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energy, they don't want to be lo locked into a house or an apartment or some space. it's not for our country. we're not built that way. >> you know, mika, that was -- good morning, everybody, welcome to "morning joe." that was actually an illustration of what writer windsor mann in his latest analysis of donald trump has done. last month donald trump declared victory over the coronavirus, and this month he declared war. this week he surrendered, and it's very interesting, mika, that that surrendering is coming as the united states just passed a thousand deaths. new york city yesterday -- new york city alone, one city alone, had more people die from the coronavirus yesterday than died in afghanistan fighting in 2020 in 2019 in 2018, in 2017, and than 2016 combined. more people died yesterday in new york city than died this year in afghanistan, the year before that, the year before that, the year before that, the year before that and the year before that, and the president is now surrendering. already. one week in surrendering, and this ad, mika, that we're going to be showing later on today, 32,000 cases in new york, 334 deaths. this happening in the state where the president lived his whole life, and just listen to some of these quotes from january the 20th. he's not worried at all. we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china, and we have it under control. it's going to be fine. on january 24th. it will all work out well. on january 28th, he re-tweeted that johnson & johnson had created a coronavirus when he knew that was a lie. on january 30th during a speech in michigan he said we have it very well under control. we have very little problem in this country. five, five people, and those people are all recuperating successfully. that was on january the 30th when it had already been declared a world health emergency by the w.h.o. of course on february 5th, that's when the cdc shipped their faulty tests after donald trump said no to getting tests that would have already had americans tested from the world health organization tests. on february 10th, he said by april this will miraculously go away. on february 23rd, he said it's very much under control. we had 12 at one point, and now they've gotten very much better. again, yesterday, in donald trump's hometown, 1,000 americans died of the coronavirus that he -- a thousand total deaths. we went over yesterday and in his hometown of new york city 80 people died. throughout february trump also said things were getting better. on february 26th he said we're going down, not up, as we skyrocket straight up with new virus and death, new people getting viruses and death. on february 27th, he said it's going to disappear one day, like a miracle, it's going to disappear. on february 29th, he lied again about vaccines saying they'd be available, very quickly, very rapidly. when everybody said it's going to take a year to a year and a half. on march the 4th, he said it's very mild. on march 7th he said i'm not concerned at all. i'm not concerned at all. while today in new york city doctors and nurses are risking their very lives. nurses are going around in garbage bags the "new york post" reports, in garbage bags because donald trump refuses to do what it takes to get them the gear they need. march 10th, he said it's going away. just be calm. it's going away, and he lied about tests. he said on march 6th anybody that wants a test can get a test. hhs secretary azar lied also about tests. he said there's no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been. that's just a flat out lie, and mika, yesterday, donald trump, again, lying to the american people, lying in a way that's going to kill more and more american people. we've already seen that. that's not hyperbole. donald trump in january was warned by the intel community this was coming. he blew them off. in february he was warned again. he blew them off. he blew off the world health organization begging to give us tests. he's made mistakes every step of the way, and now over a thousand americans have died, and those numbers we've been telling you this for two weeks, those numbers are going to skyrocket. friends, we're not even close to the worst point of this crisis, not even close. now, how do i know that? is this about trying to predict what somebody's going to do in a campaign or how moving to the left or moving to the right is going to impact a politician -- a performance in a debate or how their poll numbers are going to be affected by some wonderful speech they give? no, this is science. this is data. you can go to the johns hopkins website to see the trend lines where they're going. it's -- you know, you see that hurricane coming towards shore, the hurricane's coming towards shore. in fact, the outer bands have started to hit the shore, and it's going to keep coming, and what donald trump said in the past i said last week didn't matter to me. it really didn't because i said we'd sort that out in the fall, but now that he's being reckless and irresponsible, now that he is still refusing to do everything he can do to get americans the testing kits that would not only save lives and shorten this virus, but it would do what he's mainly concerned with. >> right. >> save his businesses. it would save other businesses. it would save the wall street from crashing even more. it would save people who are going to be struggling, 30% unemployment perhaps. if you get this widespread testing as i've withbeen saying a month now you can track the virus where it is, where it's going, who can go back to work and who can't, but mika, they still refuse, despite the fact i was promised time and again -- and americans were promised this past weekend that we're going to hear about great breakthroughs on testing this week. mike pence promised us that over the weekend. we've heard nothing. >> and it's just kind of trickling out. >> just more lies by the president saying oh, we're doing a better job than south korea. no, south korea has 50 million people, mr. president, that live in their country. here it is. adjusted for population. we have 340, 330, 340 million, so mr. president, you're lying when you say that we are doing a better job than south korea. south korea actually, if you look at that, the u.s. trails every country in the number of coronavirus tests conducted per million people, and this is science. i don't know. maybe you didn't take science at whatever school your daddy got you into. i don't know. but this is just science. this is just data. donald, you can't fudge this. you can't negotiate with a pandemic. you can't have a patchwork approach to going to war. americans are dying. they're going to keep dying, and you're wrecking the economy. you are wrecking the economy unless you start nationalizing the effort to get testing out to every american so we can see who's healthy enough to go back to work. we can see who has the disease and who needs to be quarantined, and we can tell the difference between the two. we are flying blind because of you mr. president, and it comes down to testing, testing, testing. we've been telling you this for a month. we're telling you this again. you've got to focus. you've got to save lives, and you've got to save the economy, and right now you're failing on all three points. do a better job. >> as you saw, the president tried to say that this was going to go away. it didn't go away, and to your point, joe, about testing to back up a little bit on two fronts. number one, if we had followed the warnings of the world health organization, if we had not fired everybody in the pandemic office, we would have had testing early on and perhaps some of his economic goals would be possible if we could do rapid tests across the country, if we could figure out if there are any asymptomatic carriers out there, we would have a road map. we would not be flying blind, and for some parts of the country it might be possible to reopen a lot quicker, but we don't have that because the president botched that, so then it gets to a question for the republicans. for republicans who still won't speak out about what's right here, speak out about the science involved because you got to pull back, and you've got to look at this presidency, and this is what we've come to. we let it go. the republicans let it go when he constantly attacked the media from the get go, called us crazy, called us oversensitive. let it go, it's fine. >> wait, but beyond that he said that the way we were covering this, the way we were warning americans about this day coming and that it would get even worse, he said that coverage was a hoax. >> but i'm backing up to the beginning. republicans let it go when he chipped away at our democracy, undermining the media. when he chipped away at our democracy and cozied up to dictators. when he chipped away at our democracy and worked with a foreign leader to get dirt on a political rival. are we really going to find out the hard way? are we going to find out the hard way that it is not okay to let a president run roughshod over our democracy and go completely unchecked? are we going to find out the hard way, are republicans and democrats and american citizens going to find out by watching their families get ill from a virus that the president tried to play down? by getting ill from a virus that the president reopens the economy before it's possible scientifical scientifically? how far are we going to let him go? >> well, mika, you've said are they going to let him do this? they already have. there are a thousand people in america, over a thousand people now dead from a virus, from a pandemic that donald trump said was going to go away, that it only infected five people and it was going away. that it only affected 15 people and that it was going away, that it was going to magically go away, and we didn't need to worry about it, and here we are, again, we'll show you the numbers later on this morning. we'll show you the trend lines that we showed you yesterday. this is going to get much worse, and jonathan lemire right now in new york city as i said, it's a war zone in new york's hospitals. this country that suffered so much on 9/11, that gave so much of its heart and soul on 9/11, new york city cops coming down with this, new york city firefighters coming down with this, nurses and doctors are those firefighters now on the front lines, are those cops on the front lines, hospital administrati administration, and are guess what as we look at an abandons times square in a crisis the president said was going to go away, we have nurses who are dying, by the way, nurses that the "new york post" reports are forced to wear garbage bags because they don't have protective gear. they are literally draping garbage bags over them in this fight against a pandemic that the white house has been warned could kill over 2 million americans, more americans than died at every war since 1776. a and yet this president is still whistling past the graveyard, and it's nurses and doctors and our senior citizens who are effectively being told to go to hell. >> the image you just showed of times square there stark and empty is eerie, and scary but also representative of a state that's doing its part. people are staying home. they are social distancing themselves. they're doing what they can, and at least right now they have largely been it seems abandoned by the president who up until a short time used to live here. trump, of course, now, let's remember he doesn't live in new york anymore. he changed his residence to florida a few months back. yesterday in new york city the mayor's office put out a statistic, at 10:00 a.m. there had been 199 deaths by this coronavirus. by 6:00 p.m., it had surged to 280. that's only an eight-hour gap. 81 people died. that's more than ten per hour. you showed it there. we have reports of nurses having to wear plastic garbage bags because they don't have enough equipment. that same hospital where that's happening a worker died. at a couple of hospitals, bellevue hospital, new york university hospital we are seeing them make makeshift morgues. they're closing down streets so they can build up tents so they can be prepared to take the influx of bodies that are expected to come because of this death. we have talked about testing. it was just a week or so ago where the president and the vice president promised drive through testing at walmarts and targets. that hasn't happened yesterday. the president yesterday. >> by the way, as you're talking about testing jonathan lemire, in the county where donald trump loves to travel to, palm beach county, you can't get tests. the president said on march 6th if you want a test, you can get a test. in all of palm beach county, there are no tests to be had in the third largest county in the state of florida. this is in the state of florida where senior citizens are, so many senior citizens are, jonathan, and you have the president's people writing op-eds and telling cable news reporters if seniors die, seniors die. you have republicans who are lieutenant governors in texas saying you know what? grandparents you know what, they're going to be willing to die so the economy doesn't go down too badly. this is the innew argument that being made by donald trump's supporters that, yes, a lot of people are going to die, and well, that's not as troubling as a bad economy. but go ahead, jonathan, i'm sorry so interrupt. >> no, the point is well taken, and that is you are right. that has become the rallying cry of some certain parts of the right suggesting this is a sacrifice that some americans are willing to make to keep the economy going. obviously it's in everyone's interest for the economy to do well, but public health should be coming first. the president here, we saw his tweet yesterday. he laid it out pretty plainly for us. he accused the media of -- that the media is the driving force behind the efforts to keep the country closed to keep it shuttered. he says the media wants that to happen because it would be detrimental to his re-election efforts. it's not the media that's suggesting the country remain closed. it is scientists, doctors, and perhaps most importantly the nation's governors who are at the hot spots right now. governor cuomo in new york, obviously california, washington state, seemingly by the day we have more and more states advising lockdowns, suggesting people stay home for the next two or three weeks, joe, and it is only going to get worse. i keep coming back to what governor cuomo said yesterday. new york is going through it now even though its apex is a couple of weeks away. new york is foreshadowing what's going to happen to the rest of the country. other parts of the country, florida included, are going to be dealing with the brunt of what new york is going through right now. >> i hear one doctor after another saying florida's going to be the next hot spot. let's show that image of the "new york post" again if we can, can you imagine, more people are going to be dying of the coronavirus in the united states by just multitudes than died on 9/11. can you imagine if we required new york city cops and new york city firefighters to be fighting the fires and the death and destruction that day in garbage bags? the people that you are looking at on the front of the "new york post," those are firefighters. those are police officers on 9/11 except they're going to be working on a virus that will end up killing more americans than were killed in iraq, killed in afghanistan, killed in the entire war on terror, and what we're talking about, because the president brought this up, mika, before surrendering, you know who we're throwing away when larry kudlow and steven moore and donald trump, and people for catholic magazines are saying, you know what? people have to die. there's a story. >> senior citizens, grandparents. >> and there's a story in the "new york times" about a lawyer who -- a big spread about a lawyer who influenced the president with two arguments that senior citizens were going to die anyway. they were unproductive, and they cost a lot of money. they cost a lot of money. >> really? >> so there's the logic that the president has taken forward, and who's being abandoned? it's world war ii vets who gave their entire life now in their 90s, the frailest among us, and they're being