Last week. That means 38. 9 Million People have been thrown on to the unemployment lines in the last eight weeks. 38. 64 million to be precise. The only bright spot is the weekly claims have consistently come down. That implies that the layoff trend has already hit bottom. Heres the markets reaction to all of this. The dow at the moment is on the down side but not much by. Youre looking at 60 points lower. Youre looking at the nasdaq down about 16. Small losses across the board. Helping the market, astrazeneca, working with Oxford University, they have announced progress on a vaccine. They will do phase three trials with 30,000 american patients in july. If it works, they say they could deliver 300 million doses by the early fall. Then weve got three stories about open up and open up now. 600 doctors delivered a letter to the president outlining the Severe Health costs of the lockdown. They call it a mass casualty incident. Open up, they say. The front page of the New York Post blares the same message. The big apple is dying, the streets are empty, the lockdown quote, needs to end now. That is strong stuff. The writer joins us in just a moment. That new jersey gym that defied the governors lockdown, closed today. We are going to delve into that. The police were following gym users to their cars so they could identify them through the license plate. They got citations later. I told you it was a jampacked show and it is. Varney company is about to begin. Stuart im starting with the breaking news on the revolt. That is the new jersey gym. They have now been shut down not by the police but by the department of health. Steve keely from wtxf joins us from the gym in bellmawr. What are the owners saying about todays shutdown . Reporter well, they said they expected this, because they got a semithreat from the governor yesterday during his news conference, then mysteriously they got a sewer backup caused by paper towels in their bathroom even though they dont even have paper towels in their bathroom. So a mysterious sewage backup that suddenly in the middle of the night, four Police Officers in marked cars, one in an unmarked car, escort a department of Health Vehicle over here to tape all those orange, blaze orange stickers, notice of embargo from the county Health Department, but then four pages of legalese from the woman you see to the right of governor murphy every day, the state health commissioner, ordering the atilis gym to be shut down for a health violation. Here is some more of what the owners ian smith and Frank Trombetti said this morning. Its just a bump in the road for us. We opened on monday, we stayed open tuesday, we stayed open on wednesday, and murphy does not have the legal precedent to shut us down so hes resorted to calling in the Health Department. However, all of these messages on the wall from the Health Department were put on without them ever stepping inside and taking a look at the facility. Reporter well, they had hired a private cleanup crew and they are in there now cleaning up the mess, and they could open today if they wanted, but they say they are not going to defy any Health Department orders, but they fully intend to reopen tomorrow on day five, since this all began. You mentioned the guys that were pulling out of the gym yesterday postworkout. The police knew how long they were in the gym so they had written their license plates down, then tailed them out of here and pulled over six young men and wrote them tickets for getting in shape. Stuart steve, thanks very much indeed. Report right from the scene. We appreciate that. All right. The revolt continues, bottom line. Look, this is the front cover, front page of the New York Post and says mayor deblasio should open the city now. The man who wrote that opinion piece joins us in about ten minutes. It needs to end now. Thats referring on the lockdown. Staying on the revolt, hundreds of doctors sent a letter to the president saying reopen the country. They write this. Quote, the millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke or kidney failure. In youth it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies and poverty and abuse. Dr. Marc siegel is here. To me, thats a clear call that the social cost of the lockdown is just too much, open up the country. You agree with that . Completely agree with that, stuart. First of all, lockdowns have never been proven to work when theres this much virus around. They just dont work. The virus is already in the community. In new york city, big hot spot, we are seeing a decline in covid19 cases, an incline in the amount that are admitted to the hospital. We need to reopen our hospitals. Listen, heart attacks, strokes, people that have acute emergencies, infections, broken bones, surveys show they are afraid to go to the hospital. Four out of five, afraid to go to the hospital. Cancer screening down by 90 . Wellbeing trust, to your point, has something called deaths of despair and every time the Unemployment Rate goes up by one point, deaths of despair climb by about 20,000 a year. You know what that means here . Between 75,000 and 150,000 deaths will occur due to alcoholism, due to drug abuse, due to suicide from people that lose their jobs. We are going to end up seeing a lot more people dying from the aftereffects of this virus than from the virus itself if we dont end the lockdowns now. Stuart we hear you, doctor, but i need your comment on astrazeneca. They are working with Oxford University to get 300 million doses of a vaccine to the public by october. By the way, they start phase three trials on 30,000 american patients in july. Doctor, that sounds promising to me. Very exciting news as opposed to the other news. Listen, astrazeneca, the Oxford University