Congressman Steve Scalise, Republican Whip, of Louisiana’s 1st district, talks about his time in self-quarantine, how COVID-19 is now making its mark on his state and his effort to take back the egregious funding to the Kennedy Center during a pandemic. Was it the right time to squeeze special funding?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.
You know, we haven't really been counting down, but it is 210 days till you, the ultimate jury gets to go out there and vote.
Obviously, we have bigger fish to fry.
There'll be plenty of time for the election.
We do have some updates as it relates to that.
The president 51% approval, latest Zogby poll, in spite of the media mob mob and their attempts to uh just slander and smear.
It they've not stopped.
The Democrats have not stopped being who they are.
The media mob has not stopped being who they are.
It is there are a lot of villains here in terms of in the middle of a pandemic, the mob questioning if they should take press conferences, attacking the president without mercy.
There's nothing this man can do that will ever satisfy them.
There's nothing he can do that will ever satisfy the Democratic Party.
They plot, they plan, they scheme, they complain, they just attack, attack, attack.
And you know, it's hard for them for even five minutes to put anything aside.
They just they're incapable of it, at least that's my conclusion.
Uh, we'll have the latest on all of that.
Um a lot about the WHO that was spreading nothing but Chinese propaganda uh in the midst of the early days and even beyond as it relates to the coronavirus.
Why are we funding?
We're the majority funder, the WHO.
They failed the world on a spectacular level.
Also, China should have to pay.
This study, 95% of this all could have been avoided had they not lied and covered up to the extent that they did.
If you can believe it, we actually have new information that New York was warned even earlier than the November 2015 health care task force that recommended the purchase of 15,783 ventilators in case we had an influenza pandemic and warning the federal government it's not their responsibility that this was something that is absolutely foreseeable, that you have a need to act on behalf of the people of the state of New York.
Well, they had another study in 2006.
I mean, it's unbelievable to me.
It is a it is a fail of monumental proportions.
They they were recommended to buy 10,000 ventilators when Bloomberg was in office.
They bought 500 and then they couldn't afford to maintain them, so they auctioned them off.
Can you believe that?
Again, the same warning, same admonition.
People will die.
This is gonna happen, not if it happens.
It's going to.
It's when, not if.
Uh, we'll give you the details of all of that.
We have our facts without fear segment.
The we we do seem to be at a point of of leveling as it relates to this.
I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves on that.
The the key predictions have been reduced dramatically, where they were predicting, you know, as well, put it this way, their predictions were if we did not mitigate, if the president had not acted 10 days after the first known case of coronavirus in the U.S. and institute a travel ban,
uh, if we had not had the quarantine and then the subsequent travel bans, and we didn't have these mitigation efforts, they thought 2.2 to 2.4 million Americans could lose their lives in this.
Then it was as high as 250,000, what, a week to ten days ago now.
Now they're down below a hundred thousand.
So obviously what what's being done is working, but now the issue also is how do we begin the reopening of the economy and doing it quickly.
There is an answer.
There is a way.
I think a lot of it is gonna have to do with testing.
And Abbott Laboratories in their new five minutes, you you get an answer test.
When I when I went to the UNS uh the UN NS Comfort in New York City Harbor the day it arrived to get into the area before I can get anywhere near anybody or any ship, I was stopped by military members, and they took my temperature without touching me.
I just put this device close to my head.
It was 98.8.
Guy said perfect.
I thought it was 98.6.
But anyway, um, but they're taking people's temperatures now.
We'll be able to test people.
For example, if you're in a highly concentrated area like New York, small geographical area, highly concentrated with people, they will be able to test building by building before you get in a building whether or not you have the virus or not.
And if you have it, you go home.
So there's there's going to be as we've been discussing, a whole new paradigm shift on everything.
But the quicker we open up the economy, the better it's going to be for the entire country.
And we we've got to get up and running as quickly as possible.
And the cure cannot be worse than what the original problem is, as the president's been saying.
Oh, Joe Biden now is saying, Oh, I supported the travel ban from the beginning.
I don't know if he knew what day it was, but we'll get to that too.
I want to start, though, with look, I can spend all the hours that you want on hydroxychloroquine and discuss with you all of the things that have led up to,
you know, people like Dr. Oz and so many doctors, for example, in the New York area, New Jersey area, Long Island area, that are all using it, why France is using it, why Spain, 73% of patients have been using it there, those testing positive COVID-19, uh, why Turkey confiscated it all so they could distribute it to the people that actually have a need for hydroxychloroquine.
Uh, Israel, why did they send us 10 million doses in record time because they understand that it's working, uh, and other countries as well.
Every country on the face of this earth has been using it.
And I watched Dr. Wolf Blitzer and Dr. Mika Brzezinski and Dr. Humpty Dumpty on television, and they are literally saying to the American people this is an untested, unproven, dangerous drug.
That though those are their words.
And they say it over and they say it over and they say it over again.
