Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is based in Italy, with his wife Callista who is the United States Ambassador to the Vatican. He is at the epicenter of all that is happening with the virus in Italy. With this virus affecting those with compromised health and the elderly Italy was a prime target. Italy is among Japan and Germany having the oldest population in the world. The Speaker gives his advice to the American people, seeing what Italy did wrong and what we can learn from it.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
And we expect, by the way, affiliates along the Sean Hannity Show Network, the president expected to take to the podium about, well, eight minutes from now if he's on time.
Maybe put back a little bit sometime during this half hour.
When it happens, we'll cover it live.
We will likely alter our break schedule as we did last week.
There's so much I have to say.
I've got to literally slow myself down.
And I really, there's a lot of things I want to accomplish here.
Number one, I just believe the political side of this infuriates me.
The double standard, the hyperventilating, those that have politicized this whole thing.
I mean, I'm watching the debate last night, and there's Quid Pro, Quo, Joe, N1, H1, you know, and Bernie, absolutely clueless, and the president needs to shut up.
You know, these sorts of comments.
I'm like, oh, very, very helpful.
When I look at this timeline and I look at what Donald Trump has done, which is unprecedented, and I see there's not a single good thing that they can say about what this president has done.
There's not, they won't, when the president was saying this, we were instituting a travel ban.
And timelines really matter in moments like this.
Who is doing what went in there?
And I'm going to get into this in some detail in the course of the program here because Joel Pollock over at Breitbart had an amazing timeline here.
The first person with coronavirus that arrived in the U.S. was January 21st.
What were the House impeachment managers doing?
They were making their opening arguments two days later.
When the president, by the way, decided after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on January 30th as coronavirus was spreading.
January 31st, the president declared a national health emergency, put in the travel ban, the quarantine people in China, and Joe Biden said the president's decision was hysterical, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.
Oh, what were they doing in the Senate on January 31st when Trump was doing this?
Oh, yeah, the Senate was holding a vote on whether to allow further witnesses and documents in the impeachment trial.
And that went on till February 5th.
And then you look at, okay, well, we can look at the Biden-Obama record on H1N1.
That's all important.
And it drives me crazy because we're now going to get lectured by people that did nothing, said nothing, and just criticized it was the single biggest best decision the president made.
I think we're going to look back and the president, there's never been any infrastructure designed where there's going to be a public-private partnership and there's going to be drive-up testing widespread.
That's never happened before.
And I believe in the future, first of all, with this virus, I believe lives are going to be saved.
I think many fewer people are going to contract the virus, which is a good thing.
And we all want to stay healthy.
And if you bring up any of these comparisons, it's the media and it's the Democrats that have politicized this from day one.
They can't even admit the travel ban was a good idea.
They can't admit that this public-private partnership is a hell of a good idea.
They can't admit that all of the other travel bans that have subsequently been put in effect, even now Ireland and Great Britain, are good ideas.
No, there's xenophobic.
It's hysteria.
I want to give you facts without fear.
And as I watch this, for my own personal way that I go about my life, and I think the reason I say facts without fear is I always remember we've been through very, very hard, tough times as a country.
And Americans, you know, we say these words, we sing these words, land of the free and the home of the brave.
And, you know, actually, somebody sent me, I think it was Dwayne Linda, that sent us that video today with this guy.
And then within the context of a YouTube video, it had, we have nothing to fear.
Well, fear itself.
And, you know, of course, everybody's scared about viruses, but there is also some perspective that is missing in all of this.
And I want to give that to you.
And that's why, let me first go to where we are, give you information.
We're going to talk to our medical aid team and our experts, and we're going to, you know, things that you might want to know.
I don't think any of the closing down of anything is a bad idea.
Ultimately, it prevents fewer people from contracting the virus.
Anthony Fauci's opinions have evolved.
Everybody, every medical expert's opinions have evolved.
Democrats, when they finally got their head out of their impeachment, now they're just pointing fingers and blaming Donald Trump and telling him to shut up and everything.
It's not particularly helpful.
Well, we want to spend even more than you to prove our point.
That's not the case either.
It's how do you best help the American people?
And I think this will, you know, once we're past all this, and we will get past this.
Like, I don't think most people really understand.
It's sad.
You know, I've been in rooms with friends that are dying of cancer.
I've lost two parents that have died.
My father, from the week he was diagnosed with cancer, a day after, what was it?
It was in March of 24 years ago to the day he died was one week.
And, you know, we went to see him on Easter Sunday, come back, and I wish cancer didn't exist.
It took him that fast.
By the time they diagnosed it, it spread everywhere.
I love the fact that our medical researchers, our scientists, our doctors are the best in the world.
They're even talking about treatment to this specific virus, considering they were able to break it down genetically faster than ever, and a possible vaccine coming online faster than ever in test trials.
I'll give you more information on that.
And I want everybody to be healthy.
And people die in the flu.
I have the actual numbers.
We lose tens of thousands of Americans every single year from the flu.
And all of these practices, I'm all for elbowing for the rest of my life.
If that is going to help keep Americans healthier, I'm all for it.
It's been well known for years.
And anybody that doesn't want to shake hands is like a virus phobe or a germ phobe.
And I'm like, okay, maybe they weren't so dumb after all.
But we have worldwide, as of now, 164,000 cases in the United States, 3,823 that have contracted Corona, 49 states, three U.S. territories.
As of just a couple, an hour or two ago, 67 patients said died.
I've been warning you the last couple of days that it's going to get worse as more testing gets out there and available.
One of the reasons for that is the vast majority of people that will contract Corona.
This is important to know.
The vast majority of them, the 98, 9% of them will either have no symptoms, mild symptoms, or what tends to be a bronchial, almost pneumonia-like flu symptoms, full-on flu symptoms.
The people that are most in danger are those with underlying medical conditions, compromised immune systems, autoimmune, maybe they recently went through chemotherapy, radiation, and the elderly in particular.
Average age is around 80 of those that get the virus and are at risk at death.
Half the known cases in the U.S. are Washington State, California, and New York.
If you want to look at flu numbers, just, and by the way, some of the underlying conditions that they're most concerned about are blood disorders, chronic kidney disease, compromised immune system, pregnancy, current or recent endocrine disorders like diabetes, metabolic disorders, heart disease, lung disease, neurological conditions.
Those would be underlying diseases.
When they did their analysis, Cheryl Atkinson, the journalist, put this together when the death toll was a little bit lower at 48.
37 of those 48 deaths occurred in the state of Washington, and 25 of the Washington deaths occurred at that life care center nursing facility in Kirkland, where that first serious outbreak took place.
But they were older people in Washington, obviously that had underlying conditions.
The other people that we have of the remaining victims that we have, the ages, we don't know all the ages in the Washington facility as of now.
But anyway, the youngest victims so far, you have four in California, two Florida, one each in New Jersey, South Dakota, Georgia, Kansas, Colorado, youngest victim in his 40s with underlying health issues, four in their 60s, underlying medical conditions, seven in their 70s, and five either had underlying health issues or were in assisted living facilities.
The other two were a couple of who had just returned from overseas.
Six were in their 80s, either had medical conditions or in living facilities.
Three in their 90s in assisted living facilities.
One was listed as elderly and in an assisted living facility.
So, I mean, that's the breakdown there.
Now, the danger, why we don't want anyone else to get it is, number one, we don't even want you to have mild symptoms, but we don't want you to get the flu.
But the reason also is if you, if you have no symptoms or mild symptoms, then if you come into contact with somebody that has underlying health issues or a compromised immune system or has been through chemotherapy, radiation, autoimmune, whatever it happens to be, well, you're risking that at that point, it then becomes a life-death issue.
We don't want anybody to die.
As a matter of, I guess, knowledge and perspective, I honestly, it's been so long since I've talked about a pandemic or a virus, and they unfortunately happen from time to time.
You go back 2010 and 11, you've got, what, 32,000 to 51,000 estimated deaths in the U.S. You know, for the year, you have 2012 and 13.
Again, this is the flu, 43,000 deaths on average, anywhere between 37 and 57,000 Americans.
This is just in the U.S. and the U.S. only.
You can go through 2014 and 15, 44,000 to 64,000 deaths.
51,000 is the estimate.
2015 to 2016, a little lower, 17 to 35,000.
It fluctuates greatly from year to year, but we lose tens of thousands of people every single year from the flu.
And why am I giving you this perspective?
Am I trying to say not be safe?
Of course I want you to be safe.
And I've said that all throughout.
But I don't like when this whole thing starts out and you've got people calling it Trump's Chernobyl and the New York Times saying and call it the Trump virus.
And if you're feeling like crap, we all know who to blame.
Well, Donald Trump did not create the Wuhan Province China coronavirus.
It didn't happen that way.
And it's that kind of weaponization politicizing of this thing and trying to bludgeon Trump.
And if you look at the same cast of characters, I mean, what were the Democrats doing at the time?
That is a legitimate real issue.
I'm watching this debate last night, and I'm like, really, Joe?
Because by the time, now, I've told the whole story of H1N1 swine flu, 2009 and 10.
And we know the timeline there.
Now, to the credit of the Health and Human Services Secretary at the time, they did call it an emergency.
But Obama didn't call it an emergency until six months later in late October and got, you know, glowing praise in the media mob, which I've been saying, oh, if you need any more evidence that this is being politicized and used as a political weapon rather than all hands on deck.
I mean, if you can't recognize a single thing that the president's done, if the day the president of the United States puts a travel ban in effect, and again, timelines matter, and the president takes a lot of political heat for it.
And the president says, you know what, it's in our best interest.
Let's err on the side of caution.
And he does something within, what, a week after?
Look at the timeline that was put out.
We'll put it up on Hannity.com.
I mean, it's a pretty amazing story it tells.
Joe was saying he's xenophobic and hysterical.
I'm like, wow, that's pretty brutal.
And even last night, neither one, Bernie or Joe, would go back and say, you know what, maybe that travel ban thing was a good idea.
Now, if we can't agree at this point that that was a good idea, then that means there's nothing that Donald Trump can do that is ever going to stop them from just bludgeoning him with this virus.
But I'd like to come at this from a position of how do we keep the American people safe?
How do we keep our elderly and sick healthy?
How do we prevent death?
How do we deal with future pandemics?
I think a new paradigm has emerged before our eyes, but we're too clouded by the moment to actually see that these drive-in centers, there's no government agency that's ever going to be able to test every corner of the country.
But if you add CVS, Targets, Walgreens, Walmart, Rite Aid, and every other place in between, and people can drive in, get a test, and get their results online 24 hours later, that would be huge progress.
And then the issue of self-quarantining or staying away from those with underlying conditions or compromised immune systems.
So I have a lot of information.
I'm going to pass it all on to you and the political analysis with it because nobody's ever acted faster.
Nobody has literally created these partnerships.
Nobody took the heat for the ban and the quarantine than Donald Trump.
That single decision was the best decision he made for the country, for the health of the country.
And he got bludgeoned then for it, and now he's bludgeoned after for it.
Can't say, okay, on this one thing, Donald Trump did a good job.
No.
Putting together all of these people from all of these industries for the benefit of the American people to maximize the ability for people, if they have need or concern, to be tested and Google and everything else.
All right.
We're going to the president now, stepping up to the podium, his task force now, and he begins the briefing.
We're going to blow this break along the Sean Hannity Show Network lines.
It's very good.
I want to thank everybody for being here today.
