Because it shows you what can happen when you unleash the full capacity of america. You can test a lot of people. In fact, it makes it that much more frustrating we did not start doing that earlier. We should have been doing this a month ago like south korea but the good news is were testing much more day after day after day and as that is happening, multiple Research Teams are starting to develop an anti body test that would allow people to note if they had the virus in the past and are now immune and that is absolutely crucial when were through the worst part of this and get back out into the world. So thats good. Another Silver Lining is as confirmed cases and fatalities go up, both of which have been brutal, especially here in new york, the overall fatality rate in the United States is really, really far below italy and spain, particularly in per capita terms. Now, we dont know the whole answer on to why that is at this point, some of it probably demographics. Its probably something that could change in the future and its certainly not a consolation to the families and friends who have lost dearly beloved family members. For now, it is something to take some measure of comfort. Today as more horrific numbers came out of italy, there is a bit of good news there, as well. It is clear their curve is flattening out. Two weeks after the country declared a strict and total lockdown, italy has an 8 increase in cases daily. Thats high but better than 20, 30 daily increases from a few weeks ago. Another good thing, the basic supply chains in america appear to remain in tact. There is a great article in Texas Monthly how heb started planning for this in advance. The federal government, the Senate Passed a 2 trillion rescue bill unanimously, somewhat remarkably. Theres a lot in there, some good, some bad, some ugly but there is going to be some financial relief, some cash assistance beefed up Unemployment Insurance coming peoples way. That is the good news. Now the bad news. The bad news is the u. S. Continues to have the highest rate of growth of the virus of any major country. In fact, just a few hours ago, in a grim milestone we officially pasted china and italy to have more confirmed cases than any other nation in the world. Weve also crossed 1,000 fatalities. New york added just 100 since yesterday. While fatalities have been consenscentrated among older pe and preexisting conditions, there are lots of brutally sad, gutting, terrible cases of younger people dying, as well. 48yearold nursing assistant at mount sinai manhattan died yesterday. It showed nurses at the hospital wearing plastic garbage bags as personal protective equipment. Because we still do not have sufficient equipment to protect all the doctors and nurses and Front Line Health Care workers. The doctor i talked to today in one of the new york City Hospitals has been wearing the same mask for four days. There are still wide spread fears of infections growing among hospital workers. Here is another bad thing. We are now entering the phase where the Hospital Systems begin to get over run. Weve been warned about this phase. We were warned by the doctors in wuhan and china and lom bbardy d italy and how its happening. There are new york City Hospitals at capacity. This is what an emergency room doctor in queens told the New York Times. Today is kind of getting worse and worse. We had to get a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of patients who are dying. We are right now scrambling to try to get a few additional ventilators or even cpap machines if we could get cpap machines we could free ventilators forperspective, eveg is not fine. I dont have the support i need and even just the materials that i need physically to take care of my patients. Virus is still also spreading all over the u. S. New orleans is looking more and more like a real hot spot. Louisianas governor compared the states trajectory of that of italy or spain. Month after mardi gras, new orleans would be a hot spot and a Health Director told the New York Times the greatest free party in the world was a perfect incubator at the perfect time. More bad news in the form of unemployment claims that came in at 3. 3 million. Never in our nations history since we started collecting data in 1967 have we hit a number that high. It just completely blows up the charts. You can see here the previous biggest number was in 1982 with nearly 700,000 claims. Even the peak during the Great Recession hardly even makes a showing on the chart compared to this number. We are quite literally in uncharted territory. What happens from here depends on the actions we take as citizens, humans, the actions of Civil Society and political representatives. Joining me to discuss this, a science journalist that wrote an incredible piece two years ago that stayed with me how unprepared america was for a n pandemic has an incredible piece how this ends. Your incredible reporting and writing has been crucial during this. Maybe start with where do you see us as being in the development of this . I think were still in aly e considering the bad news you just read out. Were still not near the peak of this. There is worse news to come and i think its the next few days, weeks, these are going to be crucial for defining how the next months or even year is going to look like. The decisions we make now are going to have massive ramifications for the loses or maybe even hopefully successes that we might expect to see. You have a line that when you look at the u. S. And you say, you know, we now have more cases than any country in the world, obviously per capita italy has been hit much more brutally but china is much more bigger than us and flattened the curve. How have we ended up here in the u. S. You had a line about the original sin. Why are we here at this moment . Right, i think when i wrote my original piece in 2018 