This drug has been in existence for 65 years.
It was first approved by the federal government in 1955.
Now, I'm not playing doctor on radio and TV here.
You've got to make this decision in consultation with your doctor.
That's up to you and your doctor to decide.
Um, but all that I have read, I'm I'm bringing to you.
That's why we have Dr. Oz on every day now, because he's talking to all of these people all around the world.
He said, This is no longer anecdotal yesterday on the program.
He explained the thousand patient test in France by this doctor that you know gave us the first early indicator study.
And in fact, it is it is showing dramatic improvement in patients that are using it.
And they did a they did a case-by-case study there and also uh a clinical study in in China on it.
Okay, whether you want to take Chinese information as valid, legitimate, that's a fair question.
So the Food and Drug Administration, uh, Dr. Oz was able to get a hold of this, uh received a letter.
I believe the president has also received the letter.
I can't confirm that.
Um, it's written by Daniel Wallace.
He's a doctor.
Um, and his qualifications are beyond impeccable.
This is the expert, defining expert if ever there was an expert on the issue of hydroxychloroquine.
And he writes that he says, I am a board-certified rheumatologist based at Cedar Cyanine Medical Center in Los Angeles.
By the way, a great institution.
I inherited the largest lupus practice in the United States in 1985, and I currently care for 2,000 patients with the disease.
Remember, hydroxychloroquine is used for lupus.
It is used for rheumatoid arthritis, it is used as an anti-malarial drug.
And by the way, we see in countries with higher incidences of malaria where people take more of this medicine as a general course, less incidence of COVID-19 contraction.
But anyway, I digress.
The majority of his patients, 2,000 of them now currently in his care, uh, are taking or have taken.
Remember, he he took over the largest lupus practice in 1985, uh, hydroxychloroquine.
I have authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers.
I have written the principal lupus textbook, am a past chairman of the Lupus Foundation of America, the rheumatology research foundation of the American College of Rheumatology, and I am currently on the board of directors of the lupus research alliance and lupus therapeutics.
I have authored numerous articles on anti-malarials.
An example is attached, so on so forth.
He writes, hydroxychloroquine, plaquinyl, which is hydroxychloroquine, um is a very safe drug.
These are his words.
I'm not putting, I'm not adding anything.
It has been given to tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval in 1955, parentheses, 65 years, and as a monotherapy has not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose.
65 years, he's saying.
In 42 years of practice, no patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for a hydroxychloroquine complication.
Rheumatologists, they do not obtain EKGs before prescribing hydroxychloroquine and never had a problem.
No treatment guidelines suggest obtaining it.
On the other hand, chloroquine is associated with QT interval problems when hydroxychloroquine first came out, and we did not have other agents.
Some rheumatologists prescribed 600 to 800 milligrams a day in the 1950s and 60s, and there were occasional reports with hydroxychloroquine.
And then he went on to say uh cardiotoxicity can occur with the accumulation of the drug with long-term use in one per several thousand patients.
Again, that's at the higher dose.
The risk of eye retinal uh toxicity, we had this doctor calling yesterday confirming this very thing.
This is what he does, is 0% at five years, 1% at 10 years, 10% of 15 years with continuous use in patients who are given the advised five milligram kilogram daily dose.
The dose is adjusted downward for those with renal or hepatic impairment, three milligram kilogram dialysis patients.
And since there are five metabolites of the drug, one can obtain drug levels to monitor therapy safely since it is handled differently by patients given the same dose.
And then he goes on to say that an eye exam should be performed annually or after two to three years.
And listen to this the risk of taking 400 milligrams of hydroxychloroquine a day following a single 600 milligram hydroxychloroquine loading dose for 30 to 60 days is nil.
Nil.
That is what we're talking about here.
Not even talking about 60 days, you're talking at most, usually 10 or 20 day run.
Unless one has an allergic rash, yes, that could be a side effect, or upset stomach, uh, which would be 5% of those that take that dosage of hydroxychloroquine.
Insurance carriers are looking at the prevalence of COVID among patients given hydroxychloroquine.
Contrary to an article that gave mice 10 times the therapeutic dose of chloroquine and HCQ, there has been no clinical adverse interactions between metaphorin and HCQ.
HCQ lowers blood sugar, and there have been clinical trials suggesting they work uh together.
Nearly all of my lupus patients have taken zithromycin over the years without a single adverse event.
Also, there is consensus among lupus specialists that he talks about another drug, maybe a valuable tool in the fight against COVID.
The drug was taken, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now, you listen, you're gonna whoever everybody has to make their own decisions on these things.
But for those that are saying that this is reckless, that this is dangerous, that this is, you know, that it's our our unproven.
It's it they are saying things that are just false according to all of the experts.
Now, am I telling you to take it?
Nope.
I'm telling you to check with your doctor.
There's a reason the world is using it as it relates to COVID-19, and the whole world is using it.