abandoned. you're seeing korean war vets in the golden years of their life after giving their all to their country being abandoned by this president. you're seeing vietnam vets who went through hell not only at war but when they came home they were treated like garbage, but you know what? they still love their country. they still wave their flag. they're still proud, still proud that they went and fought for their country when they were called while people like donald trump stayed home and went to elite colleges and dodged the draft. but those vietnam vets, they're being left behind, and it seems that republicans now are making the argument let the world war ii vets die. let the korean vets die. let the vietnam vets die, let everybody in that generation die because we're worried about boeing. they want boeing who gets a $17 billion bailout in this package after killing people because of their selfishness, because of their greediness. all these other companies with stock buybacks, the same thing happened there. we have republicans -- we have people like lindsey graham and rick scott more concerned about boeing than unemployed people in their own state. and i understand with rick scott because he cut unemployment benefits so low in florida that florida actually has the worst unemployment benefits in america because of rick scott, but rick scott was worried about unemployed americans, unemployed americans getting too much money while he had no problem with boeing getting a $17 billion bailout after killing people because of their selfishness and their greediness. mika, the priorities, i've never in my life seen the priorities laid out in such a stark way between one party and the other. now, as you know, i'm not a democrat. there are a lot of things that democrats do that drive me crazy. i couldn't -- i watched the first democratic debate, and i just looked at wonderment at how far left twitter had pulled the party, but there is no doubt, if you're talking about the party of life right now. >> right. >> as the american conservative route, right now these conservatives are making democrats who are pro-choice actually look more pro-life because they're only worried about the unborn. it is the born, it is the weakest among us, it is senior citizens who they're ready to euthanize because they want boeing's corporate earnings to not dip too low. th they want to make sure that people that own businesses in their district or in their states will keep giving them campaign contributions. so this -- i don't know what -- i grew up in a baptist church and i heard a lot about abortion on the front end of life and euthanizing seniors on the other side of life. >> in is -- this is insanity. >> let me just be career if we have -- clear if we have scientists and doctors and medical professionals who have spent their lives using their god given skills to save lives and you have the ability to help them save lives and you are telling the president not to do that, that is killing. in fact, that's -- there's no way that you can say, well, abortion's bad but killing a senior citizen, and by the way, it's now -- the nurse that died in the hospital was 48 years old and healthy. got bad news for you, a lot of 30 and 40-year-olds are getting this and dying of it. so this argument that we're going to just let senior citizens die because they're no longer productive, that's the argument that is taking hold in the republican party. >> the president's a senior citizen, mitch mcconnell's a senior citizen. >> they're cloistered. they're protected. they're not like the 93-year-old vietnam vet that's in a nursing home in allentown, pennsylvania, right now, cut off from his children, cut off from his grandchildren. it's not like the 87-year-old grandmother who gave her entire life, maybe a single mom who raised the kids after their father may have left or their father may have died in a war, and now she's 87 years old and alone and scared in a nursing home where her children and grandchildren can't visit, can't even send them mail in some places from what i've heard, and they're sitting there alone afraid that they're dying, and they're hearing the president's aides say people just -- you know what? people are going to die. let's just thin out the herd. so america's gdp can rise faster. i don't know. i don't know who these people are that think this way, but they're out there, and their voices are growing stronger as more americans die. >> so let's look into the bill, the senate approved in a unanimous vote last night. kasie hunt has been standing by. now, i believe mitch mcconnell is sending the senate home, but could be calling folks back sooner. what's in the bill? >> so mika, just to pick up where joe left off and to give people the good news here. at the end of the day, those republicans, lindsey graham, others who were talking about that unemployment insurance program, setting aside the fact that they fundamentally misunderstand unemployment, they lost the argument. this is going to be in the bill. americans are on track to get, if you filed your tax returns, if you have given, you know, put the information in for direct deposit to get your tax refund, you will within weeks be eligible to receive payments directly from the government. if you make $75,000 a year or less or 150,000 if you're a family, you get some benefit up to about $200,000 as a family, those checks are coming because they finally did get it together and they passed this bill on the floor of the senate. it still does need to pass the house of representatives, but the level of urgency the house speaker nancy pelosi has already signed off on this. so i think that's really the most important thing for people to remember, that there is some sort of help coming. what we don't know is whether it's going to be enough, whether it can be enough, and whether it is depends a lot on exactly what we've been talking about all morning. it depends now on the decisions and the messages that this president sends to the american people. at the end of the day, you know, he can't order any particular state to lift lockdowns. you know, those decisions are up to the governors, so to a certain extent, people can trust their governors to take care of them, but there are a lot of people in america as we lerarne the hard way when he started talking about these experimental drugs and people started looking through their homes and one couple had the husband die because they took something that was wrong because they thought the president told them to do it. you know, his words do have power and whether or not this bill helps people depends on how he handles it going forward. >> whether it's enough or soon enough like for health workers in new york city, hospitals in new york city and businesses that support them, suppliers, it's not going to be soon enough. anything that gets to them, he should be mobilizing the national act that would allow him to get things uniformly directed to specific places and organized on a national level to make things as quick as possible. he's not doing it, and for many people specifically in places like new york city, the aid that is coming is not going to be soon enough for them and for their lives. >> it's confounding why the president doesn't use the powers that he has after we've heard him for two years talk about how he has unlimited powers because of article ii, he's not even using the legitimate powers that he has to beat this virus. but kasie, i heard yesterday that unless you get your refund electronically from the irs, you could wait up to four months. is that accurate? >> so it's a little bit hard to know, joe. they are trying to get around that. they have put a section in the bill that would let the irs send out debit cards to people, which is a lot faster than cutting a check, just a prepaid debit card, but if you haven't filed your tax returns in the past because, you know, you felt you didn't need to or you're behind you may face a bigger delay. it really is just a question of how fast the office that processes these things can get the checks out the door. they have to write them on paper, and that could take potentially months so, you know, if you're looking at this, if you're somebody who really needs this, one thing that you should do today right now is file your taxes for this year, for 2019. try and put that bank account information in there because if you do that, then the irs will be able to put you in that pool that pushes these out fastest. i think it's important, yes, it's hard, it's difficult, but everyone i think wants these payments out the door. this is not an effort to delay things, and they are trying as best they can to come up with mechanisms that will let that happen as quickly as possible, but the scale of this is just unbelievable. i mean, so many of our colleagues, friends, co-workers, we are all touched by this. we are all -- we all know people who are suddenly having a very, very, very hard time, and so hopefully this is something, but people should, you know, try to do that, take those steps as quickly as they can. >> right. >> and try to get to the front of that line. >> well, i mean, of course it makes sense, you have to file taxes for the federal government to know how much money you've made in the past several years. there just can't be that much of a discrepancy between those who have filed electronically and those who have not filed electronically. yesterday we heard it was a four-month delay. but kasie the idea of the debit cards perhaps that will expedite it for people who haven't got a refund electronically. >> thank you so much. >> up next, we'll show you the new ad from priorities usa that the trump campaign doesn't want anyone to see. plus, just a few months ago our next guest was in wuhan discussing health issues with chinese officials. we'll talk about his research at harvard and what it means for this pandemic and potentially the next one. there's also a next wave expected. also ahead, he says new york is the canary in the coal mine and his state is right behind, new jersey governor phil murphy joins our discussion. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. achoo! do your sneezes turn heads? ♪ try zyrtec. zyrtec starts working hard at hour one and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. zyrtec. muddle no more. and try zyrtec-d for proven relief of your allergies, sinus 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priorities usa actually put out an ad that president trump and his team actually are trying to get yanked off the air because they say that it's inaccurate. let's take a look at the clip and see if it's inaccurate. >> the coronavirus. >> this is their new hoax. >> we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china. >> one day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. >> when you have 15 people and within a couple of days it's going to be down to close to zero. >> we really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. >> i like this stuff. i really get it. people are surprised that i understand it. >> no, i don't take responsibility at all. >> priorities usa action is responsible for the content of this ad. >> okay, i'm looking at that ad, and i'm looking at these quotes that i got, i think, from a "new york times" article and a "washington post" and "wall street journal" articles about what the president said, and all that ad is doing is quoting him. maybe i missed something. >> the coronavirus. >> this is their new hoax. >> we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china. >> one day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. >> when you have 15 people and within a couple of days it's going to be down to close to zero. >> we really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. >> i like this stuff. i really get it. people are surprised that i understand it. >> no, i don't take responsibility at all. >> priorities usa action is responsible for the content of this ad. >> okay. i'm matching up, it's the lawyer in me i guess, but i'm matching up the quotes that i pulled this morning and the quotes i'm seeing on the ad. >> they line up with this time line they've put out there. >> they do line up. i might -- let's play it one more time. >> if anything they're missing a few. >> i want to make sure i'm not missing something. >> the coronavirus. >> this is their new hoax. >> we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china. >> one day it's like a miracle. it will disappear. >> when you have 15 people and within a couple of days it's going to be down to close to ser zero. >> we really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. >> i like this stuff. i really get it. people are surprised that i understand it. >> no, i don't take responsibility at all. >> priorities usa action is responsible for the content of this ad. >> i actually -- you know, the one thing i saw that was inaccurate is that they actually under sold in that ad how many people are dying. that's because they did it a couple of days ago and a lot more people have died in the past couple of days. the number is going up exponentially. january 20th, the president said we have it under control. it's one person coming in from china. we have it under control. it's going to be fine. >> he said it would be a miracle. >> on january 24th, he said it's going to work out well. on january 28th he tweeted out, re-tweeted out that johnson & johnson had created a coronavirus vaccine. on january 30th in a rally in michigan he said we have it very well under control. we have very little problem. it's only five people and those people are recuperating successfully. i didn't even see that one in the ad. february 10th he said it looks like by april it's going to miraculously go away. we crossed the threshold of a thousand americans dying yesterday. february 23rd, he said again, it's very much under control. we had 12 people at one point, and now they've gotten much better. many of them are fully recovered. february 26th he said we're going down, not up. we're going very substantially down in coronavirus numbers, not up. on february 27th. he predicted it's going to disappear like a miracle, it will disappear. on february the 29th. he said the vaccine was going to be available very quickly, very rapidly. on march the 4th, he said it's very mild. he said that of the pandemic. on march the 7th, he said i'm not concerned at all. a thousand people died. more people died in new york city yesterday than died the last five years in afghanistan. on march the 10th he promised it will go away. just stay calm. it will go away, and he said 15 people, remember, and it's going down to none, and a thousand americans now are dead and many more are going to die in the future. i actually -- i'm not sure what they put in there that was inaccurate other than maybe they didn't put enough information in that ad to just get it factually complete. let me bring in right now the chairman of priorities usa, guy cecil. guy, you know, i'm a lawyer. i went to the university of florida law school, a place you're familiar with. i'm just curious, i'm looking through the notes that i've gathered from the president's public statements, and the notes that you're running on that ad, and i've got to tell you, there's not a legal case here. i don't even know what they're complaining about. you used the president's own words. what's their legal argument? >> well, they have no real argument. i mean, i think the reason why the president wants the ad off the air is because it does something that he is not familiar with. it tells the truth, and you know, we waited a week to engage in this conversation because like every single american we want this administration to succeed, but what we realized is that there is no success when you do not tell the truth and you do not confront the truth, and it's not -- it's not a partisan argument. when you're talking about nurses and doctors, no one's checking their party affiliation. when my friend who is in the hospital now dealing with the consequences of coronavirus, dealing with medical professionals, he's not asking who they vote for, but we need a president that levels with the american people. and let me just say there are ways that people react -- you react because you have empathy. you react because there are facts in front of you. this president does not react to those