This morning I spoke with the leaders of the G7, G7 nations, and they really had a good meeting.
I think it was a very, very productive meeting.
I also spoke with our nation's governors.
And this afternoon, we're announcing new guidelines for every American to follow over the next 15 days as we combat the virus.
Each and every one of us has a critical role to play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus.
We did this today.
This was done by a lot of very talented people, some of whom are standing with me.
And that's available.
And Dr. Burks will be speaking about that in just a few minutes.
It's important for the young and healthy people to understand that while they may experience milder symptoms, they can easily spread this virus and they will spread it indeed, putting countless others in harm's way.
We especially worry about our senior citizens.
The White House Task Force meets every day and continually updates guidelines based on the fast-evolving situation that this has become all over the world.
It's all over the world.
It's incredible what's happened in such a short period of time.
On the guidelines of the task force, the new modeling conducted by Dr. Burks and our consultation with governors, we've made the decision to further toughen the guidelines and blunt the infection now.
We'd much rather be ahead of the curve than behind it, and that's what we are.
Therefore, my administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible, avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people, avoid discretionary travel, and avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and public food courts.
If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus and we're going to have a big celebration all together.
With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.
A lot of progress has been made.
I'm also pleased to report today that a vaccine candidate has begun the phase one clinical trial.
This is one of the fastest vaccine development launches in history, not even close.
We're also racing to develop antiviral therapies and other treatments, and we've had some promising results, early results, but promising, to reduce the severity and the duration of the symptoms.
And I have to say that our government is prepared to do whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes, we're doing.
We're doing it in every way.
And with that, I'd like to just introduce Dr. Burks, who's going to discuss some of the things that we strongly recommend.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I think you know over the last months we've taken very bold action to stop the virus from coming to our shores.
And because of that, we gained time to really get together and understand the progress across the globe of what has worked and what hasn't worked.
We now need to appeal to every single American so that they can have their role in stopping the spread of this virus.
We've talked about things before about washing your hands, but we really want to focus on if you are sick, no matter who you are, please stay home.
If someone in your household is diagnosed with this virus, the entire household should quarantine in the house to prevent spread of the virus to others.
The reason we're taking these strong and bold steps is because we know there is virus spread before you develop symptoms, and then we know that there's a large group, we don't know the precite percent yet, that actually is asymptomatic or has such mild cases that they continue to spread the virus.
If your children are sick, please keep them home.
Now to our older population or those with pre-existing medical conditions, everyone in the household needs to focus on protecting them.
Everyone in the household.
I want to speak particularly to our largest generation now, our millennials.
We have the mom of two wonderful millennial young women who are bright and hardworking, and I will tell you what I told to them.
They are the core group that will stop this virus.
They are the group that communicates successfully independent of picking up a phone.
They intuitively know how to contact each other without being in large social gatherings.
We're asking all of them to hold their gatherings to under 10 people, not just in bars and restaurants, but in homes.
We really want people to be separated at this time.
To be able to address this virus comprehensively that we cannot see, for which we don't have a vaccine or a therapeutic.
The only thing we have right now is the amazing ingenuity and compassion of the American people.
We're appealing to all Americans to take these steps to protect each other and to ensure that the virus doesn't spread.
These guidelines are very specific.
They're very detailed.
They will only work if every American takes this together to heart and responds as one nation and one people to stop the spread of this virus.
Thank you.
All right, we're going to take this and move the break at the bottom of the hour, just informing our stations along the Sean Hannity Show network line as we continue the press conference.
Dr. Anthony Fauci now stepping up to the podium.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dr. Birx.
So just to connect with what I mentioned to you in previous discussions in this room, and Dr. Burke said it very well, that in order to be able to contain and curtail this epidemic to not reach its maximum capability, we have a two-pillar approach, one of which I believe has been very effective in preventing the substantial seating, and namely the travel restrictions that we've discussed many times in this room.
The other, equally, if not more important, is when you have infection in your own country, which we do.
And you know, I could read the numbers, but they're really essentially what we've seen yesterday, incremental increases both globally as well as in the United States with the curve doing that.
So therefore, the kinds of things that we do are containment and mitigation.
This, what we're mentioning now, the guidelines, when you look at them carefully, I believe if the people in the United States take them seriously because they were based on some rather serious consideration back and forth, some may look at them and say they're going to be really inconvenient for people.
Some will look and say, well, maybe we've gone a little bit too far.
They were well thought out.
And the thing that I want to re-emphasize, and I'll say it over and over again, when you're dealing with an emerging infectious diseases outbreak, you are always behind where you think you are if you think that today reflects where you really are.
That's not words speak.
It means if you think you're here, you're really here because you're only getting the results.
Therefore, it will always seem that the best way to address it would to be doing something that looks like it might be an overreaction.
It isn't an overreaction.
It's a reaction that we feel is commensurate, which is actually going on in reality.
So take a look at the guidelines, read them carefully, and we hope that the people of the United States will take them very seriously because they will fail if people don't adhere to them.
Have to have, as a whole country, cooperate and collaborate to make sure these get done.
Thank you okay, go ahead, mr. President.
Rather than surprise Mr. President, a lot of people are concerned about how long all of this might last.
Do you have any kind of estimate that if Americans really were to band together and do what the White House is suggesting, how quickly you could turn this corner?
My favorite question, I ask it all the time.
How many times Anthony?
I think I ask him that question every day and I speak to Deborah.
I speak to a lot of them.
I get the opinion.
So it seems to me that if we do a really good job, we'll not only hold the death down to a level that is much lower than the other way.
Had we not done a good job?
But people are talking about July August, something like that.
So it could be right in that period of time where I say wash, it washes through other people don't like that term, but where it washes through, is this the new normal until the height of the summit?
We'll see what happens, but they think August could be July, could be longer than that, but I've asked that question many, many times yes.
That being said, Mr. President, Americans today and looking forward, are living with so much anxiety and so much fear, facing uncertainty right now.
I'm curious, how are you talking to your own family about this?
How are you talking to your youngest son?
Do you empathize with this sense of anxiety?
People are really scared.
No, I think they are very scared.
I think they see that we're doing a very professional job.
We've been working with the governors and the frankly, the mayor's local government at every level.
We have FEMA totally involved.
FEMA's been, you know, usually we see FEMA for the hurricanes and the tornadoes.
Now we have FEMA involved in this.
They've been doing a fantastic job locally working with people that they know because they work like, as an example, in California, in the state of Washington.
They work with them a lot on other things and they're very familiar, so they're working on it.
What you can do, and all you can do, is professional, totally competent.
We have the best people in the world, we have really the greatest experts in the world and someday soon hopefully, it'll end and we'll be back to where it was.
But this came up.
It came up so suddenly look, you were surprised, we were all surprised.
We heard about it.
We heard about reports from China that something was happening and all of a sudden, we did make a good decision.
We closed our our borders to China very quickly, very rapidly.
That was a.
There was a.
Otherwise we'd be in a very as as Tony has said numerous times we'd be in a very bad position, much worse than we would be right now.
You look at what's happening in other countries italy's having a very hard time, but I think that I think that what we do and i've spoken actually, with my son he says, how bad is this?
It's bad, it's bad, but we're going to uh, we're going to be hopefully, a best case, not a worst case, and that's what we're working for.
Yesterday, we can clear up some confusion on two key fronts.
One is about your own test.
The other is about containment efforts.
Is the administration considering more aggressive containment, uh options like a quarantine, a national curfew?
For sure, we have that very much.
Yeah, we have that very much and we are uh, we've been pretty aggressive.
We were early with Europe, but we were very, very early with uh, China and other places, and fortunately we were.
And as far as containment, here we are.
We we're coming out with strong suggestions and you know it's becoming a little bit automatic.
You look at people, they're not doing certain things, for instance.
They're obviously not I wouldn't say.
The restaurant business is booming and bars and grills and all people are self-containing for to a large extent.
We look forward to the day when we can get back to normal.
Are you considering instituting a nationwide lockdown, a nationwide quarantine?
The NSC knocked that down, but there's still some questions about how it all can be.
At this point, not nationwide.
But, well, there are some places in our nation that are not very affected at all.
But we may look at certain areas, certain hotspots, as they call them.
We'll be looking at that.
But at this moment, no, we're not.
The second question is, you said you had your coronavirus test Friday night.
The White House doctor's office put out a statement around midnight Friday saying that no test was indicated.
So when exactly was your test administration?
Well, I had my test.
It was late Friday night, and the reason I did it was because I had no symptoms whatsoever.
So the doctor said you have no symptoms, so we don't see any reason.
But when I did the press conference on Friday, everybody was going crazy.
Did you do the test?
Did you do the test?
So very late on Friday night, I did the test, and he may have put out, or the doctor may have put out something at a, I don't know what time the letter went out, maybe it was put out by somebody else, but the results came back, I believe, the following day, and we tested negative.
The question is, how could the White House doctor's office say a test wasn't indicated, implying that you hadn't had one when in fact you had.
Well, I told them that, and I went totally by what they said, the doctors, more than one.
They said you don't have any of the symptoms.
They checked what you're supposed to check and that I didn't have symptoms.
But I did a test late on Friday night, and it came back probably 24 hours later or something.
They sent it to the labs, came back later.
Yeah, please.
Mr. President, you had a teleconference with the nation's governors today.
And in that teleconference, you told them if they need things like respirators or masks to try to get it on their own.
What did you mean by that?
And what will the federal government?
If they can get them faster by getting them on their own.
In other words, go through a supply chain that they may have.
Because the governors, you know, during normal times, the governors buy a lot of things, not necessarily through federal government.
If they're able to get ventilators, respirators, if they're able to get certain things without having to go through the longer process of federal government, we have stockpiles now where we're ordering tremendous numbers of ventilators, respirators, masks, and they're ordered.
And they're coming.
And we have quite a few at this point.
I think, Mike, we have a lot.
But if they can get them directly, it's always going to be faster if they can get them directly if they need them.
And I've given them authorization to order directly.
Mr. President, one of the big weaknesses in our health care system is search capacity for medical facilities.
And I wanted to ask what precautions, what planning is being done to get China was able to build hospitals in a matter of days.
Are you prepared to use the Corps of Engineers or FEMA to start building search capacity that we may need in a couple weeks?
Well, first of all, we hope we don't get there, and that's what we're doing, and that's why we're taking a very strict look at this.
But we also are looking at areas, and not only looking, we're expanding certain areas.
We're taking over buildings that aren't used.
We're doing a lot in that regard.
We hope we don't have to get there, but we are doing a lot in that regard.
Mr. President, could you clarify something?
These guidelines say stay home if you're sick.
Yesterday, the Vice President said no one should worry about losing a paycheck if they stay home when they're sick.
But the House bill exempts companies of 500 employees or more from the paid sick leave requirement, and that's 54% of the American workplace.
Why is it a good idea to only require small businesses to provide payments?
Well, we're looking at that, and we may be expanding that.
We are looking at that.
We want fairness.
We want it for everybody.
No, we're looking at that through the Senate, because as you know, the Senate is now digesting that bill.
So we may very well be hitting something on that.
Good question.
I've got two questions here, Mr. President.
One, going off of what he was asking.
How many ventilators and how many ICU beds do we have right now, and will it be enough?
I could get back to you with that number.
We've ordered a lot.
We have quite a few, but it may not be enough.
And if it's not enough, we will have it by the time we need it.
Hopefully, we won't need them.
And you'll give us the exact number.
