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Meet the Press - March 15, 2020

Mike Dewine (R-OH), J. B. Pritzker (D-IL), Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Peter Salvin, Johnese Spisso, Kasie Hunt, Peter Baker, Yamiche Alcindor, and David Brooks.

CHUCK TODD:

This Sunday: Coronavirus pandemic.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

I am officially declaring a national emergency.

CHUCK TODD:

President Trump's announcement coming as cases soar --

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

We feel we could have up to 100,000 people in Ohio right now who are carrying around the coronavirus.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO:

This is going to be everywhere.

CHUCK TODD:

-- and experts warn we're not ready for the millions who may become infected.

ANTHONY FAUCI:

The system is not really geared to what we need right now. It is a failing, let's admit it.

CHUCK TODD:

-- the president testing negative for the virus, hopeful the crisis will quickly pass.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

Some of the doctors say it will wash through, it will flow through.

CHUCK TODD:

My guests this morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker of Illinois. Plus, how ready are we?

DR. IRWIN REDLENER:

We're heading there, almost inevitably, to some sort of significant surge in demand on hospitals.

CHUCK TODD:

I'll talk to two experts about how prepared our health care system is for the coming spike in cases and whether our hospitals could become overrun with patients. And the great shutdown. France and Spain join Italy with sweeping restrictions. Chaos at U.S. airports as travelers return from Europe. Schools closing, sports leagues canceled, theme parks going dark. Still, are we doing enough to slow the disease? Joining me for insight and analysis are: Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Kasie Hunt, David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, and Yamiche Alcindor, White House Correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Welcome to Sunday and a special edition of Meet the Press.

ANNOUNCER:

From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is a special edition of Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.

CHUCK TODD:

Good Sunday morning. America's recognition of the coronavirus crisis we now face seems to have grown about at the same pace the virus has spread: slowly at first, then exponentially. As of this morning, there were roughly 3000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. resulting in 60 deaths but there has been very limited testing so those numbers may be way off. Gone is the nonsense that this is a hoax. Gone -- mostly -- is the disinformation that this is nothing worse than the flu. And gone, too, is the myth that we're in for mere inconveniences. We're facing one of the most serious health crises in American history. President Trump's declaration of a national emergency on Friday calmed the financial markets but only after his teleprompter speech on Wednesday prompted Wall Street's worst day in more than three decades. In this morning's special edition of Meet the Press I'll talk to Dr. Anthony Fauci, two governors and two hospital executives at the front line of this crisis. And, of course, we have our political panel. So many questions remain: Why has the U-S reacted more like overwhelmed Italy, than like South Korea, where there appears to have been some containment? Why do health experts seem so much more alarmed than the federal government does? When will we have enough test kits to know how widespread the virus is? Will the healthcare system be able to handle the coming surge in cases? And, ultimately, are we doing enough right now to stop the epidemic? We do know this: life in America is changing, at least for the time being. And sadly, things are likely to get worse before they get better.

LESTER HOLT:

We’re moving into uncharted territory.

NORAH O’DONNELL:

Millions of students will now have to stay home.

DAVID MUIR:

The financial markets in freefall.

CHUCK TODD:

A nation on edge, as efforts to contain a global pandemic grind public life to a halt.

NEW YORK RESIDENT:

Nervous, scared, confused. Not really sure what's going on.

CHUCK TODD:

Governors in 19 states and Washington D.C. have closed schools. The National Guard is now active in a growing number of states, businesses are shuttering. Last night: airports from Chicago to Dallas to New York jammed with Americans trying to come home.

GOV. LARRY HOGAN:

I have just enacted an executive order to activate the National Guard.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT:

A state disaster for all counties in the state of Texas.

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

We will close all K-12 schools.

CHUCK TODD:

On Friday, the president declared a national emergency.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

A national emergency, two very big words. The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion dollars.

CHUCK TODD:

And the House passed an emergency relief package. The legislation includes two weeks of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave for many Americans, as well as food aid, enhanced unemployment benefits, and free testing regardless of insurance coverage.

REP. NANCY PELOSI:

The three most important parts of this bill are: Testing. Testing. Testing.

CHUCK TODD:

Still despite weeks of promises on testing --

VICE PRES. PRENCE:

On the subject of testing, we've been making steady progress.

SECY. ALEX AZAR:

The production and shipping of tests that we’ve talked about all week is completely on schedule.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

Anybody that needs a test gets a test.

CHUCK TODD:

-- The Atlantic's Covid Tracking Project reports that fewer than 25,000 tests have been conducted nationwide. NBC has confirmed about 3,000 reported cases, but testing data is very difficult to collect.

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD:

People should not say if you want a test you can go get a test right now.

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:

We have a serious deficiency in being prepared for testing.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Do you take responsibility for that?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

Yeah, no, I don't take responsibility at all

CHUCK TODD:

Because of the limits on testing - the actual number of cases is likely much higher.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

Even though we've only had five confirmed cases, we feel that we could have up to 100,000 people in Ohio right now who are carrying around the coronavirus.

