Near youve managed to somehow to and what was the pushback like we were a tight community and look out for each other and try to take care of each other we were strongly encouraging everyone to wear masks as we saw the percentage of positive testing rate go up, we knew we had to take additional action either that or we were looking at shutting down our economy and so on june 23rd, we put in a mandatory mask order initially the compliance was slow, and we had our code enforcement, we had our fire marshal, and we had our pd out going business to business weve checked over 2,500 businesses weve issued and i think were the only city in the tampa region that has issued municipal violations for violating the order. Now were seeing much better compliance and were finally starting to see our percentage of positive testing rate start to decline which is a move in the right direction. One of the you tweeted on july the 17th, yesterday, it wasnt long ago that state officials werent permitted to say Climate Change now there are those who refuse to acknowledge the science on masks. I look forward to the day we have when we have national and state leaders that depoliticize science especially when lives are at stake. We are seeing this with this mask issue the same thing with Climate Change, the same thing with cigarettes. The idea this embrace of antiscience has now become a national scourge yeah, its really incredibly frustrating. It really isnt a partisan issue when you look at the fact that you have the governor of ohio and alabama and arkansas theyve issued mandatory mask orders for whatever reason the governor of the state seems to follow our president and, as my friend in south florida said, if we had a consistent message from our governor, at least a consistent message, obviously we would like a mandatory order. It would make all of our jobs as mayors a whole lot easier to get our community completely onboard with everyone wearing a mask and thats not just when youre inside you ought to wear it when youre outside if you cant socially distance, also you bring up one of the first people in miami to get coronavirus, the number two patient, his big complaint its not all that different from st. Petersberg but the idea is you people dont live in a vacuum. In particular you are tourist hubs for people from all over the world, particularly all over america. You could do the st. Petes way. If you have people around you who dont respect those same rules, your borders are porous absolutely. And thats the challenge that we have this is the time of year where everyone likes to take vacations. And what you see happening now because so many states wont let people from Florida Travel there now because of our percentage of positive tests is people from within our state that are traveling and staycations i dont want somebody coming from another city where theres no mask order into my city where we have a mask order number one, theyre not going to know what the rules are and probably are not going to be wearing a mask, but i dont know what theyre bringing in to my community. If we had a uniform rule across the state, if we had real leadership from our governor, things would be a lot simpler for all of us and we would get through this a lot quicker as all of the experts are saying. Mayor kriseman, thanks for the efforts on the part of st. Petersburg because it will affect the rate at which the rest of us get the infection and hopefully dont die from it. Thank you, sir we mentioned the Washington Post report about the white house trying to block money in an Upcoming Senate gop relief bill aimed at testing and tracing. Its a gop bill, by the way. To put things in perspective the report says that as of late may there were fewer than 20,000 new cases of coronavirus reported each day on friday alone there were more than 76,000 new cases. Yesterday 78,000 new cases i think its pretty clear theres a cause for concern and that more funding for testing is needed joining me now laura garrett, an msnbc science contributor, also the author of the bestseller the coming plague newly emerging diseases and a world out of balance written, by the way, before the coronavirus. Good to see you. Thank you for being with us again. You and i were talking late friday night about the fact this testing thing which youve been talking to me since january or february, weve just never take then seriously and for whatever reason this administration has adopted a line that said the reason we have more cases is because we have more testing if you didnt have more testing, you wouldnt have more cases the logic is flawed because we also have more people dying, so clearly even if you didnt test as much as we do or more, youd still be getting people getting coronavirus and theyd be getting sick and dying well, ali, the percentage of people who test positive is going up, so as a percentage of all tests done, the number who turn out to be infected is higher every single day. So, yes, theres more testing, thankfully, because were finding these people, but theres also far greater percentage of people who get tested are indeed infected but, you know, the problem is were doing testing in an absolutely chaotic fashion that is aimed at the individual so individuals out there who have reason to be concerned that they might have been exposed to the virus can go and line up in these cars in the blazing heat in arizona and so on and get themselves tested and then wait a whole week, sometimes even more, for their results so that by then theyve infected a lot of other people if, indeed, it turns out they have the virus. This doesnt actually help us know how the virus is spreading, who its spreading from and to, what percentage of the population that is carrying the virus and is actively spreading it has no symptoms and so as a result were not