about whether america was prepared or not, i think the answer was no but i think weve ended up being far more unprepared than anyone expected and one of the main reasons for that is the failure of testing. None of the experts i knew, none of the people who have been warning for years that a pandemic would been it way expected that america with its bio medical power would completely fail to roll out wide spread testing for a new pathogen. The scope of that failure has really cascaded through the rest of the countrys preparedness measures. Hospitals have pandemic plans in place, many did and that would have allowed them to ramp up production of supplies to allocate places for patients, but those plans couldnt be enacted because we had no idea where the virus was or how many people were infected and by the time we did know, it was everywhere, which sent states into a situation where they had to compete with each other for precious resources from dwindling International Supply chains. We still have a situation of a very federalized response. State by state, the mismisgovernmismisglovsissippi governor over riding, the governor of alabama saying look, i think were okay right now even though, you know, georgia and louisiana have terrible outbreaks and there is something just maddening about watching everyone make the same mistake over and over again, which is waiting until it too late but there is also something about the insane logic of pandemic spread that people cant seem to get their heads around. Yeah, i think this idea of x growth is really hard for people to understand. Like how quickly things can go wrong. And i think thats kpexacerbate by the nature of the virus. The virus has a long fuse to it. It takes a long time for symptoms to show up during which time people can spread the virus to other people and then it takes a long time for those symptomatic cases to end up in the icu on ventilators, on really intense critical care. And what that means is we under estimate the proportionality of the response thats required. People go people see social distancing. They stay at their homes for several days and think what is this for . Why am i doing this . The reason were doing this is to give the rest of the Health Care System enough time to prepare themselves and it takes so long for these events to develop and unfold that we need to insta gate these measures before they feel proportion anytime and for a long time when they might not feel like theyre working, only then can we slow the spread enough. Ed young, you have been an incredible resource throughout this. Thank you so much for making a bit of time for me tonight. Thank you for having me. Here with me now, someone who understands the decisions and the process for managing wide scale disasters. Jay johnson, former secretary of Homeland Security under president barack obama. What is your answer to the question of how is the most richest, most powerful nation on earth the Largest Military with pride ourselves on being number one end up in this situation where we now in sort of a knew m number sense have the worst outbreak in the world. Because we were unprepared, chris. This is an unprecedented once in a century crisis. Not since 1918 have we seen anything like this, but it was not unanticipated. Those of us in the Prior Administration remember all too well the experience we had with the ebola virus from west africa in the fall of 2014. Frankly, this that was a fraction of what we are dealing with now, but the situation we have is a nationwide disaster. Normally, when we deal with disasters in this country, they are state by state, region by region. This is a nationwide disaster and unfortunately, our government has been slow to respond. There will be studies. There will be i. G. Reports. There will be congressional investigations months and years from now to try to understand why we did not act sooner. I think the focus has to be what do we do from this moment forward . Youve reported that u. S. Cases have now surged past china. Were number one on the list. So what are we going to do about this . And chris, there is wide spread misapprehension of the respective roles of governments, National State and local in dealing with Something Like this. It does require very much a federallike response. Donald trump, President Trump cannot command that we all go back to work before easter sunday. He cannot command the governor of new york or the governor of new jersey to lift their executive orders to require us to leave our homes and go back to work. That is a local matter depending upon the circumstances that exist in each community and each city and each state so long as the Political Leadership in those jurisdictions understand what they are dealing with and are ahead of the curve and not behind it. The role of the u. S. Government in a crisis like this is to surge resources. To make sure that hospitals have the ventilators, the test kits, the masks and so forth and at the federal level, the National Level fema ought to be the center piece of that effort. My concern is fema has not been given the authority to marshall those resources and make sure the ventilators and test kits get to the cities and communities where they should be needed most and it appears were entering into a bidding war between states for these very vital resources right now. Theres also a worry about just to site two things you talk about. History will be written two headlines today. One propublic ka uncovering emails how chaos at the cdc slowed the early response to the coronavirus. Cdc responsible for the test kits. Another headline today, politico, the trump team failed to follow the playbook it wrote out both of those ignored, which adds up to what youre talking about in terms of the federalization of the response, i wonder if you can weigh in. There is a balance between the fact certain states