CHUCK TODD:

And joining me now is a very familiar face these days in this crisis, it's Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci, welcome back to Meet the Press.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Good to be with you, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

Let me start with the testing issue. And I start it with -- there because I feel as if this is -- we're on repeat. Every week, we're told, "No, we're ramping up." And every week, we don't ramp up. That’s the -- why should we believe that this is the week that this is going to work?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Yeah. Chuck, I think the reason is because we've really made somewhat of a sea change here. Before -- I mean, obviously, early on we weren't in the situation where we could actually get the tests out in a broad way. And I mentioned on the show last week that we needed to get the private sector involved. And just a couple of days ago, we had the CEOs there, who are going to be now putting it on full overdrive. So I would expect that very soon. When I say "soon," I'm talking about --

CHUCK TODD:

What is soon?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

-- days. Days to a week, where you're going to start to see it go up like this. Not everybody, tomorrow, is going to be able to get a test. But pretty soon, you're going to see a major escalation of capability and implementation.

CHUCK TODD:

I just want to point out, and this is just one example. Steve Peoples, he's a reporter for The Associated Press. He shared his experience. "I'm presenting, I’m presenting mild symptoms, headache, mild fever, mild cough. I want to get tested in North Jersey. Primary care tells me, 'Go to ER.' ER tells me to call City Health Department. Health Department tells me to go to Urgent Care. Urgent Care tells me to go to ER. And everybody says no test."

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Yeah. That's right. And you're going to hear about that even a little bit, you're going to hear individual ones. But as a group, it's going to change, Chuck, it really is, because once you get the heavy hitters from industry and private sector involved, they're going to be able to make it go.

CHUCK TODD:

What's realistic about the spread of this virus right now? We’ve had -- Governor Mike DeWine is going to be on the show later. He goes, "Well, yes, we only have 26 confirmed cases," but his scientific advisors have assume there is hundreds -- there might be 100,000 people with it in Ohio. Is that a fair estimation?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

It is. The nature of outbreaks are that you percolate a little bit along and then you reach what we call an exponential fade. If you look at every curve, Chuck, it does this and then it goes way up. What we -- and Italy is an example of an individual country that did not implement the massive type of containment and mitigation and it went way up. So they're here now. They're really struggling. Our goal right now is that if you do nothing, it's going to do this. We're going to get more cases no matter what. What we need to do with containment and mitigation is to blunt that curve because, left to its own devices --

CHUCK TODD

Yeah.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

-- it's going to do this.

CHUCK TODD:

How do you know when this curve is -- and do you have any evidence that we're blunting it?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

You know, right now, well, I'm sure that we are with what we're doing. But the numbers don't tell us that yet. So what's going to happen is that if it goes like this and continues and doesn't come down, if you have a mound, you've done something. But you don't know about it until after the fact. On any given day, you can't say, "Oh, we've blunted the numbers," because the numbers are still going up no matter what you do. It's how much up they go that is the issue.

CHUCK TODD:

I guess the question is, are we taking these precautions that you and others have said seriously? I don't know if you've seen overnight these pictures at various airports, as people scramble to come back from Europe, stuck. I mean, look at these crowds in O'Hare. You had crowds in Dallas, at Dulles. And these are people, because of this worry, they want to get back into the country from Europe, and they're being jammed together. This is the federal government -- the governor of Illinois basically said, "Look, we can't do anything about this. This is the federal government." What went wrong here?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

No, I don't think anything went wrong. I think it's just the nature of the problem. When you have a situation where people are in different countries, that there are going to be restrictions, American citizens, their family, others, permanent residents, can get back. They don't need to immediately get back because they think they're going to be left out.

CHUCK TODD:

Well, but they came -- that’s what they did do.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

That's what they did. But they're not -- they will be able to get back. When they do get back, they're going to have some enhanced screening, depending on the country. If you're in the European group, if you're now with the U.K. and Ireland, what you're going to have, is you're going to have two weeks of self-imposed isolation.

CHUCK TODD:

Italy -- you brought up Italy a few times. I want to bring up a story here The Boston Globe where one Italian journalist shared the following remark. And it just said, "Many of us were too selfish to follow suggestions to change our behavior. Now, we're in lockdown and people are needlessly dying." This is St. Patty's Day weekend. There've been plenty of bars and restaurants that were crowded. Is this a mistake? France just shut it down. Spain is shutting it down. I think Pennsylvania's thinking about doing this. Should the country shut down bars and restaurants?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Well, you know, that's an individual question. What the country should do is absolutely, and more so proportionately in those areas that have community spread. But as a country --

CHUCK TODD:

What areas don't have community spread right now, Dr. Fauci?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

You know, I mean, real obvious community spread. So the question is that you want to bring down and hunker down everywhere even more so. I'm not saying the rest of the country's okay, don't worry about it. Everybody's got to get involved in distancing themselves socially. If you are in an area where there's clear community spread, you have to be much, much more intense about how you do that. That's where you get things like school closings. You don't want to school -- close every school in the country. But there are areas --

CHUCK TODD:

Why don't you? And I ask this because is it -- do you worry that if some places do a lockdown, but some don't. I take, you know, I think Indiana’s one of the -- every state that touches Indiana has closed schools, but Indiana hasn't, for instance. So is -- are you risking something if not everybody is following the same guidelines?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

No, Chuck, you always want to be ahead of the curve. I mean, the golden rule that I say is that when you think you're doing too much, you're probably doing enough or not enough. All right, that's the thing you've got to do. You don't want to be complacent. You always want to be ahead of the curve. But it depends on how far ahead of the curve you want to be. Don't even for a second think that I'm saying we shouldn't -- I like to be criticized. When I say, "Oh, you're being too overreactive," that's good for me.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, right. Let me ask it this way. We've had a health care official say this to us. That if we could guarantee that people would get their sick leave pay, guarantee that we could basically do what FEMA does in a natural disaster, give people cash for the basics, for groceries, would you prefer a 14 day just sort of national shutdown to slow this?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

You know, I would prefer as much as we possibly could. I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay. Have you made this point of view --

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Yes.

