This is almost unbelievable, if it wasn’t for the fact the governor is a democrat.  Hopefully voters are paying close attention to this stuff and will remember in November.  All of these authoritarian tendencies are being triggered by the opportunity known as COVID-19.

The DEMOCRAT governor of Nevada has signed an executive order banning the use of hydroxychloroquine as a medical treatment for those suffering from the coronavirus.

LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s governor has signed an emergency order barring the use of anti-malaria drugs for someone who has the coronavirus.

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s order Tuesday restricting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine comes after President Donald Trump touted the medication as a treatment for the virus. (read more)

This level of severe Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) will immediately open a black-market for people to travel across state lines to obtain their medical needs.  Great job idiot.

I hate to say I warnedyaso, but…

First they released 1,700 inmates.  Then the LA Sheriff shut down all the gun stores, saying they were not essential services…. Now LA Mayor Garcetti announces he will shut down water and electricity for anyone who attempts to defy the stay at home edicts.

…”The easiest way to avoid a visit” from the LA storm-troopers “is to follow the rules”… “Your behavior can save a life” Garcetti said, “And that life could be yours.”…

The official “neighborhood prosecutors” have been assigned. The LA Directorate of Coronavirus Compliance has now been activated.  Choose carefully comrade citizen.  That’s a nice place you’ve got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it..

Los Angeles – […] He reminded young people that the virus can hit them too, urging them to stay at home and practice social distancing.

“Your behavior can save a life and take a life,” Garcetti said. “And that life could be yours.”

The mayor addressed President Trump’s remarks from earlier Tuesday about having the nation “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” Garcetti said he didn’t think L.A. would be back to normal “in that short time.”

“We won’t extend it one day longer than we need to,” Garcetti said, but emphasized that the “safer at home” measure had to be followed through.

The mayor said L.A. is six to 12 days behind New York in being hit with a wave of positive cases.

“The peak is not here yet,” he said. “It will be bad.”

Garcetti emphasized the need for medical workers who can test, treat, heal and tend to coronavirus patients. He announced that together with L.A. County, the city has opened up a portal for medical personnel recruitment, with both paid and pro-bono positions.

“We need to be prepared for some of the darkness that is ahead,” the mayor said. “Each one of us can be a light. We can light a match of hope. We can navigate that tunnel with each other and not alone. And more importantly, what we do can ensure that more people exit that tunnel together… and that our city will rise again.”

The mayor went on to announce the “business ambassadors program” — an effort to get nonessential businesses to close.

“This behavior is irresponsible and selfish,” he said of those that remain open.

He said the Department of Water and Power will shut off services for the businesses that don’t comply with the “safer at home” ordinance.

Neighborhood prosecutors will implement safety measures and will contact the businesses before issuing further action, according to Garcetti.  (read more)

Here’s the transcript from the President Trump COVID-19 Task Force town hall event earlier today.

[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Bill.

Q Unusual circumstances, where you’re trying to communicate with the American people and we’re trying to maybe bring the American people a little closer to you and get some answers.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that’s true.

Q To you, Mr. President, when was the moment that you thought, “We got to move on this”?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think when I started seeing and reading about China, and seeing what was going on in China — Wuhan, specifically. It seemed to come mostly out of there — that area, the province.

And when I saw that, and I saw the kind of death they were, you know, talking about on television, in the papers, and I started reading a lot about it. And, really, when I had to make a decision: Do I stop people from China and specifically that area — but from China — to come into the country? And everybody was against it. Almost everybody, I would say, was just absolutely against it. We’ve never done it before. We never made a decision like that.

Q Did somebody come to you with a bit of information, a piece of data? Was it a world leader? Was it a member of your own team? What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: No. No. It was instinct. No. We had a large group of people right behind me in the Oval Office. And I made it — I consulted with Mike. But we made a decision. I made a decision to close off to China. That was weeks early. And, honestly, I took a lot of heat. Sleepy Joe Biden said it’s xenophobic. I don’t know if he knows what that means, but that’s okay. He said it’s racist, what I did.

Thousands and thousands of more people — probably tens of thousands would be dead right now if I didn’t make that decision. And I must say, doctors — nobody wanted to make that decision at the time. It was very, very early. Call it luck or call it talent; it doesn’t matter. We made a great decision.
I took a lot of heat from China. They weren’t happy with it. Now they understand it, and they’ve really — you know, we’re doing just fine. But they were not happy with it.

Q We’re bringing it to —

THE PRESIDENT: I took a lot of heat from a lot of people.

Q Bringing the conversation to present day, in the past day and a half you got a lot tension for this: a tweet that, I think, went out late at night. You said, “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”

THE PRESIDENT: I really didn’t get —

Q So you start to look at this 15-day period, which will come to us —

THE PRESIDENT: Sure.

Q Day 15 is next Monday. Today, arguably, day 9. What are you trying to gauge, as to how you can open the country back up again?

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. When you say I took a lot of heat for that essentially, I really didn’t. I mean, a lot of people agree with me. Our country is not supposed to be — you know, it’s not — it’s 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. They — it’s not for our country. We’re not — we’re not built that way.

And I said, you know, I don’t want the cure to be worse than the problem itself — the problem being, obviously, the problem. And you know, you can destroy a country this way, by closing it down, where it literally goes from being the most prosperous — I mean, we had the best economy in the history of our country three weeks ago. And then all of a sudden, we’re supposed to shut it down. And then we’re supposed to pay people not to go to work. We never had that. We used to pay people to go to work when we had — when we had a problem.

Q Right. But this is a government order to go and ahead stay home. It’s tricky though when you try and turn the faucet back on.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, it’s very tricky.

Q New York could be different from Utah.

THE PRESIDENT: It is. It is.

Q Louisiana could be different from Arizona. So how do you go about making that decision here?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you have to make the decision. Look, we lose thousands — I brought some numbers here. We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off — I mean, every year.
Now, when I heard the number — you know we average 37,000 people a year. Can you believe that? And actually, this year we’re having a bad flu season. But we lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn’t call up the automobile companies and say, “Stop making cars. We don’t want any cars anymore.” We have to get back to work.

Now, with all of that being said, it’s incredible what the American people have done and — and, honestly, the American people have learned. We’ve all learned together, between the shaking of the hands and the washing of the hands. Well, I used to wash my hands, and I always wash my hands a lot. I never was a big believer in shaking hands. Once I became a politician, you shake hands and you get a little bit used to it. Like, immediately, when I see you, I sort of apologize that I’m not shaking your hand, if you don’t mind.

Q Well, we exchanged air elbows, which is — seems to be the thing —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. I don’t even like to do — I never like to see that actually, but —

Q Yeah, right now on Capitol Hill, you — you’ve got members of the Senate debating a $2 trillion bill.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, more than that.

Q I mean, did you think that it — it blows away the ability for us to imagine that they could pass legislation in excess of $2 trillion. Now, who knows what’s behind the curtain there? Who knows what is stacked into $2 trillion?

THE PRESIDENT: You’re —

Q How much concern do you have —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we canceled the deal last night —

Q — that you could be facing criticism that President Obama faced in — in 2009, about sweetheart deals for certain companies as Democrats would argue?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure. I canceled the deal last night. I said, “I’m not going to say that deal.” Because Nancy Pelosi came in and put a lot of things in the deal that had nothing to do with the workers, that had to do with an agenda that they’ve been trying to get passed for 10 years.

And I came in — I told Mike, I told a lot of people, “There’s no way I’m signing that deal.” I was getting calls from John Kennedy, from Ben Sasse, from many, many people — Lindsey. I was getting calls from a lot of different people, saying this deal — Tom Cotton — this deal is terrible, what they’ve done.

They took a deal — you know, we almost had a deal, the day before. And it was between Schumer and Mitch. And it was really a good, solid deal. All of a sudden, they start throwing all of the little Green New Deal stuff in, right? And — the boardrooms, what they look like. And, “We want green energy. We want all this stuff. Let’s stop drilling oil.”

They had things in there that were terrible. Windmills all over the place and all sorts of credits for windmills. They kill the birds and ruin the real estate, right? A lot of problems. I mean, a lot of problems. And I said, “I’m not signing this deal.”

Q But $2 trillion dollars, it’s —

THE PRESIDENT: Now they’ve renegotiated it.

Q It’s hard to avoid some of those trapdoors, you could argue.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, but we have great things for not only companies — forget the companies. The companies are nothing other than they are an employer of thousands and thousands of people. And they pay them very well. We want to protect our workers. I want to protect our workers. Workers first.

But you have to protect companies like Boeing. They had a real bad year — let’s face it — with the problems, and they were in trouble before this. And then, all of a sudden, this happened. We can’t lose a Boeing and we can’t lose some of these companies. And companies — frankly, Bill — that were solid as — like, AAA companies. Because of what’s happened over the last couple of weeks, they go from AAA to being, like, they could use a hand.

Q Tough time.

THE PRESIDENT: We can’t — right. We can’t lose those companies. If we lose those companies, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs. Millions of jobs. The faster we go back, the better it’s going to be. We have a pent-up energy that’s going to be unbelievable. We’re going to bring it back fast; I really believe that.

Q I’ve got a lot more questions. And my — so does my colleague, Harris Faulkner. I’ll allow her to rejoin the conversation now.

THE PRESIDENT: She’s great.

Q Harris?

THE PRESIDENT: Do I have an earplug here?

Q I’ll help you out with that.

THE PRESIDENT: If I could do that —

Q Go ahead, Harris. I’ll — I’ll relay and translate.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q Hello, Mr. President. So good to see you today. This will be a little bit to relay. I understand you guys are going back and forth on the economy and employers, but more than 66 percent of people are employed by small businesses. The VP talked a little bit about this. We hear you dropping big companies’ names. The question here is, how do you shore up both as you look forward?

