Vladimir putin. He believes that putin controls all of russia and all of its wealth, and anything like the purchase of this of this home had to have been through or with the permission of vladimir putin. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. You know, back in the earliest days of this pandemic, when the virus was only in one province in china before it reached our shores and spread all across the globe, tens of thousands of people in wuhan gathered for an annual tradition. 40,000 families prepared nearly 14,000 dishes and the organizers were going for a world record for number of dishes served to mark that events 20th anniversary. Attendees sat close together, sharing the meal, and soon after, people began getting sick. And 57 residential blocks within the wuhan neighborhood that held the banquet were labelled fever buildings. Now, looking at those images now is really gutwrenching. Its fair to say it was most likely not a good call to go ahead with that event. But, again, this was midjanuary. I mean, the Chinese Government was suppressing information about the virus. Most people did not understand yet what we were dealing with. But now, seven months after the first case popped up here, we have a better sense of what this pandemic is, or we should. We know that as a country we need to avoid big gatherings with no social distancing, particularly indoors, so no nightclubs and no bars, no frat houses, no big massive, massive events. And if we wear masks and we are careful, well, maybe we can muscle through this and lead a semi normal life. Well, this was the scene in south dakota last month. The surges motorcycle rally held over ten days. Now, this took place seven months after the Lunar New Year banquet in wuhan, china. At the start of this event, 160,000 americans had already died. And it has been abundantly clear for months that big events, Mass Gatherings without social distancing, are extremely high risk for spreading coronavirus. But south dakotas republican governor christie gnonoem did n want to hear that. Shes a rising republican star. Lectured or violence in the streets during the rnc, and just the other day showed up at a Republican Party event in, huh, iowa, appearing to set the stage for a future run for president and governor noem has made it her regular practice to thumb her nose at all the condescending liberal talking heads who say we should take the pandemic seriously. Theres concern about this big motorcycle rally thats happening this weekend in south dakota. And we dont have to play the sound bite. Oh, my god, on television, all the cable news. How dare you . Its going to become a superspreader event, governor, a big superspreader event. Look at all those people. Look at how they gather. Well, weve had several big events in south dakota already. We had the first spectator attended professional sport, the professional bull riding was held in south dakota. We had the july 3rd event and saw no increase in cases because of that crowd that gathered to celebrate our countrys freedom and independence. People have been gathering. Weve been back to normal for over three months here in south dakota. So we know we can have these events, give people information, let them protect their health, but still enjoy their way of life and enjoy events like the sturgis motorcycle rally. We hope people come. We hope people come. Were back to normal. Were back to normal. The virus went away. Now, it is important to consider the scale of what we are talking about here with the surges motorcycle rally. Remember the big outdoor crowds we saw at protests in the wake of George Floyds death . A lot of people, including myself, as i said multiple times on the show, were really concerned that those events could lead to a lot of spread of the virus. But, you know, months have gone by and the evidence suggests they did not, thank goodness, and part of the reason for that is because of the scale of those events. In new york city, a city of 8 million people, tens of thousands of people took to the streets. And the protests themselves stopped other people from going out. And so they didnt lead to big superspreader events. Sturgis, south dakota, on the other hand, is home to 7,000 people. And this years motorcycle rally drew over 460,000 people, like dropping a city the size of miami into the middle of a small town. So what happened . New research by Health Economists concluded the Sturgis Rally led to over 260,000 additional coronavirus cases, or get this, nearly 20 of the new cases in the u. S. Between august 2nd and september 2nd. 20 . Now, its important to note, this paper is still under peer review, but look at this map. I mean, people came to sturgis from all over the country and then, of course, returned to their homes and communities, spread from coast to coast. The researchers have calculated the total Public Health cost of all of these cases at over 12. 2 billion, which get this, is enough to have paid each person who went to sturgis over 26,000 not to attend. Just stay home. Now, like i said, its preliminary research, its not yet peer reviewed, but think about it this way, even if this study is off by, say, i dont know, a factor of four, okay . Its still nuts. I mean, i wonder what the residents of wuhan are thinking about us right now six months, seven months into fighting this pandemic. There are still so many difficult decisions and balances and costs and benefits. For instance, schooling, which weve been talking a lot about on the show night after night. So many questions where its still hard to note what the right answer is, but then there is a subset of stuff that is real, real easy. Like wear a mask and dont hold events with 400,000 people. But in america, we cannot even do those things. And that is because our attitude about the virus stems in