CHUCK TODD:

-- known inside the administration?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Yes.

CHUCK TODD:

Is it getting pushback or are they --

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

No, no.

CHUCK TODD:

-- slowly getting there?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

In fairness, they listen and they generally go with what we say.

CHUCK TODD:

So are we -- Should we expect more closures? Should more Americans be prepared to be hunkering down at their house?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

I think Americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing.

CHUCK TODD:

That means no restaurants, no bars, things like that --

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Again, Chuck, when you say "No --"

CHUCK TODD:

Yeah. I hear you -- "Unlikely," I mean.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Yeah. Much more so. I mean, obviously, you're going to have people who are going to go to restaurants anyway. But for the most part, and particularly, if I can say this, this is particularly appropriate and relevant for people at the high risk. The elderly and those who have underlying conditions right now should really hunker down.

CHUCK TODD:

And the final thing I want to ask you about is our hospital preparedness. The ventilator situation and the respirator situation both seem to be potentially dire if this, if we don't flatten the curve. How concerned are you?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Well, if you have a really massive increase in cases, there's no country or anybody in the world that's going to be perfectly prepared. But we have a stockpile and we will hopefully be able to backfill and refill that stockpile. But I think people should remember, that's the reason why we want to blunt that curve. If you let the curve get up there, then the entire society is going to be hit.

CHUCK TODD:

Should all elective surgery be postponed right now?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

You know, for the most part, elective surgery, keep people out of the hospitals except those who need to be in the hospitals.

CHUCK TODD:

And if you think you have symptoms, don't go to a hospital, correct?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Don't. Contact a physician, contact a health care provider and get some instructions about how you can get tested. But stay home.

CHUCK TODD:

All right. And final question is this. I want to show the picture of the briefing yesterday. Are you guys practicing enough social distancing? You know, at the time, the president was being tested. But, I mean, you looked up here and a lot of us were going, "Wait a minute. We've been told not to be in a crowd that small."

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Right. You know, a crowd that small, but sometimes there's business that you need to do. But I'm working on it, Chuck. I'm working on getting everybody to do this. I hope I'm --

CHUCK TODD:

Elbows out.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

-- successful.

CHUCK TODD:

Elbows out. Dr. Fauci, I know these have been some long nights, some long days. Thanks for coming on and giving us more information.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Always good to be with you, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

In our new NBC News Wall Street Journal poll that is out this morning, we asked registered voters how much confidence they have in government leaders to handle the coronavirus outbreak. 75% say they have confidence in their state government. 72% said the same about their local government. 62% said the same about the federal government. And just 48% said they have that kind of confidence in President Trump individually. Governors, as the heads of state government, top that list. And we have two of them with us this morning, Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. Gentlemen, welcome to Meet the Press. As you both, I think heard, I referred to both of you during that interview with Dr. Fauci. Governor Pritzker, let me start with you with what happened overnight at O'Hare. And again, you weren't the only airport, but every major international airport seemed to have a similar situation. Dr. Fauci seemed to say, "Look, that is what's going to happen when you come back into this country." What do you believe should have been done that wasn't done?

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

Well, that's not right. I mean, I have enormous respect for Dr. Fauci, but that's just incorrect. We knew when the president gave the orders that European travel back to the United States was going to be cut off, that there would be an influx of people, Americans and others, that would come before the final cutoff. So what should've happened? They should've increased the Customs and Border Patrol numbers. And they should've increased the number of CDC personnel on the ground doing those checks. They did neither of those. So last night, as people were flooding into O'Hare Airport, they were stuck in a small area, hundreds and hundreds of people. And that's exactly what you don't want in this pandemic. So we had that problem. And then today, it's going to be even worse. There're a larger number of flights with more people coming and they seem completely unprepared.

CHUCK TODD:

So you have not gotten any reassurance from customs officials that they are going to have more folks on hand today?

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

Well, here's what I got. I got a call at about 11:00 last night after that tweet from a White House staffer who yelled at me about the tweet. That is what I got. Now, we've been talking to Customs and Border Patrol officials directly on the ground at O'Hare. I've been working with the mayor and our senators to make sure that we're getting the federal government to pay attention to this problem because we can't have it happen all day today.

CHUCK TODD:

Governor DeWine, you've been among the more -- governors that have -- I think, following Dr. Fauci's advice, and frankly, I think your own health official who said, "In pandemics, people think you're overreacting at the start. And then after it's over, they think you've underreacted." Based on what you heard from Dr. Fauci, are you going to close bars and restaurants in the state of Ohio?

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

We're certainly looking at that. You know, we started off last week closing the schools. We reduced the number of people gathered together to 100. You know, we've restricted access to our nursing homes, to our prisons. So we're taking tough steps. And Chuck, I think it's very instructive, I know people talked about this before, but I just looked at a chart. You look at the pandemic of 1918, you compare the two cities of St. Louis and Philadelphia, and you saw Philadelphia didn't get it. But the thing that I noticed in the chart is Philadelphia was only two weeks behind St. Louis. And so --

CHUCK TODD:

Wow.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

-- Philadelphia’s went up straight like this. St. Louis is more like that. And so what it tells us is, you know, all the people I've been consulting, from Dr. Amy Acton, who's doing a great job as my health director, but to national experts, they say, "Look. Every day counts so much. And you cannot wait. You've got to move very, very quickly." And look, these are tough decisions. We're inconveniencing people. It's making people's lives change. But we've got to save lives. Everything we're doing is to save lives.