It's important that they have not given us an exact number.
We could give you a number.
If it's important, we'll give you a number.
Go ahead.
And yesterday, you said that this was under tremendous control.
Do you want to revisit that statement if we are going to be experiencing this until July or August, five more months ahead of right now?
When I'm talking about control, I'm saying we are doing a very good job within the confines of what we're dealing with.
We're doing a very good job.
There's been a tremendous amount of the way they're working together.
They're working hand in hand.
I think they're doing really a great job.
And from that standpoint, that's what I was referring to.
Yes, you're not saying it's under control, right?
I'm not referring to it, meaning the virus.
Yeah, if you're talking about the virus, no, that's not under control for any place in the world.
I think I read, I think I read, no, I didn't know.
I was talking about what we're doing is under control, but I'm not talking about the virus.
Yes, please.
Stock market took another hit today.
Is the U.S. economy heading into a recession?
Well, it may be.
We're not thinking in terms of recession.
We're thinking in terms of the virus.
Once we stop, I think there's a tremendous pent-up demand, both in terms of the stock market and in terms of the economy.
And once this goes away, once it goes through and we're done with it, I think you're going to see a tremendous surge.
Are you looking at any domestic travel restrictions?
I know that's been on the table before, but is that warming up at all?
We're not really.
We hope we don't have to, Steve.
We think that hopefully we won't have to do that.
But it's certainly something that we talk about every day.
We haven't made that decision.
Doctors and nurses in this country are telling us across the board that they're terrified of this virus, of the fact that they forget it, of the fact that they might take it home to their families.
What can you say to assure health care providers in this country that the federal government is doing something today to ensure that they get personal protective equipment to protect themselves and their families?
Well, I think the federal government is doing everything that we can possibly do.
We made some very good early decisions by keeping people out, by keeping countries out, certain countries where the infection was very immense.
I notice a lot of people are talking about South Korea because they've done a good job on one side, but on the other side, tremendous problems at the beginning.
They had tremendous problems and great numbers of deaths.
I think that we've done a fantastic job from just about every standpoint.
With that being said, you look, no matter where you look, this is something that's an invisible enemy.
But we are speaking all the time, not only with the people, but also the professional people, the nurses, the doctors.
They have been doing a fantastic job.
We are also working very much on getting them the kind of equipment that they need.
And for the most part, they either have it or they will be getting it.
But remember this.
We want the governors, we want the mayors, we want them locally from a local standpoint because it can go quicker.
We want them to work.
And we had a great talk with the governors today.
I think it was a really great talk.
There's a tremendous coordination.
There's a tremendous spirit that we have together with the governors.
And that's pretty much, for the most part, bipartisan.
Mr. President, you told John that you think this could wash through, as you said, July, August.
You just told Steve when he asked you about a possibility of recession.
You said it may be.
I'm curious, if there is a recession, when do you think that might hit?
Well, I don't, number one, determine recession.
I just say this.
We have an invisible enemy.
We have a problem that a month ago nobody ever thought about.
Nobody in a, you know, I've read about it, I read about many years ago, 1917, 1918.
I've seen all of the different Problems similar to this that we've had.
This is a bad one.
This is a very bad one.
This is bad in the sense that it's so contagious.
It's just so contagious, sort of record-setting-type contagion.
And the good part is the young people are, they do very well, and healthy people do very well.
Very, very bad for older people, especially older people with problems.
My focus is really on getting rid of this problem, this virus problem.
Once we do that, everything else is going to fall into place.
Yes, please.
Mr. President, we have a rumor last night.
A lot of rumors last night, a lot of rumors last night that you were going to put in a national curfew or some kind of text.
I've been watching.
Right, exactly.
Me too.
Your people were saying this is a foreign disinformation campaign.
Is that what's going on?
Are people messing with us on the internet?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, that I can't tell you if they are or not.
I think a lot of the media actually has been very fair.
I think people are pulling together on this.
I really think the media has been very fair.
I think it could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games, but it doesn't matter.
We haven't really determined to do that at all.
And hopefully, we won't have to.
That's a very big step.
It's a step we can take, but we have not decided to do it.
Jennifer, go to the next question.
Mr. President, two things, one on airlines and one on Jeff Bezos.
Can you talk a little bit specifically about what you'd like to do to help the airlines resolve?
And then, second of all, we heard that Jeff Bezos has been in contact with the White House daily.
Can you say what he's been asking for or proposing?
Well, I've heard that's true.
I don't know that for a fact, but I know that some of my people have, as I understand it, been dealing with them or with him.
And that's nice.
We've had tremendous support from a lot of people that can help.
And I believe he was one of them.
As far as the airlines are concerned, the airlines, we're going to back the airlines 100%.
It's not their fault.
It's nobody's fault unless you go to the original source.
But it's nobody's fault.
And we're going to be in a position to help the airlines very much.
We've told the airlines we're going to help them.
We want $25 billion.
But we're going to be backstopping the airlines.
We're going to be helping them very much.
It's very important.
Mr. President, what's the other thing about the stock market, sir?
$25 billion for the passenger carriers and $4 billion for cargo?
We're going to be looking at it very strongly.
We have to back the airlines.
It's not their fault.
In fact, they were having a record season.
Everybody was.
They were having record seasons, and then this came out, and it came out from nowhere.
So not their fault, but we're going to be backing the airline.
Stocks continue to fall today.
Would the one who support negative records?
The best thing I can do for the stock market is we have to get through this crisis.
That's what I can do.
That's the best thing we can do.
That's what I think about.
Once this virus is gone, I think you're going to have a stock market like nobody's ever seen before.
He'll be back in a sec.
He'll be back in a second.
I think the question that I think maybe John asked about until July, the guidelines are a 15-day trial guideline to be reconsidering.
It isn't that these guidelines are now going to be in effect until July.
What the President was saying is that the trajectory of the outbreak may go till then.
Make sure we don't think that these are solid in stone till July.
That would be the outside number.
Mr. President.
Mr. President, you've been criticizing.
One second, please go ahead.
To follow up, Senate Republicans, do you want Senate Republicans to change the package that passed the House last week, even though you're not going to be able to do that?
I think they may make it even better.
Look, they're working together very well with the House.
They're working very much in unison, like the question before.
They're working to only enhance it and make it better and make it fair for everybody.
And that's what we're looking to do.
So we may go back and forth with the House a little bit, but both will be in a very positive fashion.
Please.
Mr. President, these new guidelines say avoid social gatherings in groups of more than 10 people.
The CDC's recommendations yesterday were for people to avoid gatherings of more than 50 people.
What's evolved in you and your team's thinking in just the past 24 hours?
And also, what exactly do you need to see in a stimulus?
Well, let me just have the professionals answer that.
Thank you, and thank you for that question.
So we have been working on models day and night around the globe to really predict because some countries in our very early stage, like the United States, we've been working with groups in the United Kingdom.
So we had new information coming out from a model.
And what had the biggest impact in the model is social distancing, small groups, not going in public in large groups.
The most important thing was if one person in the household became infected, the whole household self-quarantine for 14 days, because that stops 100% of the transmission outside of the household.
And as we talked about early on, it's silent.
We had another silent epidemic, HIV, and I just want to recognize the HIV epidemic was solved by the community, the HIV advocates and activists who stood up when no one was listening and got everyone's attention.
We're asking that same sense of community to come together and stand up against this virus.
And if everybody in America does what we ask for over the next 15 days, we will see a dramatic difference and we won't have to worry about the ventilators and we won't have to worry about the ICU beds because we won't have our elderly and our people at the greatest risk having to be hospitalized.
Dr. Burks, can we ask you to comment on the effects?
Dr. McGross, if you're not.
Go ahead.
Yes, Mike, please.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Very productive call today with governors.
We talked about the new rollout of testing that we described yesterday and drive-through and community-based testing.
And I know how grateful the President is for the efforts that governors are making.
And now with the Admiral and the United States Public Health Service, as well as FEMA, we made great progress today in coordinating those efforts.
But the other issue that was raised with the President today was personal protective equipment.
And the reason I mentioned testing is because one of the recommendations that we have for states is that these remote testing sites make a priority of two groups.
One would be people over the age of 65 that have symptoms.
We don't want them to go to hospitals or emergency rooms.
We want them to go to a remote site in a parking lot or at an isolated community.
I would continue our live coverage.
The President, now Vice President Pence speaking, Task Force on Corona, and we go back to it.
We will be letting our stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network make their decisions on when to break a knot.
Are at an isolated community location.
But the other category is our health care workers.
We want to make sure that our health care workers have the opportunity to be tested and using that new high-throughput test that the president arranged with our major commercial labs, we'll be able to do that much more expeditiously.
So we're putting a real priority on our extraordinary health care workers that are at this very hour coming alongside people that are struggling with the coronavirus and people that are concerned that they may have been exposed.
The other piece is we're grateful that the legislation passed by the House of Representatives includes liability protection for N95 masks produced by companies like 3M in Minnesota, by Honeywell.
Literally tens of millions of masks are produced every year for industrial purposes, for construction.
But the health experts say they can be used just as readily to protect health care workers from respiratory ailments.
3M and other companies were not able to sell those to hospitals, but the President negotiated with the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate.
We've added a provision to the bill that will literally, from one company alone, add another 30 million masks per month back to the marketplace.
We're strengthening the supply chain, and healthcare workers around America can be absolutely certain that the President and our entire team are going to continue to put the health of America first and put first our health care workers across this country that are meeting the needs of the people of our country.
Mr. Vice President, how many test kits have been sent out and how many people can actually be tested?
I think the admiral can answer that correctly.
And you might want to talk about the roving also.
So thank you very much for that.
As we talked about yesterday, we're really entering a new phase of testing.
At first, we were at the initial phase where the CDC developed test was only available in public health laboratories in the CDC.
Works very well for a few thousand tests per day after it gets running.
We're now moving into a phase that the big commercial laboratories with high throughput screening have availability.
So as we talked about last week, because of the historic efforts of the FDA, a Roche test and as the President predicted, a thermofisher test were both produced last week under an emergency use authorization.
1.9 million of those tests will be sequentially into the ecosystem this week.
From the information we have right now, 1 million tests are available with all the reagents, everything ready to go, primarily at the reference labs called Quest, LabCorp, and a couple others.
Now, it doesn't matter if they're not in your neighborhood, because every day when people get tests, a little white box goes out in front, it gets shipped by an incredible distribution system, the test result and it's electronically reported.
So these are available to people nationwide.
We expect more and more than 1 million coming on board this week as the reagents come up and as people with the testing capacity validate that in their own hospitals and other and other places.
And in the future, we expect at least 2 million next week and at least 5 million the week thereafter.
There are also a whole growth of what's called laboratory determined testing or laboratory derived testing where individual laboratories because of the regulatory deregulation of the FDA can develop their own tests and start using them.
So if you're a CLIA certified lab with complexity you can do that.
So the point is testing is now entering sort of what we normally do in the health care system where big labs in a high throughput basis receive these through normal channels.
So that part of it is really underway.
Do you know how many Americans have actually been tested?
Do you have a number?
There is a number.
I don't have that number because I've been working on setting up this distribution system.
So this is where we are.
The state and public health laboratories in the CDC are published every day on the CDC website.
The CDC gets feeds from LabCorp and Quest, and they get that on a daily basis.
What is not being received right now, and Ambassador Burks is fixing, is that these homegrown tests in highly complex labs don't necessarily get reported in the system.