things. this president reacts to political pressure and self-interest. and so when you are going to a white house podium every day and wrapping yourself in self-congratulation and propaganda, the only way we will get this administration to act is if we americans put political pressure on this administration to do the right thing, to tell us the truth, and to get supplies where they need to go today. and that's the reason we decided to -- that's the reason we're still on the air in all the markets that we originally started running this ad is because all we're doing is telling the truth and the trump campaign does not have a leg to stand on in challenging the ad. >> all right, guy cecil, thank you so much for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. you know, mika, guy talked about empathy, and i know that he -- the president constantly ridicules nancy pelosi for praying for him. that's actually the prayer since this has begun, i have been praying every night that this president -- that his hardened heart. >> me too. >> will become empathetic, that he will have empathy for those nurses that are wearing trash bags, those doctors who were on the front lines who are leaving their children at home and risking their lives every day, for the veterans that survived world war ii and the korean war and vietnam that he won't forget their sacrifice, and that he'll do everything he can to save their lives instead of seeing them as an unproductive member of the herd. praying for that empathy. the president needs empathy. the president as i've been saying all along needs to succeed. he needs to wake up. i know people say he's not capable of it. guess what, we only have one president in the middle of this pandemic. he's got to sick seucceed. >> he does. >> but succeeding he's got to push testing. he's got to get supplies to those doctors and nurses on the front page of the new york post. he's got to get relief for our senior citizens from new york to florida, to arizona up to washington state. >> so we've got, you know, a lot of different ways that we're hearing from the president. i know it's a hell of a job for the correspondents that are in there, the reporters that are in there during those briefings. i wonder how the president will respond to hearing read to him in his face that 13 people died at elmhurst hospital overnight, that the morgues are becoming over capacity. our morgues in new york city at this point, intensive care beds will run out in the next 24 hours. what does he think of the families who are losing people by the day and the health care workers that risk getting this? these facts need to be put in his face and when he shouts and -- shouts down a reporter then the next reporter needs to ask the same question. we need the answers. he needs to be held accountable for the decisions he's making. we'll get back to jonathan lemire in just a moment. first let's bring in former harvard medical school professor and founder of the university's cancer and hiv/aids research departments, dr. william hazeltein, he returned from wuhan where he chaired the u.s./china health summit. thanks very much for joining us. looking at the numbers, especially in new york city, what is your concern as to where this is going, especially if businesses start to be reopened by the president of the united states? >> this is a serious situation. we have an epidemic which we still don't control. that's true in new york, and it's beginning to be true in other parts around the country. it's already been true in washington state. it's far too premature to consider reopening, not just in new york, but anywhere in the country. we need to see what's going to happen before. i ought to say something else. if you compare what we're doing here in the united states to what china has done to control its epidemic we are deficient, even in the most extreme case, which is new york or california, we're not doing even a fraction of what china did to control its epidemic. >> what should be -- what should we be doing, especially in new york city, and if you could speak directly to president trump, what would you tell him? >> i think if you look at what we should be doing, anybody who's been in contact with someone who is known to be infected should be put in mandatory quarantine in an isolated hotel room for up to 14 days from time of contact. that is how the chinese stopped their epidemic. i have done an interview with an american who flew from shanghai. two days later he was told to come downstairs with his wife, and for the next 11 days they were in isolated separate hotel rooms, not allowed to open the door. they were served with hazmat clad workers every day for their food, and until they asked t the -- passed the 11 days with no symptoms. that is what we're not doing. even the lockdown, the so-called lockdown not a lockdown. >> yes, doctor, you saw what china did to actually bring the virus not to a complete halt but to certainly slow it down dramatically. we're now hearing public health officials expressing concerns about the fact that china may be celebrating too early. we all may be reading too much into how those numbers have dipped so much that once people start going back to work, chances are good that virus is going to spread anyway. what are your thoughts about that? >> that's definitely possible. it's possible for two reasons. one, new people can come into china. they're trying to control that, or to anyplace, and the second is the virus we now have a major reservoir all over the world. it's likely to come back whether it comes back quickly or comes back seasonally, we've got to be prepared. i'm also pleased to say from my years of experience in working and developing drugs against viruses like these that this is not a difficult problem for science to tackle. we will have drugs that stop this infection. we will have drugs that treat and cure those that are infected, and we will have drugs that prevent those who are exposed from being infected. we must use every tool at our disposal to make sure those drugs get developed quickly. the other thing i should say is i'm very worried about what i'm calling very worried about what calling these false hopes, the chloroquine. if they work they'll be minimally effective. i'm very worried about those telling these as cures which could lead to behaviors which are dangerous, not only for the people who engage in those behaviors and take so-called protective drugs but people around them as well. these are not effective in stopping infection and are minimal effective, at best in treating infection. >> it's jonathan lamir uh-. one thing the administration has said is simply if you are a resident of new york city, if you were to leave the city you should self quarantine for up to 14 days. is that a wise decision? >> very wise decision. in fact that's what china did and does. if you move from one place to another you are asked to stay in self isolation for 14 days. if you have come in from outside the country and go to beijing you are what's called home quarantined, not even allowed to open the door to your apartment. you have to be in that apartment. not even have food delivered to you. new york is a hot spot. we don't know who is infected and who is not infected because we're not doing widespread testing. it's presumptive if you've been in new york, you're possibly infected and should self quaranti quarantine. doctor you said hotels should be used as self quarantine. what other measures are they taken that are not being taken right now? >> if you've been exposed to someone who is infected you are required in china to take your temperature two times a day and report that on an app. everybody in china has an app on their phone that tells their status and allows them to report their status on a twice daily basis. there are many measures like that. the good news is that there will be an end to this epidemic, whether it's a natural end and it goes away or whether we develop the drugs that are antiviral drugs. from my perspective it's a tragedy that never needed to happen. many of us were very clear in warning, this will come back. we had it recall -- as early as 2004, 2005 a chemical compound that would be very likely to treat not only the sars virus but all coronaviruss. we stopped the development of those drugs. my fervent hope is that we will not stop it now. why did we stop it? there was not an economical model that pharmaceutical company koss use. that's the perfect time for the government to step in and provide the incentives necessary. we did that, develop drugs against bioterrorist weapons. i helped to develop those drugs. those mechanisms are good. we just didn't use them to protect ourselves. many public officials said will be a next epidemic. let's hope we don't stop the development of these drugs prematurely so we have them for the next, the next and the next wave of epidemics that are surely coming over the next 20 years. >> former harvard medical school professor and founder of the university's cancer and hiv/aids research departments. dr. william hasletein, thank you for being on. >> great information. so many warnings, as he said, going back to 2004, 2005. funding gutted. you had bill gates saying this day was coming. you had scientists and doctors saying this day was come iing. the administration had a pandemic war plan and they did nothing on that list. the president was ignoring intell reports, february when he was ignoring intell reports, refusing to take tests for coronavirus from the world health organization, it's been one mistake after another, killed a lot of people and is wrecking our economy. >> the app and quarantine measures are two things we could be doing right now. let's go to live reaction for the senate vote or the stimulus plan. plus more help is coming to new york city in the form of a u.s. military ship. we'll take a look at the military preparations under way. "morning joe" is back in a moment. that's my man there. that's my man there. tv sports announcer: time out. let's go to a commercial. nooooooo! not another commercial! when you bundle your home, auto and life insurance with allstate you could save 25%. in fact, the more you bundle the more you can save. put the other game on if it's important to you allstate can protect it. ...home auto and life insurance you could save 25%. if it's important to you allstate can protect it. what? bundle and save with allstate. click or call for a quote today. it almost goes without saying, but if someone purposefully tries to infect another person, you better believe authorities are coming after them. politico reports in a memo to top justice department leaders law enforcement agency chiefs and prosecutors across the u.s., deputy attorney general jeffrey rosen warned that anyone who intentionally spreads the coronavirus could face criminal charges under federal terrorism laws. the doj also set up a task force to manage the hoarding and price gouging of supplies urgently needed for the fight against the deadly virus. joining us now, state attorney general for palm beach county, dave aaronburg, who is looking into how we enforce all of this. >> let's start, tav, we got news that the florida governor was going to screen everybody flying from new york and new jersey down to the state of florida. it certainly is happening, and there are new yorkers getting out of the city who obviously are going to be bringing the coronavirus with them to the state of florida, but how exactly do you implement that? how do you stop people from going from new york to florida or from california to arizona? >> those are all good questions, joe. i get why the governor did what he did. there was a jetblue passenger who flew from new york to palm beach with coronavirus. he found out about it on the plane when his doctor texted him his test results. that passenger put everyone at risk. with the spike in cases in new york, i see why the governor is acting the way he has. those orders are confusing and add a lot of questions to the mix, aside from constitutional questions, you're also asking questions of enforceability. we have 190 flights every day from the new york area into florida. we don't have enough state health care workers to screen all those passengers. now we're calling up the national guard to help. yet all the airports are not covered. this is clearly a work in progress. i'm hoping we can get it together. there's confusion here, like what happens when people drive into the state? do you put up roadblocks and barricades and checkpoints? the governor said that's not going to happen. so, we're all left scratching our heads. lastly, law enforcement is supposed to monitor all these people once they get into the state. that's really difficult. so, we're going to depend a lot on voluntary compliance with these orders. >> and it sounds like it's nothing but a pr stunt, to be honest with you. let's talk about people who -- we heard about people who intentionally infect others. what about that jetblue passenger who knew they might have coronavirus, got the test and without getting the information first on whether they were positive or not, got on a flight and endangered people on that flight. it reminds me a lot of rand p l paul, who took his test, was waiting to see if he was positive and, while he did that, was hanging out in the senate in very close quarters with other members of the united states senate, going to the senate gym even though it had been closed down, going to the senate swimming pool, even though it had been closed down. is there a sort of negligence there that -- i'm not just saying for rand paul but for others that did that, is there possible criminal liability that's attached to those willfully, reckless actions? >> well, when someone violates a quarantine order that's an easy case to prove. either they were there or they weren't. that's a second misdemeanor punishable by 60 days in county jail. it's a tougher case, less cut and dry, when you deal with someone who may not have known he had the virus and is acting carelessly. the aids epidemic, 33 states were imposing these hichlt v transmission laws. there's not those laws on the books for coronavirus. most states will rely on culpable negligence which says you can't act recklessly and put others in harm's way. i think that would mean you know or should have known you have the virus and yet acted so recklessly that it would become likely that others would get the disease. legislatures around the country may want to modernize their state laws to reflect today's pandemic. >> state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg, thank you very much. it is two minutes past the top of the hour. along with joe and me, our own willie geist joins us now. good to see you, remotely. >> it is good to see you. i've got to say, your location, i do not know. you found a place. you're just a great reporter. that is, both in walking distance of the new york fed and off-track betting site. >> ain't that something? >> you were there to cover every story. yeah. >> i had my finger on the pulse and also brought in the lighting team from the blair witch project. hope that's working. >> i thought it was more like the flashlight thing that they do on snl. >> exactly. >> i was about to scream, what is happening? but willie, we've been talking about the first hour, we've been talking a good bit about this president and how, unfortunately, it looks like past is prolog, that we've been saying last week we only have one president. this president has to succeed and we want him to succeed desperately in this fight against the pandemic, but now he's saying things that are just not connected to science, aren't connected to reality and now we've had to go back and look at a lot of the quotes he has made since january. and, my god, they were so reckless. they have given americans a false sense of security and now, as i said yesterday -- and i know that you work so hard with wounded warriors, coming back from afghanistan and iraq, but just to put the numbers in perspective, more people died in new york city of the coronavirus yesterday than died in afghanistan in the war in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016. this is the crisis has hit the shore. and the worst part of the storm isn't even on shore yet. >> yeah, you're right, joe. and i thought dr. fauci said it best last night in an interview