Tonight theyre reporting that this 117bed hospital at united memorial is considering just becoming a 100 covid facility because they mostly have Covid Patients now anyway, and their numbers in North Houston just keep rising and rising relentlessly. So i want to show you this footage from the ap tonight because its a rare scene that most of us dont usually get to see of how this all ends, of what the inevitable consequence is of these skyrocketing numbers. Over 3 million cases now in the United States. Regularly 50,000 new cases a day now. Record hospitalizations in arizona, florida, texas, california, all over. The inevitable consequence of all of that is what happens in hospital rooms like this one youre about to see in North Houston. And i frankly also wanted foosee this tonight specifically because the doctors at this hospital working with Covid Patients and trying to save these patients lives, they specifically want the country to see this. The doctors in this hospital invited the Associated Press and their camera crew in to see this specifically so people will believe this is really happening because there are too many people in our country who believe it isnt. Perhaps needless to say at this point after all that lead up i will tell you this footage is very raw. Its not gory. Its not bloody, but it is upsetting. If you do not want to see something upsetting in a medical sense i will give you a second to hit pause or step away for a second but then im going to show it. Three, two, one. Lets go ahead and show this footage. As coronavirus numbers surge in houston the battle to save lives is increasingly uphill. Doctors and nurses at United Memorial Medical Center try to save a 66yearold widow. Her oxygen levels falling rapidly, her vital signs declining. Before she fell unconscious she told staff she may have contracted the deadly virus from the dozens of people who gathered for her husbands recent funeral and expressed her regrets for having such a large gathering. Despite their best efforts to revive her, she dies. Thank you, everybody. We have seen an exponential increase of cases we have of covid. The hospital has had to expand. We had 46 beds and went to 58, and now 88 beds. And even though it sounds like a lot of beds its not enough. Its horrifying because you cant get your breath. And all you can think in your head is am i going to end up on a ventilator, do i have to be on a ventilator. Thats all i kept thinking. Lord, its getting worse and worse to where i might wind up on a ventilator. We wipe down our food deliveries, our groceries. I didnt even go to the Grocery Store because i have Underlying Health conditions. My son would go to the Grocery Store. Did everything in my power and here i am. And we are trying to tell people, you know, keep your safe distance, use your mask, wash your hands. They dont do it. They think this is a hoax. Anybody that thinks this is a hoax, they should come and spend the day with me here. Thats one thing you dont want to do when youre a doctor, but you got to do it. I mean, somebody has to do it. The medical director of that hospital you just saw there is dr. Joseph varon, the Associated Press notes as of them shooting this footage today dr. Varon has worked more than 100 days straight without rest in North Houston. Heres the texas tribunes picture worth a thousand words about what has happened in texas hospitals to get them to this point. The vertical dotted line you see there on sort of the left side of the screen that shows the date when texas republican Governor Greg Abbott started proverbally pounding his chest and brag about how texas was going to open up the whole state more than anywhere else in the country. The rising line to the right shows whats happening in texas since. As of memorial day texas had just over 1,500 people hospitalized. Today they are edging toward 10,000. The Texas Republican Party had been planning until today to hold a giant indoor inperson 6,000person state convention in houston next week. The houston regional alone has over 55,000 cases of coronavirus. Its also home to the Worlds Largest medical system, the texas medical center. Its now into its third week operating at full or beyond capacity in terms of its icu beds. But texas republican officials want to hold their convention there inperson, indoors. Texas Republican Party officials initially rebuffed Health Experts concerns about holding this inperson 6,000person Convention Next week in houston. Yesterday they ignored the houston mayors reminder that local Health Officials might just order the thing shutdown if in fact the Republican Party of texas convened their convention. Today houstons mayor says he advised the citys Legal Department to review the Republican Partys contract with the citys Convention Center. After that legal review of the Convention Center in fact contacted the state Republican Party of texas and told them their inperson Convention Next week at the houston Convention Center, that is now canceled. Perhaps instead of cramming 6,000 people into an indoors event in houston next week perhaps the state party could take a virtual tour with dr. Varon on his rounds at united memorial in North Houston. In Florida Hospital capacity is starting to teeter as well. The state says its going to surge a hundred extra nurses and dozens more beds into Jackson Memorial hospital in miami. There are now dozens of hospitals across florida that are reporting zero icu beds available. After weeks of refusing to release this kind of data statewide florida is now just starting to release information on utilization rates at hospitals across the state. Of the 306 Florida Hospitals listed in the state database 41 report they have 0 of their icu beds available. 