Q The question is a good one. And it’s pointed — you’re talking about Boeing, and yet you’ve got — what? — two thirds of American businesses are small businesses.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

Q And you think about what they’re trying to do, in terms of adjusting to this new reality that’s been thrown on them. What will you do for small business?

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, well, first of all, I have to say that Harris is one of my favorite people. And I didn’t hear a word she said, and I was hoping it wasn’t too devastating a question. But she is a fantastic person, I have to say that, okay? Now, that I’ve said it, because I can’t hear Harris —

But, no, the bill is very much focused on the small-business person. It’s very much focused on small companies, including restaurants and all sorts of small companies.

And what people don’t realize — you know, you’re talking about these massive — we have the greatest companies in the world. You talk — you add them all up and the small businesses are just about equal in size to these massive companies, of which we have many also.

It’s the engine of our country: small business. This bill is absolutely aimed at the small business and the worker, and the workers of those small businesses. And the owners — the owners are going to need help. They’re going to need some loans. They’re going to need things. And we’re going to be able to take care of them because we don’t want those small businesses to go out of business, nor do we want the big businesses to go out of business.

Q When they said, “Mr. President, we got to shut this down,” how hard did you push back?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’ll tell you, I never heard of such a thing. We’ve had flus where we lose 36,000. We’ve lost as many, I guess, as 78,000 people in one year. And they came in and they said to me, “Sir, we’re going to have to close the country.” I said, “What are you talking about?” “Well, we have a virus. It’s coming in.”

And I knew that, and I made the early decision with China. So, I already — already closed it off to China, and that was a long time before they came in. But they came in — experts — and they said, “We’re going to have to close the country.” I said, “We’ve never closed the country before. This has never happened before. You’re going to — you’re saying…” I said, “Are you — are you serious about this? We are going to take this country that’s fully employed, where we have 160 million people working, and you’re telling me we have to close it and people are going to go out of business and they’re going to go bankrupt and they’re not going to have jobs? What are we talking about here?”

This — don’t forget, this has never been done. We’ve had flus before. We’ve had viruses before. So this is something new. And this is why I say we have to — I gave it two weeks and — you know, I guess, by Monday or Tuesday, it’s about two weeks. And we’ll assess at that time and we’ll give it some more time if we need a little more time. But we have to open this country up.

Q But when they came to you and had that conversation with you, how long did it take you to accept that new reality?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I — look, I accept things. I understand things very quickly. I mean, I — I understood exactly what they were saying, but we can socially distance ourselves and go to work. And you’ll have to work a little bit harder and you can clean your hands five times more than you’re used to. You don’t have to shake hands anymore with people. That might be something good coming out of this. Although I must tell you, as a politician, it’s a lot warmer when you walk into a crowd and you’re shaking a lot of people’s hands. You love those people.

Q I’d agree with you on that.

THE PRESIDENT: They love me and I love them, you know. But — but it is a little bit colder. But you won’t be shaking hands for at least a while and things will happen. But we have to put the country to work.

Look, you’re going to lose a number of people to the flu, but you’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression. You’re going to lose people. You’re going to have suicides by the thousands. You’re going to have all sorts of things happen. You’re going to have instability. You can’t just come in and say, “Let’s close up the United States of America.” The biggest — the most successful country in the world by far.

You know, when I came in, when I was elected — and you knew this number — China was going to overtake us in the year 2019. Wasn’t even close. We went way up, and they didn’t. We’ve done great. They pay us a fortune in tariffs and everything else. And yet, we have a good relationship with them. We just signed a trade deal. But we’re the number one in the world by far.

And now a few people walk into the Oval Office and say, “Sir, we have to close up the country.” I said, “What are you…” I said, “What are you talking about?”

Q And that — and that, Mr. President, must have been a very difficult thing to accept.

THE PRESIDENT: One of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made, because I knew that, when you do it, as soon as you do it, you’re going to drop — I mean, they’re talking about 20 or 25 points of GDP. Nobody’s ever heard of 25 points. If we went down a point, that’s a big deal. Now, all of a sudden, you’re basically turning off the country. I said, “This has never been done before. What are you talking about?”

But we understand it; you have hotspots. But we’ve had hotspots before. We’ve had horrible flus. I mean, think of it: We average 36,000 people. Death. Death. I’m not talking about cases, I’m talking about death — 36,000 deaths a year. People die — thirty-six [thousand] — from the flu. But we’ve never closed down the country for the flu. So you say to yourself, “What is this all about?”

Now —

Q How did you —

THE PRESIDENT: It’s never been done.

Q How did you process that?

THE PRESIDENT: Not good. I wasn’t happy about it. And I also knew that I had to do it beca- —

Look, with Turkey — I give this as an example — and Syria, I said, “Sign a deal with the Kurds. Make peace.” Erdogan, he didn’t want to. He’s a — he’s a man who loves Turkey. And I have a very good relation- — I said, “Sign a deal.” He didn’t really want to, the Kurds didn’t really want to, and it went on — you know, the so-called Safe Zone, the — recently, a few months ago.

I said, “Sign a deal. Do me a favor: Sign a deal. Get it done.” They didn’t really want to. All of a sudden, they start fighting — fighting, fighting, fighting. And it vicious. And other countries got involved. Now I say, “Let’s sign a deal.” They said, “Okay. We’ll sign a deal.” We needed a period because I don’t think — if I would have not done it, we would have been unbelievably criticized for not doing it. But it’s never been done before.

Q One more —

THE PRESIDENT: Bill, somehow the word got out that this is the thing we’re supposed to be doing. Now, we’ve had some really bad epidemics and other things — I mean, we’re calling this a “pandemic,” but we’ve had bad epidemics. I’m sure they could have been called pandemics. But we never did a thing like this before. But I had to do it. It’s been very painful for our country and very destabilizing for our country, and we have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought. And people can go back to work and they can also practice good judgment.

Q One last question then we’ll get back to our viewers here, too. A month ago, the CDC had an initial test that failed. At that moment in late February, you said, “It’s perfect.” And it wasn’t perfect. So what happened there in the early stages —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, what I was said was —

Q — in late February?

THE PRESIDENT: What I said was perfect was my conversation with the head of the Ukraine. That’s what I really said is perfect, okay? That was another whole scandal, nonsense — a total, you know, witch hunt.

But this one is a much different thing. We had other administrations — not just the last one — they built up a platform. They built up a test. But the test was no good. It didn’t handle large numbers of people. It was okay for a very small group, but not for a large group. So we had to break it down —

Q So then, did the CDC screw up or did you screw up? Or —

THE PRESIDENT: No, I — we did not screw up —

Q Or where did this go wrong?

THE PRESIDENT: — and I don’t think CDC screwed up either. They had a test that would have worked for a small group of people — in other words, for a normal problem. I don’t think anybody could have — in all fairness to CDC — and this is a big government agency and there are very good people in there. But nobody ever expected a thing like this. Nobody would say that millions and millions of people would have been tested.

So what we did is we broke that egg, we broke that system, and we’ve created a new system that now we’re doing unbelievably big numbers and it’s set for the future, should we ever need it again. I hope we don’t need it again.

Q Thank you for your time. We’re going to bring the others in, as well, in a moment.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Good.

Q Thank you for being patient. We will get to you. We have so many questions, not only from our network, but from millions of people all across the country.

So, your questions in a moment here as we continue live in the Rose Garden at the White House with the President and his task force in Washington.

(Commercial break begins.)

(Commercial break ends.)

Q Welcome back to our Fox News Virtual Town Hall with President Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force. Excited to finally get to be able to talk one on one with him now. We got our tech problems worked out.

I want to first ask you, Mr. President, about the idea of the political division that’s going on on Capitol Hill. You’re talking about these bills — this phase one, two, and three of the stimulus bill — like they’re going to fix so much with the economy, and people are literally fighting like cats. I mean, what can you do to bring them together?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think they’re actually coming together. We had a bill that — it was done the other night and then, all of a sudden, somebody else injected herself in and all of — we didn’t have a — we didn’t have anything that was even remotely signable.

But now I hear, just from a few minutes ago, that they’re doing well. And it’s for the workers, it’s for the people of the country. And I hear they’re doing pretty well, so we’ll see how it comes out. But it should have been — well, it’s like — I watched Governor Cuomo, and he was very nice. We’re building them hospitals. We’re building them medical centers. And he was complaining about — we’re doing probably more — definitely more for — than anybody else.

And he was talking about the ventilators, but he should have ordered the ventilators. And he had a choice; he had a chance. Because right here — I just got this out — that he refused to order 15,000 ventilators. I’ll show this to Bill, but — take a look at that, Bill. What does that say?

Q Is this social distancing here? (Laughs.)

Q Go ahead and read it to us.

THE PRESIDENT: This says that New York Governor Cuomo rejected buying recommended 16,000 ventilators in 2015 for the pandemic — for a pandemic; established death panels and a lotteries instead.

So he had a chance to buy, in 2015, 16,000 ventilators at a very low price and he turned it down. I’m not blaming him or anything else, but he shouldn’t be talking about us. He’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators. We’re going to help.

But, you know, if you think about — if you think about Governor Cuomo, we’re building him four hospitals. We’re building him four medical centers. We’re working very, very hard for the people of New York. We’re working along with him, and then I watch him on the show, complaining. And he had 16,000 ventilators that he could have had at a great price and he didn’t buy them.

Q Yeah. And I hear you going back and forth. And Governor Cuomo has talked, in recent days, that you regularly talk and have a good relationship. And so, we will follow the news as you’re bringing it to us there — right there in the Rose Garden.

I want to get to a viewer because the people’s voice is so huge right now and always, Mr President. Joyce submitted a question from Facebook about the stimulus checks. Let’s watch and I want to get your reaction.

VIEWER: I am fortunate; I can continue to work. I can telecommute. There are people who are losing jobs. They’re losing an entire income for a household. And rather than receive a check, I would just like to pay it forward and have the government pass mine on to someone else.