have worse outbreaks than others but were ending up in the situation where every state is recreating mistakes of the states before, many of them, saying look, its not so bad here. We dont need proactive measures and youll end up without breaks everywhere if you keep doing that. Exactly. You got to stay ahead of the kusk. Governor ycuomo keeps saying ne york state is the leader of the virus. It incumbent on each mayor and governor to stay ahead of this. I understand the governor of alaska basically mandated anybody that enters the state of alaska has to go into a 14day quarantine. I dont know if thats comple completely necessary but certainly trying to stay ahead of the curve and so, you know, i used to say to my people, you got to plan for the next attack. Dont plan for the last attack. And, you know, youve got a tsunami three feet behind you and you got to sprint to stay ahead of it. Chris, a crucial part of this is once we do manage to flatten this curve, whether its six months from now, three months from now, weve got to figure out the proper benchmarks for when we can tell the public it is okay to go back to work and leave your homes. There is going to be some risk entailed in that and striking the balance between our economy and health. Jay johnson who served in the Obama Administration as the head of dhs. Thank you for making time. Thanks, chris. Next, what will the economy look like on the other side of this pandemic . A member of president s counsel of economic advisors joins me to talk about what to make of the staggering unemployment numbers after this. Life isnt a straight line. And sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. But when youre with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, theres nothing to stop you from moving forward. A partner who makes sure every step is clear, its more than just fast. It keeps all your devices running smoothly. With builtin security that protects your kids. No matter what theyre up to. It protects your info. And gives you 24 7 peace of mind. That if its connected, its protected. Even that that petcamera thingy. [ whines ] can your internet do that . Xfinity xfi can because its. Simple, easy, awesome. [ barking ] today we got staggering data with the economic effect of the coronavirus pandemic and the attempts to flatten the curve. More than 3 Million People filed for unemployment last week alone. Unlike anything weve ever seen. It was just two weeks ago we had a total of 282,000 people filing for unemployment benefits. Now its 3. 3 million. Historically speaking, there has never been a spike in jobless claims even close to this. It shows claims dating back to 1967. You can see the peaks and valleys through the years until you get to the latest data until the line dwuarves any week by far. We see the enormous amount of Economic Activity basically on a dime in an extremely rare tv appearance, jerome powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve made the correct point that this is not like a normal recession. This is a unique situation, so i think this is people need to understand. This is not a typical downturn. Whats happening here is people are being asked to close businesses, to stay home from work and to not engage in certain kinds of Economic Activity. At a certain point, well get the spread of the virus and confidence overturn people will come back to work. In is new. We have no idea how the economy will come back. Safe to assume it is going to be different than it was. Some folks out there largely in the political right, folks with a lot of money seem to be influencing the president. They dont want to wait. They argue the fight of fighting the virus is too high. The billionaire that heads up the company paychecks told bloomberg the damages of keeping the economy closed losing a few more people. A few more people. Also economists saying fighting the virus is necessary to bring back the economy. Joining me is one of them professor betsey stephenson, chief economy most of the Labor Department and counsel of economic advisors which lets start with unemployment data because you worked the department of labor where i believe the burro of labor statistics churches these number sos you s so youre familiar with those and i watch People Struggle to make sense of them. How do you make sense of that number and what it means for the situation were in . So that data is put out by the department of labor and its real numbers. Its the number of people who are filing for unemployment in a given week. Each state reports their numbers in to the federal, the u. S. Department of labor and then they put them all together and give us the seasonally adjusted number. Weve never seen a number like that before. Youve already said that. But i think if we think about what jay powell was just saying its not that surprising of a number. Right now, there are 212 million americans who have been told to stay home. This claim was for last week. So the weekending on saturday and i think at that time 150 million americans have been told they need to stay home. So 3. 