part from the top. From the president barking at a reporter petulantly yesterday to take off his mask to the rising star governor of south dakota, positioning herself in opposition to Public Health experts, were back to normal. And, of course, who can forget former trump adviser Kellyanne Conway seen here in the oval office so if talking about having it contained. Way back in march. You talked about how the administration initially had this contained. But during that time, why did the administration send out more tests and work to get hospitals prepared . Even today, the state of florida is saying they cant test everyone per the administrations guidelines because they dont have tests. So youre asking a couple of Different Things there. Ill try to just give some facts. The hhs secretary said this morning that were ramping up. Why now . Why didnt they do it contained it is being contained. Im not a doctor, im a lawyer. You said its not being contained. Are you a doctor or a lawyer when you said its not being contained . You said something thats not true. Yes, that little condescending moment, by the way, should be what everyone remembers about Kellyanne Conway. Maybe the only thing they remember about her contribution to public life. And that tone seen there, that petulant tone, it has not changed in six months, as we tick towards 200,000 dead americans. Its why we are where we are today. Its why we are stilled holding huge, huge events without much social distancing over seven months into this. Joining me now, one of the researchers who cowrote that sturgis study, associate professor of economics at the university of colorado denver. Good to have you, professor. I want to start first with just the methodology here. Like, how solid is this . How confident are you that the modelling youve used here is is getting it right about what the what the effect was . Yeah, id even push back about characterizing this as a modelling exercise. What were doing here is were taking locations that are heavily exposed to the Sturgis Rally, either meade county itself or locations that we see a large number of cell phones traveling from those locations to sturgis itself, and then were comparing those locations to similar locations. Theyre on the same trend, have the same number of covid cases, and were just matching them up and showing they lay right on top of each other ahead of the Sturgis Rally. Then postSturgis Rally, the places had high exposure diverge and start seeing an uptick in cases, relative to places that had the same levels and same trends. This is all based on actual data and actual numbers. The only modelling assumption going on here right. Is youve got places that look identical that some places were exposed to sturgis and some places werent. If you buy that then you buy the analysis. Right. So youve got county a and county b and these counties are fairly similar counties before sturgis, and you can look at why theyre similar visavis covid and then you know a bunch of people from county b went to sturgis because you have the cell phone data but no one from a went and you start to see that rise index up a few weeks after sturgis in the county where people were coming back from the rally. Yeah, and then we can count up the actual differences in cases. This has been characterized actually by the governor of south dakota as a bs model, and its not at all. Its actual comparisons. Its were you surprised by what you found . I mean, the numbers here the thing that jumped out at me was the 20 . And i guess i that jumped out at me before i quite realized scale of the event, but 20 of the cases, 260,000 cases, the level of illness and disease and death and cost is staggering. Yeah, it shows how much a single event or a single large event can contribute to the national spread. This is what exponential growth is, right . You have a large number of people and then they all touch two people and they all touch two people and it just goes off and off and off. The thing that really jumped out at me was how much of the no places or what percentage of the numbers come from outside of south dakota. That we only have about 3,000 additional cases due to the surges rally according to our analyses in south dakota, whereas the rest of the country accounts for everything else, so this is a situation where all the economic benefit of having a large event like this rests in a single state, and all the Public Health cost is borne by everybody else. Thats a great point. Its like a massive pollution enter prize, right . Like the negative externality gets thrown all across the nation and all the businesses and folks who count on that and i understand 100 why if youre a person in sturgis or around sturgis you want that event to happen because obviously its an Enormous Economic engine for the people around there in the state and it would be crushing if it doesnt happen, but now youve got 257,000 excess cases around the country. Yes, that is correct. And i get it. People are tired of the disease. Im tired of the disease, but that doesnt change the facts on the ground that this is still an incredibly infectious and incredibly deadly disease. Andrew freedson, who is a professor of economics there at the university of colorado denver. Thank you, that was great. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Over 190,000 americans are dead from the coronavirus, about 1,000 are still dying every day. We have over 6 million cases. And while democrats, you might remember, passed additional relief months and months ago, Mitch Mcconnell, Senate Republicans in the white house had balked, and the odds now of further legislation are not looking very good. Republicans skinny bill is less than a skinny bill. As Chuck Schumer and i have said, its an emaciated bill. It falls short in meeting the needs of the American People when we talk about putting money in their pockets, when we talk about feeding the food insecure people in our country, preventing evictions for those who become homeless. Completely ignores what we need to do in a very substantial way. This is why i want to talk to someone in democratic leadership involved in all these negotiations by nancy speaker Nancy Pelosis side, congressman Hakeem Jeffries from new york. The h. E. R. O. S. Act passed by democrats in the house months and months ago, variety of money for things, several trillion dollars. Then the economic damage sort of continued to show up, a bunch of things ran out from the first bill. The president tried to jerry rig it with executive orders. Now theyve come back with their counterproposal which is far, far less than the democratic proposal is. The logic would be meet halfway. Why is meeting halfway not good enough . Well, thats a great question, chris, and weve been asking that for the last several weeks. In fact, Speaker Pelosi offered to meet the republicans halfway. Remember that the republican bill was originally 1 trillion. They are going in the other direction because the bill that Mitch Mcconnell right. Has introduced today is approximately 500,000 billion. The crisis isnt getting any better, its gotten worse. And as a matter of fact, when we acted on may 15th, decisively, because we understood that both the Public Health aspect of the crisis and the economic aspect of the crisis required a transformational intervention, since that moment, 116 days later, more than 105,000 americans have died. Tens of millions of americans continue to be unemployed. And, in fact, there have been more than 5 million cases of coronavirus infection, chris, since the house acted. And so the challenge that we have is that the republicans and donald trump are living in a fantasy land. They want to wish the virus away. The the the white house has been sort of back and forth on this in a way where i mean, again, calling it the white house as a unified entity i think probably overstates things because there is the president , his whims, his staffers, i dont think there is much coherence there in the Republican Party or the Republican Senate caucus, which is part of what has made negotiating this difficult. Here is larry kudlow basically saying today, if we dont get anything, its fine. We talked about the hardship and the disparity, the aggregate numbers you and i have talked about a million times over the past several months. Still a lot of pain out there. Im trying to gauge how comfortable you would be going into the back end of the year without an agreement with the other side of the aisle . Look, we can live with it. We can absolutely live with it. Is that you think thats their position, like, were good . You know, its unfortunate because in the legislation that was rolled out today on the senate side, there was no money for state and local stabilization. We include approximately 1 trillion to protect Public Safety, Public Health, public education, Public Transportation and the provision of public good. There was no additional round of direct stimulus statements to the American People. We believe that the American People need an additional round of up to 6,000 per family. There was no money in the republican bill to assist renters who are struggling and homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgage. We include approximately 175 billion. Its just extraordinary in terms of the negligence and the malpractice of the white house, and its a confusing message, chris, because, you know, every other day theyre sending a different message as to whether they want an agreement or not. I want to just put a fine point on this with something you just mentioned. So there was that 1,200 1,200 check that came in the first c. A. R. E. S. Act for people who qualified making under a certain threshold. You said the h. E. R. O. S. Act would have additional direct check payments to people, right, whether youre unemployed or not. Am i reaing this right . Right now the Democratic Party wants to send basically every American Household making under a certain amount of money thousands of dollars six weeks before an election that the president is the incumbent for with the president s signature on it, which is what he did the last time, and the president and the republicans are like, we dont want to do that. We want to not send people that money. Thats the current state of affairs. Yes. Its extraordinary when you think about it from the standpoint of, if the president is unwilling to do the right thing because hes just unwilling to do the right thing, you would think hed be willing to act in his own selfinterests weeks before an election to try to turn things around. Heres my theory on this, chris, that when we criticize the president for only caring about himself, were wrong. The president cares about himself, his golf game and the stock market, in that order. And i think because the stock market has been largely immune from the economic shocks to the system that Everyday Americans are experiencing, hes decided hes good. And thats unfortunate, and the American People should draw a lesson from that. Yeah. He doesnt care about the working class, he only cares about the investment class. Its a fairly compelling theory for a set of facts that are hard to figure. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, thank you for making time tonight, sir. Thank you, chris. Next, its worth remembering, that as much as donald trump fancies himself master art of the deal, nancy pelosi ha had this guys number since day one. Shes still in the power position. Well talk about that right after this. These folks, they dont have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps. 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