THE PRESIDENT: Wow, is that great? Well, you obviously come from West Virginia and I love that state. And thank you very much, Joyce. I’ll tell you what: That’s great. I wish we had more people like Joyce, I will tell you.

But, you know, it’s going to be a substantial amount of money — around $3,000 for a family of four and — assuming it all gets done, assuming we can get the Democrats to sign it. But it’ll be great.

But, Joyce, I think that’s such a nice gesture. Really, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Q Well, and you just said, right when you and I began talking a few minutes ago, that, you know, almost in breaking-news fashion, it looks like the juggernaut might be moving on Capitol Hill to try to push towards that stimulus bill.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

Q So, we’ll be watching for that.

You know, Mr. President, I’m watching the Dow as you have been talking — and, formerly, the Vice President. It’s up by more than 1,500 points. What do you watch for each day? I mean, are you keeping your eye on that? Is it — is companies calling you — small and large? Like, what is your barometer that, “Okay —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

Q — things are in trouble or things are doing better”?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the Dow was helped by the fact that they — you know, there were theories that we were going to stay out for four or five months, and you can’t do that, as a count- — you’d destroy our country if you need a thing like that.

And we’re going to be opening relatively soon. And we are — our time comes up on Monday or Tuesday, our — you know, the allotted two weeks, but we’ll stay a little bit longer than that. But we want to get open very soon. I think that was a big reason it’s gone up.

I also think that the fact that the Senate and the House, I — we seem to be getting along as much as you can get along. We seem to be getting along now on a — on a bill. I think that maybe had even less of an impact than the fact that we’re opening up this incredible country — because we have to do that. I’d love to have an open by Easter. Okay?

Q Oh, wow. Okay.

THE PRESIDENT: I would to have it open by Easter. I will — I will tell you that right now. I would love to have that — it’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.

Q That’s April 12th. So we will watch and see what happens.

THE PRESIDENT: Good.

Q I’m going to toss it back to my cohort, Bill.

Q Thank you, Harris. That would be a great American resurrection — (laughs) — two and a half-plus weeks from now.

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) That’s very good.

Q So, Dr. Birx, a series of questions on the medical front here. I want to go to Allison from Indiana — appropriately so, Mr. Vice President — who has a question, by way of Facebook, about possible mutation. Watch.

Q My question is this: If you were to get the coronavirus, can it mutate and can you get it again?

Q Dr. Birx?

DR. BIRX: So, that’s a great question and a very smart question. Because it’s an RNA virus, it can mutate and it constantly mutates. But what has been pretty good about the coronaviruses in general is they keep their structural pieces very similar. What do I mean by that? There’s certain — the outer coat, the envelope, and the inside part of the virus has stayed very constant. It’s even very similar to SARs, which we haven’t seen since 2003.

And so, we — what has been picked for sites, both for the vaccine and for monoclonal antibodies, are very much those constant sites. And we believe that anybody who becomes positive and makes effective antibody — because there are some people who can’t make as good of antibody as others — but if you make effective antibody, you shouldn’t get re-infected.

Q The way it was described to me — and correct the medical positioning of this question — but the virus is trying to figure out a way to survive. And that’s where it moves around and it mutates.

Now, in Singapore, there was a headline earlier today suggesting a possible second wave in that island nation. How do you — how do you gauge that at this point?

DR. BIRX: Well, remember, in Singapore, they took the President’s guidelines and the executed them very early because they could see China next door. And so, they saw those and they implemented those guidelines. So, very few people became infected in Singapore.

Because so few people have been infected, you don’t have what they called “herd immunity.” And so, until we get through this current pandemic, this — if it has seasonality, which we hope and believe it could — if it gets through this current season, it will be in everybody’s best interest to do as the President has recommended — our work on additional vaccines, our work on additional therapeutics, in really getting to both pre- and post-prophylaxis so that the healthcare providers can get — get a shot, potentially, that will protect them. We would call it “pre-exposure prophylaxis.”

All of those things are being worked on to prepare us for the next season. We’re — so, we’re focused today on what we need today and to go — get through this current epidemic. And then we’re also getting prepared in case it comes back in the fall, or in case it comes back in the fall of 2021, when we’d have a vaccine.

Q I’m going to bring the Surgeon General on this. And to both of you, I’ve been listening to you very carefully for weeks now. And what you’ve said is, we want to be the model of South Korea. Well, South Korea has “flattened the curve,” to borrow a phrase, and their death rate is about 1.2 percent. This morning, here in the U.S., our death rate was right around that same mark: 1.3 percent.

To the Surgeon General, what does that tell you? Or how much do you consider the death rate here at home when we try and make decisions for ourselves?

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: Well, thank you for that, Bill. I think there are a couple of important things for the American people to remember. The first one is that, when you look at the data here in the United States, of all the people who we’ve tested so far, only about 90 percent of those — well, 90 percent of those folks do not have the coronavirus; they test negative. So, most people, even when they have cold and flu symptoms, do not have coronavirus. Number one.

Number two, 98, 99 percent of people are recovering. So people need to understand that, yes, some people will get coronavirus in many communities across America, but that most of them will recover. That — that’s very important for people to understand.

And beyond that, we’re trying to help people understand the importance of stopping the spread. And the President — when he, nine days ago, listened to his health — his health providers — his health — his health consultants, he said, “What do we need to do right now?” And we said, “We need to lean into this next two weeks to stop the spread and then we need to reassess.”

And one thing I can tell you for certain is that I’ve been on the task force for three weeks, and the President listens to Tony Fauci. He listens to Dr. Birx. He listens when I or Dr. Carson or Dr. Hahn or Dr. Redfield speak up. And he also listens to the governors. And so we will assess at the end of the 14 days and we’ll figure out the most appropriate thing to do. And based on my experience in the task force so far, the President will make an appropriate decision based on all the data.

Q Thank you for that answer. Is everything cool with you and Dr. Fauci? He was not there —

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, absolutely.

Q He wasn’t there last night for —

THE PRESIDENT: No.

Q — the briefing. He’s not here today.

THE PRESIDENT: Because he has other things to do. No, we get along very well.

Q Your relationship is good.

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s been very good. You would have heard about it if it wasn’t. I mean, it — every time he does — he’s not at a meeting — and sometimes other people, too — they said, “Why isn’t Dr. Birx at a meeting? Is there a problem?” And I said, “Deborah, could you please come to the meeting? Do you mind? Because…” (Laughter.)

No, they — they — you know, I have — I respect all of these people. These are great people. And Deborah is extraordinary and Tony is extraordinary. I get along with all of them. But if there’s — you know, they have other things to do.

And, yesterday, we weren’t really talking about what he’s an expert on. We were talking about other things — a lot of other things. And, you know, they — I don’t think they should be at every press conference.

Q So, you’re good? That’s the point.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we’re fine. We’re fine.

Q Dr. Birx, early on, you said the massive amount of testing in South Korea — 96 percent, to the Surgeon General’s point — 96 percent came back negative. I think that’s an important point to convey again to the American people.

Noah from Maryland has a question now. His question is about healthcare workers on the frontlines of this pandemic here.

VIEWER: Now, my mother is a nurse. She works in the healthcare field. What do you and your team plan to do to help healthcare workers that are putting themselves at risk every single day as a result of the coronavirus?

Q Excellent question. Dr. Birx, do you want to take that?

DR. BIRX: Yeah that’s — I love that question because my mother is a nurse. She’s 91 now, so she’s not practicing. But I think we have to remember: In a majority of hospitals, in a majority of places, it is the nurses that are on the frontlines. They’re the ones working every moment with the patients to ensure that they do well. They’re the ones at the bedside. They’re the ones providing comfort. They’re the ones providing the medical interventions. And they are our first priority. It is why we worked so hard to get the protective — personal protective equipment out there.

But I think what we didn’t often talk about is, we’re really — with the changing guidelines for testing, that is going to free up all of that personal and protective devices that were being utilized for testing back into the hospitals and the clinics for our nurses and doctors. And that’s going to make millions of more masks and PPE, as we call it, available to the hospital workers who need it the most because now people can self-test.

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: And, Bill, can I jump in on that really quickly? I want people to know that I’m a still-practicing anesthesiologist at Walter Reed. The Vice President and I, we first met during Ebola. And I went into the hospital. I put on PPE. I know how scary it is, even when you have the proper equipment, to deal with an infectious disease. And I’m getting texts, phone calls, messages from people all across the country.

And I want healthcare workers of America to know: We are fighting for you each and every day to make sure you get what you need from the stockpile, to make sure you get what you need from manufacturers across America, to make sure you’re getting decreased demand — which is why we put out our new guidelines on elective surgeries. Because it’s not just about increasing the supply; we aren’t going to supply our way out of this problem, as important as supply is. We need to also lower demand by decreasing unnecessary usage of PPE.

And a game changer that just came out, just this week, was the new FDA self-swabs. And the Vice President and the President have talked about that. That will utilize less PPE. So, we’re working on making sure supply gets where it needs to, and FEMA is doing a great job of that, but lowering demand —

Q How can — but how can someone watching this right now acquire a self-test?

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: Well, right now, the FDA is making that more available. We’ve seen testing increase in real numbers. When you look at last week, from Monday to Friday, the amount of testing increased tenfold. So we’re seeing testing increase. The concern is that it’s actually using up more PPE, which is why we want to prioritize testing for the people who are most in need — the healthcare workers, the people who are vulnerable — and why we’re pushing. The FDA has lowered barriers like none other to make sure we can get these new testing modalities available that use less PPE and do more tests.

Q Thank you for that. Back to Harris now, with another question. Harris.

Q All right, actually, you know what? I want to stay on this home-testing kit topic for just a second with Dr. Birx. You know, the home test, who — is there a place where people check a box and say I’m positive or not? How are you going to keep up with people who test themselves? And you need that information, Dr. Birx, to know where the clusters are in the country. That’s part of why you would do it.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s not a home test.