3 million, i think well see another big spike when we see claims next thursday but what were seeing is different. In 2008, we had two years where initial claims were about 200 to 300,000 per week more than they normally are. So think about that. Thats like 104 weeks, two to 300,000 people more than normal filing for unemployment. The problem here is well have three or four weeks or, you know, of 2 or 3 Million People so were going to get there pretty quickly. The question will be whether we end up with more people who are formally furloughed or, you know, let go during this crisis compared to 2008. In terms of what relief is on tap for those folks, i mean, boosting Unemployment Insurance is a big part of the bill the Senate Passed and we expect the house to pass tomorrow and cash assistance. I saw someone doing some of the math that was fairly optimistic for me it sort of modelled if youre a family of four, two kids, two working parents both laid off, a sizable four or 5,000 a month, somewhere in th neighborhood possible between the Unemployment Insurance and cash assistance, do you think the scale of what were going to likely have after this passing tomorrow is up to the scale of the disruption . I do, actually. I think they did a really good job of trying to patch a lot of holes that are in the Unemployment Insurance system. So the reason to use the Unemployment Insurance system is because thats going to get the money in the hands of people who have actually been furloughed and bringing in an income. The problem with that system is so many people arent eligible for it, maybe theyre gig economy workers or earnings werent quite high enough and what it bill aimed to do is cover more people and then also give them more money because the real issue with Unemployment Insurance is it is time to trade off the idea that we want we dont want your consumption to fall too much but we want you to have an incentive to go back to work. Right now, we dont want any incentive to go back to work so replace peoples wages at 100 , what they did to do that was you get your normal u. I. Plus you get that weekly pandemic relief check that adds to your u. I. , which will give a large number of people something thats really close to 100 of their previous paycheck. Final question for you about these sort of trade offs as we seen, the quote in the intro, you know, look, i mean, some people are going to die but America Needs business to happen. I saw this great piece, a study of the 1918 flu pandemic that said cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively do not perform worse with economic recovery, if anything grow faster after the pandemic is over. Meaning there is not a choice between the health and economy. Both arrows point in the same direction. As an economist yourself, is that how you see this . I think thats right. I think the paper has the typical academic warnings of who knows whether this is exactly relevant to today but stop and think about what caused that. If we went back to work tomorrow, there would be enormous disruptions. Some of us would do what we could to protect ourselves. Others would go to work but large numbers of people in the office would get sick and that would cause its own set of havoc and much harder to recover from the kind of havoc letting the pandemic play out would create. We lose lives and have worse economic results. The senates Coronavirus Relief package includes funding for Election Protection but is it enough . Sta stacy stacy ee brems on the fight of the pandemic next. You werent a . Sure. Sometimes i wish i had legs like you. Yeah, like a regular person. No. Still half bike half man, just the opposite. Oh, so the legs on the bottom and motorcycle on the top . Yeah. Yeah, i could see that. For those who were born to ride, theres progressive. Yeah, i could see that. Missions in iraq as aand afghanistan. 89 combat as a National Security advisor, i worked to keep our country safe. Im amy mcgrath. Now im running for senate in kentucky against Mitch Mcconnell. I can win, but i need your help. With your contribution, we can finally remove Mitch Mcconnell from office and start repairing the damage hes done to our country. I approved this message. Because this is gonna take all of us. The coronavirus rescue bill that just pasted the senate expected to pass the house tomorrow has 400 million to help states implement systems like absentee voting and voting by mail in the eventuality of everything were going through with physical distancing and lockdowns will continue for awhile, possibly even in some form until the general election in november. That 400 million supports the states to implement that, that number is far below what advocates wanted. They asked for 2 billion but its more than 140 million figure originally offered up by senate republicans. Now, the there is still a ton of open questions what all this means for conducting democracy during a pandemic. Joining me now someone who thinks about this just about every second of every day, stacey abrams, the founder of fair fight action and candidate for governor of georgia. Lets start, stacey, where you are. Youre in georgia and before we get to the bill on the elections, things there look pretty intense particularly in atlanta. What is your assessment of where things are right now in your home state and how the response has been at a state level. Today the governor of georgia and the mayor of atlanta had a town hall and provided Additional Information but there continues to be concern about the diversity of responses depending on which county youre in, which city youre in. One of the challenges is making sure there is a unfied response and so were waiting to see the next steps that the governor takes. Ill tell you that i started, one of the organizations i started in the wake of 2018 election was called seat, the southern Economic Advancement project because across the south, the 12state region, this say region that has the most vulnerable populations. We have higher levels of poverty. We have lower levels of access to Public Benefits and those Public Benefits tend to pay less. We haveless paid leave and so almost every one of the issues that were facing in the wake of covid19 are hitting the south harder and so at seap, were working to connect people with resources so we have a map where weve connected with Community Networks and listing the organizations offering support from community to community but i raise that because as much as we need the federal government to take action, we cannot forget the responsibility that states have. States like kentucky and louisiana and north carolina, the governors have taken executive action to