireland, while he still works as Prime Minister. Ireland last month asked Health Professionals of all kinds who were not currently working in the countrys Health Service to please sign up and join the fight. The Prime Minister himself is now among them. And that kind of volunteerism, among the, you know, the paufrlg and connected, but also among regular people, we have seen it all over, and it is heroic. In the u. K. , the governments request for ordinary citizens, to come forward, and volunteer to bolster the British NationalHealth System, to help Health Care Workers prop up their nhs, the British Government asked for 250,000 british citizens to volunteer in that effort. Theyve now had 750,000 british citizens come forward, three quarters of a million people, regular citizen volunteers coming forward to help, and this is on top of the thousands of british Health Professionals who have volunteered to join the front lines again, as well. I didnt realize it before the Washington Post pointed it out today, but that number of british civilian volunteers that came forward, that 750,000 strong cadre of accomplish volunteers, four times the size of the entire british military. The data Modeling Group at the university of washington thats been so influential with our government and in our country, theyve been doing these models of when individual u. S. States are going to hit the peak of their outbreak, how many deaths thats going to mean, how many beds each state is going to need, by what date, that same Modeling Group at the university of washington has just started doing the same kind of modeling estimates for European Countries as well. And there is, in those models, and in those projection, some good news for some of the hardest hit European Countries. For italy, which was hit so, so badly, and is still struggling in some ways, the modelers at university of washington says that the first wave of the pandemic has peaked in italy, the peak is behind them. For spain as well, quote almost all regions of spain are at or past the peak. For france, quote, the model shows that france is just passing its peak. Now, French Health officials said this week that they believe they havent peaked yet. But the numbers in france do show their curve at least flattening out and this university of washington model shows that france will start to improve from here. That they are peaking now, and things will get better. According to this modeling, the peak in germany is still to come. But the good news, for these projections, for the nation of germany, is that germany has kept its epidemic there contained enough, they have slowed the spread enough, in germany, that even though they are not expected to peak in terms of their apex number of cases, until the third week of april, quote, the model shows that germany will have enough beds, and enough icu beds, to meet demand, when they get to that peak. So there is some good news, for European Countries who have lots of cases. The bad news in this new modeling for European Countries is for our dear friends in the uk, you know, where three quarters of a million british citizens have come forward, volunteering to help, where there is such goodwill, and such desire to do the right thing, where the Prime Minister, boris johnson, with all of the controversy around him and his government, the whole country is pulling for him, he himself is in intensive care in a london hospital. But in the u. K. , the johnson government was slow to put in place stayathome orders and to close schools and businesses. They had some sort of pseudo scientific ideas about maybe being fined if they did nothing and super slow to act and that meant that the virus kept spreading in the u. K. , and they kept achieving more and more prevalence in that countrys population while the government couldnt get it together to confront the real data and the real science and put in place the measures needed to protect the people so they are going to have a gigantic epidemic and they are going to have a gigantic death toll. The university of washingtons model at least predicts that the u. K. s death toll is going to peak later on this month, and theyre predicting that the u. K. Will not have enough hospital beds or enough icu beds to meet demand, by a lot. Theyre predicting that the u. K. Will be short by tens of thousands of icu beds. The washington model is predicting that deaths in the u. K. Will ultimately be more than italy, and spain and france combined. The only other country facing an acutely negative projection in this model is sweden of all places. The university of washington model says that sweden, too, will outpace its hospital beds and its icu beds by the time of their peak, later on this month. And that is because sweden, too, of all places, for its own idiosyncratic reasons, the swedish government zpidecided t they wouldnt put in place stayathome orders and wouldnt close the school, wouldnt close businesses, they decided they would wait it out and see how things went and swedens government decided to assume things wouldnt get that bad and now they, like the u. K. , are facing the, what feels like the inevitable overwhelming of their medical facilities. And thousands of deaths. Even as other European Countries start to get this under control. And i mean from this distance, here in the united states, we tend to think of sweden and norway as kind of twin scand yafbian countries, like vermont and New Hampshire of Northern Europe for us, they share that cold northern peninsula at the top of the world and we think of