DR. BIRX: Great. So it’s not a home test; it’s a self-test. So what do I mean by that? I mean, the individual can drive up, receive the items — because, again, we still want to just test people with fever and symptoms that really need to be tested. They can self-swab the front of their nose, put it in the container, then the person can collect it with gloves — gloves alone — with the biohazard bag and get it in.

I just want to speak to the Americans for just a second though. We have to ensure that we still are testing, even though, probably by today, we will have done more tests than South Korea did in eight weeks in the last eight days.

In the last eight days, we’ve done more testing than South Korea. But we did that because we transformed the testing process, as the President spoke to. But we don’t want people, who are just worried, to go get tested. If you don’t have a persistent fever, if you don’t have a cough, if you’re not in the risk group, if you’re not a nurse or doctor, we really want the testing and the drive-through testing, and the testing that is provided in the cities, to be very much still focused on the people who need it.

Q Got it.

DR. BIRX: Because there’s only so much even those high-throughput machines are doing. They’re doing about 50-, 60-, 70,000 tests a day now. They could get potentially to 150,000 a day, but we want to make sure we’re testing in the areas that really have the problems.

Q All right, and knowing the difference between the home and —

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah, Bill, it’s one of the things — just to amplify that point, if I may.

Q Go right ahead.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yeah, thanks, Harris. You know, American people are asking all the time — the President and I hear all the time and see it — is what can they do to make a difference. And in addition to the “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” the American people can take Dr. Birx’s advice.

It’s that old proverb that “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” And one of the ways that you can help is by recognizing that we want to focus testing on people that have symptoms. Although, according to the test now, as the Surgeon General said, 90 percent of the people that have been tested for the coronavirus don’t have it. Okay? That number — we’ve tested more than 320,000 people. And that’s an encouraging number, I would expect.

But for any American out there that just may be concerned but not be symptomatic: One of the ways you can make sure that testing is available for people that have symptoms — and, just as importantly, for our healthcare workers that we want to make sure have all the protective equipment that they need — you can recognize that if you don’t have symptoms, don’t do a test.

THE PRESIDENT: Harris, one thing I might add —

Q Thank you both for taking that. Bill.

THE PRESIDENT: Harris, one thing I might add that, to me, is so important: Again, we took something that was broken and we made it the model. And I didn’t even know — I just heard the number for the first time from Deborah — that in a short period of time, we’ve done more testing than South Korea.

Now, you’re not going to read that in the newspapers because they don’t like to write things like that. But I’d love you to say that one more time because that — that’s a big number. We’ve done more than South Korea in a short period of time. We’re doing more now than South Korea, by a lot.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: (Inaudible) eight weeks.

THE PRESIDENT: What was that number?

DR. BIRX: So, we’re believing that there are probably around 2,009 — 2,900 — 2,000 — 29,000 —

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: 290,000.

DR. BIRX: 290,000 tests.

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: 290,000. Almost 300,000.

DR. BIRX: And now we’re way over 300,000. But we achieved that over the last seven to eight days. We have to do more. We understand that, but we want —

THE VICE PRESIDENT: They did that over eight weeks.

DR. BIRX: Over about eight weeks.

THE PRESIDENT: We’re going up — we’re going up — proportionately, we’re going up very, very rapidly. Every day, we’re going up higher.

Q What was our negative test rate at the moment? It’s — is it 90 percent?

DR. BIRX: I’m glad you asked.

Q Or is it higher?

DR. BIRX: So I really am glad you asked, because this gets into “Where is the virus now and where is it expanding?” And so, across the country, our test rates are still way under 10 percent, except for one place: New York City, metro New York, New Jersey, close to New York City. Those rates are coming in in the 28 percent range. Right now, New York, the case attack rate — what we’re talking about, the number of people who are getting infected — is four to five times any other place in the country.

Q Why is that? Density of population?

DR. BIRX: I think part of it is density; part of it is the spread that may have happened on metal surfaces, like in the subway and people that were in the subway. Part of it may be a large number of people came back after Christmas, from Asia, that didn’t get caught up in the closure.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you blame the governor for that?

DR. BIRX: And part of that could be the Europeans who have come back subsequently. And there’s a — I mean, it’s a big area of world trade and global transit, so I think the virus probably was quietly expanding, because until it gets into an older population, you don’t really see it in the same way.

Q Thank you for that. And we’ll get to all of you again in a moment here. Going to get a quick break here. More of your questions from across America here at the White House, in the Rose Garden, after this.

(Commercial break begins.)

(Commercial break ends.)

Q Welcome back to our Fox News Virtual Town Hall with President Trump and members of his task force. We are in the Rose Garden, here at the White House, and it’s a real honor to be sitting here with you all.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Q And I hope, together, we can kill the virus and give a lot of people hope about getting back to their regular lives.

THE PRESIDENT: It’s true.

Q You said something 20 minutes ago that I’m sure a lot of people were pretty keen on. You said that we would — I’m paraphrasing now — you would like to be back to normal by Easter Sunday.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q That’s 19 days from now.

THE PRESIDENT: It’s okay.

Q Is that true? Is that possible? Or is that false hope?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s possible. Why isn’t it? I mean, we’ve never closed the country before, and we’ve had some pretty bad flus and we’ve had some pretty bad viruses. And I think it’s absolutely possible.

Now, people are going to have to practice all of the social distancing, and don’t shake hands, and wash your hands, and all of the things that we’re doing now. But we have to get our country back to work. Our country wants to be back at work. That was not a controversial thing I said the other day. Our country wants to go back to work.

And, again, the cure — it’s like this cure is worse than the problem. Again, people — many people — in my opinion, more people are going to die if we allow this to continue. We have to go back to work. Our people want to go back to work.

Q But you have said consistently is, the first order of business is to kill the virus. So when you look at the data from around the world and across our country, how do you determine that 19 days from now it might be safe? Because there are millions of people watching this now who have their family fortune on the line.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Well, they have their family fortune on the line the other way, too. They’re going to lose their jobs, maybe never to get them back. They’re going to lose their businesses, never to get them back.
We want to start up as soon as we can because we’re going to have a very quick comeback if we do that. If we delay this thing out, you’re going to lose more people than you’re losing with the — with the situation as we know it.

So I think it’s very important for our country to go back. And I’ve had many, many people — you know, when you said it was a little bit controversial, not to most people. Most people think I’m right about it.

Now, whether we’re locked in a room, or whether we’re in our office and practicing all of the things that we’re supposed to be practicing — staying away from each other, you know, et cetera, not shaking hands, washing your hands all of the time. But our country has to get back to work. Otherwise — otherwise, it’s going to be very hard to start it up again. We can’t lose the advantage that we have.

Q What we’re trying to figure out in this whole scenario here is how deadly the virus is. And, so far, it is highly contagious but not very deadly. We can agree on that based on the data, correct?

DR. BIRX: Yes. I mean, yes.

Q So when you take the answer of Easter Sunday, do you see that as realistic? Do you see that as possible?

DR. BIRX: So my job — and I think what’s really important is a lot of what we’ve done is we’ve tackled this epidemic the way people said we should have tackled flu in 1918. And they compared St. Louis, who took this kind of approach, to Philadelphia.

What we’re trying to do now is use 21st century solutions and trying to get data down to the most granular level so we understand what’s happening at the area of the spread.

So even today there are counties throughout the United States that don’t have their first case. So our job is to make sure they never have their first case and ensure that our efforts are focused on where the virus is expanding. That can be done today because we have that level of granularity. So that’s what the President has asked us to put together: to use these two weeks to get all the data from around the country and all the data from around the globe, and really understand what’s working.

And it’s really important that the Americans know — I know the Vice President covered this very clearly in the first hour — but every American needs to continue the President’s guidelines for these next — these next six days or seven days. We have to have them following those guidelines.

Q I see the Surgeon General shaking his head in agreement too.

THE PRESIDENT: Bill, excuse me, just one second. You can’t compare this to 1918 where close to 100 million people died. That was a flu, which — a little different. But that was a flu where if you got it you had a 50/50 chance, or very close, of dying.

I think we’re substantially under 1 percent because the people that get better are not reporting. So we only know people that go to doctors and go to hospitals, and we’re taking that. And we’re still a little bit above 1 percent. When you add all of the people — the millions of people that have it, that get better, we’re substantially less than 1 percent.

And when they came to my office — don’t forget, they were saying 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent — this is a very big difference. No, we have to put our country back to work.

Q We have a few minutes left, and I want to bring in our panel of experts too. Dr. Mehmet Oz is with us. Dr. Marc Siegel and Dr. Nicole Saphier. I want to give you guys a round of questions quickly here, with Dr. Oz.

Why don’t we start with Dr. Siegel this time around? Go ahead, Marc.

DR. SIEGEL: Mr. President, with the deaths going over 600 today, I want to say that fear — the fear that’s coming out of this disturbs me the most. And fear divides. You need unification and unified leadership to fight the fear.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

DR. SIEGEL: So I was really encouraged to see you reaching out to governors — Governor Cuomo, Governor Newsom — making liaisons that weren’t there before. Do you think that that kind of movement, where you’re the leader and other people work with you, will help us to isolate the virus in the epicenters where they are — to separate out those epicenters, to test the people in those centers, and to thereby squash the virus?

THE PRESIDENT: I do. I think, Doctor, it’s a very good thing. And Governor Newsom and I have been getting along really great. We’re sending the ship — the great hospital ship, as you know.

And we are doing very well with, I think, almost all of the governors. For the most part, it really has become something. It’s — it’s — we’re dealing almost every day. We’re speaking to each other, whether it’s conference calls. Usually we’ll have 50 governors on the call at the same time.