CHUCK TODD:

You know, it struck me, Governor, that on Wednesday I think you announced six cases, Thursday, 13, Friday, 26. We can do basic math here. Double, double, double. It's what Dr. Fauci said. I'm certain you're not excited about your 2:00 p.m. briefing today that you'll be doing. Do you have any indication that anything is bending this curve down to that mound yet?

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

Well, I don't think we can tell. But, you know, as the experts tell me, we're always way, way behind in what we know. Our testing is just now ramping up. For example, at Cleveland Clinic, University of Cincinnati, some other hospitals are just now basically coming online in their ability to test. So we're going to see the number of tests go up dramatically. But what I'm telling the people of Ohio, look, none of this should be a surprise. We know there's a bunch of people out there who are carrying this virus around. And that's part of the message, particularly to young people who maybe aren't so worried about it, the 20-somethings. Look, you may not get really, really sick. You may get lucky. But you may take that to your grandmother, who's 80. And we know people in their eighties, the mortality rates at least 15-20%.

CHUCK TODD:

Governor --

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

So everybody's got to take care of everybody else.

CHUCK TODD:

Governor Pritzker, and I'm sure other cities will be offended if I say this, Chicago does St. Patty's Day on a level that many other cities do not. I know you've been concerned about the crowds at bars and restaurants already over the weekend. Are you thinking about shutting down bars and restaurants, particularly after hearing what Dr. Fauci said?

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

Well, let me just compliment Governor DeWine and the other governors. We're the ones who've had to provide the leadership because the federal government just has fallen down on this. So they didn't advise us to shutdown major events, sporting events, parades. We made those decisions on our own. They are not the ones that advised us to close schools. We made those decisions on our own. So we're on our own out here. I wish we had leadership from Washington. We're not getting it. With regard to St. Patrick's Day, we shut down the parade. We didn't color the river green, as we usually do. And I have advised that we need to keep our crowds smaller. And yesterday we say that -- you know, we put a limit of 250 people in gatherings. We cancelled all the gatherings larger than that. And then yesterday what we saw was many young people who think they're impervious to this went out and celebrated. And I had my 2:30 briefing yesterday. Called out the problem of people on the street. And unfortunately, we haven't seen a lot of movement. People aren't understanding that, even if you're healthy, even if you're young, that you may be a carrier. And you're going to hand it over to somebody else. COVID-19 is spreading because even healthy people can be walking around, giving it to other people. So we need to go on lockdown.

CHUCK TODD:

I was just going to say, it sounds like then you -- so are you going to close bars and restaurants? That is your plan? You sort of contradicted yourself there, saying you were going to keep the size smaller, but then you're making the case to lockdown.

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

Well, what I'm telling you is that we've been on the trajectory now and planning for each of these steps because it's not easy. You can imagine each one of these decisions has consequences to them that are not just about the pandemic.

CHUCK TODD:

Of course.

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

They're also about people's livelihoods. So we're actually looking hard at that decision making today. We obviously saw what happened in Europe. Nowhere in the United States really has there been a lockdown on bars and restaurants, but it's something that we're seriously looking at.

CHUCK TODD:

Both of you have primaries on Tuesday. You have indicated, a couple of days ago, you guys will go forward. Any hesitance? Governor DeWine, you first.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

We're going to go ahead. But we're telling people, again, to be careful. The good thing in Ohio is we have basically four weeks of voting. People can vote today. We're urging them to go vote today.

CHUCK TODD:

Gotcha.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

They can vote Monday. They've got 13 hours on Tuesday. So that just naturally spreads it out. We're asking them to be very, very careful.

CHUCK TODD:

Governor Pritzker, any second thoughts about the primary on Tuesday?

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

We've done the same as Ohio. We have actually lengthened our hours of early voting. We have mail balloting. We've had record mail balloting this year. So we're going to go ahead with it. But we've been extra careful at all of our polling places. Everybody is practicing good hygiene. And we're making sure that it's safe for people to come and vote. The schools are closed, so many people will be voting in schools. And there won't be big crowds.

CHUCK TODD:

I have a feeling it may be the last primaries we have for a little while. Anyway, Governors DeWine and Pritzker, thank you both for joining us. I know these are long days and nights.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

Thank you, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

Thank you both for your service.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE:

Thank you.

CHUCK TODD:

One of the great fears --

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER:

Thank you.

CHUCK TODD:

-- in this crisis is that hospitals could become overwhelmed by a tsunami of cases. When we come back, I'll talk to two top hospital executives on whether our health care system can survive what's coming their way.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. If the thousands of confirmed cases of COVID-19 turn into millions, how will our healthcare system manage? The steps we're taking, like social distancing, are all an effort to flatten the pandemic's curve so that hospitals aren't overwhelmed. That is why this flattening of the curve is such a priority. Joining me now are Johnese Spisso, the president of UCLA Health, and Dr. Peter Slavin, the president of Massachusetts General Hospital. Welcome to you both. Let me start with you, Dr. Slavin, about the things that Mass General is doing. When are you preparing for what is going to be the peak of this curve? Whether it's a mound or a spike, is this coming in days, weeks? When do you expect it?