them sort of similar and having similar politics, but they have very different approaches to coronavirus. Norway put in place early stayathome orders and closed schools and businesses while sweden didnt and literally at the same time this week, norway has flattened its curve enough that they are starting to work on when it is going to end. Theyre starting to work, when theyre going to repeal their anticoronavirus policies, and open their economy and their society back up. That is happening right now in norway. While sweden, sharing a long border with them, on the same chunk of land, in that northern part of the world, swedens government just next door, this week, is scrambling to give themselves new powers, so they can put in place belatedly now policies that they hope will at least mitigate, at least slow down, what looks like a coming disaster. We are seeing more and more patients coming in every day. And unfortunately, not a lot of patients are leaving the icu. At least not alive. So it is pretty worrying. And we have several wards filled with covid19 patients, in the hospital, that are still not in need of intensive care. But theres a big worry that many of them will arrive in intensive care soon. Thats general surgeon who is working in stockholm, sweden, we see him expressing that worry there. That statement from him is part of a collection of statements, from front line medical workers, that nbc news has been collecting from doctors and nurses and other Health Workers all over the world and all over this country. This for example was a prediction that we got just a few days ago from dr. Furcash gada, a surgeon at multicare tacoma General Hospital in Washington State. Watch. Here i am back to work, with covid19, just want to let the world know and my Health Care Providers when youre on the other side of this, you will have a lot less anxiety, a lot less fear, and youll feel like youre invincible because you can deal with this crisis, without anybody having to worry. And for my patients out there, for the people with fear, know that no matter what happens, you can work from home, the lights are on, babies are being born, bones are being set, this hospital, this profession, were in a league of our own. Well take care of you. That was dr. Furkash gada, in tacoma, a surgeon in Tacoma Washington and i hear he was yesterday in the operating room. This is dr. Gada, in the midst of all of the covid craziness were still in the operating room taking care of really sick patients that really cant wait, being very careful about conservations of ppe, were using masks, reusing masks and some occasions gowns and sometimes not leaving the operating room to take a bathroom break, because we dont want to waste our gowns. The level of involvement of our staff is just incredible. Everyone is going beyond what they have ever been asked to do. And due even have to ask them. You dont even have to ask them. Im proud to work here. Im proud to work here. Again, dr. Furkash gada, in tacoma, washington. Another one to see. Another doctor indian descent. Dr. Ajit rye who is annance theseologist in california and he is in new york now because he volunteered to come do time in a front line new york city hospital. Here in new york, we are in full blown crisis mode and the city is sinking, so although first responders, and myself, im just one person, but i believe that we can still be a life vest for an overburdened Health System to help it remain afloat and what has been so surprising to me is that the resource depletion im seeing here in one the wealthiest cities in the world reminds me a lot about the limitations i experienced when i was providing medical care for warwounded refugees in the middle east, working for doctors without borders. And you know, everyone in the country is so fixated on ppe shortages and ventilator shortages, but none of that even matters if you dont have the medical personnel to turn those machines on. So for doctors and nurses around the country who are just waiting, time is now when we need you. Some clinicians believe that because of their specialty, they may not be able to contribute to the care of critically ill patients, but the truth is, at a time like this, anyone and everyone with medical training has value. We are seeing a disproportionate amount of disease and death in one region, so for me, it just didnt feel right to sit back and watch it happen. Again, an anesthesiologist who works in california but he has come to new york to work at a front line new york city hospital. Here is just one more i want you to see. This is from a working paramedic in the new york Fire Department. Fdny. Its been, its been a crazy week. The call volume is 6500 or better. Last night, it was 6900 again. Theres been a lot of people dying. Im getting phone calls from crews who are going four, five, six arrests, cardiac arrests, people dying, knowing theyre trying to work out, this sunday, i did 12 cardiac arrests in a 16hour tour. Its a suspected that most of them are covidrelated as the patients tell us that they have similar signs and symptoms of what is going on. The sick leave of the fdny ems is about 20 to 25 . Thats people who have contracted the virus and theyre out sick. Thankfully, some of those people are starting to come back in. But we do have a lot of members who are really sick with it. We have two members who are intubated. We have about seven or eight members who are in the icu. And a whole bunch of them are in quarn fene. Roughly about 700 people of the Fire Department are being monitored for