And there's a reason that even in New York state of all places, now county executives are begging Cuomo to end his hydroxychloroquine ban because he's forcing anybody that wants to get the medicine into the hospital System, which you don't want to overburden, and if you don't have COVID-19 before you go in, the odds are much higher you have it when you leave a hospital.
And still he even though the president is sending him millions of doses, is hoarding it and forcing people into the hospital system.
It's ridiculous.
Just like he has failed at an epic level, which we'll get into in even more detail today.
But this is something that, you know, if they're telling you it's not safe, I would prefer for me personally, I listen to Daniel Wallace.
I'll listen to Dr. Oz, who's talked to doctors all around the world and does it all day, every day.
It's not the army, of course we want clinical trials.
We don't have time for a two-year clinical trial, and the effects are being chronicled all over the place.
It's no longer, as he says, even anecdotal.
It's way beyond that.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, let me read it again from this uh Dr. Daniel Wallace, Dr. Wallace of Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles.
Hydroxychloroquine, HCQ, plaquinil, same thing, very s is a very safe drug.
It's been given to tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval in 1955, that's 65 years, and has not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose.
In 42 years of practice, no patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for HCQ complication.
Now look, check with your doctor.
I'm not a doctor, but I am telling you, it's been it's now being given out all over the world as a treatment for COVID-19.
There was a survey of 6,300 doctors.
It is rated by far the number one treatment option of the doctors surveyed.
A piece that was up Los Angeles doctor, this was on, I think ABC five, uh ABC 7, I think, out in Los Angeles, uh, Anthony Cardillo, ER specialist prescribing the combination of drugs, meaning with the zithromycin, uh, with people experiencing severe symptoms.
Every patient I've prescribed it to has been very, very ill, and within 8 to 12 hours, they were basically symptom free.
So clinically, I'm seeing a resolution.
Feds are buying up massive quantities of it.
Uh, and we have 29 million doses, and you know, Andrew Cuomo's still hoarding it, even though the president, again, he builds the hospital, he staffs the hospitals, he sends the ships, he sends the gowns and the respirators and the ventilators, and now he's sending hydroxychloroquine, and Governor Cuomo refuses to act.
25 till the top of the hour, facts without fear and news and information.
Look, we're headed towards 400,000 cases worldwide.
Uh, deaths worldwide.
Now we have uh I'm sorry, nearly 400,000 cases in the U.S. Uh that's the total.
New York, 131,000 of those.
And uh over 11,000, just a little over 11,000 deaths.
Uh tens of thousands are now recovered, uh, which is again where we are worldwide.
We're looking at this 1,364 uh plus thousand, 65,000 now, uh, coronavirus cases, 76,457 deaths, hundreds of thousands recovered.
Um, and what we're now beginning to see are, if you remember, we heard when they when they went outside, and when when they went out and got these models that they had put together and they were showing us these models, they were put together and they were based on estimates that turned out not to be true.
It's the IHME model.
Remember when they came out, coronavirus task force and Dr. Burks and Fauci were saying, well, if we didn't do anything, we didn't have the travel ban, we didn't have the quarantines and the extended travel bans, then the Europe travel ban, first Italy and Iran and other countries, and then all of Europe, but UK and Ireland, and then even they were included, and now with even Canada and Mexico and pretty much worldwide, um, and we didn't have the mitigation impact.
They predicted that it could be it could have been as high as 2.22.4 million Americans dying.
But again, these are models, but had we not done those things, we know you don't have to be a scientist and you don't have to be a mathematician to know that the travel ban put into effect 10 Days after the first known coronavirus case in the U.S., it is incalculable.
How how many probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans would have otherwise contracted the disease.
We would be in a far worse position today had the president not acted and decided to be xenophobic, Islamophobic, and a fearmongerer, as Joe said.
By the way, Joe is saying he supported it.
Joe Biden, I'm not kidding.
Called it xenophobic.
He called it fear mongering.
He called it hysteria.
In moments like this, this is where the credibility of the president is most needed.
As he explains what we should and should not do.
This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, hysterical xenophobia to uh and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science.
He sounds tired, doesn't he?
Anyway, now he's falsely claiming that 45 nations block Chinese nationals from entering the U.S. before Trump did.
Uh not true.
Uh no American should have to wait a single minute so Donald Trump can put his signature on a physical check.
Not true either.
Now Joe's saying he's going to wear a mask in public during the pandemic of coronavirus.
Okay, Joe, you're irrelevant at this point.
And your phone call with the president, I'm I'm sure you were giving him all the advice you gave him on N1H1 and Super Thursday and every other admonition because uh 60.8 million Americans contracted N1H1, to use your words.
Anyway, he is now near the bottom of a survey ranking democratic leadership during coronavirus with his disastrous podcast video podcast.
And Biden now finally, um two months and three days late, criticizing Trump for not banning travel from China soon enough.
I'm like, huh?
Ted Cruz lit him up on social media.