No, I think we’re doing very well. But, you know, it’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also. They can’t say, “Oh gee, we should get this, we should get that.” We’re doing a great job, like in New York, where we’re building, as I said, four hospitals, four medic- — we’re literally building hospitals and medical centers. And then I hear that, you know, there’s a problem with ventilators. Well, we sent them ventilators. And they could have had 15- or 16,000; all they had to do is order them two years ago. But they decided not to do it. They can’t blame us for that.

Q Dr. Oz is up next. Go ahead, Doctor.

DR. OZ: President Trump, a good surgeon knows, after the surgery, when his patient can be discharged. And these 15 days are like a big operation on America.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

DR. OZ: But a great surgeon knows when there’s a complication after discharge. So if we can meet the goal of fixing America and getting it back on his feet by Easter, I’d love to know exactly how you know that it’s safe from a medical perspective. What’s going to indicate that we might have to pull back a tiny bit in case we have a relapse?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, Doctor, a thing like that could happen. But I really believe that we can do much of what we’re doing and we can do it from a work environment, instead of a — an environment where everybody is locked up and everybody is saying, “Oh, the business is gone. The business is gone and everybody is suffering depression.” You know better than anybody about depression. I’ve watched when you talk about depression. And that causes death and it causes a lot of problems.

And, you know, these are people. They want to save their business. They don’t want to be locked up in some room or some apartment or house, and in the meantime, their restaurants close, their businesses close. They want to be saving their business.

And I — I believe very strongly, you’re going to lose far more people by going that way than you are if we kept this thing going. I could keep them out. I mean, I’m sure that we have doctors that would say, “Let’s keep it closed for two years.” Okay? “Let’s close it up for two years.” No, we’ve got to get it open. Our people want it open, and that’s the way this country was built.

Q Dr. Nicole Saphier now. Doctor, go ahead with your question.

DR. SAPHIER: Thank you. And, President Trump, I do believe, as a nation, that we are beholden to you for your decisive swift action in the beginning with the travel ban. I do think that we would have been in a much different, worse situation had that not happened.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

DR. SAPHIER: However, we still did have a lag in the testing, which, of course, did not have anything to do with you.

But my question is for Dr. Birx and the task force. As we still see across the nation that some people are not able to get tests — I have colleagues that still can’t test some of their patients — is there a plan to fast track or even parallel track rapid ELISA serological testing to try and get this out there so that we can mobilize more PPE and more hospital beds by doing more testing and being able to isolate those people quickly?

DR. BIRX: Yeah, that’s a very good question. So, right now, the tests that we have are all based on the RNA of the virus. And so we’re utilizing the platforms, and thank goodness we’re utilizing the platforms that were developed, really, to work and support HIV-positive clients.

So this is the machines that have been used to detect their viral load for the last more than a decade in the United States. Those machines right now are being utilized for this test in a high-throughput way. We’ve asked developers to work on a point-of-care fingerprint test that could be used for antibody and antigen, but the antibody tests will only tell you if you have been infected. Even if we can get IgM, it will be part of the early and — probably recovery phase. And then, we’re working with companies to work on getting RNA tests that are point of care.

So these are really critical test that people are working on right now. But, in the meantime, we’re using what we have today to ensure that we can get more testing done.

And I just wanted to say: I want to thank the American people and physicians who have let us prioritize — remember, we didn’t have this platform until eight days ago. We’ve done all of these diagnoses for inpatients, primarily, so that they can get on the appropriate therapy. And we prioritize our testing to hospital patients. We will, over the next few weeks, be able to make more tests available to the actual American public with symptoms and to the doctors’ offices as you’ve requested.

THE PRESIDENT: And, Nicole, it’s important to remember we’ve done more tests in eight days than South Korea has done in eight weeks. And our tests are better; they’re highly sophisticated. And, frankly, I took one. It’s not the most pleasant thing in the world, I will tell you that. We’re going to have a much simpler test very soon. But we have a really good test, and we’ve done more in eight days, nobody know — I just heard this number a few minutes ago. I learned it from being on your show, actually. Pretty impressive.

Q I think the way you described it was: up the nasal passage, and took a right hand —

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And you hang a right.

Q Hang a right at the eye.

THE PRESIDENT: Hang a right under the eye.

Q To all of you: Stand by. We’ve got a few more moments left here. But as our virtual town hall continues, to all the doctors — Nicole Saphier, Mehmet Oz, and Marc Siegel — we very much rely on you on a day-to-day basis. So thank you for being a part of this today.

(Commercial break begins.)

(Commercial break ends.)

Q Back here in the Rose Garden at the White House, I’m Bill Hemmer with my colleague Harris Faulkner. I have about 90 seconds left. And just with the panel here — the President, the Vice President, Dr. Birx, and the Surgeon General — thank you again for your time. I see this as a public service, but also as a way to try and figure out what the facts are, and that’s the reason we came here.

But you were just saying again, Mr. Vice President, during the commercial, the way you can achieve your objective is how?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the President made it clear yesterday that we — we want to open up the country as soon as we can. But the key is that more Americans — and tens of millions are, Bill — but more Americans have put into practice the President’s coronavirus guidelines —

Q Just read those off —

THE VICE PRESIDENT: — “15 Days to Slow the Spread” —

Q — because it’s hard to see.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: — the sooner we’ll be able to open up.

Q What is it? “Wash your hands. If you’re sick, stay home”?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s personal hygiene. It’s — it’s if you’re sick, stay home. If someone in your house has the virus, stay home. But it’s also avoiding groups of more than 10. Avoiding unnecessary travel. Don’t eat in restaurants during this period of time. Use the drive-through. These are all the principles that every American can do.

Now, there are going to be Americans that that have different guidance from their state and local officials that are more stringent. We defer to that. We respect that. But the more Americans that do this, the sooner that we’ll be able, as the President said, to get back to work.

Q We have to be a patient nation if you’re going to ask them to do that, as you well know.

Mr. President, thank you for your time.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Q And I’ll see a bit later on “Bill Hemmer Reports” at 3 o’clock Eastern Time.
And to Mr. Vice President Mike Pence, thank you. Dr. Birx, terrific work, and the Surgeon General, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.

END 2:00 P.M. EDT

“Rally to the standard” is a call to arms when a situation is critical, there is no time for lengthy debate, and optimal solutions are needed.  Americans are rallying to the standard.

President Trump is subjecting himself to ridiculous attacks by an insufferable corporate media press corps during daily press briefings. The result is helping to expose a resistance ideology that rots the nation; and Americans are rallying behind him.

President Trump has surrounded himself with health experts, and subject expertise from the medical community; however, he also cuts through the complex aspects with common sense answers the American public can understand.  POTUS is really good at skipping the pontificating elocution & relating, conveying, the challenges to middle-America on terms that everyone can see.

As a result of Americans seeing a direct and accountable, solution-driven, business approach being applied to a national emergency, the approval ratings for President Trump have jumped significantly.  Optimal solutions are not always perfect; but in times of crisis, great leaders know to generate optimal solutions.   The entire administration is focused on achieving optimal solutions for every part of the coronavirus challenge as they surface.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump may be enjoying a small rally in public support as the nation faces the COVID-19 pandemic. Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults, up from 44% earlier this month, approve of the job Trump is doing as president. Trump also had 49% job approval ratings — the best of his presidency — in late January and early February around the time of the Senate impeachment trial that resulted in his acquittal.

[…]  Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic may be behind his higher overall approval rating. Americans give the president generally positive reviews for his handling of the situation, with 60% approving and 38% disapproving. Ninety-four percent of Republicans, 60% of independents and 27% of Democrats approve of his response.  (read more)

ps.  Behind every great man…. well, you know…  God Bless Melania !

Earlier today New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted FEMA during a press conference for sending 400 medical ventilators when his state needs 30,000.  WATCH:

.

However, in 2015 the New York State Department of Health specifically studied the issue, warned about a critical lack of ventilators during a pandemic, and the New York Governor made a specific decision NOT to order them: [pdf link here]

So Andrew Cuomo is blasting FEMA today for not providing something he choose not to order and prepare for in 2015.  That’s a little bit unfair and hypocritical, no?

 

You can tell when Speaker Pelosi recognizes a political backlash for her manipulative schemes because it’s the only time she blitzes the media. After suffering a very large political hit, beyond the capability of the media to defend, Pelosi said today the House will take up the Senate coronavirus bill.

The writing was on the wall late yesterday as people started digging into the 1,400 page House proposal and exposing all of the far-left ideological efforts within it. Billions were earmarked for nonsense progressive projects and the House scheme was fraught with social engineering that had nothing to do with assisting workers and businesses.

Even Pelosi’s own party started telling leadership they had gone way too far with the assembled list of nonsense legislation. The speaker recognized if she did not quickly make a tactical retreat her party would be crushed by exposure of the brazen politics they were attempting. The reach was so extreme, the media could not protect her.

In an effort to save a horrid face, the speaker was forced to blitz the media alone while all other house members watched to see how she could recover. Whenever Pelosi stands alone, that’s the “tell” for the size of the political miscalculation.  Pelosi announced she was abandoning plans for the 1,400 page House scheme. Now the senate work continues…

WASHINGTON DC – Congressional negotiators signaled Tuesday they are likely hours away from clinching a bipartisan agreement on a nearly $2 trillion emergency stimulus package — capping five days of frenetic talks over a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are expected to announce an agreement later Tuesday, under immense pressure from President Donald Trump, a dire economic outlook and the growing number of Americans losing their livelihoods amid the crisis.

The Senate’s lead negotiators — Mnuchin, Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland — have spent most of Tuesday huddling behind closed doors as they finalized policy details and legislative text. If those last-minute talks are successful, lawmakers say they could vote within hours.

“The timeline is as soon as possible,” Ueland said leaving a more than hourlong meeting with McConnell, Mnuchin and a half-dozen GOP senators who have been heavily involved in the rescue package.