However, as we move forward, particularly in the high, in the commercial phase of where we are right now, we expect about 80 to 85 percent of the tests to flow right into the CDC.
We know them.
That's not good enough for Ambassador Burke.
She wants 100, and we'll work on that.
Sir, first of all, Mr. Pucker.
So I think just to put it a different way, a lot of testing has been going on, and I don't believe anybody's been able to do what we're doing and what we will be doing.
And let me just say that we talked about the drive-through testing yesterday.
I want it to be clear to everybody, this is just another tool for states and local public health systems and health care systems to use.
It's not replacing testing that goes on in a doctor's office or in a hospital, or if you go to your doctor and wants to get tested in that office, this is just another tool that we're hoping the states to have.
And again, as we talked about, this is modeled on the FEMA-based points of distribution system, optimized for testing.
We expect this week we now have gear people being shipped right now today that will be in over 12 states with multiple sites, many of states having multiple sites to start augmenting the local capacity and really providing the state and the local people what they need as another way for people to get tested.
Mr. President, Mr. President.
So this has never been done before.
That's never been done, and certainly not on a level like that.
And I will say that I think I can speak for the professionals that if you don't have the symptoms, if your doctor doesn't think you need it, don't get the test.
Don't get the test.
I think it's very important.
Not everybody should run out and get the test.
That's right.
But we're able to handle tremendous numbers of people.
Mr. President, earlier today, Governor Cuomo of New York said that he believes that hospital capacity soon will be overwhelmed and implored you to call on the Army Corps of Engineers to build temporary facilities to house patients.
Is that something we're looking into it?
We've heard that.
We've heard it from really two places.
There are two places that have specifically, New York being one, and we are looking into it very strongly.
Yeah.
Mr. Steve, go ahead, please.
All right, we continue to listen to the president leading his task force doing a Q ⁇ A with a fairly restrained media for one day.
We'll continue our live coverage through the top of the hour break for our affiliates along the Sean Hannity Show Network.
Newt Gingrich, in the middle of the pandemic in Italy, will tell us what's been going on on the ground there and why we need to take what's happening there seriously, straight ahead.
How have you changed your own behavior to take account of this virus?
Are you washing your hands more?
I've always washed my hands a lot.
I wash my hands a lot, probably maybe if anything more, certainly not less.
What was it like taking the test?
It's not something I want to do every day, I can tell you that.
It's a little bit of a little bit of good doctors in the White House, but it's a test.
It's a test.
It's a medical test.
Nothing pleasant about it.
The president said that in a tweet that Governor Cuomo should be doing more.
I think he can do more.
But I think he can do more.
And, you know, it's an area of the country that's very hot right now.
I think New Rochelle, a place I know very well, I grew up right near New Rochelle.
I think it's a very, no, I think it's an area that has to be tamped down even more because it's a hotbed.
There's no question about it.
So I think they can look at doing it.
But we're getting along very well.
We've had a very, in fact, I noticed you made some statements just now that the relationship with the federal government has been good, that federal government has done everything they've wanted us to do.
But we can, I think it's very important that all of the governors get along very well with us and that we get along with the governors.
And I think that's happening.
I have Mr. President.
The Defense Secretary and the Assistant Defense Secretary have decided to separate and be in a bubble to avoid the spread of the disease and to protect the chain of command.
Is that something you and the Vice President should be doing?
And has there been any talk about having to have a 25th Amendment?
Well, we haven't thought of it, but you know, I will say this, that we're very careful.
We're very careful with being together.
Even the people behind me are very, they've been very strongly tested.
I've been very strongly tested.
And we have to be very careful, but everybody should be vigilant.
We have to be vigilant.
Two simple questions.
Mr. President, two simple questions for the public.
Okay, I don't know if this is a question for you or for Dr. Burke, but Dr. Burke said that it is the millennials who are going to lead us through this and that now is the time to look out for the older people in our home.
Older might be a state of mind, not necessarily an age.
So for those millennials of us who have parents who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, what is older?
What should we tell them at this point?
Well, if I was Dr. Fauci, I would tell you there's a physiologic age and a numerical age.
So older people with pre-existing conditions.
And what do we mean by that?
You know, significant heart disease, significant kidney disease, significant lung disease, any immunosuppression, any recent treatment for cancer, any of those pieces in any household.
Now, why do I think the millennials are the key?
Because they're the ones that are out and about.
And they're the most likely to be in social gatherings.
And they're the most likely to be the least symptomatic.
And I think we've always heard about the greatest generation.
We're protecting the greatest generation right now and the children of the greatest generation.
And I think the millennials can help us tremendously by having, plus, they need to communicate with each other.
Public health people like myself don't always come out with compelling and exciting messages that a 25 to 35 year old may find interesting and something that will take to heart.
But millennials can speak to one another about how important it is in this moment to protect all of the people.
Now you could be 40 and have a significant medical condition and be of substantial risk.
You could be 30 and having come through Hodgkin's disease or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and be of a significant risk.
So there are risk groups in every age group, but there's more millennials now than any other cohort, and they can help us at this moment.
Mr. President, thank you very much.
You already talked.
Mr. President, the other day you said that you were not responsible for the testing shortfall.
Very simple question.
Does the buck stop with you?
And on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your response to this crisis?
I'd rate it at 10.
I think we've done a great job.
And it started with the fact that we kept a very highly infected country despite all of the, even the professionals, saying, no, it's too early to do that.
We were very, very early with respect to China.
And we would have a whole different situation in this country if we didn't do that.
I would rate it very, very, I would rate ourselves and the professionals.
I think the professionals have done a fantastic job.
As far as the testing, you heard the Admiral, I think the testing that we've done, we really took over an obsolete system or put it maybe in a different way, a system that wasn't meant to do anything like this.
We took it over.
And we're doing something that's never been done in this country.
And I think that we are doing very well.
We took the system, we worked with the system we had, and we broke down the system purposely.
We broke it down in order to do what we're doing now.
And within a short period of time, and even now, we're testing tremendous numbers of people.
And ultimately, you're saying it will be what?
It will be up to how many people we'll be able to test.
We certainly expect with the high-throughput testing that that's no longer a barrier.
The barrier is actually doing the test on a person.
And I'm sure, as the President would inform you, in order to do the test, a health care provider needs to dress in full personal protective equipment, full personal protective equipment.
And there's a swab that's put in the back of the nose all the way to the back of the throat.
It's called a nasopharyngeal swab, which is then put in media.
The next person who has to get tested, that health care provider has to change all the personal protective equipment.
When you put that in, it's highly likely a person coughs or sneezes, so you're at risk.
So that's what we're trying to fix now by the mobile platforms, by all the things we're doing, is to enable sort of high throughput of this swabbing.
And we're doing some technological things, too, that might be breakthroughs to make it much, much faster.
But we certainly expect that from thousands of people per day, we will be at the tens of thousands of people per day this week, according to those who are loyal.
Does the buck stop with you?
Yeah, normally, but I think when you hear the, you know, this has never been done before in this country.
If you look back, you know, take a look at some of the things that took place in 09 or 11 or whatever it may have been, they never did.
Nobody's ever done anything like what we're doing.
Now, I will also say, Admiral, I think we can say that we're also getting this ready for the future so that when we have a future problem, if and when, and hopefully we don't have anything like this, but if there is, we're going to be very, we're going to be starting off from a much higher plateau because we were at a very, very low base.
We had a system that was not meant for this.
It was a smaller system.
It was meant for a much different purpose.
And for that purpose, it was fine, but not for this purpose.
So we broke down the system and now we have something that's going to be, and is very special and is ready for future problems.
I think we can say that very strongly.
Thank you, Mr. President.
How close are you to shutting down America's northern border with Canada?
And could you also speak to the fact about the elections that are supposed to be taking place tomorrow?
Is it your advice that those states postpone those elections?
Well, I'd leave that up to the states.
It's a big thing postponing an election.
I think to me that really goes to the heart of what we're all about.
I think postponing an election is a very tough thing.
I know they're doing, because they've been in touch with us, they're doing it very carefully.
They're spreading people out at great distances, as you can see.
And I think they'll do it very safely.
I hope they do it very safely.
But I think postponing elections is not a very good thing.
They have lots of room in a lot of the electoral places.
And I think that they will do it very well.
But I think postponing is unnecessary.
On the northern border, sir.
How close are you to share?
We think about it.
We think about it.
If we don't have to do it, that'll be good.
We have very strong emergency powers when it comes to something like this, both on the southern and the northern borders.
And we are talking about different things, but we'll see.
Right now, we have not decided to do that, Steve.
Can we get Dr. Fauci to talk about the vaccine file today and whether the timetable for a vaccine has, is it possible to accelerate?
Is there still 12 to 18 months?
Thank you for that question.
The vaccine candidate that was given the first injections for the first person took place today.
You might recall when we first started, I said it would be two to three months, and if we did that, that would be the fastest we've ever gone from obtaining the sequence to being able to do a phase one trial.
This has been now 65 days, which I believe is the record.
What it is, it's a trial of 45 normal individuals between the ages of 18 and 55.
The trial is taking place in Seattle.
There will be two injections, one at zero day, first one, then 28 days.
There will be three separate doses, 25 milligrams, 100 milligrams, 250 milligrams, and the individuals will be followed for one year, both for safety and whether it induces the kind of response that we predict would be protective.
And that's exactly what I've been telling this group over and over again.
So it's happened, the first injection was today.
Sir, the market just closed down 3,000 out of 13% in response to the market.
Thank you.
Dr. Fauci, is there guidance for someone who may have felt sick but then feels better, so you had symptoms but you no longer do, your fever's gone away.
How long would you stay home after that point?
That's not clear from the government.
If you are positive for the infection, if you have coronavirus, it is less how you feel than whether or not you're still shedding virus.
So the general issue about letting people out of a facility, for example, a hospital or whatever, who have been infected, you need two negative cultures, the same way that was just described, 24 hours apart.
The market will take care of itself.
The market will be very strong as soon as we get rid of the virus.
Because the UK said today that pregnancy was one of those underlying conditions.
Do we say that too?
There's very little data in pregnant women.
I think about a week ago I said the reports that came in from China from the Chinese CDC of the nine women who were documented to be pregnant and have coronavirus in their last tri-semester delivered healthy children and they themselves were healthy and recovered.
That is our total sample size and we will be getting more data from countries.
While countries are in the midst of this crisis like Italy, I try not to bother them frequently to get us their data.
We try to get it just weekly from the countries that are in the midst of responding to the epidemic so that their focus is on their individuals in their country.
Mr. President, is any comment on what people like Devin Nunes, the governor of Oklahoma, have been saying, encouraging people to go out to restaurants, which goes directly against what this advice in your guidelines says?
No, I haven't heard that.
I haven't heard that from Devin or anybody else.
Should they stop saying that?
Well, I have to see what they said.
I wouldn't ask people to go to restaurants if they felt okay with their families.
I would disagree with it, but right now we don't have an order one way or the other.
We don't have an order, but I think it's probably better that you don't, especially in certain areas, Oklahoma doesn't have a tremendous problem.
Oklahoma, you said the governor of the governor of Oklahoma.
Devin Nunes is another.
Yeah, well, I hadn't heard that.
So should they be doing that or should they not be doing that?
No, it's adverse to what the professionals are saying.
And what you're saying in your guidelines, that people should be doing that.
Well, it's adverse, but I'll take a look at it.