You know, then he's producing one bad word salad after another, as Red State put it.
I thought that was pretty funny.
Um, but whatever.
I mean, it's a case where we cannot let this we've never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17 all the way around 16.
We have never, never let our democracy second fiddle.
Wait, that we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Uh, and now he's praising Governor Whitmer of Michigan, who is obviously a leading VP candidate.
Yes, she's the one that banned hydroxychloroquine and then said weeks and weeks later, oh no, no, no.
I I I think we uh there's uh there's enough evidence showing that it's beginning to work.
Only governor not getting this is Cuomo.
Unbelievable.
And he's getting it all for free, just like all the hospitals built are for free, just like the ventilators they didn't buy, he's getting those for free.
Now we're having it staffed.
I'll get to that in a second.
Um again, more facts without fear.
The the cure can't be worse than the original problem.
The president now, beginning with Minuchin and others, looks like they're gonna form some White House task force.
I hope they put Art Laffer on that task force and Steve Moore on that task force.
But the president's look, how do we reopen parts of the economy?
It's like what I said.
I think having the ability to test people and get results in five minutes, and you know, if Abbott can crank out these test the new testing methods that they have, it'll be how we can open up the country.
And it'll probably be geographically at first, but then the testing can be used in in even a place like New York City.
If you want to get in a building, you're gonna have to take the five-minute test and wait.
Um, so but it's better than not opening up the economy.
Uh, the president says he believes the economy will open with a bang.
Look, you it's it you can't even calculate now how bad third quarter numbers are gonna be.
They're gonna be terrible.
The Dow is uh up again today on news that it seems to have been leveling off now.
Uh, but you know, this could be a an economic worldwide recession, the likes of that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.
But the sooner we get up and running, the better it's gonna be uh for everybody.
Anyway, the IHME now, you know, first they said 2.2 million, if we didn't do anything.
Well, the president did put the travel ban in effect.
The president did put um quant quarantining in effect, he expanded them all out.
Then we had the mitigation efforts.
Now, where they were a couple of weeks ago, it could be as high as 240,000 Americans.
Now they're below 100,000 in their estimates, which means that it's it's working.
As we discussed yesterday, the predictions of how many people would be in ICU or needing hospital beds was off by a solid 60% or 50% even less than what they had been predicted.
That's all good news.
Again, anecdotal that all of these efforts are working.
We have uh an update on Boris Johnson.
He's in stable condition, uh, apparently getting oxygen, not on a ventilator yet.
Uh the mitigation efforts continue through the end of this month.
The paycheck protection program, tens of thousands of small businesses now applying for the 40 billion in relief uh and also getting money into the hands of American workers that have been displaced even temporarily.
That is all now in the process of getting moved out.
Thousands of lenders have made the loans available for the small businesses.
Uh we've now done almost two million tests uh in the country, and they're growing by nearly 125,000 people per day.
And now we have CVS is launching two new drive-thru sites in Atlanta and Providence, Rhode Island and some of the other states.
They're evaluating the moving ahead with a vaccine.
Not sure if I want this vaccine, but that's my own personal choice.
You make your own decisions with your own doctors and therapies, obviously hydroxychloroquine at the front and center of that.
Um we now have not only in New York is I mean, it's pretty amazing what the president's done in New York.
I mean, not only did he send the Navy hospital ship, thousand beds, and they're now treating COVID 19 patients, the largest bed uh hospital uh in the in the country, the Javitt Center, that was not designed for COVID 19 patients, they're doing it there.
And to help the ever incompetent Andrew Cuomo, who gets praise from everybody in the mob in the media.
They're even staffing that for him and building numerous other hospitals in Nassau, Suffolk County, Long Island, and New York, and Westchester, New York.
Um, which, you know, all the doses of hydroxychloroquine are coming from Donald Trump.
All the ventilators have been coming from Donald Trump, all the hospitals built from Trump.
I mean, you'd look at the actual numbers, it's it's pretty spectacular because you know, everything that New York has needed has come from the federal government, in spite of the fact that this peak week in that November 2015 health department report on the need for ventilators, uh, is now come true during a severe influenza pandemic, November 2015.
This is Cuomo's own health care task force, a shortfall of nearly 16,000 ventilators.
15,000 783 short.
If we had an influenza pandemic, the governor didn't buy a single one.
Nothing.
Zero.
It would have been 0.4% of his budget in 2015 and 16.
He refused to buy one.
Now we went back and looked.
How many times do you think Governor Cuomo in his wonderful press conferences has been challenged about this?
Compare that to the questions Donald Trump is getting every day.
Listen to the listen to the one time he was questioned.
Listen to this flimsy answer of his.
There was a report in 2015 where the state suggested or a task force suggested maybe New York should increase its stockpile.
Any reason that that wasn't done?
Jimmy, that's not the fact and you know it.
Read the fact checkers on it.
There was an advisory commission called Law and the Life, Life and the Law, that had a chart in 2015 that said if you had the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, you may need X number of ventilators.