“We’re trying to finalize all the documents, going through a lot of complicated issues, and we’re making a lot of progress,” Mnuchin said, flanked by Rep. Mark Meadows, who was recently tapped as Trump’s next chief of staff.

Schumer took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to declare that senators were “on the 2-yard line” and said there were no remaining disagreements that couldn’t be resolved over the next few hours. (read more)

President Trump and the COVID-19 Task Force will be holding a briefing from the White House at 5:30pm ET.  [Livestream Links Below]

White House Livestream Link – Fox News Livestream Link – PBS Livestream Link

[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Been a very busy day. I want to thank the American people for the incredible sacrifices that they’re making on behalf of our nation. And I want to encourage everyone to keep following our guidelines on social distancing: avoiding large gatherings and hand washing, and all of the other things that everybody knows they’re supposed to be doing.

Ultimately, the goal is to ease the guidelines and open things up to very large sections of our country as we near the end of our historic battle with the invisible enemy. Been going for a while, but we’ll win. We’ll win.

I said earlier today that I hope we can do this by Easter. I think that would be a great thing for our country, and we’re all working very hard to make that a reality. We’ll be meeting with a lot of people to see if it can be done. Easter is a very special day for many reasons. For me, for a lot of — a lot of our friends, that’s a very special day. And what a great timeline this would be. Easter, as our timeline — what a great timeline that would be.

My first priority is always the health and safety of the American people, and we want everyone to understand that we are continuing to evaluate the data. We’re working with the task force and making decisions based on what is best for the interests of our fantastic country.

In order to defeat the virus, we must continue to be very strong. Your resilience and spirit has been inspiring to everyone. Right now, this virus is attacking 149 countries, but everybody looks to us and they’re watching us.

And I’m very proud to be your President — I can tell you that. There’s tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Stay focused and stay strong. And my administration and myself will deliver for you as we have in the past.

Let me provide you an update on critical preparations and supplies in our war on the virus. Through FEMA, the federal government is distributing more than 8 million N95 respirators, 14 million surgical masks, and many, many millions more are under order, and they’ll be arriving soon. 2.4 million face shields, 1.9 million surgical gowns, 13.5 million gloves, and more than 4,000 ventilators to the areas of greatest need have already been sent. And we have 4,000 being delivered to New York.

The federal government is using every resource at its disposal to acquire and distribute critical medical supplies. The core element of this strategy is my executive order authorizing the use of the Defense Production Act, which has, as you know, already been activated, actually, a long time ago — quite a long time ago.

Private companies are heeding our call to produce medical equipment and supplies because they know that we will not hesitate to invoke the DPA in order to get them to do what they have to do. It’s called leverage. You don’t have to use it from the standpoint of — actually, it’s been activated, but you don’t have to use it. But the threat of it being there is great leverage. And companies are doing as we ask, and companies are actually — even better than that, they’re coming through and they’re calling us. And it’s been, really, something to see.

This morning, Ford, 3M, and General Electric Healthcare are making tremendous numbers — they’ve already started — of respirators ventilators and face shields. They’re working together. We didn’t have to exercise or utilize the DPA in any way. The fact that we have it helps, but we didn’t have to. And for the most part, we won’t have to.

We’re receiving full cooperation from companies with the understanding that the federal government stands ready to compel cooperation if need be. We haven’t found that to be the case.

It’s been really amazing to see these big, strong, powerful — in some cases, very small companies, family-owned companies, step up and make a lot of great product for what we’re going through and what we will continue to be going through for a while.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the National Guard are building four hospital facilities in New York City at the Javits Center, which will be operational very soon. They’ve already started.

In addition, they’re building four separate medical facilities in different parts of the state. We’re dealing with Governor Cuomo on that. So you’re going to have four hospitals and four medical facilities at the highest level, too. Really incredible facilities. Temporary but incredible.

We’re also deploying the U.S. Navy hospital ship, and that will be arriving in New York Harbor in the not-too-distant future. It’s finishing its maintenance. They’re doing a very big maintenance, and what we did is we condensed it very seriously. And, as you know, the other hospital ship — and these are incredible ships — it’s already on its way to Los Angeles.

So we’re in frequent contact with state and local officials, and getting a lot of work done. We’re, likewise, building hospitals in Los Angeles. We’re working also — the State of Washington. We’re working with the governor of the State of New Jersey. We’re building a medical facility, a hospital facility, and doing a lot of work.

I want to thank the people from FEMA — the great people from FEMA — and also the Army Corps of Engineers.

Secretary Mnuchin and the members of my administration continue to work closely with Congress. I’m pleased to report that we are working to pass the biggest and boldest financial relief package in American history. Senators will soon, hopefully, vote on a $2 trillion bill that will deliver direct cash payments to struggling Americans. No fault of their own. This came out of nowhere. Nobody can imagine this even happened. But it’s not their fault.

We want to protect, and we will, all of the things that a person needs protected and a family needs protected. We’re working on job retention, loans for small businesses, and extended unemployment insurance for laid-off workers.

The legislation will also include billions of dollars for additional resources for our, really, heroic — these are incredible doctors, nurses — brave — and hospitals, as well as support for hard-hit industries such as the airline industry and the cruise ship industry, which employ tremendous amounts of people and obviously serve very important functions beyond that.

With very tough protections for the American taxpayer, the loans will be very secure and they will be very profitable and, at the same time, they’ll bridge — they call them bridge loans. In many cases, they’ll be bridging these companies back into very good health. Some of them are very important companies that four weeks ago didn’t have a problem.

I’m also confident that the Democrats will do the right thing. I feel very confident. They’re working very hard together right now — Republicans and Democrats — and they’re getting very close to a very fair deal and a great deal for the people of our country.

Today, as you probably saw, the Dow surged over 2,100 points. That’s the all-time record in history of the Exchange. This is very encouraging. And I think part of the reason is they are looking at what is close to being passed, and I think a very big part of it is they see that we want to get our country opened as soon as possible. They see we’re working very hard on that. That’s a very big factor, I think, in today’s historic gain.

The legislation developed in the Senate is the first step to restoring confidence and stability to America’s economy as we look ahead to the time when we can carefully and responsibly reopen our country for business, and we hope that’s going to be very soon.

I want to assure Americans that we have a team of public health experts. You’ve gotten to know them as well as I know them; they’re great people. Incredible. Talented. They love our country. Also, economists and other professionals working to develop a sophisticated plan to reopen the economy as soon as the time is right — one based on the best science, the best modeling, and the best medical research there is anywhere on Earth.

Our great people have been — especially when it comes to our public health experts and officials — have been helping other countries, dealing with other countries, constant touch with other countries, helping them out, because many of them have never seen anything like what’s happening.

But our decision will be based on hard facts and data as to the opening. I’m also hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter — that beautiful Easter day. But rest assured, every decision we make is grounded solely on the health, safety, and wellbeing of our citizens.

This is a medical crisis; this isn’t a financial crisis. But it’s a thing that nobody has seen for many, many decades. Nothing like this. Marshaling our economic strength is a key feature of defeating the virus, producing the material supplies and equipment that we need. And they’re doing a really fantastic job.
We’re helping the governors. We had a conference call the other day with governors, and we allowed the press to join us in the call. And the spirit between us and the governors has been really great.

We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival. I think we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned a lot. This crisis has underscored just how critical it is to have strong borders and a robust manufacturing sector.
For three years, we’ve embarked on a great national project to secure our immigration system and bring back our manufacturing jobs. We brought back many jobs — records numbers — record numbers of jobs.

And this really shows — this experience shows how important borders are. Without borders, you don’t have a nation.
Our goal for the future must be to have American medicine for American patients, American supplies for American hospitals, and American equipment for our great American heroes.

Now, both parties must unite to ensure the United States is truly an independent nation in every sense of the word. Energy independence — we’ve established that. That’s something incredible that we have established. We’re energy independent, manufacturing independence, economic independence, and territorial independence enforced by strong, sovereign borders.

America will never be a supplicant nation. We will be a proud, prosperous, independent, and self-reliant nation. We will embrace commerce with all, but we will be dependent on none.

Above all, we know that the best thing for our economy and the world right now is a very, very powerful victory over the virus. Every day, the American people and showing the unity and resolve that has always defined the character of our nation.

In New York, citizens are using 3D printers to make hundreds of the face shields. They’re making them by the hundreds. In Texas, businesses and churches are uniting to collect gloves and thermometers for hospitals.

In the selfless actions of our amazing citizens, we’re seeing enduring strength of our magnificent nation, a spirit that can never be broken, and a victorious future that can never be denied. It never will be denied.

Now, what I’d like to do is, perhaps, ask a person who has really established herself as maybe the world’s great expert on what she does — if I could ask Deborah to come forward and say a few words. And then I’ll ask Tony to come up and speak, and then our Vice President. And then we’ll take a few questions, and we’ll do it quickly. And we’ll probably see you again tomorrow.

So, Deborah, please.

DR. BIRX: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I think those of you who heard at the town hall, we are continuing to accelerate testing at a record rate. We now have 370,000 tests that have been done. The majority of those — over 220,000 in the last eight days, which, those of you who have been tracking the South Korea numbers, put us equivalent to what they did in eight weeks that we did in eight days.

This was made possible because of the HHS team working together, bringing together the strength of the FDA with the CDC, and the leadership of Secretary Azar. We’re very proud of those numbers, but we know that we have to do more, and we continue to accelerate in testing to ensure that those who need the tests are tested first and have access.

As we talked about yesterday, we’re working on the ability for people to take their own sample. That does not mean home testing. That means taking your own sample in the front of your nose with available swabs into normal saline that can be transported to the laboratories. That will allow and free up all of the drive-throughs to be very sparing on PPE, because you’ll be able to do that with gloves rather than the full PPE outfits. This will allow for more of that PPE to be dedicated to our hospitals.