when he said the disease sets the timeline. the disease sets the timeline. you can't make up an arbitrary date, even if it's easter, and say that's when we're going back to normal. that's just not how this works. the president has said before this is going to disappear. he sort of wished it away, said it's going to be a great miracle and it will go away. that's not how it works, and his own scientists have told him that and he knows that. i get it, we have to strike the balance between all the people you and i are talking to, small business owners who are saying i'm dead here. i'm in big trouble. i have good friends, people who live in my house saying i'm not sure how i'm going to get through this. i have a small business and i'm laying people off. i'm glad congress did something on that, $2.2 trillion yesterday. the balance that we want to find is, yes, we want to help small business owners and the companies that employ so many people. but the first priority is stopping this medical crisis. yesterday, as you guys have been pointing out, the united states hit a grim milestone. the number of deaths from coronavirus passed 1,000, according to an nbc news calculation. it came as the nation reported its deadliest day in the outbreak yet, more than 200 deaths yesterday alone. new york's coronavirus cases have exponen tichlt ally shot up in the last day reaching 33,000 infections. the death toll there becoming increasingly grim, 332 people have died from covid-19 in the state of new york. deaths in new york city strikingly account for more than 85% of that number at 280. according to the city's department of health, 96% of the deaths involve patients with pre-existing conditions. more than half of the deaths reported there were men. and now to the new york hospitals, facing a surge in the number of coronavirus cases. it's now being compared to the same kind of increase that overwhelmed health care systems in both china and italy. mt. sinai west in manhattan, some hospital workers have posted photos on social media showing nurses wearing trash bags due to a lack of protective gear. trash bags. hospital confirmed last night that one registered nurse now has died. at elmhurst hospital, public hospital in queens, 13 people died in a matter of 24 hours, one doctor describing the situation there as apocalyptic. all of the intensive care beds in the city are expected to be full by tomorrow, every icu bed full by tomorrow. new york city's morgues could reach their capacity by next week. fema spokesperson telling politico new york has asked for emergency mortuary assistance. joe, you put all that together and that's where you have the disconnect between the president of the united states, standing at that podium, trying to paint a rosie picture and be optimistic. i get it, the president wants to lift the spirit of the country. but you also have to be realistic and understand what's happening inside these hospitals, not just in new york city. that's where all these cases are. but across the country and the wave that's going to spread across the country coming. as we've seen italy and china be a precursor of what's to come here in the u.s., the rest of the country can look at new york city. >> they certainly can. and, mika, that's what governor cuomo said. what's happening here is going to spread across the country. we have lower numbers right now on the west coast, but in part, that's because the west coast doesn't have testing. i talked to -- again, i talked to dave aronberg and talked to you about the fact that the third largest county in the state of florida, palm beach county, doesn't have any tests. >> yeah. >> you can't get tested in a majority of america, despite the fact that a month or two ago the hhs secretary azar lied and said that there were no shortages of tests. the president lied by saying, i think a month ago, or close to a month ago, if you wanted a test you could get a test. that's just not the case. i want to keep going back to the war comparison that the president made. we've heard him talking about afghanistan, so desperate to get out of afghanistan that he's negotiating with the taliban because he says americans have been dying there too long. mika yesterday, as willie was saying, in one new york city hospital -- >> yeah. >> -- more people died in one day than have died fighting in afghanistan in all of 2020. in one new york city hospital. the war is not over there. the war is in the president's hometown, and he needs to wake up. and he needs to aggressively fight it. he needs to use all the power he has to fight that pandemic and he's still not doing it. >> if we don't have testing that is immediate and not something that takes a week and is only for a few people in the country, you can't reopen the country. it's simple. because you would be flying blind. this is a virus that includes people who have terrible symptoms, people who die but also asymptomatic carriers, people who have it, but you have no idea they have it. so, you can't move until you have testing. >> we were promised this week, this past weekend by mike pence and white house aides. >> not happening. >> there was going to be a big announcement on tuesday about testing. >> right. >> and that we were going to have big announcements on wednesday about testing. and guess what? we've got nothing. >> it's a mess. different types of tests. >> other than the president misrepresenting numbers. jonathan o'mechltaer, when the president said yesterday we're testing more than south korea, that's like saying california is testing more than rhode island. you're comparing two states that just can't be compared. you look at this graph that we have that shows, of course, the united states with 340 million people, six times, at least, the population of south korea. and so it's a misleading statistic. you look at this number and you see when it comes to u.s. testing compared to other major powers, we're behind everybody. we're behind the united kingdom. we're behind the dutch. we're behind italy. we are so far behind south korea right now that, willie, until the testing comes -- we've been saying this a month at least. i'm sorry, jonathan, i'm con founded why the president is not focused on testing, why he's distracted. yesterday he was talking about nato. was that yesterday or the day before? they all blur together. i think he started talking about nato. and he talks about all of these bizarre things, but they still aren't focused on testing, which every medical expert, every economic expert who really knows what they're talking about says until you can test the population, you can't reopen the economy effectively, because more people will get it, more people will spread it. it will lead to more shutdowns. it will make this great recession a great depression. >> joe, that's exactly right. has the testing situation improved in the united states? sure. but it's got a long, long way to go and it's not comparable to what's happened in south korea. the u.s. has six to seven times more people living here. as we've been pointing out time and again on this show, south korea and the united states had their first cases on the same day, and south korea has already, obviously, flattened the curve and well on the way to getting past this while in the united states the apex is a few weeks off. without the testing, this is what medical experts have said, it becomes such a dangerous proposition to reopen parts of this country as you're not seeing how it spreads. as much as we're seeing new york city being overwhelmed right now, no question that population density place a role in the exponential spread of this virus, it will travel. more rural parts of this country where there are fewer health resources, the medical facilities there are not nearly as advanced or significant as we're seeing in some of the big cities and also states, the president has been fond of pointing to nebraska. these are states with large elderly populations and will be extremely vulnerable, willie and we're seeing here. the president is steam rolling ahead with this easter timeline and, according to the reporting of my colleagues at the associated press it was born out of a conversation he had with business leaders that are obviously pushing for the economy to reopen as much as they can but also he thinks it's a nod to the evangelical community, strongest supporters throughout, and they're fixing on the symbolism of the resurrection of easter even though reverend sharpton said yesterday they missed the part of what happens on good friday and it's the sacrifice that a lot of americans are about to make that the president seems unwilling to come to grips with. >> easter is two weeks from sunday. if you open up the country again and you start to open up the economy again, two weeks from sunday, think about where we are. we're just getting started in new york city, which is sort of ground zero in the united states for this. it's only going to expand by then. obviously his own scientists, his own doctors around him at the white house are telling him, in indirect ways, it seems, during those briefings and in interviews around those briefings to say the disease sets the timeline. there is no arbitrary easter deadline. we have to watch what the disease does, and then we can decide when it's safe to open the economy and not expose more people and crash the economy even further. let's go to the white house and bring in nbc news correspondent hans nichols. what more can you tell us about that easter deadline the president has been talking about quite a bit, and how is he viewing this balance of his scientists telling him we have to wait and watch and see how many cases come in. social distancing seems to be working somewhat, at least in new york city, as governor cuomo pointed out, we should extend that further across the country. and his wanting to get the economy going again. not just him, obviously millions of small business owners in this country would like to see that. how is he viewing the balance here? >> rhetorically, at least, he seems to be tapping the brakes a little bit. he said two contradictory things, another moment he said they would make it before easter. he seems to be leaving himself a little bit of room to make a decision. to me, the most important thing the president said last night wasn't necessarily about the time line. as you said, the disease sets the timeline in a lot of ways, but it's his use of guidelines and recommendations. in a lot of ways the president is turning into his own white house press secretary of state, going out there every day, giving a lot of information. but in a lot of ways the president is powerless to turn the economy back on. that decision will be left to governors, mayors. yes, he can sign legislation, $2.2 trillion is quite a bit of money, almost half of what you have in a normal federal budget, enormous some 10% of gdp. joe, from his time on congress, understands this, but the rhetorical powers of the presidency diminish over time. we're now in year three of the trump presidency and even if he suddenly says, everyone go back to work the monday after easter, we want everyone to get back out there, i don't get a sense that new york is going to do that, that california is going to do that, that florida is going to do that. >> it's impossible. >> and the president seems to understand that when he falls back on guidelines, recommendations. these were never orders. the president doesn't have those powers. and that may be why we're seeing him so much because he's trying to do this at least attempting rhetorically. guys? >> what's interesting, hans, you say that, mika and i were talking about this. i think we said it the next day when he talked about that easter opening, we had said -- mika and i were talking after the press conference and said he can't do that. he knows he can't do that. >> right. >> so he's just -- he's saying something that he knows will not be met because they already knew inside the white house that this new york explosion was going to come when it was going to come. inside the white house, they were terrified of that 2.2 million number from the british study by neil ferguson and so it seems like the president is just saying things maybe for the business community. maybe he can give us some insight. he's setting deadlines that he knows he will not make. and then he's privately telling business leaders, it's going to be later than april. have you heard what the logic s is, what the reasoning is, what the strategy is behind the president saying things about easter that he knows will not happen? >> i think the best case here is to revert to the president's own rhetoric. he is admitting he is looking at this in the most optimistic way. we saw that with him saying he's hopeful. there's not a lot of data to support it, but he's hopeful, optimistic. all presidents will try to juice the economy with their words. they never want to talk about the bad things. you saw that with reagan, clinton, clearly with president barack obama when they were getting bad jobs numbers. you want to give the country a sense of optimism. there's a little bit of that from this president. there may also be -- i know that the fed chairman is speaking on nbc right now and forgive me for getting too sort of into financial speak but there may be a bit of a hedge with the president where if he says he's on record of saying i want to open the economy much, much sooner but these democratic governors were preventing me from doing so, we get economic numbers and they're bad, and they are going to be bad, the president says look, i was always for opening up earlier. even if we stay closed as a country much, much longer and the public health crisis is abated or diminished and the economy ends up tanking, the president has an argument for saying i was for opening up but it was joe biden, andrew cuomo and all these naysayers that were preventing the animal spirits of the economy from taking off. guys? >> nbc's hans nichols, nails it as usual. mika, that's exactly what's happening. it's why the president is not being aggressive. it's why he's not putting into effect the defense production act. it's why he keeps trying to push this off on the governors when any other president in u.s. history would take control of this situation and not be so weak and so dithering. this is a president who is trying to set up others. >> right. >> to take the fall. but, you know, it gets more complicated when it's not new york and california, when it's florida, when it's louisiana, when it's arizona. we'll see the president in a more difficult position. i saw on twitter somebody speculate that the president will soon stop even showing up at these press conferences because the death toll is about to sky rocket. he knows the death toll is about to sky rocket. >> some day it would be good if he didn't go to the press conferences so we could get real information that's actually correct. two questions for the president that we could put out there. why we're not taking the measures that other countries have taken to flatten the curve, setting up hotel rooms for two-week quarantines. hotels around the country could be used. there are trump hotels. he's asking other companies to pitch in. this is a way trump hotels can pitch in. and clubs. >> so if you look -- >> it behooves him to step up with his family businesses. >> trump hotels just around new york city, you look at the one in columbus circle, that could house a lot of people. you're exactly right. the president is talking about other companies pitching in. that would be a great way for him to pitch in right now, where just like china did, and because he likes president xi so much. he says it all the time. >> follow the model. >> he could follow the model of sending quarantined people, putting one in every one of his rooms, in his trump properties in new york city. >> and number two, in lieu of testing an app has been developed where people who have been exposed to people with coronavirus can take their temperature and check in. these are measures that are not being taken that have worked in other countries. let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. dr. dave, among the many things you're looking at is medical students being deployed. tell us about it. >> we have been appropriately running from the enemy, as we prepare equipment, staff, infrastructure