There is no state in the United States that bought ventilators for the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
The federal government did not buy ventilators for the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
Nobody in the world bought ventilators in preparation for a 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
This is a foreseeable problem.
That's what it said.
We have a duty and a responsibility to act now.
That's all in the report.
And during a severe influenza pandemic, there is likely to be a projected shortfall of ventilators, 15,783.
During peak week demand, New Yorkers, that's this week.
And he didn't buy any of them.
He just refused.
Now, the person that led the New York State Health Commission report or report, the ventilator allocation guidelines, the guy by the name of uh former New York City Health Commissioner, Howard Zucker.
Dear New Yorkers, protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers is a core objective of the Department of Health.
During flu season, we are reminded that a pandemic influenza is a foreseeable threat, one that we cannot ignore, Andrew.
Nice try.
In light of this possibility, the department is taking steps to prepare for a pandemic, limit the loss of life, and other negative consequences.
That's what it says directly in the report.
I continue.
An influenza pandemic would affect all New Yorkers.
We have a responsibility to plan now.
Part of the planning process is to develop guidance on how to ethically allocate limited resources, i.e.
ventilators, during a severe influenza pandemic while saving the most lives.
As part of our emergency preparedness preparedness efforts, the department, together with the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, is releasing their 2015 ventilator allocation guidelines, which provides an ethical clinical legal framework to assist healthcare providers and the general public in the event of a severe influenza pandemic.
He didn't no, he didn't.
It would have been 0.4% of his budget.
Now he did have 750 million he wasted on a failed solar panel factory, mothballed.
90 million on a partnership with a California light bulb company that went nowhere.
600 million on a computer chip factory that went bust.
So he's not telling the truth, but this is the thing.
If this was Donald Trump's task force and he didn't act, you think he would get the same treatment, or would he be hammered daily by the mob in the media?
You know, Andrew, all talk, no action, governor of New York.
He didn't act.
They had a responsibility to act to save lives.
It couldn't be any more clear.
And the way he dismisses it the one time he's asked about it is pathetic.
And now, by the way, you have you know county executives all around the country saying stop forcing our citizens into the hospital if they want to get hydroxychloroquine that their doctors want to prescribe for them.
And they're not doing it.
Our friend Kerry Pickett had a great story about this.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
And by the way, 14 years ago in 2006, um, then Mayor Bloomberg, to his credit, they said he would he'd be short as many as 9,454 ventilators.
At least the guy tried.
At least he bought 500 ventilators.
He bought them and he bought face masks and he bought a bunch of other supplies.
He did something.
And then they couldn't afford to maintain it.
And they sold them at auction.
That's New York's epic fail.
It ended up on the auction block.
Unbelievable.
And now every hospital now that's being built.
I mean, you look at the numbers.
I mean, it is breathtaking how much, you know, they're sending out, meaning, meaning the federal government.
I mean, you got 11.7 million N95 respirators, 26.5 million surgical masks, 5.3 million face shields, 4.4 million surgical gowns, 22.6 million gloves.
I mean, that's all going out, courtesy of the federal government.
And, you know, six separate hospitals, the Navy Ship Hospital.
Now they're even they're staffing the Javett Center, the largest hospital in the country for New York.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Andrew.
You did a great job, Andrew.
Keep talking.
Because that's about all he's good at.
Talking, saying nothing.
And what he said in that answer is a lie.
It's not true.
It's an absolute, it's an epic failure.
And it was the same thing, epic failure on de Blasio's part.
Now you would say, why wouldn't you take it seriously?
Smallest geographic area, 11 million people.
Pandemic, your ground zero.
911, the first trade center attack, numerous other terrorist threats in New York.
Uh, you don't have anything on on in supplies?
Nothing, no preparation, and you waste all that other money.
It's unbelievable to me.
All right, as we roll along, facts without fear, toll free.
It's 800 nine four One Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, one bit of uh, well, I guess good news.
Uh I saw this for the greater New York State area, some of the data.
Um, this guy, I think he used to be a New York Times writer, um, Alex uh Berenson.
I can't believe I'm quoting a New York Times guy, but great news, New York State data, hospitalizations tend to rise some on Mondays, but the trend is clear.
Net intubations rose by less than a hundred, down eighty percent since Friday.
Uh a fantastic day for reality, a terrible day for team apocalypse.
Um, obviously the travel ban, the quarantine, the extended travel bans, and then more travel bans, and then mitigation efforts are having a clear um and positive uh impact at uh preventing people from contracting coronavirus, and more importantly, uh we see that this leveling off that everyone has talked about, and then hopefully the precipitous drop if patterns hold uh follows there, then thereafter.
Uh, we welcome back our medical aid team expert, Dr. Oz is with us.
Um, he was kind enough to share with me a letter uh from Daniel Wallace.
I read this in the last hour, board certified rheumatologist.