doing testing in a way that advises policymakers, mayors and governors on how to make decisions. And now in retrospect testing were finding really good reasons why we need to be doing this differently for example, in spain, which has this horrible epidemic, we all remember back in april, you know, hearing every day about people dying in spain, well, after huge exposure all over the nation of spain, they did a survey of almost 12,000 spaniards, only 5 turn out to have been infected at the time nyu has done this big study, really important, where they tested how much virus was in your body. So theyre taking a sample and theyre not just finding are you infected or not but how many viruses do you actually have in your body at that moment and its a really interesting finding that the highest viral loads are not in the people in the hospital, theyre in the asymptomatic people Walking Around in your community and they have so much virus in them that theyre actively shedding it so this is why this is why this is so important because if you have the highest viral load at the front end of your sickness, if youre asim tymptoc or dont develop symptoms at all, you take a test and it takes five to seven days, because thats what its averaging now, to get the results of the test, youre carrying on like nothing is wrong for five to seven days because you dont have any symptoms youre not feeling sick. And that is the most dangerous time for you to be out there in contact with people. Absolutely. So lets say, for example, we now know of several clusters, very large clusters, of people who have gotten infected going to a bar so if you are doing smart testing and youre in florida, lets say, you would go out and you would pick key bars that tend to have large numbers of people congregating and you would conduct tests of that population and do rapid turnaround, within 24 hours, so you could see, oh, yes, we have a lot of virus in these bars we have to shut the bars down. But right now decisions like do you shut a bar down, do you open a school, are being made absolutely blind with no data regarding the virus to guide the decision. In fact, at one point we had representatives of the cdc saying theres just too much virus out there. And what theyre trying to convey is this random testing is just finding virus everywhere we turn, and its not something thats helpful in order to make the proper decisions ali, i cannot tell you how upset i am about the chaotic approach were taking if every country in the world were fighting this virus the same way the United States was, we wouldnt be now in 4 million cases in the world we would be in the territory of triple digits, hundreds of millions of cases in the world laurie, is there anything you see the administration is doing that could get us in the right direction, or are you coming to the conclusion as i have they have decided this is not their priority i think wall street and the administration have shared a blind faith this virus will burn itself out or there will be a herd immunity effect and miraculously everyone will turn out to be immune to the virus one day. Policies have been based on Wishful Thinking and lets make sure it does not affect the election precisely the opposite has occurred not only has the virus gone completely out of control, not only do we have intensive care units full now in at least four states not only do we have refrigerator trucks lined up outside of hospitals to store cadavers for collection in this hideous way that we suffered here in new york back in march april, but were seeing an absolutely log scale, explosive scale of growth even if the federal government at this moment decided to completely change their policy and focus in state by state, county by county, try to do the right thing, its just too big and its going to completely boom rang on them. It will be the decisive factor in the upcoming election thank you for joining me whether its late night or early morning. You are always available to us and we are grateful for it Laurie Garrett is an msnbc contributor and the author of the coming plague newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. An important read to understand the times were going through right now. This morning the country continues to mourn a true american hero. John lewis is remembered as a true civil rights pioneer with a tireless spirit. His friends and colleagues vowing to keep his legacy alive. Last night the sun sat on his life, and this morning the sun rose on a new day, a day for all of us to find another way. A lot of folks ask me why their dishwasher doesnt get everything clean. I tell them, it may be your detergent. Thats why more dishwasher brands recommend cascade platinum. With the soaking, scrubbing and rinsing built right in. For sparklingclean dishes, the first time. Cascade platinum. With spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. Just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. 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An ipad worth 505, was sold for less than 24; a playstation 4 for less than 16; and a schultz 4k television for less than 2. I won these bluetooth headphones for 20. I got these three suitcases for less than 40. And shipping is always free. Go to dealdash. Com right now and see how much you can save. We have come a great distance in this country but we still have a great distance to go his legacy is not the legacy of the 1950s and 60s. His legacy continues today and forward. He fought for something. He never fought against something. He fought for a better america he fought for the ideals of america. He knew that the fight was so much bigger than those who would spew hate and division he knew the fight was for an elevation of who we are as a people and we can be thats the life of john lewis. He challenged us to be our