and logistics for this battle. it is now time to turn and face the enemy, the virus, the coronavirus. we have to move head on into this. we really must strengthen the front lines. it's the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals, those working in the icus and the emergency departments across the country. they're going to get sick. they're going to need to be backfilled. we need to have a whole team of doctors, nurses, health care providers that can be supported to do that, we can bring in the reserves. we can bring in the military. we can graduate medical students sooner than they would have been. we can bring in retired doctors and nurses. we can send them for house calls. they can be testing and triaging patients in their home while by telehealth they're communicating back to the front line, back to the front line doctors and nurses so we're not exposing those critical health care providers that are right now, right today in the icus, in new york city, in the e.d. in new york city. and they will be that way in florida in two to three weeks. we need to backfill as we prepare for the battle. >> you know, dr. dave, it's so interesting you talk about florida. we've been talking all morning about how testing is not available, even in palm beach county, the third largest county in the state of florida. testing is just not available for the public. and i want to ask you about that but also i just want to follow up. you're right. we're at war. and we really have to get in more footing. the uae, i heard, is having flight attendants who know first aid becoming aides in hospitals to nurses there. you wrote a piece for nbc website talking about the same thing. so, we have to get on war footing. can you talk a little bit, though, about testing and the lack of testing across the state of florida, across the state of arizona, across the state of california, across america? >> joe, the critical shortage that we have today is the lack of massive overwhelming testing. we are in this battle blind. we don't know who is positive and who is not. we cannot know how to change behaviors, because i am certain i've talked to a lot of people, and you have also, who will tell you their behavior would be different if they knew they were positive from the coronavirus even if they were asymptomatic. it is natural, normal human behavior. if you know you were positive, your social distancing, your self quarantining will be more stringent. >> that would also, of course, mika, not only make sense medically, but economically. >> we're flying blind. >> and get those who are not positive back to work. >> dr. dave campbell, thank you very, very much. >> still ahead on "morning joe," a welcomed sight for new york city. usns comfort will be docked to ease burden on hospitals there. we'll get a preview next. >> plus one of those headlines that make you cringe. all 94 residents of new jersey nursing home presumed positive for coronavirus. we'll talk to that state's governor, phil murphy, on his battle against the pandemic. people ask me what sort of a person should become a celebrity accountant. and, i tell them, "nobody should." but, i just don't think you need a separate private plane. but i, but i want it! hey, buddy. what's the damage? i bought it! the waterfall? nope! a new volkswagen. a volkswagen?! i think we're having a breakthrough here. welcome to caesar's palace. thank you. laso you can enjoy it even ifst you're sensitive. se. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! welcome back to "morning joe." the navy is deploying two support ships on either coasts of the united states to help hospitals amid the coronavirus outbreak. the usns mercy has departed for los angeles and the usns comfort is preparing for deployment to new york city. joining us from norfolk, virginia, where the usns comfort is currently stationed, national security and military correspondent courtney kube. the president has been touting this ship. governor cuomo thanked the president for sending the ship. exactly when will it arrive and how will it function to support the hospitals in new york city? >> reporter: well, so, willie, if you can see behind me right n now, it's on the other side of the comfort, the giant white hospital ship that's right behind me, there are sailors lined up, boarding the ship right now. this ship can hold about 1,000 medical personnel and has more than 1,200 beds -- excuse me, i have that backwards, 1,200 medical personnel and 1,000 beds that functions as a floating hospital. it's important to point out what this ship can do and what it's really not set up to do. with the coronavirus response, this ship will act essential ly as a floating hospital that's not treating coronavirus. so, it has one isolation ward but it's really not set up for isolation patients, for people with contagious diseases, but it's actually one of the largest trauma facilities in the united states. so it will take on the patients in this case in new york city who have, you know, basic trauma wounds, heart attacks, the kinds of things that the hospitals really can't handle right now while they're focused on so many hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients. so the ship is boarding right now. it will get under way in the next couple of days and it will take a couple of days to get up to new york city. once it's there, it generally takes 24 hours before it will start seeing patients. another thing you probably can't really see from our shot here is that it has three different ways of getting those patients on board so it can bring them on in emergency situations via helicopter. it can actually bring patients on via small boats and there's, in some cases, even bring people up via ramps going on. so, willie, we expect them to be in port, taking patients as early as late next week. >> as you say it's a full floating hospital. it's an incredible ship and will take some of the pressure off these new york city hospitals that effectively have become coronavirus wards unto themselves to get some of those other critical patients on to the ship. i want to ask you about something else. mike esper announcing that american troop movements around the world will be halted for the time. obviously, coronavirus has infected the united states military as well. what more can you tell us about that? >> reporter: yeah, that's right. several days ago, secretary esper said that any troops who were coming and going from the countries that were strongly affected by coronavirus, he cut that off. but just yesterday, late yesterday he signed an order that said there will be no troop movements going overseas or back for 60 days. what that means for the average u.s. service member, soldier, sailor, airman, marine, their families and civilian personnel who support them, these people will get their orders several weeks out and then they start moving their household goods, their vehicles, their clothes, their furniture. they'll move them out days, even weeks before they go. so there will be situations here where people have already moved their things overseas and now they're stuck, whether it's here or in their location overseas with none of their things for the next 60 days. it is possible that it wouldn't go the full 60 days. they're working toward a worst case scenario according to defense officials i spoke with. it's important to point out, willie, this will not impact the drawdown in afghanistan. the u.s. military is going there from 14,000 troops to down to 8,600. they'll be there early june if they sail on the timeline they're on right now. those troops will be still coming home. troops are coming out of locations, war zones. some of them will have to go into quarantine, but the 60-day overseas ban or halt in overseas movement will not apply to them, willie. >> it was inevitable that coronavirus was going to visit the united states military. now they're taking those precautions. nbc's courtney kube in front of the usns comfort in norfolk, virginia. thank you so much. mika? joining us now, we have the governor of new jersey, phil murphy. obviously, with the proximity to new york city, there's a lot of interconnectivity of the problem that is certainly hitting the epicenter of this crisis, which is new york city. governor, how is new jersey doing and what do you need? >> listen, we're in a tough spot but we expected it. we may be on different sides of the hudson but we're in the same boat as new york, 4,400 positive tests as of yesterday, 62 precious lives have been lost. we're aggressively testing. we need, really, more beds. the federal government is working with us quite well in that respect. more equipment, more personal protective equipment. we're way short there. and we're trying to expand our heroic health care worker workforce. all of that at the same time is trying to do everything we can to break the back of this curve, flatten it. stay at home. social distancing, et cetera. >> governor, jonathan lamier. i believe new jersey has the second most cases of the coronavirus across the nation, surpassing california and washington, but well behind new york. andrew cuomo, across the river, nearly on a daily basis is pounding the gst government saying they need ventilators. the hospitals in his state are falling far short of what they need. where are you? can you update us on new jersey's status in terms of ventilators? what are the things the federal government can help you with? >> we were on with the fema administrator last night, on with vice president pence yesterday. we'll be on with him and the president again today. we are short personal protective equipment, including in addition to that ventilators. we are turning over every stone we can in our own right in knowledge, around the country, around the world. we got two allocations out of the federal stockpile. we need more. that's probably our number one priority right now. we're way short. we have not seen our surge. all the numbers are going up, as we expected, by the way. we told folks this was going to happen. it is happening. partly because of community spread. partly far more so because we're testing much more aggressively. and the more data we have, in many respects, the better we can manage this. we still, as i said, lost 62 precious lives. that number, sadly, will also go up. >> wedgewood, new jersey's willie geist is with us and has a question, governor. willie? >> good morning. >> good morning, governor. good to see you. i wanted to ask you about a nursing home in woodbridge, new jersey, where reports are that everyone, all the seniors in that facility have contracted coronavirus. what more can you tell us about that specific case and more broadly about what's happening in senior living facilities across the state? >> yeah, willie, good to have some jersey blood there at the desk. so, thanks for the question. st. joe's, last i heard, i don't think it's everybody, but a significant amount of both the folks who are there as well as employees have tested positive. we're in the process of, sadly because st. joe's has served folks particularly end of life at woodbridge for decades, but we're in the process of shutting it down and moving the folks into protective cohorts at other facilities. we've got about 375 long-term care, nursing facilities in the state. last i got, we had high teams of infections of coronavirus at those locations. that number will likely certainly also go up. as it relates to st. joe's, we're shutting it down and we're doing everything we can to get out ahead of it at the other facilities up and down the state. we saw the tragedy in washington. we don't want to relive that in new jersey. >> governor, given what you've seen in the state of new york, you've said publicly it's likely coming for new jersey, that you're the next step on this awful path that we're headed down. the president of the united states has been saying he would like to see america back open for business by easter, which is two weeks from sunday. do you see that as plausible in your state? >> listen, i would be the happiest guy in new jersey if not america if that were the case two weeks from sunday. i will just say we've been at this since january. i formed the first whole of government task force on this on february 2nd, on super bowl sunday, in fact. we've been basing our decisions on data, science, medicine, health inputs. again, i'll be the happiest guy around. that's not what we're looking at right now. we're looking at this continuing to go up. we've got to break the back of the virus first, then open the economy. >> so if you're following the science and the numbers, as you have said, in new jersey is going up. obviously, testing is going up. you have a couple of really bad situations on your hands, proximity to new york city, the nursing home where everyone has tested positive. the numbers are headed in a very bad direction as of now if by easter day the numbers are still heading in a bad direction, and the president wants to reopen business, will you listen to him or will you do something differently? >> yeah. again, the numbers are going up, as we had projected and we have been telling our residents this was going to happen. this is not unexpected. now, listen, i've got to -- the sequence of events here is to flatten the curve, break the back of the virus, make sure that the numbers are going down meaningfully, and then i think we can responsibly open society and the economy. if those numbers are not at that point, by the way, by easter, by next sunday, the sunday after easter, whatever it is. if the numbers aren't telling us that we're meaningfully going in the right direction, we won't be able to open up the state responsibly at that point. there's nothing that would make me happier but we can't. if we go too early i'm fearful we will throw gasoline on the fire and have a much bigger challenge on our hands and the challenge is pretty darn big to begin with. >> governor, a lot of focus on, obviously, donald trump's performance, president of the united states. so, obviously, there will be. it seems that the president has figured out a way to work with democratic governors, whether it's governor cuomo or governor newsom. he also had kind words for you a few days ago. how are you all working out your relationship right now in the midst of this crisis? >> listen, i think as best we can. this is something that none of us have ever lived through before. i don't get to wake up every morning and say listen, today i'm going to pick president x or y. the president is donald trump, the vice president is mike pence. we have a very good relationship in terms of communication. our asks remain significant. we have a fraction of the personal protective equipment that we need. we're trying on our own to find that, but we need our federal partners to be with us in that regard. we are working very well with fema, but the army corps of engineers building four field hospitals, that was a decision the president himself took, and i'm grateful for it. we are expanding our health care workforce. that's largely on us, but we've got a good working relationship. we have no choice. and i think we're all sort of at the end of the day, we're all in this together. >> governor phil murphy, thank you very much. >> and coming up, our next guest wrote an article that was shared widely across our newsroom. the atlantic's ed yong explains how the pandemic will end. he joins the discussion next on "morning joe." lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! more than ever, your home is your sanctuary. that's why lincoln offers complimentary pickup 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[squawks] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ (vo) quof those who workthe grit anfor themselves. they're the backbone of our economy. and in these challenging times, they're adapting to support their communities. so be sure to support them in return. intuit quickbooks. nothe xfinity my account app puts you in control withe. digital tools to give you the help you need when you need it. get fast and easy answers with personalized help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. change your wifi password to a phrase that's easy to remember. even troubleshoot your services on your own. we're working to make things a little easier for everyone. download the xfinity my account app today. i'll be speaking with