DR. PETER SLAVIN:

Good morning, Chuck. This is something that places like Mass General and hospitals around the country do on a daily basis on a small scale. We've been preparing for disasters for over 100 years, and for this particular one, over the last two months. We're taking a variety of steps to get ready. We, like other parts of the society, are promoting social distancing, asking our staff who can stay at home to stay at home, cancelling elective surgery, and trying to do as much outpatient care through telemedicine, particularly for vulnerable populations. And we're training our staff and getting ready to engage in this difficult challenge that lies ahead.

CHUCK TODD:

Do you have a timeframe, at all, that your experts are telling you, based on what they think's happening in New England?

DR. PETER SLAVIN:

We think that the next week or two are going to be critical. We've begun to see cases in this area, but we expect them to rise dramatically in the coming weeks.

CHUCK TODD:

Johnese Spisso, you’ve had -- the West Coast has been dealing with this a little bit longer than the East Coast. What have you learned over the last six weeks that tells you what we should be expecting over the next six weeks?

JOHNESE SPISSO:

Well, thank you for having me. I want to first start by saying this is definitely an unprecedented time for healthcare systems in our country. But Chuck, I want your viewers to also know the remarkable effort that our staff are making around the clock to really prepare and implement our emergency preparedness plan for the COVID-19 outbreak. And all of this is really consistent with our mission of an academic health system to really treat the most complex injury and illness that we see with our team of experts, to really train that next generation of healthcare professionals on how to face these outbreaks, and to conduct that leading edge research and discovery that hopefully will lead to more cures. So we focused on, in addition to all the things that Peter mentioned, our big focus has been how do we establish surge capacity, recognizing that most of our hospitals are full. So our efforts have looked at really how we can create additional places to care for patients. If you go past our emergency department now, you'll see tents erected in the parking lot that allow us to increase emergency department capacity. We're, throughout our 180 clinics throughout Los Angeles and Southern California, we're encouraging telemedicine visits so we can create additional capacity there. We've set up a satellite drive through testing station. We were fortunate at UCLA Health, our biology lab was one of the first to be able to start testing and doing our own tests that really save us time. We're hoping to continue to increase capacity. And having that drive through area allows us to really contain patients from coming in to our main hospitals, where our most sick patients are.

CHUCK TODD:

Dr. Slavin, it seems as if the thing we keep hearing about, respirators and ventilators, respirators, in this case meaning the healthcare equipment essentially that healthcare workers need to treat folks, and of course, ventilators because this is one of the things with the breathing issues for those that are elderly. What are your concerns? Has the federal government stepped up enough on this front?

DR. PETER SLAVIN:

Well, my concerns are I think we need to think about this in almost a war-like stance. My concern is that we have millions of healthcare workers around this country who are prepared to do battle against this virus, but I'm concerned that there are at least a couple of areas of supplies that they need in order to fight that virus as effectively as possible. One is the testing that we need, and Dr. Fauci commented on that, and I hope, indeed, that private labs are going to ramp up testing. We've started at Mass General Brigham to increase, to do our testing as of yesterday. But we also --

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, wait. Can I interrupt you --

DR. PETER SLAVIN:

-- are very worried about personal --

CHUCK TODD:

-- why was it yesterday? Why wasn't this six weeks ago? Can you help explain to viewers why your lab, and I talked to Johnese about this earlier as well, I know they got online last week too. Why did these private facilities and university facilities take so long to get online?

DR. PETER SLAVIN:

Well, it was just the day before yesterday that we got regulatory relief from the FDA so that we didn't need to jump through all sorts of hoops and prove that our testing was as accurate as possible. Certainly the testing is accurate, but the FDA relaxed its regulations so that we could begin testing immediately. My other big concern is personal protective equipment. Even before the most significant battles lie ahead, our supplies are low. I hear from hospitals around our region and around our country that their supplies are low, and we need the federal government to engage in a Manhattan Project to get industry to create surgical masks, eye protection devices, gowns so that our healthcare workers can engage in this battle. We wouldn't want to send soldiers into war without helmets and armor, we don't want to do the same with our healthcare workers.

CHUCK TODD:

And Johnese Spisso, last question for you. One thing the federal government hasn't done yet that you'd like to see them step up and do?

JOHNESE SPISSO:

Well, again, I think I'd echo what Peter has mentioned about supplies. We really have to make sure we have the personal protective equipment to keep our healthcare providers and our patients and our families safe.

CHUCK TODD:

Johnese Spisso, Peter Slavin, Mass General, UCLA, both coasts. Good luck over the next couple of weeks and perhaps couple of months. I know we're all hoping you can handle this surge capacity. Thank you much. For the latest on the coronavirus, follow the live blog on NBCNews.com/coronavirus. When we come back, President Trump says he's doing a terrific job confronting the crisis. Is he? Panel is next.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. The panel is here. David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times; Yamiche Alcindor, White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour; Kasie Hunt, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent, and Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. I feel like this morning, Peter, we heard a little bit, if you read between the lines of Dr. Fauci and the governors of, of this -- of the federal government is leaning in but perhaps not as much as they would like to. Because on one hand, they're making the case that we need to -- we're not doing enough. And on the other hand, they're not ready to call for more action.

PETER BAKER:

Right. It's stunning to hear Mass. General say they've just got the FDA approval yesterday when we've been hearing about that from the administration officials now for --

CHUCK TODD:

This is Mass. General, one of the leading hospitals in this country.