I think those of you who are tracking this epidemic closely, like I am, you will begin to see that there is encouraging results coming out of Italy. We are impressed by the decreases that are seen in mortality, the number of people succumbing to this illness, and the number of new cases.

Our new cases will continue to surge because we’re still working on our backlog, although we will be in touch with the laboratories after this press conference to really find out how many are still in backlog and how many were run in the last 24 hours. Until we get into a 24-hour cycle, we’re going to have a disproportional number of new cases compared to the actual new cases, and we will let you know when we have reached that equilibrium.

Finally, and I know Dr. Fauci will talk about this further, we remain deeply concerned about New York City and the New York metro area. About 56 percent of all the cases in the United States are coming out of that metro area, and 60 percent of all the new cases are coming out of the metro New York area, and 31 percent of the people succumbing to this disease.

It means, because they still are at the 31 percent mortality compared to the other regions of the country, that we can have a huge impact if we unite together. This means, as in all places, they have to be following the presidential guidelines that were put out eight or nine days ago. And this will be critical.

But to everyone who has left New York over the last few days: Because of the rate of the number of cases, you may have been exposed before you left New York. And I think, like Governor DeSantis has put out today, everybody who was in New York should be self-quarantining for the next 14 days to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread to others, no matter where they have gone, whether it’s Florida, North Carolina, or out to far, far reaches of Long Island.

We are starting to see new cases across Long Island that suggest people have left the city. So this will be very critical that those individuals do self-quarantine in their homes over these next 14 days to make sure they don’t pass the virus to others, based on the time that they left New York.

So if they already are 4 days out, then it’s just 10 more days. So I thank you if you help get that message out to others.

Dr. Fauci?

DR. FAUCI: Thank you very much, Mr. President and Deb. I want to just talk very briefly about two or three things.

First, the issue of testing and how that has really changed the complexion of the approach that we’re going to be able to take. We right — know testing was an issue. We had many questions of testing in this room for a number of times. Now that we literally have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of testing out there, there are a few things that we can do with that.

One of the things is that when we make policy about what we’re going to be doing with the rest of the country, particularly those areas that are not hotspots, we need to know what the penetrance of infection is there. So we need to put a light on those dark spots that we don’t know. We have to act, policy wise, on data. And we’re going to be getting more data — a lot more data.

The other thing is that the areas of the country that are not hotspots, that are not going through the terrible ordeal that New York and California and Washington State are going through, they still have a window of significant degree of being able to contain. In other words, when you test, you find somebody, you isolate them, you get them out of circulation, and you do the contact tracing.

When you have a big outbreak, it’s tough to do anything but mitigation. We have an opportunity now that we have the availability of testing to do that. So you’re going to be hearing more about how we can inform where we’re going, particularly because we have the ability to test.

The second thing is, I just want to reiterate what Dr. Birx said about New York. It’s a very serious situation. They’ve suffered terribly through no fault of their own. But what we’re seeing now is that, understandably, people want to get out of New York. They’re going to Florida. They’re going to Long Island. They’re going to different places.

The idea, if you look at the statistics, it’s disturbing. About one per thousand of these individuals are infected. That’s about 8 to 10 times more than in other areas, which means when they go to another place, for their own safety, they’ve got to be careful, monitor themselves. If they get sick, bring it to the attention of a physician. Get tested.

Also, the idea about self-isolating for two weeks will be very important, because we don’t want that to be another seeding point to the rest of the country, wherever they go.

And then thirdly, just one — one just comment about drugs and the testing of drugs. You know, you heard yesterday about drugs being out there that physicians, on an off-label way, can prescribe it to give people hope of something that hasn’t been definitively proven to work, but that might have some hope.

I don’t want anybody to forget that simultaneously with our doing that, we’re also doing randomized clinical trials on a number of candidates. You’ve heard about candidates, but there are others in the pipeline, where we’ll be able to design the study and, over a period of time, particularly since we have so many infections, we’ll be able to determine definitively are these safe and are they effective. We’re talking about remdesivir, other drugs, immune sera, convalescent serum, monoclonal antibodies. All of these are in the pipeline now, queuing up to be able to go into clinical trial.

So I’ll stop there and (inaudible).

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Tony. Great job.

Larry, how about just a quick few minutes on how we’re doing over at the Hill, please?

MR. KUDLOW: Thank you, sir. We’re mak- — we’re gaining great progress on this phase three legislation. Negotiations continue. We’ve had continued reports. I’ve been up there with Secretary Mnuchin. Secretary Mnuchin continues today with the Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, checking in with the President. They’re getting closer and closer. They expect a vote as soon as possible.

I just want to walk through a couple of key points. This legislation is urgently needed to bolster the economy; provide cash injections and liquidity; and stabilize financial markets to get us through a difficult period — a difficult and challenging period in the economy facing us right now, but also to position us for what I think can be an economic rebound later this year.

We started the year very strong. And then we got hit by the coronavirus in ways that probably nobody imagined possible. We’re dealing with that as best we can.

This package will be the single-largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States. The single-largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States.

Phase two delivered the sick leave for individuals — hourly workers, families, and so forth.

Phase three, a significant package for small businesses. Loan guarantees will be included. We’re going to take out expenses and lost revenues. As the President said, eligibility requires worker retention. We will maintain the people eligible. We’ll maintain their payrolls during this crisis period. And, on top of that, we will have direct deposit checks of roughly $3,000 for a family of four and that will bridge to enhanced, plussed-up unemployment insurance benefits that will essentially take those up to full wages. This is one, two, three, four.

You know, a strong workforce requires strong business. You can’t have a job without a business to work for. And the hope here is that — the companies that were operating very well at beginning of the year when the economy was in good shape, we will help them and their employees get through this tough period so they will come out the other side — let’s say this — later this spring or summer — and will continue their operations. That’s the key point.

Now, don’t forget there’s income tax deferrals for individuals and corporations without interest and penalties. There is student loan interest and principle deferrals without any penalties.

And finally, I want to mention, the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Refund. That will be replenished. It’s important, because that fund opens the door for Federal Reserve firepower to deal a broad-based way throughout the economy for distressed industries, for small businesses, for financial turbulence.

You’ve already seen the Fed take action. They intend to take more action. And in order to get this, we have to replenish the Treasury’s Emergency Fund. It’s very, very important; not everybody understands that. That fund, by the way, will be overseen by an oversight board and an inspector general. It will be completely transparent.

So, the total package here comes to roughly $6 trillion: $2 trillion direct assistance, roughly $4 trillion in Federal Reserve lending power. Again, it’ll be the largest Main Street financial package in the history the United States. Liquidity and cash for families, small business, individuals, unemployed, to keep this thing going.

We’re headed for a rough period, but it’s only going to be weeks, we think. Weeks and months. It’s not going to be years, that’s for sure. And hopefully pave the way for continued economic recovery after this crisis departs.

Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Larry. I’ve been hearing that voice for so many years — like 30 years or more, maybe. And it’s a great voice and it’s a great man. So Larry Kudlow, thank you very much.

MR. KUDLOW: Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: I want to say that that package — and we went over parts of it, but pretty big parts — it really sets us up to, I think, even supersede where we were a month ago. I think we can get up there quickly and I think it allows us to supersede. It allows us to help these great companies that need help, like Boeing, which is — you know, it had a problem and then, on top of that problem, it had the virus come in. But we’ll be helping Boeing. We’ll be helping the airlines. We’ll be helping the cruise lines. We’ll be doing a lot of things and the money will all come back to us, and it will come back to us in a very strong form.

And before we take some questions, I’d like to ask our great Vice President to say a few words, if you wouldn’t mind. Please.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mr. President. The White House Coronavirus Task Force met again today. And on behalf of the President of the United States, everyone on our team, and our state leaders, let me just say: Thank you, America. People across this country, businesses large and small are responding to the threat of the coronavirus in ways that are deeply inspiring.

Now, people are acting on the President’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” and it is making a material difference. Our experts standing beside us told us that if every American — regardless of whether you’re in an area that’s impacted by an outbreak of the coronavirus or not, if every American would embrace these guidelines, that we could significantly reduce the number of Americans that would contract the coronavirus and protect the most vulnerable. And as the President reflected earlier, tens of millions of Americans are doing just that and we’re grateful.

The focus of our task force, of course, is to slow the spread, to promote mitigation strategies. Beyond that, though, the President has us focused on testing and on supplies, and making sure that those that are enduring the symptoms of the coronavirus and those who are ministering to them — our extraordinary healthcare workers — have the support that they need.

In the category of supplies, you just heard Dr. Birx indicate that we’ve made great progress. We have done more tests in the last eight days than were done in the previous eight weeks. And it’s because of the public-private partnership that the President forged with commercial labs.

And I would encourage people around the country to remind your family members and friends: If you don’t have symptoms, don’t get a test. We want to make sure that people who are having symptoms, who have a concern have the ability to be tested and to have those tests processed.

We’re continuing to urge all county hospitals, all labs around the country to report to the CDC all the results of the test, as it’ll give these experts around us the ability to continue to advise the President on best practices.

As I mentioned, we — we all continue to follow the outbreak around the country and the test results. But as several have mentioned, we’re particularly focused on New York. The reality is the New York metro area was 60 percent of the new cases in the country.

And specifically, as a lay person, I can tell you that the infection rates are roughly 1 in 1,000 in the New York City metropolitan area, where they are 0.2 percent per 1,000 or 0.1 percent for 1,000 in places like Washington State.

It is the reason why today the White House Coronavirus Task Force is calling on any American — first and foremost, if you’re in the New York City metropolitan area or elsewhere — to take the guidelines that we issued and avoid nonessential travel. But for anyone in the New York metropolitan area who has traveled, our task force is encouraging you to monitor your temperature, be sensitive to symptoms, and we are asking anyone who has traveled out of the New York City metropolitan area to anywhere else in the country to self-isolate for 14 days.