tony. i'll be speaking with debra, with some of the people they like and respect and they're going to bring along with them. we'll be speaking to vice president mike pence and steve, and we'll be speaking to everybody. i'm not going to do anything rash or hastily. i don't do that. but the country wants to get back to work. our country was built to get back to work. we don't have a country where they say hey, let's close it down for two years. we can't do that. it's not our country. so, we're going to be talking. and it could be -- we'll do sections of our country, big sections of our country that are very -- little affected by what's taken place. and there are other sections that are very heavily affected so it's a big difference i would say by easter we'll have a recommendation, and maybe before easter. and at the end of the 15th day, or even during the 15th day, i think we'll have some kind of recommendation, but our country wants to get back to work. >> the last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence. aggressive measures to find, isolate, treat and test are not only the best and fastest way out of social and economic restrictions, they're also the best way to prevent them. >> find, isolate, treat, test. all the things we're not doing here. the testing, again, is key. it's key. not only on the medical side of the ledger, but also on the economic side of the ledger. the president wants to open his properties by april, by easter, and yet in the county, palm beach county where donald trump has mar-a-lago and spends most of his time, you can't get a test. and what's so interesting, again, that's where mar-a-lago is, he can't open it up. there's a story breaking this morning about how if you're close to the president, you can get tests. politicians jockeying for covid-19 tests find proximity to trump is the fastest route. this is, of course, mick mulvaney. >> of course. >> the latest, we find out, who has gotten the test. yet americans can't get the test. >> there are things that we're not doing right now. we're not separating hospitals from the virus. that was a complete cluster from the get-go. they're trying now to create hospitals but right now there are people with coronavirus mixing with regular hospital community, something that's not happening in other countries. another thing, separate those who have been exposed from those who haven't. we're not doing that. other countries are setting up hotels for isolation rooms. we're not doing that. the president needs to talk about what we need to do. joining us now, staff writer at the atlantic magazine, ed yong. ed, your latest piece is entitled "how the pandemic will end." in it, you write this. even a perfect response won't end the pandemic. as long as the virus persists somewhere, there's a chance that one infected traveler will reignite fresh sparks in countries that have already extinguished their fires. fires. under these conditions there are three possible end games, one that's likely, one that's dangerous and one that's very long. the third scenario is that the world plays a protracted game of whack-a-mole with the virus, stamping out outbreaks here and there until a vaccine can be produced. this is the best option, but also the longest and the most complicated. it is likely then that the new coronavirus will be a lingering part of american life for at least a year if not much longer. i mean the science just tells us, ed, that you are going to have a resurgence or a second wave in america at the very, very least. >> absolutely. it is very clear from all of the experts i have spoken to that this is going to be a long-term problem that isn't going to go away in just a matter of weeks. it may be possible if we do all the right things right now, if we expand testing, if we get enough masks and protective supplies to protect the health workers currently making heroic sacrifices on the front lines, if we stick to social distancing and slow the spread of the virus, and if we get clear, coordinated leadership from the federal government, that then the first wave of this pandemic may be controlled to an extent, but it will come back once those restrictions lift. so for a long period of time we're looking at probably multiple rounds of social distancing and the need to be adaptive and flexible. but covid-19 is not going to go away for a while, and we need to ste steele ourselves for that possibility. >> ed, it is jonathan lemire. i believe yesterday was the first time dr. fauci mentioned from the white house, talking about how one of the waves that could come down the road would be when travelers from the southern hemisphere come to the united states. they, of course, as much as we are warming up heading into spring and summer, which is believed to help combat the virus, they're heading into their fall and winter. there's a suggestion that the outbreak there is only going to get worse in the months ahead, not only bad for them, but travelers from those countries could travel north and reignite things here. how worrisome is that? what can the u.s. do to try to prevent that? >> i think this question of seasonality is really important. a lot of coronaviruses are winter viruses, but this one is finding a world full of immunoliogically naive people. so whether there's a resurgence in any parts of the world, i'm not sure it is going to make enough of a difference. i think the problem internationally and within the united states is that the virus is so widespread that unless you stamp it out everywhere you still get the chances of reignitions of pandemic, even in places that seem to have it under control, which is why we're going to need to be adaptive and flexible and we need to prep for the idea that communities will need to go on and off with the social distancing and the upheavals we're experiencing for some time. >> ed, it is willie geist. good to have you on this morning. you do say in a glint of optimism in your piece that there is still time to get this under control. what are the conditions under which that would have to happen? because it seems like we almost as a country would have to pitch a perfect game for this disease to be brought to heel in our country. >> yes, that's right. we have, unfortunately, lost a lot of time. america had a decent amount of warning that this was happening in china and health experts did provide -- did sound the alarm quite early, but steps weren't taken. we fell behind especially on testing, and that remains a core priority. testing capacity is increasing across the country, but it needs to be very carefully coordinated now, as does the supply of masks and protective equipment which are running so very low. there needs to be a mass logistical effort to ensure production is ramped up and is equitably distributed across the country. there are agencies that can do that. there's defense logistings agency that manages military operations overseas that can help with that. the production of more protective equipment needs to happen immediately and companies can be retasked to manufacture such equipment at a time when global demand is incredibly high and supply chains are faltering. you're right, we do need to pitch a perfect game. this is a massive problem, and it requires really clear coordination. crucially for all of the citizens who aren't involved in the medical sponsor in manufacturing supplies, we need to physically distance ourselves. we need to stay at home to provide the health care system enough time to gird itself for the storm to come. >> so in terms of pitching a perfect game, the mass logistical operation you are talking about, ed, on a scale of one to ten how is the united states doing right now, ten being the best? >> well, let's just say that there is an index that ranks all countries in the world and rates them according to their preparedness. at the start of this year the united states had the top ranking, 83.5, a solid "b". i think we would probably get an "f" looking at our response right now. i think a lot of the experts who i have talked to, even people who were pessimistic about the prospects of a pandemic and who warned that we were not prepared, are truly shocked at how badly the u.s. is performing. this gives me no pleasure to say. it is a really hard think to watch. it is really hard thing to watch friends and family in danger, but we can do something. we still have time. >> "the atlantic" magazines ed yong. thank you very much. "the atlantic" has been doing great reporting on the pandemic. check out the website. still ahead on "morning joe," wall street is bracing for unemployment claims. so much to cover on this fast-moving pandemic. the number of cases in new york has shot up to nearly 33,000 and hospital workers are increasingly at risk, some as we've mentioned even going as far as to use trash bags to cover themselves since they don't have enough protective gear. you are watching "morning joe." we will be right back. e americas urgently needs blood and platelet donations and asks all healthy donors to schedule an appointment to give. now, with the corona virus outbreak, it is important to maintain a sufficient blood supply. your blood donation is critical and can help save lives. please schedule an appointment today. download the blood donor app. visit redcrossblood.org or call 1 800 red cross today. you can make a difference. hey allergy muddlers... achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. zyrtec muddle no more. let's be honest. quitting smoking is hard. like, quitting every monday hard. quitting feels so big. so try making it smaller, and you'll be surprised at how easily starting small can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette. starting small can lead to something big. resa place to celebrate,been to take a first date, to grab a meal between soccer practice and piano. and even though tables are empty at the moment... ...the kitchens are full, prepping everything so it's just right. keeping customers safe. and making the food as delicious as ever. they're still there for you. now you can be there for them. while the doors may be closed, the kitchens are open for delivery. 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(vo) quof those who workthe grit anfor themselves. they're the backbone of our economy. eir communities. so be sure to support them in return. intuit quickbooks. how do you gaveeno® happy 24/7? with prebiotic oat. it hydrates and softens skin. so it looks like this. and you feel like this. aveeno® daily moisturizer get skin healthy™ when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. i'm a war-time president. this is a war. a different kind of war than we've ever had. >> our country is not supposed to be -- you know, it is not built to shut down. our people are full of vim and vigor and energy. they don't want to be locked into a house or an apartment or some space. it is not for our country. we're not built that way. >> you know, mika, that was -- good morning, everybody. welcome to "morning joe." that was actually an illustration of what writer windsor mann in his latest spot-on analysis of donald trump has done. last month donald trump declared victory over the coronavirus, and this month he declared war. this week he surrendered. it is very interesting, mika, that that surrendering is coming as the united states just passed 1,000 deaths, new york city yesterday -- new york city alone, one city alone, had more people die from the coronavirus yesterday than died in afghanistan fighting in 2020, in 2019, in 2018, in 2017, and in 2016 combined. that's right. more people died yesterday in new york city than died this year in afghanistan, the year before that, the year before that, the year before and the year before that. the president is now surrendering. already. one week in, surrendering. 32,000 cases in new york, 334 deaths. this happening in the state where the president lived his whole life. just listen to some of these quotes from january 20th. he's not worried at all. we have it totally under control. it is one person coming in from china and we have it under control. it is going to be fine. on january 24th, it will all work out well. on january 28th, he retweeted that johnson & johnson had created a coronavirus when he knew that was a lie. on january 30th during his speech in michigan he said, "we have it very well under control, we have very little problem in this country." five, five people. and those people are all recuperating successfully. that was on january 30th when it had already been declared a world health emergency by the w.h.o. of course, on february 5th, that's when the cdc shipped their faulty tests after donald trump said no to getting tests that would have already had americans tested from the world health organization tests. on february 10th he said, by april this will miraculously go away. on february 23rd he said, it is very much under control. we had 12 at one point, and now they've gotten very much better. again yesterday in donald trump's hometown, 1,000 americans died of the coronavirus that he -- or 1,000 total deaths. we went over yesterday. in his hometown yesterday of new york city, 80 people died. throughout february trump also said things were getting better. on february 26th he said, we're going down, not up, as we skyrocket straight up with new virus and death, new people getting virus and death. on february 27th he said, it is going to disappear one day, like a miracle it is going to disappear. on february 29th he lied again about vaccines, saying they would be available very quickly, very rapidly, when everybody said it is going to take a year to a year and a half. on march 4th he said, it is very mild. on march 7th he said, i'm not concerned at all. i'm not concerned at all. while today in new york city doctors and nurses are risking their very lives. nurses are going around in garbage bags, the "new york post" reports, in garbage bags because donald trump refuses to do what it takes to get them the gear they need. march 10th he said, it is going away, just be calm, it is going away. and he lied about tests. he said on march 6th, anybody that wants a test can get a test. hhs secretary azar lied also about tests. he said, there's no testing kit shortage nor has there ever been, that's just a flatout lie. mika, yesterday donald trump again lying to the american people, lying in a way that's going to kill more and more american people. we've already seen that. that's not hyperbole. donald trump was warned in january that this was coming. he blew them off. he blew off the world health organization, begging to give us tests. >> yes. >> he has made mistakes every step of the way, and now over 1,000 americans have died, and those numbers -- we've been telling you this for two weeks. those numbers are going to skyrocket. friends, we're not even close to the worst point of this crisis, not even close. now, how do i know that? this isn't about trying to predict what somebody is going to do in a campaign or how moving to the left or moving to the right is going to impact a politician's performance in a debate or how their poll numbers are going to be affected by some wonderful speech they give. no, this is science. >> uh-huh. >> this is data. you can go to the johns hopkins website to see the trend lines, where they're going. it is -- you know, you see that hurricane coming towards shore? the hurricane is coming towards shore. in fact, the outer bands have started to hit the shore, and it is going to keep coming. what donald trump said in the past i said last week didn't matter to me, really didn't. i said we would sort that out in the fall, but now that he's being reckless and irresponsible, now that he is still refusing to do everything he can do to get americans the testing kits that would not only save lives and shorten this virus, but it would do what he is mainly concerned with. >> right. >> save his businesses. it would save other businesses. it would save the wall street from crashing even more. it would save people who are going to be struggling. 