41 hospitals in florida say they have 0 availability in their icus, icus totally full. 41 out of 306. Perhaps even more worrying there are 18 Florida Hospitals where its not just the icu thats full, its the whole hospital. 18 Florida Hospitals today reporting 0 of their regular hospital beds are available. They are just absolutely full. If you nudge one state up from the Florida Panhandle you find that in the great state of alabama heres the headline in the montgomeryadsvertiser tonight. Available alabama icu beds at alltime low as covid19 hospitalizations spike. Alabama once again warning that they are at a statewide peak in terms of icu utilization and the limits on the beds available. In neighboring mississippi, my god, do they have a situation on their hands right now. I dont know if this has received a lot of National Attention yet but this is a remarkable situation. The Mississippi State legislator in its infinite wisdom decided they would hold a several weeks long legislative session in person over the past few weeks at the State Capitol in jackson. And during that weeks long legislative session lawmakers largely refused Public Health recommendations to wear masks while they were inside the capitol doing their legislative work, sitting in hearings, casting votes and all the rest of it. Now look at the headlines on the clarion ledger newspaper in mississippi as of right now. First one here, outbreak at mississippi capitol. Number of infected lawmakers grows to 26. 26 state legislators have just tested positive. Quote, many politicians flouted recommendations to wear a mask inside the capitol in recent weeks. Now about one in six Mississippi State lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus. Quote, the number of coronavirus cases linked to the outbreak at the capitol has grown to 36. That includes 26 legislators according to the states top health official. It apparently also does not include tests of all lawmakers, some whom returned to their district before they got tested at the capitol. So the number may yet rise. The legislators known to be infected already include the leader of the house in mississippi, also the leader of the senate in mississippi whos the Lieutenant Governor. He oversees the senate and also the member of the Public Health committee. These are all republican legislators. Now tonight the mississippi governor also a republican his name is tate reaves, he has had to deliver just a remarkable general warning to the general population of the state of mississippi. Watch. It is my opinion that if you have been in contact with anyone in the legislator or if you have been in contact with any staff person that works at the legislator you need to get tested. If you have had the misfortune of having any contact with the Mississippi State legislator you need to get yourself a coronavirus test. And when that is going on with the statehouse and the state senate and the Lieutenant Governor and the state Health Director in mississippi is now basically saying i dont care what legislative business you guys still have to do you have to get out of here. You have created a gigantic outbreak in the State Capitol, literally in the State Capitol building. When thats going on in your State Capitol it is perhaps not surprising this is now as of tonight the other main headline at the clarion ledger newspaper right now. Quote, governor tate reeves says more restrictions are coming, possibly a masked mandate. Mississippi in part because their entire Political Class has just been inflicted all at once in part because they neglected to follow Public Health guidance about Wearing Masks mississippi as a state may be about to get a mask ordinance. That is the down spiraling situation in mississippi tonight. In tulsa, oklahoma, tonight the tulsa Health Director is making National News for announcing another new dramatic surge of new covid cases in tulsa. The city and county Health Director says president Trumps Campaign rally in tulsa, which youll remember was the first large indoor congregant event of any kind in the country for months when it happened last month. The tulsa city and county Health Director now says that event held by President Trump appears to be the likely source of the new surge of the virus in tulsa, oklahoma. So, yeah, its bad all over. Its at least bad in lots and lots of places. And it is our particular curse as a country that the head of our federal government appears to be personally responsible for making some of it bad himself for the purposes of his campaign. I mean, its just we spend all this energy like thinking oh, this is, you know, we have two competing parties who both have governing philosophies and they compete who has the best ideas to address the nations challenges. No, we have a president whos causing outbreaks and telling you not to follow cdc guidelines. Its not a Competition Among two