I mean, inherited inherits the largest lupus practice in the U.S. in 1985, 2,000 patients under his care right now with lupus, majority taking HCQ.
He's authored 400 peer-reviewed papers, written the principal lupus textbook, and he is saying H uh CQ, plaquinil, are very safe drug.
He says it's been given to tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval in 1955.
That's 65 years if you're doing the math in your head.
And as a monotherapy, he's not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose in 42 years of practice.
No patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for an HCQ complication.
And he further goes on describing that the risk of taking 400 milligrams of HCQ a day following a single 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 to 60 days, which by the way is well beyond what the average treatment is for those that have COVID-19.
But he goes on to say is nil.
He said the risk of taking that for that period of time, 30 to 60 days is nil, unless one has an allergic rash or upstead upset stomach.
But I've been watching all these doctors in the media mobs telling us it's untested and it's unsafe and it's unproven, and and how dare the president be advocating for this.
Anyway, Dr. Oz, uh, you have Dr. Daniel Wallace on your show today.
You know, he's a fascinating man.
He's iconic.
Uh some of the most prestigious people in the in the world couldn't claim what he claims.
He's led the biggest societies, he's respected by his peers, 42 years of uh practice, leaves the program at Cedar Sina, which as you mentioned, is you know, it's what his practice is one of the largest, maybe the largest in the country.
And the fascinating thing about Dr. Wallace is when I called him, I was calling for a different reason.
You know, you and I have been talking about this coincidence that people with lupus who are taking hydroxychlorofin don't seem to get COVID-19.
And we're trying to see is that a coincidence or is that a clue?
So I was peppering him with questions to see if we could do a study, because he leads this huge 57 university consortium that can do these kinds of quick surveys and analyses.
And in the middle of it, he stopped me and said, Can you do me a favor?
I said, What?
And I'm thinking he's gonna want to wants to come on the show, you know, say some other something else.
And he says, I I just want you to hope that people out there talking about this drug, hydrosochloric and understand that they're wrong when they talk about the complications.
And I said, in what way?
And he said, we don't have any complications of the ones they're talking about.
Of course, there's a medication, you have to be careful.
There's some side effects if it interacts with other drugs, but the things these guys are talking about on television, the pundits.
I mean, none of you guys prescribe this medication.
And he's right.
I'm a heart surgeon.
I would never prescribe this normally.
You know, I you there are many people talking about this, doctors, uh TV hosts, news anchors, everyone thinks they know the, you know, they know the correct advice to give to patients, but none of us actually personally prescribe it.
But the rheumatologists do.
And he said, just clarify uh that that it did that there's no heart issues, there's no guidelines for checking the heart because there are no heart issues.
There's no issue with blindness.
That happens after 10 years of chronic use, daily use uh in one percent of people, and you can identify if it's gonna happen and stop before then.
All these rumors about it being dangerous for diabetics, you know, a good portion of my patients' diabetic, it's just not true.
And so he wasn't trying to make a point or get a get got you back.
He was just literally stating something.
There was a point of information.
So I checked other rheumatologists out.
They all sort of say the same thing.
We've had it wrong.
And so he wrote that letter that you just were reading to the FDA because you know, everyone thinks everyone else knows, right?
I thought the FDA knew this.
The FDA quite honestly at I I believe thinks it's more dangerous than the rheumatologists who used to think it is.
So they ought to be talking to each other, and I hope this letter will get that conversation going.
You know, I guess there might be a conflict old style way of thinking, which is we must follow the old rules, clinical trials, clinical trials.
Okay, in theory, I agree with that.
You agree with that.
And the phrase that you've coined is well, you you gotta go to war with the army that you have.
And we don't have time for clinical trials, but as you pointed out yesterday, um, it's no longer anecdotal.
We're way beyond the anecdotal stage, and and yet there is this mysterious reluctance and resistance and this clinging to this older model.
And I'm not saying I'm not a doctor, but I everything I've read and everything that I've learned from you and and others tells me that this is working and it's you being used millions and millions of millions of doses for COVID 19, and I'm not seeing any red flags from anybody.
Well, Didier Rolt, the famous French infectious disease specialist who I've been interviewing on the show, he's also on today, um, is pretty outspoken about this.
He said it's unethical not to give people the option.
He's not swearing in promising that it's the golden uh solution.
He just thinks that it's in his experience.
Now he's up to a thousand patients he's treated on this protocol where he has complete data, he's about to publish it, that he believes it should be shared.
Now, that stated, I'm still not gonna stay here and pontificate and think guarantee you it's gonna work.
I don't know.
You got you have to do the large clinical trial that Dr. Fauci's asking for.
It needs to be done.
God bless everyone who wants to do that.
I've been trying to get it done.
I think we'll we'll eventually have the answer, but eventually isn't good enough if uh your doctor with a patient in front of you who's coughing, high fever, not doing well, and remember these guys are using it early.
But let's just get one second into this issue of new versus old.