30% unemployment perhaps. if you get this widespread testing, as i've been saying for a month now, you can track the virus, where it is, where it is going, who can go back to work and who can't. but, mika -- >> yeah. >> -- they still refuse, despite the fact i was promised time and again that -- and americans were promised this past weekend that we were going to hear about great breakthroughs on testing this week. mike pence promised us that over the weekend. we've heard nothing. >> and it is just kind of trickling out. >> just more lies by the president saying, oh, well, you know, we're doing a better job than south korea. no, south korea has 50 million people, mr. president, that live in their country. here it is. adjusted for population, we have 340, 330, 340 million. so, mr. president, you're lying when you say that we're doing a better job than south korea. no, south korea actually if you look at that, the u.s. trails every country in the number of coronavirus tests conducted per million people, and this is science. i don't know. maybe you didn't take science at whatever school your daddy got you into, i don't know, but this is just science. this is just data. donald, you can't fudge this. you can't negotiate with a pandemic. you can't have a patchwork approach to going to war. americans are dying. they're going to keep dying, and you are wrecking the economy. you are wrecking the economy unless you start nationalizing the effort to get testing out to every american so we can see who is healthy enough to go back to work, we can see who has the disease and who needs to be quarantined and we can tell the difference between the two. we are flying blind because of you, mr. president, and it comes down to testing, testing, testing. we've been telling you this for a month. we're telling you this again. you've got to focus. you've got to save lives and you've got to save the economy, and right now you are failing on all three points. do a better job. >> well, as you saw, the president tried to say that this was going to go away. it didn't go away. and to your point, joe, about testing, to back up a little bit on two fronts. number one, if we had followed the warning of the world health organization, if we had not fired everybody in the pandemic office, we would have had testing early on. perhaps some of his economic goals would be possible if we could do rapid tests across the country, if we could figure out if there are any asymptomatic carriers out there, we would have a roadmap. we would not be flying blind, and for some parts of the country it might be possible to reopen a lot quicker, but we don't have that because the president botched that. so then it gets to a question for the republicans, for republicans who still won't speak out about what is right here, speak out about the science involved because you got to pull back and you've got to look at this presidency. this is what we've come to. we let it go. the republicans let it go when he constantly attacked the media from the get-go, called us crazy, called us oversensitive, let it go. that's fine. >> wait, beyond that, he said that the way we were covering this -- >> right. >> -- the way we were warning americans about this day coming and that it would get even worse, he said that coverage was a hoax. >> but i'm backing up to the beginning. republicans let it go when he chipped away at our democracy, undermining the media. when he chipped away at our democracy and cozied up to dictators. when he chipped away at our democracy and worried with a foreign leader to get dirt on a political rival. are we really going to find out the hard way? are we going to find out the hard way that it is not okay to let a president run rough shod over our democracy and go completely unchecked? >> yeah. >> are we going to find out the hard way? are republicans and democrats and american citizens going to find out by watching their families get ill from a virus that the president tried to play down? >> well, mika -- >> by getting ill from a virus if the president reopens the economy before it is possible scientifically? how far are we going to let him go? >> well, mika, you've said are they going to let him do this. they already have. there are 1,000 people in america, over 1,000 people now dead from a virus, from a pandemic that donald trump said was going to go away, that it only affected five people and it was going away, that it only affected 15 people and that it was going away, that it was going to magically go away and we didn't need to worry about it. here we are again. we will show you the numbers later on this morning. we will show you the trend lines that we showed you yesterday. this is going to get much worse. jonathan lemire, right now in new york city, as i said, it is a war zone in new york's hospitals. this country that suffered so much on 9/11, that gave so much of its heart and soul on 9/11, new york city cops coming down with this, new york city firefighters coming down with this, nurses and doctors are the firefighters on the front lines, are the cops on the front lines. hospital administration attacks. guess what? as we look at an abandoned times square in a crisis that the president said was going to go away, we have nurses who are dying, by the way, nurses that the "new york post" reports are forced to wear garbage bags because they don't have protective gear. they are literally draping garbage bags over them in this fight against a pandemic that the white house has been warned could kill over 2 million americans, more americans than died in every war since 1776, and yet this president is still whistling passed the graveyard. it is nurses and doctors and our senior citizens who are affectively being told to go to hell. >> the image you just showed of times square there, stark and empty, is eery and scary but representative of a state doing its part. people are staying home, they are social distancing themselves, they are doing what they can. at least right now they have largely been, it seems, abandoned by the president who up until a short time used to live here. trump, of course, now let's remember he doesn't live in new york anymore. he changed his residence to florida a few months back. joe, you said that the stats are sobering. yesterday in new york city the mayor's office put out a statistic at 10:00 a.m. yesterday. there had been 199 deaths from the coronavirus in new york. by 6:00 p.m. it had surged to 280. so that's only an eight-hour gap and 81 people died, more than ten per hour. you showed it there. we have reports of nurses having to wear plastic garbage bags because they don't have enough equipment. that same hospital where that's happening, a worker died. at a couple of hospitals, bellevue hospital, new york university hospital, we are seeing them make makeshift morgues. they're closing down streets so they can build up tents so they can be prepared to take the influx of bodies that are expected to come because of this death. we have talked about testing. it was just a week or so ago where the president and vice president promised drive-through testing at walmarts and targets. that hasn't yet, at least not on a large-scale effort across the country. the president yesterday -- >> by the way, as you are talking about testing, jonathan lemire, in the county where donald trump loves to travel to, palm beach county, you can't get tests. the president said -- >> wow. >> -- on march 6th, if you want a test you can get a test. in all of palm beach county there are no tests to be had, in the third largest county in the state of florida. this is in the state of florida where senior citizens are, so many senior citizens are, jonathan, and you have the president's people writing op-eds and telling cable news reporters that, you know, seniors die, seniors die. you have republicans that are lieutenant governors in texas saying, well, you know what, grandparents, you know what, they're going to be willing to die so the economy doesn't go down too badly. this is the new argument that's being made by donald trump supporters that, yes, a lot of people are going to die and, well, that's not as troubling as a bad economy. >> coming up, one of our next guests says two things are critical to stopping the pandemic, protecting vulnerable populations and breaking the transmission process. you'll notice opening things up by easter is not on that list. dr. jeffrey sax joins the conversation straight ahead. lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! you can't claim that because it's inanimate! people ask me what sort of person should become a celebrity accountant. and, i tell them, "nobody should." hey, buddy. what's the damage? 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>> so it is a little bit hard to know, joe. they are trying to get around that. they have put a section in the bill that would let the irs send out debit cards to people, which is a lot faster than cutting a check, just a prepaid debit card. but if you haven't filed your tax returns in the past because, you know, you felt you didn't need to or you're behind, you may face a bigger delay. it really is just a question of how fast the office that processes these things can get the checks out the door. they have to write them on paper. that could take potentially months. so, you know, if you are looking at this, if you are somebody that really needs this, one thing you should do today right now is file your taxes for this year, for 2019. try to put that bank account information in there because if you do that, then the irs will be able to put you in that pool that pushes these out fastest. i mean i think, joe, it is important, yes, it is hard, it is difficult, but everyone i think wants these payments out the door. this is not an effort to delay things and they are trying as best they can to come up with mechanisms that will let that happen as quickly as possible, but the scale of this is just unbelievable. i mean so many of our colleagues, friends, co-workers, we are all touched by this. we are all -- we all know people who are suddenly having a very, very, very hard time. so, you know, hopefully this is something, but people should, you know, try to do that, take those steps as quickly as they can. >> right. >> and try to get to the front of the line. >> well, i mean, of course, it makes sense. you have to file taxes for the federal government to know how much money you made in the past several years. there can't be that much of a discrepancy between those who filed electronically and those who have not filed electronically. yesterday we heard it was a four-month delay. perhaps the debit cards will expedite for people that haven't gotten a refund electronically. thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up, jobless claims are just coming out. we will get a full breakdown of the damage next on "morning joe." ♪ >> tech: don't wait for a chip like this to crack your whole windshield. with safelite's exclusive resin, you get a strong repair that you can trust. plus, with most insurance a safelite repair is no cost to you. >> customer: really?! >> singers: safelite repair, safelite replace. too many after-parties. new neutrogena® bright boost with dullness-fighting neoglucosamine. boosts cell turnover by 10 times for instantly brighter skin. bright boost neutrogena®. he's not himself. something's going on because he is struggling. >> maybe i'll ask rudy to say a few words. thanks, rudy. >> he's literally sitting right in front of you. >> it is even hard to watch, the confusion. >> what we saw -- at pleasure, what a name right now. but what we just saw, we just left pleasure. >> paradise. >> paradise. >> frankly, it is hard to watch. >> mr. president, you need to -- >> the inability to finish thoughts. >> decided to shield and shelter -- look, look. >> the burst of outrage and anger. >> that's enough. that's enough. >> mr. president, i was going to ask -- >> that's enough. >> pardon me. >> put down the mike. >> he has some verbal problems that are becoming a little bit more noticeable. >> by an anomonous. and god bless the united states. >> easily identifiable cognitive decline. >> that's how the first lady got involved. she's got a son together that is a -- a beautiful young man. >> even for his supporters who are worried that he might say something that doesn't make sense. >> they take a shower and water comes dripping out. it is dripping out very quietly dripping out. people are flushing toilets ten times, 15 times. >> they are so worried about him speaking off the cuff. >> you got to see this guy. >> oh, i don't know what i said. oh, i don't remember. >> the weird things that he says. >> if you have a windmill anywhere near your house they say the noise causes cancer. >> this is just kind of odd. who swears at a voter like this. >> son of a [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. he's a [ bleep ]. >> when you watch it, you use the word uncomfortable. it is uncomfortable to watch. it is is going on. it is concerning to me. >> something is wrong. >> you put a big investment. we appreciate it very much tim apple. >> it is not looking good. how many gaffes can you make every day. if my father was making the same gaffes he was, they would invoke article 25. they would literally try to remove him from office. >> you literally never stop working to try to improve the country, durrr -- and the government -- >> dan covino is still tweeting clips of joe biden. i have said it for some time, that you can make a lot of other arguments against an opponent that you have, but this daily clip show from last night i guess, it just shows, willie, how they open themselves up for everybody to go back and look at all of the times the president looks confused, diss oriented, looks like he's slipping a little bit mentally. i mean both sides, it seems to me that's mutually assured destruction for either side to make that argument. it doesn't make sense. >> yeah, we've got two men well into their 70s, both prone to verbal gaffes. the clip that the trump team sent out yesterday had joe biden effectively clearing his throat a series of times and made that into a montage, some stumbles, of course. we pointed to those, of course, during the debate and throughout the campaign he had those moments, of course. you're right. i'm not sure it is an argument the president of the united states wants to have because shows like "the daily show" can run out the litany himself. we got the number we have been waiting for all morning. the labor department put out its statistics, a jaw dropping 3,283,000 jobless claims were filed last week. 3,283,000 jobless claims. that number dwarves any other week on record. joining us economic analyst steve ratner. this falls within expectations here. 3.28 million. put it into some kind of context, if you can. >> well, first, willie, it is actually i think -- you know, in fairness to all of the economic forecasters nobody really had any idea what would happen today but it would be bad. this is roughly twice i think what the consensus estimates were. it is vastly higher than anything we have ever seen before. i think the highest we have seen in history was 695,000 back in 1982. the highest we saw during the great recession was 665,000. this may well only be the beginning. this is the first week where we've had data from people most recently getting out of work, but the numbers are obviously going to decline and we are headed for very, very significant unemployment. i think you will see forecasts revised after the numbers that process, i will be shocked if every mainstream forecaster is not now expecting unemployment well into the double digits. a week or so ago james bullard, the president of the st. louis federal reserve bank, said he thought unemployment could get as high as 30%. that would put it higher than the great depression. obviously these are unusual circumstances, but we are clearly in a major recession with major impacts on working men and women in this country, b who are not going to have their jobs. >> also with us former acting secretary of labor under president obama, seth harris. seth, thank you for being with us. we've heard steve mnuchin talk about the possibility of 20% unemployment. when you add up all of the small employers who haven't wanted to let members of their workforce go but who are going to have to be making a very tough decision over the next week or two, do you fear that those numbers may actually go up over the next few weeks? >> i do, joe. i think we're going to see continued very high rates of unemployment filings, which is the number that willie just gave us, and i think we're going to see unemployment spread. this bump in unemployment claims, which was 3 million more