developed a vaccine here that uses a viral vector. We have done that before. They have tried it in primates already, in monkeys, and it works. They started to try it in people and now they are gearing up. As you said, 30,000 people are going to end up getting it over the next few months. The United States government is putting 1 billion towards this right now, money extremely well spent. My prediction is if this continues to look as safe and effective as we are seeing, we are going to have a vaccine by the end of the year from oxford with the backing of astrazeneca. They are talking about 300 million doses to be available by the end of the year. I think they are on target for that. Stuart all right. Doctor, we hear you loud and clear. Very loudly. Very clearly. Thanks very much, doc siegel. Good stuff. Want to get to the big Economic News of this morning which is 2. 4 Million People filed Unemployment Benefits just last week. Susan has been digging in. See any positives in this report . Susan absolutely, i do. So in investing we have this term called the trend is your friend, and in this case, its absolutely true, even when it comes to Economic Data like jobless claims. We have been down now, trending lower for the last seven weeks. In fact, last weeks number was revised downward to 2. 68 million from the 2. 98 million and im also looking at the states that have reopened. For instance, georgia saw the biggest drop in the week, a decline of 66,000 from a week ago which shows that once the economy reopens, people get back to work, these jobless claims numbers do eventually keep going down. We saw the biggest increase when it comes to california, a jump of 33,000 but that comes more from the gig economy which is paying some pretty good Unemployment Benefits. Some people suspect people prefer to get these jobless benefits instead of going back to work. But i would say that would be probably the most concerning factor here is that it rose to a record 25 million. Stuart we hear you, susan. Thank you very much indeed. Gary kaltbaum joins us now. I believe from florida. Thats his home base. Yeah, there he is. Thats his library in florida. Right. Gary, are you encouraged by the pace of opening up and going back to work . Here, absolutely, stuart. We are still dead as far as tourism which, by the way, brings in 75 Million People and 75 billion of economic numbers. That has to get better and thats going to be in time. But i have to tell you, over the last three weeks, i have been traveling around the three counties here that have about 2. 5 Million People, but only 2800 cases of the virus. We are now opening up and i can tell you, three weeks ago, it was a ghost town. Two weeks ago, less of a ghost town. Now with things opened up and some things at 50 , some things at 25 , people are out and about, the traffic is almost back to normal, the restaurants with less capacity are filling up. You can just feel it. So the more and more we open up, the better the numbers are going to be, on employment, on gdp and everything else. Its just a matter of time as far as im concerned. Stuart all right. Gary, im sorry to cut it short. I know you went to Great Lengths to get here today but we do appreciate it. Weve just got a jampacked news day. Gary kaltbaum on the positive side, thank you, sir. Now, news on the major theme parks. They are submitting their plans to reopen in florida today. Lauren, i guess this is how we found out what the parks are going to look and feel like when they do open. Lauren the big meeting is today but we do have some hints from disney, universal and sea world. Disney hopes to do what they did in shanghai, that reopening, because it worked. Limit capacity to under 30 , face masks, temperature checks, social distancing. Sea world, they want to open their parks and they think they can do it by june. The reason they think that is because its mostly outdoors when you go to sea world. Universal, we know the least about. They are expected to detail their plans at 2 00 today. Stuart florida wants that tourism to come back and well see when it does. Lauren, thank you. Lauren people need something to do. Stuart we all do. Thats a fact. All right. Check futures again, please. A narrow loss pretty much across the board. I did notice that facebook is way up again premarket this morning. Star performer yesterday, looks like it continues today. Still to come this hour, my interview with Vice President pence. I will get his take on getting us back to work. Msnbcs Mika Brzezinski is demanding take twitter take down the president s page. She set up a meeting with jack dorsey to ask why is the president allowed to have the platform. What a story. Did you see the cover of this mornings New York Post demanding that mayor deblasio end the lockdown now . The writer claiming the big apple is dying. Extraordinary front page. The writer joins me next. You wouldnt accept an incomplete job from anyone else. Why accept it from your allergy pills . Flonase sensimist. Nothing stronger. Nothing gentler. Nothing lasts longer. Flonase sensimist. 