PETER BAKER:

Exactly. I thought one of the most interesting moments this week came when Dr. Fauci was on the Hill and he was asked by congresspeople, you know, "Is it going to get worse?" "Yes, it's going to get worse." "What about things like NBA games?" He says, "Yes, things like NBA games should be shut down." Boom. Within 24 hours, all of sports shut down, right? They, they were craving for direction. They were craving for Washington to tell them “what are we supposed to do at this point?” And they're not hearing it from the president. The president is kind of a bystander as school superintendents, and sports commissioners, and governors, and mayors around the country make these individual decisions to shut down American life. And the president hasn't given that kind of firm direction and guidance they're looking for.

CHUCK TODD:

I'm curious. I know - I think I heard, but, Kasie, did you hear Dr. Fauci recommend closing down bars and restaurants?

KASIE HUNT:

It seemed like he wasn't willing to quite say that. But if --

CHUCK TODD:

But he kind of implied it.

KASIE HUNT:

If, if it were me, and I owned a bar or restaurant, and I listened to that interview, I'd think, "This is probably the best idea. --

CHUCK TODD:

Yes.

KASIE HUNT:

-- This would probably be the best plan." And to pick up on Peter's point, I mean, this is something I think we are hearing from the community. I mean, I am hearing it from my friends, you know, who are looking to us in the media for guidance about what to do. I mean, the idea that Americans feel like they know that this is something that they need to be worried about, they need to be taking action in their own lives, even if they feel concerned, they have no idea what to do. The, the lack of clarity is a serious problem.

CHUCK TODD:

You know, David Brooks, I want to -- this was after the Wednesday address. Noah Rothman in Commentary wrote, "There's no excuse for the kind of carelessness in a prepared address to the nation, much less one given amid emergency circumstances. The cumulative effect of these errors and compromise palliative measures was to leave the nation less confident than it was before Trump spoke. The president might have been better off keeping quiet." But the, the point is it does seem as if that lack of confidence, and you start to see it, it's spreading with, with different people on how to deal with this crisis.

DAVID BROOKS:

Well, we see it with every federal official. None of them can get out in front of President Trump, so they all have to hang back. I had a friend, somebody I care about deeply, call me last night saying he'd a fever, and I had no idea what to tell him. Like, take Motrin, go to Netflix? It was, it was very unnerving. And then your next instinct is, "Oh, I'm going to drive up and see him," but I can't do that either. And so this goes against human nature, that we can't really care about our loved ones. And I think it, it does flow from the top. And we, we have a president who doesn't feel the emotions of other people, and therefore, he can't read the country. Six months ago, he can't say, "Wow, people are really hurting out there. People are afraid out there. I've got to act. I've got to act." He lacks that sense. And so he's not really seeing the country. He's reading what people think about him, which is all he sees. And therefore, all his reactions are late and deadened.

CHUCK TODD:

Yamiche, here's just a rundown of the last two weeks. Take a listen.

[BEGIN TAPE]

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

We're finding very little problem. Very little problem. Now, you treat this like a flu. It's going to disappear one day. It's like a miracle. It will disappear. This is their new hoax. Anybody that needs a test gets a test. It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away. Some of the doctors say it will wash through. It will flow through.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

Missing urgency.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

Well, the defining characteristic of the Trump administration has been this real challenge for truth, this real challenge of the facts, alternative facts. You've had the president say all sorts of misinformation, intentionally or not intentionally. You had the president's lawyer say, "Truth isn't truth." What you have here is a president who, as David said, wants to calm people because people are frankly terrified. They're scared. People are crying in their cars, wondering if they should be in big crowds. And you have the president really bungling easy things like an Oval Office address that should have been able to say, "Here's what you can do as an American. Here's the things that you need to do." Instead, you have him say misinformations like, you know, "We're not sure if all goods are going to be banned from Europe. We don't know if the insurance companies are going to cover the treatments of coronavirus." He obviously had to clean all that stuff up. And what you have is a leadership vacuum here that people are really worried about.

CHUCK TODD:

Well, and we've seen, the governors have filled the vacuum.

KASIE HUNT:

Yes.

CHUCK TODD:

I'm curious. Congressional Republicans, it seems to me offline they're very concerned that they're basically, they’re basically being judged through the prism of how the president is responding. Governors get to separate themselves.

KASIE HUNT:

This is a crisis on Capitol Hill. And, you know, we're going to spend the coming week waiting for the Senate to take action on a compromise that came late into the night on Friday between the White House and, and House Democrats. And it's not clear to me that there is a path forward with Senate Republicans. There's so much internal squabbling. There's other priorities and issues that they're trying to deal with. Nobody can give me a timeline. Nobody can say, "Oh yes. We're all going to get on board." I mean, the Senate, if all 100 senators agree, they can act like that, right? It takes a minute or two. If they, if they, if they want to do it that way, they can. And so far, no indication that they're going to.

CHUCK TODD:

That is just surprising on Mitch McConnell's part frankly. Because usually he is laser eyed, knowing --

KASIE HUNT:

I actually don't think this is a Mitch McConnell problem.

CHUCK TODD:

Interesting.

KASIE HUNT:

I think McConnell is, is with you on that --

CHUCK TODD:

Is in that, gets that, yeah.