So the newest idea, which is I think classic American ingenuity, and that's what this country is good at, is we have big data and we know how to do deep analytics.
And my partners at chaircare took this idea.
There was a Fox News idea, by the way.
It wasn't my idea.
One of your co-anchors, Brian uh unfox and friends, said, Hey, what about if you just looked at all the patients who are you know they're not gonna be able to do that?
We're gonna have to start calling him Brian Kilme, Dr. Kilmeed, or what are we gonna have to do with it?
Yes, Professor Kilmeat.
He likes to go profess he likes the academic title.
Okay, all right, let's calm down, Dr. Oz.
Uh let's be easy here.
So he said, he said, Well, what a you know, since there's this idea that it might prevent illness, if we looked at all the 300,000 lupus patients in America who are taking hydroxychloroquine, could we tell if any of them got COVID 19 or vice versa?
And so we've been doing that.
And we now pulled uh this is I mean scary how how in impressive this is.
Already nine million records identified 14,000 patients who are in a hydroxychloroquine.
Uh, and then we looked at those patients, and so far, none of them, none have COVID-19.
Now, do not jump up and down and say we solved this, we cured this, we know how to prevent the virus.
Uh, I want to explain this.
Because what you're saying is so all these patients that have been taking hydroxychloroquine for rheumatoid arthritis or taking it for lupus, we're not seeing incidences of COVID-19 contraction.
No.
In fact, Dr. Wallace, the letter you're just reading, he is he has 800 patients in his practice.
Not one has COVID 19, and there's a there are 40 rheumatologists at Cedar Cyanai, and they don't know of a single case of COVID 19.
And you're looking for one.
You're you're trying to find people that take hydroxychloroquine that have for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis that have contracted COVID 19.
Yes, and it I want that so badly, I put on my website, Dr. Ros.com, there's a sign-up sheet.
Please, please, if you're listening now, if you know of anybody or if you are taking hydroxy chloroquine and you got COVID 19, tell me.
I'm not trying to shove this idea down anyone's throat.
I'm earnestly trying to find one person that it happened to.
Now I'm sure we're gonna find some people.
That's to be, I mean it's impossible that everybody would be protected.
But I just want to see how often that happens.
Because it might be that this was a clue that might stimulate doctors and nurses on the front lines who are high at high risk to maybe take this for a while till we know for sure in order to prevent themselves from contracting the virus.
We don't have enough of them.
In New York City, I bet you 15%, maybe more, are infected.
I I mean it's a fascinating thing.
So it's very interesting to me because I'm like you, I'm watching this very, very closely, and you know, I was watching this guy, a doctor.
Um I won't give his name out to try and embarrass him.
He's there are people all over the airways, talent, um, on air people.
Uh this particular doctor who was on Fox that are actually saying this is dangerous, this is untested, this is reckless.
The AMA answering what the president had said on Sunday is what have you got to lose?
They said your life.
Now, I'm reading what Dr. Wallace is saying, and I'm listening to what yours is saying, and I'm watching your shows uh with patients and doctors that that are doing this for a living, and I'm keeping up with all the s studies you've been pointing out about hydroxychloroquine.
He's saying it is a very safe drug.
Tens of millions of individuals in the world have used it since its approval.
That's 65 years.
Well, that's that's hardly a small number of people, and no deaths associated with it.
Forty-two years of practice, he seems to be the leading practitioner in the country for this.
No patient of his has ever been hospitalized or died, and then he goes into the actual dosages that we're talking about here, and the risk of taking it is nil.
Those are her his words, not mine.
And let's look at the other data from that that we know is high quality.
So Didier Raoult, the Frenchman I spoke earlier, that he's he's the most referenced physician in infectious disease in the world.
He says in his thousand cases that he has very clear data on.
Again, it's not a randomized trial.
His is just I just took care of my patients, I'm collecting data meticulously.
Here's what happened.
They trivial side effects, like a rash.
That's it.
And then this the Chinese randomized trial, which is a real gold standard, where they actually compare people getting hydroxychloroquine to not getting it and showed that there's a clinical significant improvement, statistically significant improvement in all the major endpoints you want you'd care about.
Uh they also did not have any side effects from using the medication.
Now, again, I'm not I don't want people making this at home.
You have to get a doctor's prescription.
I want the doctor customizing it, all that's dated.
It is it is wrong for us to misleadingly tell the U.S. public that this is an extremely dangerous medication.
We have enough problems to worry about in America without us manufacturing additional ones.
The reality of it is we don't know for sure if it will work.
It's not anecdotal, it's going to be a debate.
Some studies will come back negative, as there have been, some will come back positive.
We'll arbitrate that, make the best decision.
But the reason there's a reason that most doctors like this, more doctors like this than any other option, and we should not scare patients or their doctors, who many of whom don't prescribe this routinely into thinking it's much more dangerous than they think.