expand coverage of medicaid to expand access to unemployment benefits, to ensure people actually receive the support they deserve and the Public Benefits meet the need at the moment. It critical in georgia and across the south. We ask governors to go beyond the minimum and do what we need to ensure every person is protected in this crisis. In terms of elections, there was a big battle, even a showdown over the funding in this bill. The idea behind the 2 billion from advocates, what it would cost to implement some form of no excuse absentee voting should it come to that in november. Whats your assessment where the legislation ended up . Of course, were disappointed the full 2 billion wasnt allocated but im pleased we have 400 million. Thats much more than republicans initially offered and what we know this has to be a down payment in our democracy. There is no doover for the november elections. The contusion does not permit a delay of that election. Which means we have to be prepared for there not to be a miracle in may that changes the world. We need to be prepared for a pandemic that disrupts our elections and we need to anticipate what the solution looks like. That means online voter registration. Sameday registration and the resources necessary for paid postage. Because its not enough to say you can mail in your ballots if the post office is closed or you cant get there. So we have to assume that we need multiple solutions that is mail in ballots and making sure that we can have some locations for people to vote. There may become m communities have to go vote. Native American Communities have very irregular post Office Access and that could be negotiable by this time. We have to anticipate for november and the reality as a nation we should be good at this by now and my assumption is that the bill is a down payment and its a starting conversation but more will be done. You know, one of the awful realities of american politics is sort of partisan divide for voting access. Generally democrats have sought to enlarge it to increase access and republicans sought to constrict it where sometimes they flat out admit that and say thats their goal. I do wonder in an environment in which people find their lives disrupted if the possibility of republicans maybe getting religion on this or understanding the need to allow people to vote particularly if their own constituencies may have a hard time doing that might change that kind of partisan valance. I think it could. Weve seen governor mike dwayne take affirmative action to make sure mail in ballots will be available in the postponed election. In the state of georgia, the secretary of state agreed with a Democratic Party we need to mail ballots to every voter. Were still in disagreement about the fact that these wont be postage paid because in georgia, a volunteer cant offer to pay for a stamp thats a violation of state law. The state has to agree to pay for it. We need to make sure in every single state that we make access available and we are hearing republicans and democrats say this is necessary because democracy isnt partisan. We are partisan. We pick the sides but democracy itself is about the conversation and we have to remember that whether youre a democrat or republican or independent, you have a right to pick your leaders and that happens in november and every person who wants to participate who is eligible should be allowed to do so. Stay D Stacey Abrams good to hear from you. How to survive social distancing. 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Were all living through this era of physical distancing, its more appropriate than social distancing wondering how long is this going to go on . Are the coming days going to be like . Its frustrating to say that we dont know for sure really the closest we can come to knowing is just listening to folks in china who have already been through two plus months of lockdown. You think of it as a dispatch from the future. I came across this great facebook post. He talked about his emotional trajectory, weeks one and two are filled with absolute confusion, anger, finger pointi pointing, conspiracy theory, helplessness and week four real laizati ization kicks in this is for real. Depression kicks in. Week five and six is hitting stride, feeling like you got this and by week switch and eight as the infection numbers dropped to almost zero you begin to venture out slowly like a p. O. W. And realize the front gate is left open. I found this human and gave me hope and comfort. So tonight, i thought we should talk to someone who has gone through the experience. Peter lives and works in china spent two months in an apartment with his wife and kids quarantined and wrote about his experience and explains the slow exit. On the 45th day of the lockdown our family went out to dinner for the first time. My daughter still hadnt interacted with another child her age and there had been no announcement about school. Peter me Peter Hessler joins me now. Take me through the trajectory of your experience of the same feeling how long is this going to go on . How long can we keep this going as the quarantine extended . Yeah, thats really one of the issues is the lack of certainty. You were never told this was going to be a month or two months and, you know, so thats part of what youre dealing with and of course, the other thing is having children in the situation is really difficult. Especially the isolation from other kids. I mean, our kids just this last week finally were able to see other children their age. You know, so thats a long time, almost two months, very hard on them. You did some reporting about the lockdown measures there and also, the hospitals. Tell us, i mean, the lockdown in china strikes me as considerably more severe than what we have here and even the places that are under shelter in place orders. Yeah, i mean, in many