KASIE HUNT:

-- but there are some other Republicans in the conference. There was a statement from Ron Johnson complaining about some of the contents of the bill. There are other issues at hand that some senators, Mike Lee is focused on the FISA renewal, right? The eye is not on the ball right now in the Senate.

CHUCK TODD:

How does the president deal with that?

PETER BAKER:

Well, he's, he’s subcontracted it out to Steve Mnuchin actually. He has been a non-player, when it comes to these negotiations, he said, "Steve, you take care of it." He hasn't even spoken with Nancy Pelosi now in weeks. The two of them obviously are estranged because of impeachment and because of other issues. He has basically left it to his Treasury secretary. And, you know, that's a consequence of the partisan wars we've had these last three years. When the, the number one official in the country and the number three official in the country are not on speaking terms, that doesn't lend itself to the kind of action Washington normally takes.

CHUCK TODD:

David Brooks, what would we say about another country whose politics were so dysfunctional that their number one and number three, that their heads of two different branches couldn't speak to each other?

DAVID BROOKS:

We would call that a failed state. And so, you know, we’re in a -- we've weakened our institutions over decades. We've had candidates running against the swamp. Well, the swamp looks pretty valuable right now. You want an establishment that can do stuff. What we're lacking right now is a complete mobilization. The federal government should be sending $1,000 checks to everybody. They really need to be writing checks.

CHUCK TODD:

FEMA should be out there now. The tents -- yes.

DAVID BROOKS:

We need the hospital gowns, we just heard. We need the ventilators to be built. It really should be a World War II mentality, but that took a certain sort of consciousness, "Oh, we have institutions that actually work." We've weakened them especially over the last three years.

CHUCK TODD:

I don't get the sense -- it feels as if the administration sees this as a political inconvenience still -- not everybody in the administration -- the political folks in the administration is probably a better way to look at it.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

Well, you have the president who is looking at his own political futures and saying, "Well, the thing that I was going to run on apart from maybe culture wars was going to be the economy. And this is the thing that I'm most worried about." That's why you had those last minute negotiations on Capitol Hill where the president was really trying to see, "Why can't I get my payroll tax? Why can't I get the industries that are going to be hit that might strain my ability to get reelected, why can't they get the help they need?"

CHUCK TODD:

Well, I think all of that's coming. It's sort of like, it’s sort of one step at a time --

KASIE HUNT:

It's, it’s a political disaster. And the only way to fix it is to make it less of a medical disaster. It's the only way through it.

CHUCK TODD:

Nice. When we come back, the other ways the coronavirus may impact the way we live.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. Data Download time. We won't know the full economic impact of the coronavirus for some time. But by the day, we learn how much bigger it will be. It's much bigger than just the stock market. In the last week, countless large events have been canceled and people's travel plans suspended, creating huge costs for local economies and travel industries. The NCAA canceled all of March Madness. That cost Cleveland $8 million for the first and second rounds of the tournament. The cancellation of the Frozen Four, which is college ice hockey's men's championship, that's costing the city of Detroit $10 million. Atlanta was preparing to host the culmination of the men's March Madness tournament, the Final Four. Now, that city is losing more than $100 million. And South by Southwest, the music, film, and tech conference in Austin, Texas, that cancellation will cost that city $355 million. Flight cancellations are creating a huge economic crisis for the major airlines and their workers. In fact, flight schedules have already been slashed to levels even lower than they were after the September 11th terrorist attacks. And in an effort to fill any seats at all, ticket prices have fallen rapidly. These are next-day, round-trip tickets during peak spring break time. And the prices are still falling. Those same flights for May are now only $97 round trip. And hotel cancellation rates are spiking across the globe. 40% in North America, just over 50% in Europe, and a whopping 90% rate in Asia. The point is the financial repercussions globally will grow fast and hit hard. Health and safety obviously comes first, but many will be feeling the economic strain from this pandemic for a long time. Not just weeks, not just months, but maybe even years. When we come back, how Democrats and Republicans are seeing even this health crisis largely through a red/blue political lens.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. We have some numbers from our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. 45% of registered voters polled say they approve of the way President Trump is handling the coronavirus, while 51% disapprove. It's a familiar set of numbers. Check out the partisan split. This also is somewhat familiar. Democrats disapprove of the president's handling by an enormous 84 -13 margin. And guess what? Republicans completely flip the script, and they approve of the president's handling by that similar enormous margin, 81 -14. But the partisan split goes well beyond that. Far more Democrats than Republicans are concerned that a family member will catch the virus. Look at that difference. Democrats say they are far more likely to avoid large gatherings than Republicans are. They're also much more likely to have changed their travel plans. And they're three times more likely to avoid eating at restaurants. David Brooks, this is the unintended consequence that a lot of us feared of this polarization of how people get information. That to me is to show that how -- two-thirds of the country get their information from one set of people, and one-third of the country gets it somewhere else. And you see it there.

DAVID BROOKS:

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, is cancer a partisan issue now? I mean, the virus is now a partisan issue. You see all reality through a partisan lens. And that's just one of the divides that going to open up. I looked back and read about all the different pandemics over centuries. And you think people come together in a crisis? They do in some kind of crisis. But in pandemic, they fall apart. The reporting from every crisis for the last thousand years of this sort is that neighbors withdraw from neighbors. You get widened class divisions. Out of fear you get a spirit of callousness.

CHUCK TODD:

Don't forget xenophobia.