Absolutely.
I don't know who would be best to answer this question.
Maybe Secretary Azore or Dr. Fauci.
School districts across the country are closing down yet for the most part.
Daycare centers remain open and considering that children can sometimes be asymptomatic carriers and go home to older individuals.
Are there any recommendations about daycare settings?
I'd prefer if one of our medical professors discuss that.
That's a clinical recommendation.
That's a good question, John.
In the original guidelines, as they were presented, it was school, not daycare.
I think it's very important.
We should probably, if we have not discussed that, go back and discuss that in some detail about whether or not that's equivalent to school.
Good question.
The question about the sort of underlying public health strategy behind some of these guidelines, telling people to avoid restaurants and bars is a different thing than saying that bars and restaurants should shut down over the next 15 days.
So why was it seen as being imprudent or not necessary to take that additional step, offer that additional guidance?
Josh, do you want to answer that?
Well, I think we have to say the data that has been coming out, and I'm sure you're all up to the date, up to date, on how long the virus lives on hard surfaces.
And that has been our concern over the last two weeks.
No, I'm sorry.
Good.
I just wanted to read.
There's an answer to this.
Oh, yeah.
Go ahead, Todd.
He was my mentor, so I'm going to have to let him speak.
The small print here, it's really small print.
In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.
So, Mr. President, are you telling us that the question is?
Mr. Resident, are you telling governors in those states then to close all their restaurants and?
Well, we haven't said that yet.
We're recommending, but we're recommending things.
No, we haven't gone to that step yet.
That could happen, but we haven't gone there yet, please.
Mr. Mr. Solon, on the election, you're saying it's a bad thing to postpone it.
But if you've got the 10-person maximum guideline, in a practical sense, can you have rallies?
Can you, primaries surely gather more intensity?
Well, hopefully this will pass through, and hopefully that will have everybody will be going to restaurants and flying and being on cruise ships and all of these different things that we do.
And it will very, very hopefully be in a fairly quick period of time.
But we're taking a tough stance.
We may make certain other decisions.
We may enhance those decisions.
We're going to find out.
As per the question that you were asking, some of those decisions may be had.
How about one more?
On the cyber attack on HHS, is there any reason to believe that they were trying to hack into the system and gather information from the system?
And also, is there any reason, so were they trying to hack to get information?
And also, do you have any reason to think that it could have been Iran, Russia?
Do you have any reason to believe it was a foreign actor?
So in the previous 24 hours, we saw a great deal of enhanced activity with relation to the HHS, HHS computer systems and website.
Fortunately, we have extremely strong barriers.
We had no penetration into our networks.
We had no degradation of the functioning of our networks.
We had no limitation of our capacity for people to telework.
We've taken very strong defensive actions.
The source of this enhanced activity remains under investigation, so I wouldn't want to speculate on the source of it.
But there was no data breach or no degradation in terms of our ability to function and serve our important mission here.
Thank you.
Mr. Vice President, what are you looking for in another stimulus package, sir?
Could you speak to that?
One thing Mike just said, it's very important to get out that this is for the next what we're talking about.
Much of what we're talking about is for the next 15 days.
Mike, go ahead.
Mr. Vice President, I've not been tested yet.
I'm in regular consultation with the White House physician, and he said I've not been exposed to anyone for any period of time that had the coronavirus, and that my wife and I have no symptoms.
But we're checking our temperature regularly every day, and we'll continue to follow guidance, which I think may be a good place to land at the end of the day.
And that is as we expand testing rapidly around the country.
through the new public-private partnership that the President facilitated.
We want the tests to be available for people who have symptoms, people who have symptoms and are in vulnerable populations, and our health care workers to make sure that they can have the peace of mind that they're doing their jobs and they're properly protected.
And so our best counsel, the Council of the Experts, is if you have a question, call your doctor, call your health care provider, ask whether or not you should be tested.
And that's what my family is doing as well.
Let me just emphasize one more point if I can.
The President asked the task force to continuously review the data and the information that we have not only in this country, but from around the world, to give the best guidance to state leadership and local health care leadership and all of the American people about how to keep themselves, their family, and their community safe.
This guidance for the next 15 days is what our experts say is the best opportunity we have to lower the infection rate over the entire course of the coronavirus.
Just as the President did by suspending travel from China, just as he did with travel advisories and screening from Italy and South Korea, just as we've done with Europe and at midnight tonight with the UK and Ireland, we'll continue to take very decisive steps to lower the spread of the coronavirus.
But we want every American to know, and we would ask all of you in the media, to spread the word of the American people that this is advice on behalf of the President of the United States to every American, what you can do over the next 15 days to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
And we're calling on every American to do your part because together we'll get through this and we'll find our way forward.
Mr. President, what do you think of that?
What was the upshot of it?
Are you still going to be able to meet at Camp David?
Well, it looks like it is.
And are you confident in their responses?
As you already would have.
I'm very confident.
They're in a position that some of them are in a rough position, if you look at a couple of them, and some are heading toward pretty rough territory.
We had a very good conference.
It was a teleconference.
Everybody was on the phone, every leader.
And almost 100% was devoted to the subject that we're talking about today.
And they are working very hard.
And, you know, they're very concerned, obviously, but they're working very hard.
But I would say just about all of it was, Steve, all of it was devoted to what we're talking about.
Did you hold that summit at Camp David?
I think so.
I mean, so far it seems we haven't.
We didn't even discuss that.
Still a ways off.
But it was a very good discussion.
And there's a great camaraderie.
There's a great togetherness.
I think I can say that very, very strongly.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right, the President wrapping up a press conference going on now the better part of an hour with his Corona Task Force.
Probably for the first time, and they were sprinkled in questions with the usual tone of the media, but for the first time.
You got a sense that what the administration has been doing and what they announced last Friday, and even the president instituting the travel ban in record time is beginning to sink in as fairly transformative.
So, I'll tell you what we'll do, though.
We've got to take a break here.
We will when we come back, Newt Gingrich has written a couple of pieces about what is going on in Italy, and he's actually written two.
I am in Italy amid the coronavirus crisis, very bad there, and America must not act now and act big.
And if it were not for Trump's actions, thousands of Americans would be dead now.
We'll examine all of this and some of the political aspects of it that annoy the daylights out of me, but more importantly, how to keep our American family safe.
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When we come back, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, as he says, he is in Italy, and America must act now and must act big.
We'll get his thoughts on what's going on there and what we should be doing here next.
All right, as we roll along, 800-941 Sean, a little over an hour.
The president now leading the press conferences seemingly daily now.
Look, a lot has happened, starting with the travel ban, then extending out the travel ban, then, of course, the quarantine.
There's nothing but politics that have been played in all of this.
We'll get to that.
But I think more importantly, as we've given out all the information now and the number of cases, and it's worldwide, 164,470, or some say as high as 169,000, 3,823 as of this afternoon, 67 patients have died.
Newt Gingrich is with us.
He's in Italy.
He's written two columns: I'm in Italy amid the coronavirus crisis.
America must act now and act big.
And also writing that if it were not for Trump's actions, thousands of Americans would be dead now.
It's amazing.
You know, I get frustrated on the political side of this because the president, if you look at the timeline, it was actually amazing how quickly he acted for the travel ban.
And then he's being called xenophobic, hysterical, and everything else in between.
And probably the one best decision in this whole mess that the world did not expect.
An invisible enemy, as the president called it today.
Okay, I think the impressive thing about the way President Trump has responded is that he's listened to technical experts like Dr. Fauci, who know vastly more than he'll ever know about viruses.
And they laid out for him in a very stark way what his choices were and what the costs were.
And on every occasion, he has taken the step which was designed to protect Americans.
And I think some of those steps were very controversial.
I mean, if you watch the debate between Sanders and Biden, Biden is still talking about the idea of, you know, open borders and no deportations and, you know, that all this somehow is somehow bad to be protecting Americans.
But I can tell you from being here with Callista in Italy, where she's the ambassador to the Vatican and dealing with this every single day, having the president learn some hard lessons, take some courageous steps, in my judgment, has absolutely saved American lives and has given us the time to begin to get organized for what is going to be a very significant challenge over the next two or three months.
And I think his leadership in that sense has been exactly in the right direction.
And I would just frankly, both as a historian and as a citizen, I get a little sick of these people who want to nitpick and micromanage.
And this is a huge historic event that is shaking the entire world as we've known it.
And I think the President of the United States and the Vice President, who's done a great job, Pence has been terrific as the head of the task force.
think they've tried to assemble the best team in america and then they've tried to actually by the way that team that that team has been evolving their positions throughout this What made this, I remember talking about this when this first started becoming an issue, is that, oh, people that have the virus don't even know they have the virus, have no symptoms of the virus.
And even before they would have any symptoms, they can transmit the virus and apparently lives a longer time airborne than other viruses, which makes it particularly pernicious.
That's right.
And look, I think that they would all tell you, I did a podcast.
I do a weekly podcast for free in Newtsworld.
And we did a podcast with Tony Fauci, who is, of course, a great historic figure.
He was involved.
I knew Tony back when he was working on HIV AIDS in the 80s.
He's been a remarkable leader in public health.
And I think he would tell you that this thing evolved in their own thinking in ways they weren't quite ready for.
And that the scale of it and the notion that if you look at what's happened in Northern Italy, where Callista and I are now living in Rome, nobody expected it to get to be this serious and this dangerous.
But now that we're watching it, I think there's a much better understanding that we have to take the right, clearly classical steps.
These are not new ideas.
I mean, we've been dealing with fluid epidemics and pandemics.
I think what's different now is, and Friday, this public-private partnership with all these big corporations, you know, and drive up testing centers.
And I mean, no government can all open an office in every town and city in the country.
Newt Gingrich with us.
He is in the midst of a big outbreak in Italy.
We'll have more with him.
He'll stay with us in the next half hour.
Then our medical experts will join us, how to keep your family safe as the Sean Hannity show continues.
Hi, 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Just some facts without fear, as we call it.
Total cases worldwide, 164,470.
By comparison, what was it?
1 billion people with H1N1.
We lost over a half a million people, according to most estimates, back in the 2009, 2010 pandemic.
135 countries now confirmed cases of corona, including 49 states in D.C. have confirmed cases in the United States.
By the way, the total number, if you want, the deaths that we now have at this particular time, worldwide, 600, I'm sorry, 6,470.
We're not sure still if we're getting accurate numbers out of China.
68 deaths confirmed now in the United States.
In terms of those that in the United States that have contracted it, that we know, 3,823, we do expect with the increase in testing that there is going to be a pretty dramatic increase in identifying those that contracted this.
I think the two biggest decisions that the president made here to help mitigate this from spreading, especially to those people that are most vulnerable, older people, underlying medical conditions, compromised immune systems or autoimmune systems or people taking chemotherapy or so on and so forth.
As a matter of some perspective, we lose tens of thousands of Americans every year from the flu.
But this one is different in the sense that, yeah, the way it's transmitted.
And if we don't identify, if you don't stop it sooner, that means that people that are showing no symptoms, they can transmit the virus.
That's how it begins to spread like it did in China and Iran and Italy and other countries, now Germany, Spain.
Really kind of, in some cases, frightening numbers, but the overwhelming vast majority of people will either have no, that contract the virus will have no symptoms, zero symptoms, or mild symptoms, or what is appeared to be a full-on flu outbreak and fully recover.
Most not needing any hospitalization whatsoever.