We have to deal with the New York City metropolitan area as a high-risk area. And for that reason we’re — we’re taking these steps and ask you for the cooperation of the American people.

Because of the spread in New York City, we will continue to surge resources. The President has described this. FEMA is coordinating with New York State for the arrival of the USS Comfort in just a matter of a few short weeks. Over the next 24 hours, more than 4,000 additional ventilators will be delivered to New York State as well.

New York State has prioritized three alternative medical facilities, and, at the President’s direction, the Army Corps of Engineers is working on plans to build those facilities out.

You’ve heard the President speak about the Javits Center — the addition of 1,000 beds. And we’ll continue — I want the people of New York City and the Greater New York City area to know that we’re with you. We’re going to continue to provide resources to support your state and local officials as they confront the spread of the coronavirus in that great city.

On the subject of supplies, we had team meetings today at FEMA, which is working on identifying the critical personal protective equipment and ventilators. At this point, FEMA informs us today that they are distributing 7.6 million N95 respirator masks, more than 14 million surgical masks, and FEMA has already shipped 73 pallets of personal protective equipment to New York, 36 pallets of personal protective equipment to the State of Washington.

We’ll be meeting again tonight. As you know, the President stood FEMA, as the National Response Center, up and they are in the lead for the — the approach to the coronavirus, which is locally executed, state-managed, and federally supported. And we’ll continue to surge those resources and make sure that they’re available.

One last word, if I may: The President reflected on the response that businesses around the country have brought to this moment. It truly is extraordinary.

Now, the President did initiate the Defense Production Act last week, but as the President has reflected many times, we will use the Defense Production Act if we need it to mandate production of — of critical supplies. But so far, no one has said no.

And, in fact, we see industry stepping up. The President mentioned Ford Motor Company working with 3M and GE Health to expand production of medical supplies. We heard that McDonald’s is now offering curbside delivery to truckers who are unable to use the drive-through to pick up a Big Mac.

And I spoke today, and the President spoke last week, with Tim Cook of Apple. And, at this moment in time, Apple went to their storehouses and is donating 9 million N95 masks to healthcare facilities at — all across the country and to the National Stockpile.

There is a level of generosity that I know is inspiring to the President and is truly inspiring to all of us who are working on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The President has made it clear that he hopes — in weeks, not months — to be able to open up the country. But let me make one last encouragement to every American: We will get to that day quicker if every American will put into practice the President’s coronavirus guidelines for our nation: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” If every American will do this, I have no doubt that we will slow the spread, we will protect our most vulnerable, and we will heal our land.

Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Mike. Thank you.

Kaitlan.

Q Mr. President, you just reiterated that you hope to have the country reopened by Easter and you said earlier you would like to see churches packed on that day. My question is — you have two doctors onstage with you — have either of them told you that’s a realistic timeline?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we’re looking at a timeline. We’re discussing it. We had a very good meeting today. You know, if you add it all up, that’s probably nine days plus another two and a half weeks. It’s a period of time that’s longer than the original two weeks.

So we’re going to look at it. We’ll only do it if it’s good. And maybe we do sections of the country; we do large sections of the country. That could be, too. But, no, we’re very much in Tony and with Deborah on everything we’re doing.

Q Who suggested Easter? Who suggested that day?

THE PRESIDENT: I just thought it was a beautiful time. It would be a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline. It’s a great day.

Q So that wasn’t based on any of the data?

THE PRESIDENT: It was — it was based on a certain level of weeks from the time we started. And it happened to arrive — actually, we were thinking in terms of sooner. I’d love to see if come even sooner. But I just think it would be a beautiful timeline.

Jon?

Q Mr. President, if you look at what we’ve just seen in the last day or so, you’ve seen the number of known coronavirus cases in the country double in just two days. Another 95 people died just in the last 24 hours. New York — New York’s governor is saying this is spreading like a bullet train across the country. And the governor of Louisiana is saying that his country — that his state may not be able to handle the cases that they’re facing by the — by early April. So what are you seeing in all of this that leads you to think that —

THE PRESIDENT: Jon, we’re working with all of them.

Q — we can reopen by Easter or even earlier?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure. Sure. We’re working with all of them. We can be talking about large sections of our country, because there are sections of our country that you didn’t talk about that are doing unbelievably well; they have very little incidents or problem — very small numbers. It’s very possible that they won’t be ever subject to what’s happening in New York.

New York is definitely a hotspot. There’s no question about it. And you know what we’re doing in New York to try and help, and I think we’re doing an incredible job. We’re going to have the hospitals up quickly — the medical centers, also, quickly.

But we’ll just have to see. We have to follow it. We have to see. We’re going to look at that curve. We’re going to see when it starts coming down. And we’ll do the best job that can be done.

John, please.

Q A question for you, Mr. President and Dr. Fauci, if we could. This would — looking at this idea of an Easter timeline — and I know that’s probably flexible — what are the metrics by which you will make the decision as to whether you can say, “Yes, we can open up this area of the country” or “No, we can’t open up that area.” I mean, will you be looking at disease numbers? Will you be looking at possible containment, isolation? What are you (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we’ll be looking at a lot of things. We’ll also be looking at very large portions of our country. And I will be guided very much by Dr. Fauci and by Deborah and by some of the other professionals that work with both of you.

And we’re going to see what — what will be, but that would certainly be — I think that’s a goal that perhaps can happen, or at least for a very large portion of our country.

Q Dr. Fauci, since, as the President said, you and Dr. Birx and others will be guiding him in making the decision, where are you now with this timeline of 19 days from now?

DR. FAUCI: So, I mean, that’s really very flexible. We — we just had a conversation with the President in the Oval Office, talking about — you know, you can look at a date, but you got to be very flexible. And on a literally day-by-day and week-by-week basis, you need to evaluate the feasibility of what you’re trying to do.

And, John, you asked for, you know, what kind of metrics what kind of data. When you look at the country, I mean, obviously, no one is going to want to tone down things when you see what’s going on in a place like New York City. I mean — I mean, that’s just, you know, good public health practice and common sense.

But the country is a big country and there are areas of the country — and I referred to this in my opening remarks — that we really need to know more about what the penetrance is there.

So if we do the kind of testing that we’re doing — and testing will always be associated by identification, isolation, and contact tracing. And you find, after a period of time, that there are areas that are very different from other areas of the country. You may not want to essentially treat it as it — just one force for the entire country, but look at flexibility in different areas.

So I think people might get the misinterpretation you’re just going to lift everything up and, even if somebody going like that, you — I mean, that’s — that’s not going to happen. It’s going to be looking at the data.

And what we don’t have right now that we really do need is we need to know what’s going on in those areas of the country where there isn’t an obvious outbreak. Is there something underneath the surface that says, “Wait a minute, you better be careful and really clamp down,” or what looks there that you don’t really have to be as harsh as you are in other areas?

So it’s looking at information that, up to this point, John, we never had. So it’s a flexible situation.

Q So is New York becoming our Wuhan? Is New York becoming the epicenter (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it certainly is, by far, the — if you call it “hot,” if you call it any word you want to use. It is at a level that — I was speaking to Tony before — it’s a level that no place else is close. It’s very unfortunate.

You know, one of the things that’s — that’s happened — that we’ve done, I think, a really good job on — I think that it’s something special what’s happened is I learned from Dr. Birx, a little while ago, when she said — I learned it actually this afternoon: In eight days — because we kept hearing about South Korea. And they had a very tough time at the beginning, if you remember. In eight days, we’re doing more testing than they’ve done in eight weeks. That’s a tremendous turn. And with our testing, it’s going — exponentially, it’s going up, up, up every day.

So we’re going to be able to do things with this very highly sophisticated testing. And it’s also — the test itself is considered the best test. So, on top of doing now more than anybody else, we have a very high-quality test. That makes a big difference. It also makes a big difference, even in terms of opening, because we’re going to see those areas like the hotspots. But New York City definitely is a very hot spot.

Steve.

Q When you talk about areas that you could open up, what specifically are you looking at? What states? Are you talking about out west or the Midwest or the southwest? Where exactly?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you can talk about the Farm Belt. Take a look at the Farm Belt. Take a look at the areas out west. Look at big sections of Texas.

I was talking to the great Governor of Texas. They have done a fantastic job out there. But they have very big sections of Texas where — you know, it’s — it’s like numerous states, frankly.

But we can have large sections of — if we want to do it that way, we can have large sections of the country open. But I think it’s very important that we start moving on that and start thinking about it, because our country wants to be open, our people want it to be open, and they want it — they want — they’re raring to go. And I think it’s one of the reasons that we’re going to have a tremendous bounce back. I think it’s going to go very quickly.

Also, I want to thank — while I’m here, I want to thank Larry for the job he’s done, Steve Mnuchin for the job he’s done. If you look at Peter Navarro, he’s sort of doing different things. He’s really — he’s a force, in terms of getting masks and getting all of the ventilators and all the things. He’s been fantastic — Peter.

But I also want to thank Congress because whether or not we’re happy that they haven’t quite gotten there yet, they have been working long hours. I’m talking Republicans and Democrats — all of them. The House, the Senate. I want to thank Congress because they are really trying to get there, and I think they will.

And I’ll see you all tomorrow. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Q Did you give the Governor Cuomo a heads up, Mr. President, about the quarantining for people who left New York?

THE PRESIDENT: Beg your pardon?

Q Did you give Governor Cuomo a heads up about quarantining people?

THE PRESIDENT: We’re talking to them about it.

END 6:24 P.M. EDT

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National Economic Council Chairman Larry Kudlow appears on Fox Business to discuss the Main Street economic support package assembled in the senate. Stuart Varney also asks about the timing for getting people back to work.

President Trump, Vice President Pence and members of the coronavirus task force sit down with Fox News’ Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner for a virtual town hall. The event is ongoing