than the preceding week alone, will drive the unemployment rate up about 2%. now, we won't see that in the data for a while, but we're going to continue to see the unemployment rate climb over the next few weeks as more and more small and mid sized businesses who don't want to go further into debt, who, frankly, like a lot of families just operate paycheck to paycheck, run out of money and really don't feel they can go on. we will see a lot more people lose their jobs. my hope is that the stimulus package will give them some capital to bridge the time until they're able to get operating again, but i think we are going to see a lot more pain and a lot more american families over the coming weeks. >> hey, steve. it is jonathan. we haven't gotten a response yet from the white house, of course, on this number. one wonders if the president will point to it as another reason to forge forward with the plan to try to reopen parts of the nation's economy in just the next couple of weeks. but my question to you is this. i mean the ink is barely dry to the stimulus package passed by the senate, the house has not voted on it yet. is it going to be a drop in the bucket? how much more is the congress going to need to try to shore up the economy in light of the numbers like these? >> jonathan, nobody knows. everybody has agreed this is so-called phase three, the third bill the congress is passing. it is almost certainly not going to be the last. it is a vast bill. in addition to the $2 trillion that's in this bill it empowers the fed to bring another $4 trillion there by buying certain kinds of debt. we are in obviously uncharted waters, so who knows. i will make this comment on the last guest's comment. i will note and i'm not going to suggest it is a pan see acea or game changer, that in addition to ever check for every american that kasie hunt was talking about, this includes $600 a week for furloughed or gig workers on top of unemployment benefits for four months. that's something we've never done before in terms of the magnitude for that. i'm not going to suggest it is going to solve the problems of this economy or every american but it is something. but, yes, the president is focused on the fact there is an inherent tension between the public health crisis, which most of us would view as the paramount issue, and the fact that the longer people stay home they're not working. we are most certainly going to get a second quarter gdp number showing a decline of 20%, 30%, numbers we have never seen before. put it in context, in one quarter this economy declined as much or more than it did during the entire great recession. now, people think while we may bounce back really quickly if we eventually get back to work, it may or may not be true. that's another discussion. but for the moment we're really heading into depths we have not seen before probably in our lifetime. >> seth harris, to then extend that conversation, when you talk to scientists and you talk to public health experts, you really get a sense that this is going to be months, possibly even several years to contain, to the point where there's a vaccine. but there's going to be second and third waves of this at the very least, that's just talking to the scientists. we've heard a lot about the president not, you know, utilizing the defense production act. is there a lever that he could be pulling right now to repurpose american workers that he's not pulling? >> well, i think the defense production act is exactly the right place to start. we hear these horror stories about front line workers, health care workers, cops, firefighters, the kind of folks you and joe have been talking about, who don't have the personal protective equipment that they need in order to avoid getting sick. we're in very serious trouble as a society if the people who are caring for us get sick themselves. so the president for some reason that i can't understand is unwilling to step up and say to american industry, you need to be on a war-time footing. i have declared myself a war-time president, the whole society needs to be organized now around protecting ourselves. this defense production act allows the president not merely to command that private sector entities produce what we need, but it allows him to prioritize who gets it when and it allows him to structure supply chains and financing so that those businesses that are brought into the war-time effort have the resources they need to do what they need to do and we send the resources to the right places. i can't figure out if it is an act of cowardice or incompetence that's causing him to avoid using the single most important tool to protect the people we need to protect the most. >> that's the question. a lot of people are asking. seth harris and steve ratner, thank you both very much for okay.. let's now bring in professor and director of the center for sustainable development at columbia university, dr. jeffrey sachs. >> jeffrey sachs, so many questions to ask you about health, about debt, about the stimulus package. i'm just going to give you the floor, and tell us what's concerning you the most right now and what america needs to do and the world moving forward. >> well, first, good morning to both of you and for everybody, stay safe and stay away from the virus. the most important thing we have to do obviously is to stop the transmission of the virus and keep people alive and keep people treated who are infected. so the first order of business certainly is stopping the epidemic itself. there's very important, good news that people should understand, and that is that several countries, all of them in east asia, are successfully stopping the transmission of the virus. not perfectly, but not having the explosive growth that we are having in the united states and europe. they're doing it partly by starting with the kind of shutdown or lockdown that we're having, but then dramatically scaling up the testing, the contact tracing and the isolation of people who are infected. in other words we need a public health approach urgently in addition to the medical approach to treat the people who are sick. a public health approach to stop the transmission of the disease. china, which was the source of the outbreak and which reached tense of thousands of confirmed cases, has essentially stopped the virus in a couple of months. we need to learn and learn carefully and quickly how they have done it. we can't see this as something that goes on for years. as mika was saying, the virus will be around, but we don't have to have a shutdown for years. of course, what trump is saying is typically ab shurd. we have to stop even hearing him for the moment, but we do need to have a way to get out of this in a matter of two or three months but that requires that as we fight the disease now with the shutdown we dramatically scale up the public health approach, which is testing, tracing, isolating those who are infected, and then you don't have to shutdown the whole economy to keep this epidemic under control. >> willie. >> so, dr. sachs, it is willie geist. good to see you. you live and work in new york city at columbia university. you know exactly what is going on inside those hospitals, some of them right in your neighborhood, major hospitals, private hospitals, big public hospitals like the one in elmhurst completely overwhelmed. can you talk to, because i think many in the country look in their own community and say, well, it is not so bad here, i don't know why we need to shut down life, why can't i go to a restaurant and keep my small business open. can you explain how the stories are all connected and how the whole country should be focused on this? >> this is a virus that humanity has not experienced before, so we are all susceptible to the infection. we're called a naive population. it is not like the flu where it comes each year, there's a kind of acquired immunity plus the vaccines. all of us are vulnerable. when this epidemic grows, it grows at what we call a geometric rate, which means that it doubles every few days. what looks like being under control one day, in a week or two weeks or three weeks looks totally overwhelming. every community needs to understand this virus is coming towards you, take care. the older people should stay out of harm's way. we should have a shutdown that covers all the nonessential economy, but at the same time understand that we need to scale up the public health workforce for the testing, for the contact tracing, for the isolating of people who are suffering symptoms so that we stop the transmission of the virus. it can be done. for two months, of course, trump did nothing, zero. he left this country completely vulnerable to pandemic. it is the most shocking irresponsibility of an american president in history, but still we can fight this pandemic by being responsible right now, by listening to the public health shorts, and by scaling up the public health treatment. let us learn from china, korea, japan, singapore, hong kong, taiwan, because they're all doing a lot better than the united states and they have some real lessons for us for how to actually succeed and not have the economy locked down for months or years. >> right. >> this is not like a normal recession or depression. this is something we can get out of in the short term. not by easter, but over the course of a few months. >> right. all right. jeffrey sachs, thank you so much. we hope you will check in with us regularly. >> thank you, dr. sarchs. >> it is great hearing from you. mika, dr. sachs talked about there's actually good news. i know a lot of people say, well, you can't look at china as an example because they're not a democracy and they lock things down and they track people in ways -- okay, fine. look at the -- what south korea did. massive testing and isolating. look at what japan did. >> yeah. >> compare the numbers in new york city to tokyo, two cities that are a lot alike as far as density goes, but shocking differences in those numbers. look at what happened in hong kong. look at what happened in singapore. the difference between what is happening in the east and in the west -- >> yeah. >> -- is markedly different, and it all comes down to, as we've been hearing this week, choices, not just from the leadership but also choices from individuals. the choices, some have been good, some have been bad. we have seen spring break. we talked about people going out on their boats on sand bars. we talked about golf courses jam packed across the state of florida right now. we all have a responsibility and we all have to do a better job. >> yes. in new york city these challenges are much more difficult because of the botched start of this. now to this. concerts are on indefinite hold, but still musicians are making their voices heard, particularly about the pandemic. earlier this week we showed you this from neil diamond. ♪ hands washing hands ♪ reaching out ♪ don't touch me ♪ i won't touch you ♪ ba, ba, ba >> it's not quite as -- >> i love it. >> not quite as uplifting but right now it's certainly good medical advice from neil diamond. >> "morning joe" music correspondent introduces us to ben's new song. >> death cab for cutie has made a name for themselves with their most recent release being "thank you for today." one half of the duo the postal service has been doing a live stream online for fans every single night and he's written this new song about this very moment called "life in quarantine." here he is. ♪ ♪ the streets are empty the bars and cafes too ♪ ♪ the street light's only changing because they ain't got nothing better to do ♪ ♪ you say it's like christmas when nobody's around ♪ ♪ when our city was still the secret before those carpetbaggers came to town ♪ ♪ the airports and train stations were full of desperate people ♪ ♪ trying to convince a gate agent that not all emergencies are equal ♪ ♪ no one's going anywhere real soon ♪ ♪ ♪ inside the safeway it's like the eastern bloc ♪ ♪ people have a way of getting crazy ♪ ♪ when they think they'll be dead in a month ♪ ♪ do like the silence of the wind through the trees ♪ ♪ i like walking beside you through these days of no guarantees ♪ ♪ the national guard is on their way to protect us from our neighbors ♪ ♪ if anyone has tried to swim for it drown out past the breakers ♪ ♪ airports and train stations are full of desperate people ♪ ♪ no one's going anywhere soon ♪ no one's going anywhere soon ♪ >> it's ben gibbord of death cab for cutie and also postal service. in a song for where we are right now, willie, we still do have a ways to go, but we do it together. >> yeah, just looking at the images of health care professionals and their calls to all the people but new york is where the problem is most acute, but across the country in there not listening to the politics, not listening to the daily briefing from the president. they're just trying to get in there keep themselves healthy and save people's lives. i had a friend who is a surgeon. i was thanking her. she said don't thank me. this is my oath. we are all going in there expecting at some point we're going to get coronavirus, but it's what we signed up for. >> that's heroism. >> it is. >> the weak links are isolation areas, hotels, other places that could isolate exposures, tracking exposure through apps, temperature readings, quick testing. we have no road map to the country's future. we have no road map to the country's future and also to all white house reporters in that briefing every day, if he shouts down a reporter because he doesn't like the question, please ask that reporter's question. let's hold the president accountable and try and get real facts. >> you know there is, though, jonathan lemire, a road map for this and we've heard it for three hours now. it starts with massive testing and then tracking and then quarantining and then healing. and then getting people back into the workforce. that is our only way forward. when is the white house going to put all of its efforts into getting that testing? it's almost universal. so we can figure out who is healthy enough to get back out in the workforce without risking the lives of those who have given so much to this country. >> we've heard it all morning. we've heard it all week. we've heard it for weeks. it begins and ends with testing. that has to be the first step and it's going to take a national effort for that to happen. where are those drive-through tests at the walmart and target the president promised a week ago. that's what needs to happen to guarantee people's health but as you said, to jump-start the economy again. and that unemployment number we just saw is truly stunning. quadrupling the highest ever before. it's showing you the pain the economic pain that this country is also feeling, and it's just beginning. most experts think this is going to get far, far worse in the weeks ahead. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage after a short break. >> thank you so much for being with us. ♪ the street lights only changing because they ain't got nothing better to do ♪ ♪ you say it's like christmas when nobody's around ♪ lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! be stronger... with nicorette coated ice mint. layered with flavor. it's the first and only coated nicotine lozenge. for an amazing taste... ...that outlasts your craving. nicorette ice mint. for an amazing taste... ..your work day stretches all. whenthe way to the horizon. you need best-in-class acceleration and handling with cargo. cover more ground with the fast, durable kubota sidekick. too many after-parties. new neutrogena® bright boost with dullness-fighting neoglucosamine. boosts cell turnover by 10 times for instantly brighter skin. bright boost neutrogena®. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is thursday, march 26th. we start with breaking news. a heartbreaking new milestone as america struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. the number of deaths in this country has now surpassed 1,000. at the same time there are more than 68,000 reported cases, up roughly nearly 750% from one week ago. that's the physical toll. this morning we got our first concrete evidence of the economic toll this is taking on american businesses and american workers. let me tell you, it is stunning. in the week ending march 21st,

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