What we are mobilizing now with the president's emergency declaration last Friday and this partnership with the biggest companies all across the country, the Walmarts, the Walgreens, the CVS, the Quest, the LabCorp, et cetera, is probably going to be a game changer in many, many ways.
I think things that we're looking for going forward, and this is where I'm going to bring Newt Gingrich back in here.
We have to be very careful.
This is a preview of coming attractions, what happened in Italy.
But even pandemic, if we're looking at pure raw pandemic numbers, which sadly happen from time to time, it does seem like we have a potential window here where we could hopefully, as a world, get a hold of this thing.
And drive-up testing sites, I think, are really important.
And as quickly as they're up and running, the better it's going to be.
They discussed that at the press conference.
Respirator availability, the president said they have a lot of them, but they've ordered many, many more.
Also allowing states, if they can get a hold of them faster, I assume from those comments, he meant that the federal government's going to pay for it.
That, too, is extremely helpful.
No federal government can dictate what's going on in the states.
Governors have a big role.
Mayors have a big role.
Municipalities have a big role here.
We also, any other items that are needed, including, and this came up, triage capability, tents and medical supplies and IVs and gloves, mask gowns, medicines, it's all in the hopper as they now prepare for potential triage if it gets worse than we want.
Nobody likes what's happening with the economy.
Now down nearly 3,000 today.
And not sure where, you know, when the end is in sight.
The president says, I got to focus on, if I cure the virus, we'll get the economy back up and running as quickly as possible.
We continue now with Newt Gingrich.
I had a conversation with you.
I want to read directly from your article about Italy.
All schools are closed.
All churches are closed, including the Basilica, St. Peter's.
All weddings, funerals postponed.
All restaurants closed.
In fact, all stores except grocery stores and pharmacies are closed.
People are urged to work from home.
And you're warning that we've got to act big.
Now you hear the president today.
You heard him.
I thought Friday was a bit of a game changer.
And obviously all these people from industry that have been going in and out of the White House, now we understand why they were able to pull that together.
What other steps would you recommend?
Well, I mean, let me say, first of all, I hope that every American will take seriously what the president has said and what the public health people have said, and that is, you know, don't go to a bar, don't go to a restaurant, candidly, don't go to church.
Close to I ended up watching the streaming of the Basilica in Washington to have mass on Sunday because even though there are 900 churches in Rome, none of them have mass right now because it's all closed down.
And so people have to understand, the earlier everybody pulls on the same team, decides to follow the rules, starves the virus so it can't find any new host, the sooner this is going to get over.
And the more people who break the rules, decide they're too smart to be told what to do, end up going out and congregating in places and end up getting the virus.
And remember, it's not just about you.
I mean, if you're 30 years old, you're not a direct threat, but your parents are, your grandparents are, anybody you know who's over 50 or 60 is.
So you could think you're really clever and you're not going to get hurt by it, but you could end up infecting your entire family.
We had one person in New Rochelle, as you know, who infected 50 people.
And so my first goal here would be to say to people, listen to what the president is telling you and listen to what the public health people are telling you and slow down.
My second goal, now that we're beginning to get that under control, is to come back to Vice President Pence's team and insist that they do worst case planning and then buy whatever it takes.
I mean, we may want to lease five or six cruise ships that are now sitting around empty.
Don't just give them money, but get them to do something for the money, turn them into hospitals and move them to places that are difficult.
We may want to look at other kind of steps we can take.
We may want to buy more ventilators than we're going to need, more intensive care units than we're going to need.
We may want to look at calling back into service medical doctors in the military who have retired, et cetera, and try to maximize the available people to deal with a pandemic.
And as Dr. Fauci said over and over again in four different shows yesterday, I read every single transcript because I respect him so deeply.
He kept saying, look, I would rather be overreacting and have it go away than underreact and have people die unnecessarily.
And that's where I'm coming from.
Treat this like World War II.
We didn't try to land in Normandy on a shoestring.
We threw everything we could develop for three years right at the beach, right with the paratroopers, right with the air power.
And we should have that attitude towards this thing.
We need to stop this as fast as we can.
We need to save the maximum number of lives.
And then second, we need to develop an economic growth package that's real that enables us not just to throw money away.
I'm deeply opposed to what somebody called helicopter money, and I deeply disagree with Senator Romney about giving every person $1,000.
You know, that's not the key to this.
The key to this is to develop investment programs, including, by the way, infrastructure and other things we need to be doing.
I'd have a tax credit to bring, for everybody who wants to bring their business back from China, I'd say, if you would like to now in-source into the U.S., we'll cover 100% of your costs.
This is a one-time opportunity because I'd like to bring all the pharmaceuticals, all the medical technology, all these things we've now discovered the hard way are in China, and I'd like to get them back to the U.S. At the end of the day, you've been warning about China.
You and Trump are the two people that I think have warned the world about China more than any, especially you on 5G and not our friends, et cetera, et cetera.
And we've been watching their massive military buildup.
Obviously, we want the information that they can provide to us.
All being said, they, you know, with all of that had happened in Wuhan province, and every life is precious.
I mean, that's what kind of has always defined us as a country.
We always believe that.
Recorded deaths that we know about, 3,218 outside of China, 3,192.
Now you see a precipitous decline.
I mean, I think we'll probably see the pattern that has played out in South Korea and other countries and China, where you see now with more testing, you're going to see a dramatic increase.
There's going to be probably more panic among the public.
But we're really just identifying more people that probably had no symptoms or very mild symptoms.
But then that prevents them from infecting those people that would be most in danger and then a leveling off and then a dramatic, precipitous decline.
The president talked about July.
Does that sound about right to you?
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm an optimist.
I think May or June.
But I think if we do this right, I tend to agree with you.
Yeah, well, I hope I'm right, but I respect the president.
And he's listening to the medical experts, and they're all telling him, be very cautious, because the truth is, this is a brand new virus.
It probably came out of bats and snakes.
We don't actually, we've never seen it in humans before, so we don't really know.
But if I look at Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, to some extent China, which I don't totally trust just because they're so profoundly dishonest, but certainly those other countries, I have to say, this can be controlled, that in fact, it requires vigilance early on.
It requires a serious approach.
And tragically, it took a little while for folks in the West to understand that, both in the United States and in Europe.
And as a result, we're paying some costs both economically and in human lives.
You know, one of the things that I really like is your forward thinking in worst case scenario, which I think we should be running up at all times.
And all right, the drive-up testing, that's pretty innovative and creative.
I would argue that down the road, we'll see this as a huge development paradigm for future pandemics when they come.
Respirator availability being addressed, as they said, a comprehensive, all-encompassing list of any other items that might be noteworthy.
I know the president did speak with the country's top grocers, and they are making every effort to make sure that the shelves are stocked so people don't have this panic and need to go in and steal every roll of toilet powder.
Why does everyone go for the toilet paper?
I'm going for the steak.
I'm going for the chicken noodle soup is what I'm going for.
I know.
Well, I have to tell you, it's fascinating because here in Italy, the stores are all fully stocked.
Amazing.
There's no shortage.
And now, what they've done here, though, is they control access.
So based on the size of your store, there is a limited number of people who can come in at any one moment.
And when they reach that limit, the next person in line has to wait until somebody leaves.
So they really tried to control human contact.
They tried to make it possible to go grocery shopping with the least possible exposure to spreading the virus.
But the stores have everything you want.
It's amazing.
Let me go back to this other idea only because I'm running grocery stores.
I got to highlight, I thought it was brilliant.
I like the idea that those industries, the airline industry, cruise line industry, that are going to be dramatically impacted by this virus, that they earn the monies that would inevitably be earmarked for them.
And you went into chapter and verse and detail to prevent overcrowding at hospitals.
These cruise line ships can be floating hospitals.
Triage tents can be set up pretty much anywhere that is experiencing, and I guess they could start packing C-130s for that, which I think would be good.
And we have, look, we have a long-site hospital in Germany, which frankly we should loan to the Italians.
I mean, as a gesture of solidarity, this hospital is sitting in Germany.
It's available for combat.
They could move it in about, I think, three days.
It could be in northern Italy.
Enormously helpful.
Also, I should tell you that the Franklin Graham's Samaritans First has come forward and working.
They're bringing a hospital.
I think the Italian government announced this evening that they're bringing a hospital to northern Italy that's going to help people.
So, you know, I mean, northern Italy is the center of the epidemic at the present time.
And all of us who believe in freedom ought to be trying to find a way to help them get through this.
I do like the fully comprehensive worst-case scenario, triage C-130s packed with tents, portable, perhaps even floating hospitals.
I know the Navy for years, didn't they have these Navy hospital ships available?
The Navy has two Navy hospital ships that I think could be made available in five days.
And again, if you parked one of them at Genoa and the other one up by Venice, the impact psychologically here would be enormous.
We have three times as many ventilators, or I'm sorry, three times as many intensive care units per capita as the Italians do.
So we're in much better shape than Italy is.
What about the economy?
Where it's all focused.
You know, it frustrates me to watch Washington again waste, fraud, and abuse, right?
Here we go.
Yep.
Yeah, I would hope that this next round gets this bill out of here.
I do give Secretary of Manuchin some credit.
They cleaned up the small business part in exactly the right direction.
But I would hope the next bill would not be a bailout.
The next bill would be an economic growth bill.
And it would be aimed at making us stronger and bigger and more prosperous, not just throwing money at stuff.
All right.
Speaker of the House, New Kingrich, thank you for your time.
We appreciate it.
Stay safe.
Our best to our friends in Italy, 800-941 Sean.
You want to be a part of the program.
I got the sense today for the first time there might have been a paradigm shift in the media.
And because there's no denying now the wisdom of the travel ban and the quarantine and the other decisions and the innovation that was going on behind the scenes where nobody was looking, the public-private partnership drive-up testing sites and everything else in between.
Well, let me say that we're working with Google, but we're working with many other tech companies.
And we're truly grateful for the efforts of tech companies in disseminating best practices and guidance for citizens online all over the country today.
Those resources are available.
And we've literally heard not only from Google, but from Facebook and Amazon and the public-spiritedness that's been reflected there is a credit to those great companies and a credit to all the dedicated Americans who work there.
I guess I'm allowed to predict just like Wall Street people are allowed to predict and they're pretty much in agreement.
You're going to see there's a pent-up demand like a lot of people, including me, haven't seen before.
But this has to get through.
They know they're getting through the crisis and will require an all-of-America approach, and that's very important.
They're committed to remaining open during this crisis, totally open.
They have to stay open.
Those stores have to stay open.
They supply our country.
Our supply chains in America are the most powerful in the world, and they're all working very hard.
They're working around the clock.
And the stores are stocking up at a level that's beyond Christmas time.
And it's great.
It was very reassuring speaking to these people.
They have it totally in hand.
There's no need for anybody in the country to hoard essential food supplies.
They said to me, could you please tell them, just go and buy, enjoy it, have a nice dinner, relax, because there's plenty.
But you don't have to buy the quantities because it's hard to refill the stores on a basis as rapid as they're refilling them.
Progressively over this week, there will be rollout to different laboratories of approximately 1.9 million tests.
There are many centralized laboratories, the behind the curtain that you never see after you give your blood.
And you saw some of the CEOs in the Rose Garden last week, like Quest and LabCorp, that are fully able, ready to run.
They have been testing already, but fully able, ready to run within the first part of this week, the very high-throughput testing.