24 hour nondrowsy allergy relief confident financial plans, calming financial plans, complete financial plans. Theyre all possible with a cfp® professional. Find yours at letsmakeaplan. Org. Theyre all possible with a cfp® professional. There are times when our need to connect really matters. To keep customers and employees in the know. To keep business moving. Comcast business is prepared for times like these. Powered by the nations largest gigspeed network. To help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. Tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. And a team of experts here for you 24 7. Weve always believed in the power of working together. Thats why, when every connection counts. You can count on us. Stuart about 14 minutes to go before we open the market and we are going to be down just a little, pretty much across the board. All right. Take a look again, please, at the cover of the New York Post this morning. A plea for the city to reopen and now, it reads the big apple is dying, its streets are empty. Tens of thousands have been plunged into poverty. Our leaders have no plans, no answers. New yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated. It needs to end now. I want to bring in the guy who wrote that genius, david marcus, correspondent from the federalist. I mean it. We needed that headline. We really really needed that headline. I think you are absolutely right. What response are you getting this morning . Thank you for that. The response has been very positive, obviously some negative stuff as well. I think this has been bubbling up now to an extent where we need to be able to have this conversation, because people in new york are going hungry. They cant pay their rent. Their businesses are closing. People cant get cancer screenings. Theres an economic and a human toll to maintaining this lockdown as well as to lifting it, so its time to talk about this right now. Stuart well, they are going to come right back at you and say you open up like that, and people will die. Whats your answer to that . Well, i mean, i think to the extent that we are able to protect the most vulnerable, we obviously need to do that, but as i just said, people are going to die as a result of the lockdown as well, and probably more importantly, that argument, that problem, isnt going to end until theres a vaccine and we dont know that theres going to be one. So the idea that we are just going to indefinitely keep the greatest city in the world shut down, we cant. And people are starting to realize its not practical, its not the right decision and it really needs to change. Stuart what happens this memorial day weekend thats coming up real soon . Weve got new york city beaches closed and the mayor threatening to take people out of the water if they dare to swim. You know, i can see confrontations coming here. You absolutely could. Its not going to be bill deblasio who is jumping into the water telling people to do this. Its going to be the nypd or other Civil Servants who dont necessarily want to do it. His entire approach has been kind of bizarre. He wants new yorkers to sort of inform on each other and call 311 if we see people doing stuff theyre not supposed to do. I live in brooklyn. We dont do that. So yeah, his approach is all over the place and so far, has not been particularly successful. Stuart david, i want to thank you very much indeed, a, for coming on the show but most importantly, for writing that front page of the New York Post. You had impact, david, serious impact. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. See you again soon. I want to talk about amazon and aoc. Now shes under new scrutiny over her role in killing those thousands of jobs that would have come to new york city, but she killed them. Ash, give me more on the story, please. Ashley yeah. That story and that irony is not lost on the New York Daily News which lets face it is a left wing view newspaper but in an editorial today as they look back on that effort to get amazon to go somewhere else which ultimately from the New York Daily News editorial, it says at this time when coronavirus is ravaging incomes across new york, wouldnt it be nice if the city and state at least knew that one of the Worlds Largest companies, one of the rare concerns positioned to thrive through the crisis, have made a longterm commitment to locate between 25,000 and 40,000 highpaying jobs here. Yes, it would and lets not forget the 27 billion in tax revenue over a 25year period, lets not forget aoc and the left Wing Campaign cried foul, saying amazon was being given nearly 3 billion in incentives, that was money that could have been used for the neighborhood of queens, long island city, elsewhere, and boy, oh, boy, new york now is looking at losing half a million jobs possibly by next march, and also a 9. 7 billion decrease in tax revenue over the next two years. Wouldnt it have been nice to have amazon sitting right there helping new york city. Stuart wouldnt it be nice. Ash, good story. Thank you very much indeed. Next one, another eye roller from msnbcs Mika Brzezinski calling on twitters jack dorsey to take down President Trumps twitter account, i guess. Susan, dorsey has agreed to meet with her. Susan and the general counsel of twitter. For a few weeks, President Trump has posted conspiracy theories that possibly joe scarborough, her husband and cohost on morning joe may have been involved in a possible death of this congressional aide back in 2001. Mika says this is ridiculous. Take a look at what she said and take a listen to what she said on the show. Donald, youre a sick person. Youre a sick person. To put this family through this, to put her husband through this, to do this just because youre mad at joe because joe got you again today, because he speaks the truth. Twitter, you shouldnt be allowing this and you should be taking these tweets down, and you should be ashamed of yourself. You will be hearing from me on this, because this is b. S. Susan other democrats like Kamala Harris has also told twitter to take down and ban President Trump from the social media site but social media says look, President Trump is a public figure, obviously, and he has influence in what he says and people want to hear it so they said they will keep him on the platform. Stuart he also happens to be the president of the United States and it wouldnt be a good idea to ban him from a public