places, you couldnt even leave your building basically or they would let one person go out every two or three days. That was very common. I think the main difference in china was they were also gathering a lot of information. There was a lot of contact tracing, theyre figuring out where the cases are, what the spread pattern. In Lockdown People had come three times to ask where we traveled and how many people we had and had that information to plan for the future. Even a twomonth lockdown wont solve the problem. This is a year or two years until you get a vaccine and so you need to develop systems in place where you can track outbreaks, you can have more flexible, you know, more individualized responses to outbreaks. What i imagine you have american friends emailing you or whats apping you or contacting you in someway or the other and what have you been telling them . Whats your advice for those of us who are on this side of the time machine and you sit there and look back at us from the future . I mean, my advice is just, you know, it cant just be the social distancing. It cant just be a lockdown. They have to you have to have tests and some kind of structure to get this other information and trace infection patterns. It all possible. The United States spent a lot of time on Anti Terrorism and foreign wars. We have to approach this in somewhat the same way. There is a lack of realization that it takes this sort of effort and maybe people think you have to stay home for a couple months and then its over. But thats not going to be it. I think its not done here. I think it will bounce back in china at various points. The societies weve seen that have done well with this south korea has done well. Taiwan, singapore, i think china has done fairly well, they all have had this element of tracing where the infection moves, and i dont see that happening in the u. S. It concerns me and i hear a lot from medical personnel, doctors and other people in the medical industry in the United States and they are really under prepared and those people are disturbed by what theyre experiencing already. What has it been like as things have slowly opened up . I think all of us are holding on in our minds that were going to get through this. This is not the new permanent normal. Some day well go to a restaurant again. How has china managed that and what has it been like just your experience of it . Everything is different. I got my haircut yesterday and i had to get my temperature taken. As you go to a restaurant, they take your temperature and record all of that. People are still Wearing Masks out on the street but its slowly returning and an epidemiologist at harvard described this as letting the air out of a balloon slowly. That the really what theyve been trying to do here and so now were starting to hear schools may reopen. I think april 7th, the first wave of students will go back and i think my kids in Public School will probably be back in mid april. I think there is a sense you can return to normal or some degree of normalcy but things are adjusted and it happens slowly. Peter hessler a writer for the new yorker thank you so much. The Publishing Health threat in jails and prisons across the country as the virus spreads within their walls. Philadelphia d. A. Larry has a plan to prevent that looming disaster and joins me next. Life isnt a straight line. And sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. But when youre with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, theres nothing to stop you from moving forward. Today we got some dire news out of new york citys jails where precisely the thing advocates, defenders and experts have been warning about for weeks, is now coming true. According to a new analysis by the legal aid society, there are 75 cases of coronavirus in city jail, most of which are in the Rikers Island complex. Rikers is one of the largest correctional facilities in the world and right now the infection right there is seven times that of new york city, and 87 times that of the u. S. As a whole. Jails as well as prisons across the country with cramped quarters and less than hygienic conditions are contributing to the spread of the virus among both prisoners and the people that work there, corrections officers, those corrections officers, and those employees, of course, can then bring that infection back to their families and their communities and so it is all a Huge Public Health threat. Some states and counties are starting to take it seriously, releasing thousands of low risk elderly or vulnerable individual, and the city of philadelphia has a more proactive plan led by the District Attorney who joins me now. Start by sort of talking about how you approach this. I have been talking to advocates and public defenders for weeks who have been really, really terrified about massive outbreaks in incarcerated populations. How have you talked and planned for this . Chris, we have our lane and there are many other lanes but im happy to tell you our Police Commissioner here has been very de decisive in deciding we will not move ahead with charges immediately for less serious offenses and what that does it reduces very significantly the number of people going in the front door of the jail. What we are trying to do at the same time is were working on people who are in on bail who dont need to be there, people who are coming close to the end of their sentence or maybe at the ends of their sentence who should be already out of there and working on people who are held on detainers because they may have some kind of a probation or parole violation, often for something very minor like testing positive for marijuana, Something Like that and were trying to get those populations out, but the real challenge of course is that the courts are shut down in philly, which they have all over the country and you dont