The 2,000 laboratories that are around the country that have a different platform, one that's amenable to so many labs, not the big, hugest, highest output, but very high-throughput laboratories are progressing.
They have to adapt the tests slightly to the machines and get used to this.
They will start lighting up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
I can't give you the precise timeline, except it has been an absolute priority of the laboratory associations, of Thermo Fisher, the company that made this test.
You heard the president predict that it might be approved within 24 hours on Friday.
I think it was five hours after that in the middle of the night that the FDA approved that.
And that's the one that's going to be widely disseminated, high throughput that's going to be available.
All right, that was earlier today, White House press briefing.
Actually, that was yesterday.
Admiral Brett Garor is his name.
Over the week, there's going to be a rollout.
Look, where are we headed to keep every American safe and secure, et cetera, et cetera?
We're headed towards, okay, things are shutting down.
Bad thing, no, it prevents the spread of the virus.
Has the threat to you and your family gone up dramatically?
Well, if you don't listen to the experts, most people, and this information has to be put out there.
The vast majority of people, as you see more testing, an increase in incidence, as I said, you know, next four or five weeks, whatever, watch it, and you're going to, the media will try and scare the living daylights out of you.
But remember, a lot of people that might contract this virus will have no symptoms.
Others will have mild symptoms.
Some will have regular flu symptoms.
And we go back to, okay, those that are vulnerable for this virus, that it could kill them.
Those with underlying medical conditions and those with compromised immune systems are the most vulnerable and older people.
Those are the clusters of people that we're watching.
Now, the more people that we know have the virus, you keep them away from older people with underlying health issues, compromised immune systems, and we go a long way at mitigating the death rate, just like the travel ban, as I've gone through today.
I mean, you know, the idea that Joe Biden can lecture the world after his history with H1N1 in 09 in 2010 and told Donald Trump he was xenophobic and hysterical to put in place the travel ban and a quarantine.
And, you know, the president got attacked.
And meanwhile, they're all in the middle of impeachment.
You know, don't let any reason or common sense get involved in a good political issue, I guess.
Anyway, so what are the facts?
What is the information you and your family best need to know?
Our medical aid team, our experts, Dr. Mark Siegel, professor of medicine, NYU, and a medical director of Dr. Radio at NYU, Sirius XM, and also the false alarm, the truth about the epidemic of fear.
And Dr. Nicole Sapphire, board-certified radiologist, New York City, Fox News medical contributor, part of our medical aid team, wrote the book, Make America Healthy Again, How Bad Behavior in Big Government Caused a Trillion Dollar Crisis.
Welcome back, both of you.
All right, Dr. Siegel, let's assess where we are today.
My prediction is more testing, what seems like a dramatic increase in incidences, hopefully plateaus, what, four weeks, five weeks?
Absolutely, Sean.
By the way, Joe Biden called it N1H1 last night, did you?
Yeah, he did.
I noticed that.
He couldn't get the virus right.
But talking about this, I talked to Admiral Gerard Gerard last night, and he laid it out for me.
And they're going to roll out about 50 large mobile units with about 40 or 50 personnel on each to the hotspots around the country.
And they're going to be able to test about 3,000 or 4,000 per unit.
So that's going to be about 100,000 per week right away.
And those will go to Quest and to LabCorp.
And then hospitals are going to be able to send specimens right now to Quest and LabCorp.
And they're going to get the throughput screening that you mentioned.
So I think in about a week from now, we're going to see about 200,000 or 300,000 more tests than before.
And we might find that the incidence is actually lower than we're worried about.
But it's very good information to have because then we can figure out who's most at risk.
And then when they expand the testing, don't we already know?
Look, I've read so much in terms of what the real, again, facts without fear, what the real science is.
If you look at, if you want the total number of contractions worldwide, and then in the U.S., you've got, you know, you've got a very different story that I feel that, well, the media is not really telling the American people.
And because the numbers, they kind of speak for themselves.
And, you know, we fight back against all these things.
Dr. Nicole, I'll bring you in here.
And we know that those that don't have underlying medical conditions or compromised immune systems, they're not at risk of dying.
The worst case seems to be a bronchial pneumonia-like at times flu.
Well, that's right, Sean, to some extent.
You know, out of the data that came out of China and what we're seeing at the majority of the other places, the average age of the person who dies is about over 80 years old.
And they tend to also have chronic medical conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, and so forth.
However, there's something slightly concerning coming out of Italy, where they started in Italy in the Lombardy region.
Now, that actually has more of an elderly who had so many severe cases.
But it is worth mentioning that Italy is now reporting the majority of the patients in their ICU are actually younger, between the ages of about 55 to 65.
So although this is likely a disease of more the elderly, those with chronic illness, we have to remember that chronic illness definitely plays a part.
And we have a lot of Americans who are living with diabetes and chronic lung disease.
And so we have young people out in the bars right now.
And the point is, anyone can get sick.
And this can be severe in anyone.
But you don't just want to take these measures to save yourself and your family.
You really want to protect those around you.
And I would just say that I guess the far majority, over 85% of people, will only have a mild illness, if any symptoms at all.
But let's just also keep in mind that there are younger people that are dying.
And we can't just say that this is a disease of the elderly and they're going to die soon anyway.
Because I've been hearing people say that, and that is awful.
And I don't want to hear that because we do.
Let me give you the numbers as we had them.
We're now at 69 dead Americans, but they analyzed the first 48.
And what they found is 37 of those deaths occurred in the state of Washington, and 25 of the Washington deaths occurred where older people were.
When you look at the rest of the map, you see the youngest victim was in his 40s with underlying health issues.
Four were in their 60s, underlying medical conditions.
Seven in their 70s.
Five either had underlying health issues or were in assisted living facilities.
The other two were a couple who had just returned from overseas.
Six were in their 80s and either had medical conditions or in living facilities.
Three in their 90s, assisted living facilities.
So we're not seeing, I mean, I just want to give people the truth.
What do younger people have to worry about?
Well, that's an excellent point.
I think the average age of death when this is all said and done is going to be over 80 years of age.
However, we have about 60% of Americans living with chronic illness of some sorts, and about 40% of Americans actually have at least two chronic diseases.
And our chronic illness epidemic is actually putting Americans to be slightly more vulnerable to this virus.
But I do want people to be aware.
If you have chronic disease, just because you're not over the age of 80 doesn't mean that you won't have severe symptoms.
Dr. Siegel, worldwide, we now have 164,470 cases thereabouts.
That's this morning's update or early afternoon update.
Total in the U.S. now at 3,823 cases reported.
67 patients with the virus have died, many of which I just defined for people.
Now, I guess I wish we didn't have any pandemics.
I wish we didn't have cancer.
I wish we didn't have influenza every year.
You know, as I do my research and I look at the numbers of people that contract the flu every year, just the flu virus, the numbers are massive.
And I, you know, you look at, for example, 2010 and 11, anywhere between 32,000 and 51,000 Americans died.
You look at 2012, 13, 37 to 57,000.
2013, 14, 33,000 to 50,000.
You know, in a year, swine flu killed 12,469, and tens of thousands of Americans contracted that.
I just don't remember this reaction.
Is there a difference here that this has caused this level of panic in people?
Well, there's a lot of reasons for that.
By the way, the swine flu ended up being milder than we were expecting or worrying about.
And we thought we were going to see a lot more deaths, but we certainly saw 60 million infected.
I think the problem here is the lack of knowing.
And I actually like the testing, and I'm pushing for more and more testing, and I'm getting that to happen because I want to see all the people that don't have it.
I want all the worried well out there that are sure they have it.
Everyone thinks they have it, Sean, if somebody down the block has it, but they probably don't.
And that's what happened in South Korea.
When they started testing 300,000 people, they found that 95% didn't have it.
And then, for those who do have it, I don't want them spreading it to the elderly or, as Nicole was saying, the chronically ill people that are, she made a really huge point.
60% of Americans living with underlying health conditions.
I don't want them catching this virus.
So, you know, if our young go around partying at a concert and they pick up a very mild case of it, and for sure, you're right, Sean, the vast majority of these cases are mild.
And the other point you're making is right.
You know, we're jumping to the accelerator pedal all the time here without even remembering that this may not ever get to the degree that we already have in terms of numbers with some of our other problems in the United States, alcoholism or car accidents or people that contract other illnesses.
But we have to be vigilant and be at the ready for it, and we're taking it very seriously, which is correct.
Dr. Nicole, when I look at this, why isn't there the same reaction to the average flu when we lose tens of thousands every year?
Or I would say go back to H1N1, and there was a particular fear, and Barack Obama had referred to it as a Mexico pandemic at the time.
I guess he was racist by today's definition.
But at the time, that was unique, wasn't it?
Because it was a virus that had a crossover between humans and animals.
It was unique in that sense.
However, most of our pandemics have been from viruses that have undergone antigenic shifts and drifts and have changed to be able to infect humans.
But here's the thing: because a lot of people want to say, why is this different than the flu?
And you're absolutely right.
We have a large amount of people who are infected with a flu every year.
We have tens of thousands of Americans that die every year, including children from the flu, which is different.
Luckily, with COVID-19, we don't really see children being involved.
But the truth is, the unknown truly instills panic in people.
And with H1N1 and the past influenza epidemics, there was a sense of, you know, people, we've dealt with influenza before.
And so they were able to actually give them basic flu tests.
They didn't actually know the genetic sequences of the viruses, but they could just test for the flu to see if it was positive or negative.
And then they would have to figure out which strain it was.
This COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus, which you can't just give people a flu test to kind of narrow that down.
And we don't have known antivirals for it that works, and we don't have a vaccine that can prevent it.
So the possibility of the infection is quite great.
We're able to temper it somewhat with the other measures from the flu vaccine, but truly it is the unknown that is causing concern.
And so the point is we want to get this under control.
Our hospitals are already quite full because it is flu season and just for various other reasons.
So if we just had this virus to deal with, we would be okay because we would always have enough first responders.
We'd always have enough hospital beds.
The problem is there is the potential to be a very high amount of cases at one given time in a system that is already close to being full.
And that's why everyone is concerned, not necessarily because the virus itself is so deadly and concerning.
All right.
I got to run, but I appreciate both of you and your coverage both on radio and TV has been extraordinarily smart, measured, informed.
I think also calming for a lot of people, telling the truth.
And I think at this point in time, when things get this wound up and this politicized, you need to have that strategic calm in the middle of storm sometimes so you can actually get to the truth and the real answers.
Thank you both, Dr. Siegel, Dr. Nicole Sapphire, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Quick break right back.
We'll continue.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 232 days until you, the ultimate jury, you get to decide which way this goes.
I need to address something here because I watched at length in detail this ridiculous debate last night with Biden.
And it was pretty funny.
In the span of 10 seconds, Joe Biden mixed up the coronavirus with the swine flu, then called H1N1, the swine flu, N1H1, and forgot the name of the Ebola virus, calling it the thing that, you know, the thing.
We can do this.
We did that.
We've been through this before with the coronavirus.
We've been through this before, excuse me, we've been through this before with dealing with the viruses at the N1H1 virus as well as what happened in Africa.
That thing that happened in Africa.
You know, we hold these truths to be a salvador.
All men and women created equal.
There you are.
You know, the thing.
You know the thing, the thing being God the thing.
And the one thing that really stands out is there's not a dime's worth of difference.
And here's the frustrating thing.
And I did see a listen, the mob and the media and the Democratic Party have been disgusting.
What they have done is harmful to what has happened in the country.