governing parties. Its a competition between governing and that. Governing and whatever this is under this president. Theres an election in november. Well see how we get ourselves out of that. But if theres one place that americans should be focusing our attention now, if theres one place we had to pick in the country to focus our attention, our wellwishes, maybe even our prayers right now it is probably this state which is in trouble. The state represented by this yellow slash orange line here on this graph. The blue line on the graph excuse me, the state represented by the blue line on this graph. The yellow slash orange line on this graph, the one on the left there with the early peak, that shows the daily case count in new york when new york went through just the apocalypse in term of covid, right, with freezer trucks full of bodies parked outside, overwhelmed hospitals. The yellow, orange line there is new york at its peak. The blue line on the right side of the screen which you can see is now peaking higher than new york ever hit on its worst days in terms of its number of new cases, that blue line represents the state of arizona which has now exceeded new york at its worst. The mayor of phoenix, arizona, did an interview with our colleague Chris Jansing today on msnbc that put right up front the desperation in arizonas largest city. Phoenix is the largest city in arizona, the State Capitol of arizona, also the fifth largest city in the United States which makes it remarkable that this is what theyre going through. The federal government has provided a testing surge in other states such as texas and florida. I request that they do the same in phoenix. When you see that positive rate that steven just mentioned above 25 we are only testing the sickest of the sick. We need more help with testing right now. We also need more medical personnel. We are stretched right now and our hospital ceos tell me its going to get worse over the next two weeks. This weekend i went to a testing site where people had waited over 8 hours. I saw a man who was sweating and struggling to breathe try to refill his gas tank because hed run out of fuel on our city street. If anyone looks at that and doesnt want to do better for him then i just dont understand it. We need that testing surge in particularly our latino areas of phoenix. We are in a crisis right now. The resources and testing have not reached every part of our state. And for months now weve been asking for additional testing. Time has come to deliver. For months. Literally youve been asking for months for this in anticipation of the situation youre in . Phoenix is the largest city in the country to have not received one of the large testing sites from the federal government. Even in april the houston mayor was announcing everyone who wanted a test could get one whereas we were struggling for our critical workers and sickest patients to get testing. At the time i asked why they had such a better result than we did and learned that the federal government had setup mass testing sites. At the time they told me we didnt have the number of cases to justify it, but unquestionably we do now with the highest positive rate in the country. We went for our first 50,000 cases in arizona it took five months, and then it doubled within two weeks. The rate of growth is staggering and scary. The mayor of phoenix, arizona, today with my colleague Chris Jansing. And what the mayor just said there about how fast its growing in arizona is true. Think about this for a second. It did take arizona almost five months. It took them 4 months and 26 days to get from their very first case to their first 50,000 cases. But their next 50,000 cases to get from 50,000 to 100,000 cases, that took 15 days. Arizona now does have the highest Positivity Rate in the nation. Over 25 of their tests are positive. That means they have the highest proportion of tests in the country coming back positive, which means they are not able to do enough tests. According to the arizona republic, the states Positivity Rate week by week since early may as gone from 5 to 6 to 9 to 12 , to 14 to 18 to 21 and now stands at over 25 . Week by week by week it has gotten worse and worse. That is a sign of an epidemic out of control and testing not able to keep pace. And testing is the first thing you need to do to try to keep pace. And it has run rampant through every aspect of the Health Care Infrastructure that arizona has. Arizona hospitals set new records for the number of people hospitalized and the number of people turning up at the er almost every day now. They had 1,000 patients hospitalized in june. And a new record every day. Today the arizona hospital and Health Care Association requested waivers from the state so they could start doing things they could never do before, things like transporting patients in private vehicles and putting adult and pediatric patients in the same hospital rooms if they need to because they dont have enough beds, they dont enough room. But take a look at arizonas second largest city, the Arizona Daily Star reporting pima county residents are going to their local hospitals with symptoms of covid19, but now theres not only the prospect that their local hospital wont have room for them and so theyll be transferred somewhere else in arizona, no