DAVID BROOKS:

Xenophobia -- And so in 1918, we lost 675,000 Americans to the flu, and nobody wanted to talk about it afterwards. And that's because they were ashamed of how they behaved. And so we need to take some moral steps to make ourselves decent neighbors to each other as we go through this thing. Like, I think people should get on Nextdoor, this sort of Facebook for neighbors, so at least you know what's going on right around you, which is super important. And so this is going to be not only a health crisis and a financial crisis. It's how we treat each other is going to deteriorate and we're not going to like who we're about to become.

CHUCK TODD:

Yamiche, wow. You painted an even more bleak picture than I thought this -- I mean, this was a depressing finding because this idea that people judge their public health warnings through the prism of the party the person belongs to.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

It's pretty crazy. And there's this idea that of course the president has not helped the situation by being -- talking in front of thousands of people, calling at least the reporting of this a hoax, making it seem as though people talking about the virus being an issue was really a personal attack on him because he feels obviously so personally aggrieved that this is happening. But what you see here is the fact that, as you said, we're a polarized nation. People are getting information straight sometimes from President Trump's Twitter account, and he's been trying to downplay this from the beginning. And including contradicting his own health officials. I also think a really important part of this poll was on page 16, which was question 20 when they said, "Who do you feel very --"

CHUCK TODD:

Be specific, will you?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

"Who do you feel is very confident -- who do you feel confident about how they're handling this?" Most people, up to 75%, said they were happy with the way the states were handling it. Less than 50% said that they were confident in the way that the president was handling it. That should make President Trump very nervous.

CHUCK TODD:

Kasie Hunt, it's within this backdrop. And the reason I also opened with the partisan splits here, Democrats are far more concerned about this than Republicans right now. This is the backdrop for tonight. Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, what may be the final Democratic primary debate. We've got states postponing primaries. Georgia is the latest to do it. Louisiana did it earlier. We'll see what happens after Tuesday, how many more states join. How does Bernie Sanders go after Joe Biden tonight on a topic that isn't about coronavirus?

KASIE HUNT:

I'm not sure he does, Chuck. I mean, you've seen Bernie Sanders himself already sort of struggle going after Joe Biden. There's been some great reporting. Rudy Kramer kind of wrote about why that was, because he still has fond feelings because Joe Biden treated him well before Bernie Sanders, you know, was a thing and Bernie Sanders continues to appreciate that. You know, I think we've seen health care be the center of all of these Democratic debates, or most of them anyway. I think you'll see some more of that tonight most likely. But I think that it is a nearly impossible situation to be seen having a political squabbling match in light of what's going on.

CHUCK TODD:

Peter, I'm not interested in the NFL free agency news that I'm reading about now when they have nothing else to write about it. And I get it. It feels like we’re all on -- I think this is -- this makes Bernie Sanders' job almost impossible at this point.

PETER BAKER:

Yeah, he wanted clearly to have one last, you know, ideological head-to-head, one-on-one kind of confrontation with Joe Biden to talk about the direction of the party before what seems to be the likelihood that he ends up ending a campaign at some point, right? This next set of primaries on Tuesday do not favor Bernie Sanders. Presumably Biden, you know, has a great deal of momentum. And Bernie Sanders wanted to have one last chance to say, "This is what I think our party should be about." And you're right. It's been completely taken over, like everything else in our life, by this one issue.

CHUCK TODD:

David, I want to close with the cultural changes that this is going to inevitably make in America. You spend so much time sort of chronicling the good and bad of these societal changes that have taken place over the last generation. In one fell swoop, we may make massive changes in how we interact with ourselves that will last a generation.

DAVID BROOKS:

Yeah, well, I do think loneliness and isolation are core problems underlying a lot of our other problems. And now social distancing has become a virtue. And so this is just going to make that problem of loneliness, detachment, alienation even worse. And so it's up to us to somehow neighbor by neighbor, we can't go knock on the doors of our neighbors right now. But somehow, we have to make contact. If we all had the emails of our neighbors, we could at least have some sort of communication. Old people die when they're not checked up on in a crisis. We've learned that crisis after crisis. So check up on the old lady next to you. There has --

CHUCK TODD:

Don't physically go next door.

DAVID BROOKS:

Don't physically --

CHUCK TODD:

Right. I mean, your --

DAVID BROOKS:

-- emails, drop a letter, something.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

And it isn't time for culture wars. The president called this a "foreign virus." There are people who are not wanting to go to Chinese restaurants, even though maybe they won't go to all restaurants. But this isn't the time to say, "These are the people who gave it to us," which of course is what President Trump was saying when he in his address was blaming the EU for not closing their borders quick enough. It's just not the time for --

CHUCK TODD:

This is Earth's --

YAMICHE ALCINDOR:

-- cultural problems.

CHUCK TODD:

-- fault. If you want to blame, blame Earth. Okay? I mean, we all live on the same planet.

KASIE HUNT:

I mean, the one positive thing I will say is I think I've heard from more old friends more in the last week than I have in the previous year or year and a half. You know, I do think that there is an element of common humanity that, you know, I hope is bringing people together despite some examples of poor actors --

CHUCK TODD:

Guess what?

KASIE HUNT:

-- stockpiling Purell and other things.

CHUCK TODD:

You don't have to check your phone if there's not anything else going on but one thing. So maybe pick up the phone. Talk to your friends. That's all we have for today. Thank you for watching. Please take the advice. Avoid big groups. Practice social distancing. Stay safe. Stay healthy. We'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.