this. So its a serious virus and were out there on the front lines battling it. The governor today said that he thinks it is going to reach its peak, and i hope hes right, you know, hes doing a pretty good job giving it to us straight, but out here in the streets, its nothing but ambulance sirens. The paramedics, the doctors, its not just the amount of work that is being put on them, its the risk to them at the same time. Its just impossible to ask what we are asking of them, and yet we are. In new york, over the last 24 hours, they started transferring some critical coronavirus patients out of one hospital, in queens. Out of Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in queens, because there were so many patients on ventilators at that one hospital, they were worried about being able to sustain the supply of oxygen necessary to keep feeding those ventilators. Worried about their oxygen supply, they distributed these critical ill ventilated patients to upstate, to albany and other new york city hospitals, and to new york harbor, on to the u. S. Navy hospital ship, the comfort. New yorks case load is roughly at 150,000 confirmed cases which means new york state alone has more positive cases than any country on earth, other than the united states. Heres a look at, new yorks numbers right now, though, which are horrible, but they may tell the story of a crisis that is starting to slow down, in its acceleration. First, lets look at the bad news first. This is the death rate in new york. The daily death toll. This is the number of new deaths reported each day over the past couple of weeks. And you can see how it rose and rose and rose and rose, there was a little dip where the numbers went down from 630, down below 600 for a couple of day, people got very hopeful those death numbers would start to fall consistently but now, they are higher than ever. You can see it in chart form here. It is bad. The daily death toll is bad. Yesterday was a new record death toll anywhere in the united states. Today was worse than that record. But that of course is the end of the story when it comes to any patients progression. Is there reason to hope in other numbers that lead up to that final death toll . Well, look, heres the numbers for the last couple of weeks for new hospitalizations reported each day in new york. These are the raw numbers. And again, you can see them going up and up and sort of tipping around, up and down and up and down and over the last couple of days, you can see the recent numbers are lower. Those are the raw numbers. Now lets again put them on a chart. These are the new hospitalization number, each day, in new york. You can see the lower numbers right now, recently, is that cause for hope . Now lets look at newlyreported cases. Newlyreported coronavirus cases in new york, this is the rate of increase each day, and newly reported cases of coronavirus, again, you dont want to get too hung up on any small set of data but what we are looking at here is a daily rate of increase, that is getting smaller, weve now had four straight days, in which the daily increase in the number of cases in new york is below 10 . It is in the Single Digits. Thats the day by day numbers. Heres what that looks like on a chart. To a layman like me, that looks like reason to hope. The pace at which new york citys new cases are increasing, starting to slow, it looks like hope to me, but you know what . Dashed hopes are the last thing we need right now so in just a few minutes, we will talk it an em deem ologist to get his take on whether there is really reason to be hope nfl these new york numbers. The numbers in the Worst Epidemic that weve got in our country. But, you know, separate and apart from what is going on in new york and whether new york is hitting an inflection point, just absorbing the days news today, there are some other clear promising signs in the u. S. , among states that took it very seriously and acted very quickly. Just as were seeing some good news out of some European Countries who are past the worst of it, in some american states, things are going better than they might have, last night, we reported on california, sending ventilators to new york and new jersey and illinois. Today, california sent more. 50 ventilators flown out today to dc and also to maryland and also to nevada. Earlier this week, we saw washington and oregon also start sending out their ventilators to other states. Their ventilators that it turns out they dont need yet because theyve done a good job so far keeping their curve low, keeping people at home, slowing new cases. Today, Washington State also gave back an Army Field Hospital that had been set to open this week, starved by Uniformed Army personnel, governor jay inslee in Washington State, today, saying quote, im incredibly appreciative of the men and women of the 627th Army Hospital center out of force carson, colorado. These soldiers uprooted their lives to help washingtonians when we needed them most. Since then, it has become apparent that other states need them more than we do. It is only right that we release this capability so those states have the tools necessary to help end this nationwide fight that we are all battling together. Unequivocally that is hopeful news. Positive news. And another one of the western states that has sort of grabbed the curve early and decisively and bent it force gfully down a they are doing better than they otherwise would have, and better than they prepared for. But now, we are in this situation as a country, where, you know, weve go