Good morning and welcome to morning joe. It is wednesday, april 1st. Along with joe, willie and me we have former white house adviser for Health Policy professor and advice proboast, doctor ezekiel emanuel. And cofounder and ceo of axios, jim vandehei joins us as well. Joe, that press briefing yesterday was dark. There was some hard truths that came forward in one big dose for the United States of america. That is a press briefing that Health Care Providers and doctors and scientists begged, begged the white house to give two weeks ago. To tell americans the truth. That is actually the briefing the Intel Community begged donald trump to give in january and february. They saw this coming even several weeks ago, doctors i know very well, scientists, Health Care Professionals were saying, mr. President , 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 people could die from this virus if you dont start moving. The president didnt want to hear it. This is, after all, a president who talked about one person dying
Suggesting that somebody is stealing the supplies that are being sent to new york. That does it for us. Stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. Hi there. Im stephanie ruhle. Its thursday, april 2nd, and heres whats happening. We begin with new and sobering numbers and an indication that while the other countries have managed to bend the health curve on the coronavirus, the numbers here in the United States are going straight up. As of this morning, there are 216,000 cases in america. More than 4,800 americans have lost their lives. Thats nearly double double the number of deaths in just three days. Early or today, they compared it with the trajectory in italy. Italy got hit very hard, and its very clear that were getting hit very hard. Right now, the epicenter of it in the United States is new york city. But as you see, its not going to be confined to new york city. Were going to be seeing this kind of thing in other large cities. Its a very difficult situation as was predicte
Gained traction, he tweeted, fire fauci. The president will not be firing fauci under six president ial administrations. As we wait for the governors to speak, look deeper what the Surgeon General and the cdc director are saying, the sacrifices of staying home and away from people are working. Our National Correspondent Jason Carroll joins me now. I may have to interrupt you if the Governors Press conference begins. The positive signs in identifying the debate on just when the u. S. Economy should reopen. Right, a lot of people are asking that, anderson. The question is, when . When will the country reopen . What is the plan Going Forward . There is one point. Health officials are saying, whatever the plan is, if you open too soon in some parts, youre going to reverse all the progress thats been made to date. For the first time in history, every state is under a disaster declaration at the same time. The National Death toll numbers are staggering, and yet, in new york, the epicenter of
President took a gamble. He gambled that this virus would dissipate. The president s talked about this from time to time, when april comes around the virus will go away. He gambled and he was wrong. In this instance where the president says we just have to pass it along to our viewers. When he says that nobody saw this coming, that one person couldnt spread it. Thats not the case. Thats how a pandemic works. They were warned about this going back to january. There are some people joining a choir director for a choir practice doing exactly what at the time the cdc was saying. They were tweeting at the end of february noted community spread. Do what you would do, stay home if youre sick, people were not getting the message that clearly needed to get out of there. Daniel dale tell us what stood out to you as a fact checker. There was another false claim. Trump was talking and he said nobody could have known read have this situation. There were years warnings not only about the general ris
Sentinel surveillance. What i do mean by that . That were actively testing in Nursing Homes the residents and workers at all times. Thats how we saw this at the beginning. Thats what we saw in Washington State and what were seeing in many of the states that have very low case attack rates. The other thing i want to leave you with, we simply know how desperate and difficult the situation has been in new york over the last few weeks. Weve been telling and talking about how this would be the week that would be most difficult because of the large proportion of cases that are coming from the new york metro area. Whats been encouraging to us, those early states outside of washington and california, which still have extraordinarily low attack rates because of their level of mitigation, all of the new areas that are having new increase in cases, we talked about them yesterday, washington and baltimore and the philadelphia metro area. That includes camden, wilmington and the counties around phi