have all of these courtrooms where you can litigate these things, so we have to work with partners to try to get this done. I was reading about that, right . So the courts shut down. Which i think is direct. For a Public Health matter. Reading stories about just as recently as a few weeks ago, courts going with people running through, which is a Public Health nightmare, but how do you do that, if the courts arent operating . Well, you have to make sure you do it at a speed faster than government. I can tell you that. You have to do it at the speed of a virus, which is pretty fast. And that of course is difficult. Government and nonparty government is not used to making quick agile changes in direction so we have been working with the d. A. s office for two weeks to identify sub groups of the jail population most amenable from the Public Safety and other perspective to coming out, public defender has been very helpful with that, the commissioner is on board, and we have been trying to get the courts, which are moving more quickly now, to move along with us to make those improvements but understand were a big state. We also have a governor who has certain powers including a power of reprieve, which is essentially a delay or a gap in the sentence that as far as i know, has not been used in over 100 years in pennsylvania. He could use it. We have a pardons board that has been extremely reluctant to pardon people, even very elderly people who present no risk to the public. They need to move in a different direction. We simply cannot do this in a slow glacial marginal kind of way, these are people who have to be moving quickly and decisively right now. The new york city mayor bill deblasio who lass come under a lot of pressure, has come under a lot of pressure from folks here in the city to deincarcerate, to let people out of rikers to pursue the categorical exemptions and people dont stop being criminals because there is a pandemic and to folks that are watching this and say wait a minute, if youre letting these people out, wont that pose a risk to Public Safety, what do you say to to them . Well, first of all, i say thank goodness for the people who push us to incarcerate and the Jail Coalition in philadelphia, very effective with several Council People pushing for this and were seeing across the spectrum, conservatives and liberals together, realize that this is absolutely something we have to do. But more specifically what i say is that unfortunately, in criminal justice, slogans are king, and science is not. The science in philadelphia is the following. When our Police Commissioner decided not to push ahead immediately with the charging of certain types of offenses, and to wait, to bring those charges after, until a point after the pandemic, was somewhat under control, what we saw is that there was a decline, a decline in those crimes. Sorry. Science says no. Science says this is not causing all kinds of crimes to happen that were not happening before. Obviously, we have to remain scientific and see if that changes. But unfortunately, we need to look to science as opposed to where we have always looked in criminal justice which is politics, and slogans that lead us astray. There is the louisiana judge today that was saying that they didnt want to let drug users out of prison for the following reasons that they are too hygienic to be released from jail, among the most unhygienic populations and a lot of people, there are ways to think about incarcerated populations, whats your response to that . My response is that judge might want to remember, we keep people for the commission of crime, not because the judge thinks theyre dirty. Thats not how it is supposed to work. We have a constitution. We have laws. And not a place where he gets to stick people who he thinks should be there. One thing ive seen people say is that if there are these populations that are currently in jail, or in prison, that do not pose a Public Safety threat, and you know, you referred to the data, and we have a pandemic and we want to get as many people out of these conditions as possible, because these places are vectors for infection, why are they there in the first place, right . Lets say there wasnt a pandemic, if theyre there, and theres a bunch of elderly folks in prisons or people in jail that we dont think are a Public Safety threat, it sort of prompts a bigger question about why are all of these people being kept behind bars to begin with. You know, it certainly does. Obviously, thats not our focus right now. Our focus now is saving lives. And in the same way that were making decisions about cruise ships, we need to make decisions about jails. Philadelphia has essentially four jails. Theyre all sitting there like a bunch of parked cruise ships and they dont just endanger the people connected to the jail, they endanger everyone, in the same way a Cocktail Party for billionaires endangers everyone if they are careless how they deal with each other and the covid19 virus spreads. The same thing can happen here. Well have the luxury of looking back later and saying did that turn out to be okay, to have these much reduced jail populations . But thats no what were up to right now. Wa were doing right now, simply put, simply trying to save lives and thats part of the mission of prosecutors, to preserve Public Safety. District attorney of philadelphia, thank you so much. That is all in for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening, rachel. Good evening, chris. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated. Thanks to you at home for joining thus hour. Happy to have you with us. In massachusetts, there were 1838 confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday. 1838. That number rose today, to more than 2400 cases. Nearly 600 new cases in one 24hour period. And that same kind of story is being told all over the