best. An icon, a leader, an american hero, some of the praise heaped upon the late john lewis who died on friday after a months long battle with pancreatic cancer. The white house paid tribute to the congressman yesterday by ordering flags to halfstaff President Trump on the other hand waited until he finished his latest round of golf to tweet he was saddened. Lewis continually fought for civil rights and encouraged activists to get into what he called good trouble. Lewis was arrested during the 1961 freedom rides he was the last surviving speaker from the 1963 march on washington and had a skull fractured by Alabama State troopers on the Edmunds Pettus bridge during the events of bloody sunday. All of that before later being elected to the house of representatives in 1986 where he became dubbed by his peers the, quote, conscience of congress and now growing calls for politicians and the public alike to rename the Edmunds Pettus bridge after john lewis. Makes sense. Pettus was a confederate general who became a grand dragon in the ku klux klan and who profited off slavery, according to the smithsonian. Joining me is the poet and writer of vanderbilt university, Caroline Williams lewis. Her piece in the new york times, you want a Confederate Monument my body is a finance federal rat monument has garnered praise as one of the best essays on Race Relations all year caroline, good to see you again. With we first spoke it was in the context of monuments and racism in this country but now its very specific because of that bridge named after your ancestor that people are saying lets name after john lewis because, in fact, in the minds of most people john lewis is the person they associate with that bridge, crossing it with Martin Luther king, and getting beaten as a result. Thats right. And i think im so humbled to get to be a part of this conversation its a seismic and serendipitous moment in history that i get to have written that article and then get to speak back and do the work that i was hoping the article would do in such real time because the work that i wanted the article to do would be a model of how people come from these dead confederates, can be participate of the charge part of the leaders of the charge to reframe those monuments by giving them their due, by putting the people the people of color who made history in shows spaces and places at the front. Thats not a rewriting of history. Thats an adding of perspective that gives us a more complete picture. And john lewis is the most recent contribution to the history of that bridge, and he is so dignified, so honorable, and such a right person for the bridge to be named after i want to read just a little bit from your essay. Its hard to read first thing in the morning but its important to people who havent read it yet hear this. You say im a black southern woman and of my immediate white male ancestors all of them were rapists. I have rape colored skin my light brown blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the old south. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the confederacy, if they want monuments, then my body is a monument my skin is a monument. Whats interesting about that, caroline, other than the remarkable writing, you are not an island in this one. Africanamerican women across this country have similar herita heritage yes and i hesitated just for a second before i sent the article in because it has been this source of shame in the past. But i think part of that was because we had to live in fear my greatgrandmother on my fathers side, Edmunds Pettus is on my mothers side. I liv she knew her white father. And they didnt talk about it because it was dangerous it was dangerous lightcolored skin was a danger because it revealed misdeeds there was this secrecy about the thing. To me getting to write that article was i wanted to be able to reclaim all of our story from the side of the black women and to acknowledge both the burden and then what can be a reclaiming of agency and a blessing because our skin is the proof. It is the proof that these men were not infallible, that their causes were not holy, just and on horrible. That they only prized a certain kind of female virtue. And it didnt look like me it didnt look like the women i come from. And so i think theres a real value to acknowledging it now. And i want that to be a place of power for people to be able to say, yes, thats part of my blood. Thats part of my truth. And that is part of how we actually really get a complete picture of what the south was and its how we can gather together to move into a Better Future this may not be appropriate for me to ask and if its not, its okay, i understand either subsequent to your article or subsequent to your appearance on television, you had some outreach from people whose last name was pettus, also are descendents of Edmunds Pettus. I did im happy for you to ask what ill say is i think its a delicate process because you dont know i wrote the piece and so i expected it i think its a delicate process because you want to i want to feel safe. I also want to do truth telling and build the right kinds of bridges into the future. I want us all to be on the right side of history. Im really grateful for the outreach, and i hope that it can be a model i hope its productive and restorative, and i hope that if it works, it can be an encouragement to other people who are beginning to navigate these new kinds of connections to their past. Yeah. Literally bridges. I have bridges in your past, and it seems you have new bridges in your future. Caroline, thank you for sharing your very, very personal story with us. And i think there are a lot of people who hear it and think its similar to their personal story. Caroline Randall Williams a descendent of the confederate leader Edmunds Pettus. I will talk