And to watch these two in particular, Medicare for all would solve all the problems.
Neither one of them, I mean, Donald Trump, he goes forward, I mean, in record time, record time with this whole travel ban, record time.
And that time was critical.
That time bought us time.
That time, literally, there's no doubt about it.
In the end, we just can't calculate it.
Save lives, save people from being infected with this thing.
And, you know, obviously, this was the thing we had said from the very beginning that was a little scary about this virus and a little different about this virus.
And that is that this particular thing, the thing, the thing, you know, people have no symptoms.
They're walking around and they could transmit the disease having no idea that they ever came into contact with it themselves.
And that's when you start getting into the big numbers of people that have the potential of dying.
Because again, and a fear factor has kicked in in all of this.
That's not good.
There was one good story out today, by the way.
A biotech company has now shipped the first batches of a vaccine to be tested on humans.
I don't want to get people's hopes up in all of this because I don't know how quickly any of this is ever going to get done, but it'd be really good.
But we're seeing, look, it's everything that we have been saying.
It is true.
This affects older people, compromised immune systems.
This tends to go after people that are older, underlying medical, underlying medical conditions, et cetera, et cetera.
But I will tell you, you know, Joel Pollack really laid out a better timeline than the one that I've been using.
And this is what bothers me in all of this, is we're now listening to Dr. Joe and Dr. Bolshevik Bernie, Dr. Quid ProQuo and Dr. Bolshevik.
And I'm watching these guys and they're like urgent, this and that.
They both want open borders.
Now, why have I always said over all these years, we need to secure our borders?
Okay, number one, we don't want people with bad intentions coming into this country that want to bring harm to Americans.
And we now know that people have crossed that border.
90% of our heroin crosses that border.
We have an opioid epidemic.
Why don't we close the border for that reason alone so that Americans will live?
Everyone's concerned about saving lives here, right?
Okay.
No, they don't want to do that.
Then I'd like to know the people that take these highly coveted spots.
We can't take in the world's population.
So those people that get in here, we'd like to know that you have the ability and means to take care of yourself while you are here.
I don't think that is too much to ask.
And certain health screenings, I don't think that's a bad thing to ask either.
I would not be surprised if over time that that does become something as a country that we do for the safety and security of the American people.
So my timeline has always been December 30, last year.
They recognize Wuhan Province area of China that there is some virus with pneumonia-like symptoms emerging.
They finally look at it and identify it and name it the coronavirus.
And everyone's like, oh, it's racist if you call it a Wuhan Chinese province virus.
It's ridiculous.
I actually found I found a speech that, who was it?
Obama gave calling it a Mexico virus back in the swine flu thing.
So anyway, but then we have the 21st of January this year.
The first person with coronavirus arrives in the United States from China.
He had been in the Wuhan province, Wuhan province area of China.
Now, again, that's January 21st.
In 10 days, the president is going to have this thing shut down.
10 days.
January 23rd, House impeachment managers, what were they doing?
They were impeaching the president with their opening arguments of removing the president.
That's two days after the first person with Corona arrives in the United States.
What were the Democrats doing?
They were impeaching the president.
Then China closed off the city of Wuhan completely to slow the spread of corona.
And they, then January 30th, what are the senators doing?
What are the Chucky Schumers of the world doing?
Well, they begin asking two days of questions on both sides in the presidential impeachment trial.
January 30th, World Health Organization declares a global health emergency as corona begins to spread.
January 30th, the very next day, your president declared a national health emergency and imposed the travel ban to and from China.
President, former vice president, Quid Pro Quo Joe called that decision hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering.
Okay, first death just three days later from Corona outside China is in the Philippines.
What are Democrats doing?
Well, February 3rd, this is after the travel ban.
This is after the quarantine was put in place.
Then House impeachment managers begin their closing arguments.
Donald Trump is a threat to national security.
Then the president, the next day, the day before the actual acquittal vote on impeachment, talks about coronavirus in his State of the Union address.
What did Nancy Pelosi do?
She ripped up every page in a temper tantrum that was obviously pre-planned as we saw that she was preparing it the whole time during the speech.
Maybe why she was so distracting.
Then, of course, February 5th, the Senate votes to acquit President Trump.
Now, they were doing nothing.
They sit here and they Monday morning quarterback.
They call the president hysterical.
They call him fear-mongering.
They call him xenophobia, CNN fake news, lecturing everybody in the media.
It's disgusting.
Their conduct in this has been nothing more than an extension of who they are and what they do every day and what they've been doing every day for three years.
This psychotic rage of Donald Trump.
How many thousands of Americans likely would have been if, in fact, the president didn't act, would have contracted this virus?
The numbers would have been probably incalculable.
I don't know what the ultimate numbers would have been, but it would not have been good.
That I can tell you.
You know, I mean, here's, and to watch them last night, well, I would do this and my plan.
I have a whole plan.
I laid out the plan.
And I'm like, well, we already know what your plan was because we know with H1N1, credit to the Health and Human Services Secretary in the Obama years, they did recognize it as an emergency 11 days in, but the administration did not.
And it's so interesting.
You watch these fact checkers and they say, well, technically, they did call it an emergency.
No, there was never a travel ban ever.
There was never a quarantine ever.
By the time Obama decided himself to do it, it was six months later, a thousand Americans were dead and tens of thousands had contracted the disease.
Like everything else the last three years.
And so the media showed a little bit shift in tone today.
Seemed maybe what the president is doing here is not such a bad thing.
Maybe the president putting the travel ban in place was a good thing.
You're not going to hear one single Democrat say that.
There's not one Democrat, nobody in the mob that has said Donald Trump has done a single good thing to protect American people here.
Now, none of them, they all want open borders.
None of them would use a travel ban.
None of them would quarantine.
They just wouldn't.
And the president's emergency declaration on Friday, okay, for the first time ever, because what are we going to do?
How do we get, what are we going to create an office of government testing in every city and town in America?
It's not practical.
Then I went through on Friday night.
We'll go into more detail on this tonight.
We were watching the president day in, day out.
He was bringing in people from all these different industries.
And it was pretty interesting to watch at the time.
And then the president, you know, we'd watch, for example, you got Walmart and you got Google and Walgreens and Target and CBS and Quest, Diagnostics, and LHC Group, and Beckton-Dickerson, and Roche, and Signify Health, and Lab Corps.
All these people had been coming in to the Oval Office to meet with the president.
Now, what was the purpose of this?
The purpose was, yeah, they were preparing worst-case scenarios if we need more mass testing and knowing that the system that they inherited could never possibly sustain what might end up being necessary.
Now, they did say in that press conference on Friday, yeah, well, we didn't know if it was ultimately going to happen.
So, this was all being done out of view of the public and out of the press.
But, you know, not everybody's going to need to be tested.
But anyway, so they're going to set up these parking lot certain big box retailers all across the country.
And drug and testing companies have now developed a rapid new way to test because they got rid of burdensome regulation again.
Results from the new test kit should take around 24 hours if you need one.
And again, not everybody needs one.
And again, if you're not going to be around, if you're young and healthy, no underlying conditions, no compromised immune system, and you're not going to be around somebody that is older with underlying medical conditions and compromised immune systems, people that are going through chemo radiation or autoimmune diseases, et cetera, and you're not feeling any symptoms, then you're probably not going to need to go get a test.
And you might want to just lessen the pressure on the system at that particular point because it's really you contracting the disease and passing it on ultimately to somebody that is potentially at risk of dying if in fact they get this.
But this, you know, we get this disease.
We go through the timeline.
They're impeaching the president.
Pretty disgusting comments by everybody in the media and everywhere else.
And it's just a continuation of hate Trump and Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeach, impeach.
And so the president met with the insurance.
Well, first, the president signed an $8.2 billion emergency spending package.
Okay, pretty, well, that wasn't enough.
First, he only wanted to offer $2 billion.
And he said at the time, whatever it's going to take, nobody knew.
President actually used the word, this is an invisible enemy.
That we've had pandemics.
We didn't know this is particularly sinister.
And again, you need some perspective here.
We lose tens of thousands of Americans with the flu.
This takes more of a more proactive need for reaction than past pandemics.
And now we're creating a paradigm that I would imagine will probably be used when future pandemics pop up.
No credit for the president.
Anyway, so you get the ban and the travel ban was extended as needed to Iran and then extended to Italy and South Korea and then all of Europe except the UK.
Now the UK and Ireland are included in this.
Then the president, while we weren't watching, you know, the FDA was cutting regulations to allow more rapid testing capacity and working with the free market, Quest and Lab Corps and the rest of these guys.
Then on March 2nd, the president's meeting with the pharmaceutical executives, again, trying to get rid of burdensome regulation.
They were able to break down the structure of corona to the point where now they can begin the process of a vaccine and treatment faster than any other virus in history.
I mean, we have the best people in the world, something I've been saying for a long time.
The FDA cuts these regulations.
The administration ordered the CDC to lift all restrictions on testing.
That was the 3rd of March.
The sixth, the president signs the emergency package.
The 10th, the president meets with insurance industry representatives.
They waived all co-pays for corona-related treatment.
The 11th, he meets with banking executives discussing economic relief for workers and especially specific industries, airline industry, cruise line industry, workers, hourly workers for direct relief to them.
If they need to stay home, if they're not feeling well, the job's going to be protected.
They're going to have their regular income come in.
And, you know, but anyone at that point, he's gotten credit for nothing.
I can't imagine how much worse it would be.
We might be in a situation like Italy.
I don't know.
I'm not a doctor, but if Joe wants to make this whole thing a big deal and he thinks he's so great, well, I have some questions for Joe Biden because I'm a little sick and tired of being lectured by people that, you know, at the moment we could have used their support and leadership and come together and say, yeah, the travel ban is a good idea.
No, that's hysterical.
This is hysteria.
No, it wasn't hysteria.
It was the president acting on behalf of the American people, and it turned out to be the right decision.
And it wasn't xenophobic or hysterical or fear-mongering.
And when they did this, you know, H1N1 pandemic, this fast-spreading disease was particularly deadly to children, impacting younger people more than older people like this case.
In April, a few days after the pandemic was detected, not labeled until, I believe, June, Obama's HHS secretary did say it was an emergency.
By October of 2009, tens of thousands of Americans were hospitalized, more than 1,000 Americans dead.
And then Obama declared the national emergency, and the media goes on TV that night with fawning coverage of Obama.
60.8 million Americans got H1N1, swine flu.
Ultimately, that resulted in 274,000 hospitalizations, 13,000 deaths of Americans in a year.
Worldwide, up to 575,000 people died.
I don't want that to happen ever.
I want to cure cancer and heart disease and everything else.
I don't want people ever dying from the flu.
So I think there's got to be some perspective here.
And I find the whole thing, you know, when you listen to these people in the media that have their agendas and the things that they say and the things they do, it is just the worst.
And I'm watching these, you know, this ridiculous Dr. Quid Pro and Dr. Bolshevik last night.
Neither one would still, no, no, we wouldn't have put a travel, but we believe in open borders, free health care for illegal immigrants.
Okay, how are you going to pay for it with this pandemic?
Because this, look at what's happened to the economy.
Yeah, now we have to just wait till this thing gets taken care of and then hopefully we get our recovery beginning.
That's the sick side of this.
That's been the hurtful side for the economy and the American people.
And this is all they've done for three years.
That part is sad because this is a moment you should say, oh, we care about all liberal, all American lives.