All of a sudden you've got people who should be offered this option by their doctor, but because of fears about non-existent uh complications, the whole system gets gummed up.
Yeah, uh well, I mean, you know, one of the things that has impressed me the most about getting to know you and know you better is your level of passion and commitment.
I mean, certain people are called to do certain things, like friends of mine in law enforcement and medicine and and nurses and doctors and scientists, they don't get into these professions usually because they want to make money, they do it because they they are passionate about it.
And the fact that you spend hours and hours and hours daily and do your own shows and do multiple shows on Fox, including mine every night, um, shows your level of commitment that you're trying to get to the answer to help save lives.
And if with all of this said, when you hear the same people that I hear, and and I look at all the work you've done, and I look at the qualifications of Dr. Wallace and the French uh uh virologist that you you're talking about on your show today.
You talked to both of them today.
It's a great show.
I can't wait to record it.
But um and I'm just sitting here saying, why the why are they telling the American people it's untested?
Why are they saying it's dangerous?
Why are they saying it's reckless?
Why is the A AMA saying uh what have you got to lose your life?
Why why would they be saying that?
Well, just so you know, the the if the there's another medical society that represents the experts on lungs, and they're actually saying they're endorsing it.
They're saying we think our practitioners should use this medication if they think it's right for their patients.
I quoted them yesterday.
Yeah, exactly.
So you know what I think is interesting to me, and I think this is what's happening.
People looking for an angle.
They want their opinion to be different from everyone else's opinion.
And sometimes everyone's saying, you know, it's a pretty safe drug.
I, you know, I consider it.
And they think, well, that's you know, that's not very exciting to hear.
I'm gonna take the opposite perspective.
What they don't realize is people believe what they're saying.
And now you've got a bunch of folks who are not doctors.
If you read the papers these days, all of a sudden, this has gone from a drug that no one would have commented on as being dangerous two months ago to being something that is so dangerous you should think twice before even thinking about it.
You would think you're snorting, you know, fentanyl that you you got from uh a drug dealer on the street.
But well, I thank you for all you're doing, and this is important.
And again, everybody needs to make these decisions in consultation with their doctors.
I say the same thing.
And by the way, Governor Cuomo still will not allow pharmacies to dispense uh hydroxychloroquine, even though the president's giving him millions or more doses.
Don't understand it.
I I I I don't I I I I really don't think he knows it.
There's no way he could know that was happening.
No, it's his executive order.
He mentioned it yesterday.
He's gonna think about lifting it, but he didn't I know, but I don't think he really appreciates that that that he's hindered.
First of all, it's it's I I think erroneous to think you should interfere with a doctor's relationship with a patient without giving it a lot of thought.
And if and there are some rational reasons two weeks ago, he might have thought this is good, but everyone else who did it pulled back.
And New York City.
I've got to run, but Dr. Roz, you've been amazing.
Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with our audience.
I'll see you again.
Take care.
In consultation with your doctor.
Quick break, right back on the other side.
Now, also Glenn Beck, Steve Scalise, can't make the cure worse than the problem straight ahead.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
Best of times, worst of times.
Uh and what do you see?
The same people, the same mob in the media, the same Democrats up to the same old, same old.
And we can't have the cure being worse than the problem.
You got Democrats now want this is a on the JustHnews.com, this is the John Solomon website, just the news.com.
Democrats want illegal immigrants to receive coronavirus stimulus checks.
I don't know where this is coming from.
I mean, can we now ask simple questions of the Democratic Party?
Why did you put into the bill funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding for the Kennedy Center for the Arts that ended up getting the money and then fired everybody?
Why?
Why wh why was that?
Why did you want to change voting laws?
Why did you want to dramatically change immigration laws?
At what point do you not realize as you delay and dither American workers, they are being denied aid.
Hospitals that need supplies are being denied the money for the supplies.
Then you have small businesses desperate.
Then you have big businesses devastated, waiting for help and aid.
You're gonna commit this amount of money, 2.2 trillion, and then another four trillion in loans, which raises questions in and of itself, but that's where their mind is.
You know, what did Donald Trump make the right call on the travel ban?
Clearly, you know, Super Thursday Joe doesn't know what day it is, uh, and the disastrous press conferences of his.
Uh, you know, he's out there now saying, Oh, I support the travel ban, and 45 other countries supported it before the uh Donald Trump did.
No, they didn't.
He just makes crap up.
He just lie.
He cut funding for the CDC at NIH.
No, he didn't.
He increased funding.
They just lie with a bandit.
I mean, you have Andrea Mitchell out there, then you the fake news people, they're at it's dangerous.
Hydroxychloroquine.
That's it.
They're saying it on fake news CNN, untested.
It's a 65-year-old drug.
We, you know, we can't do any better.
The the preeminent, you know, uh guy uh in in terms of hydroxychloroquine in the country, Daniel Wallace's letter shatters these lies.
But they continue to push it.
Why I guess because Donald Trump is believing in it.
Andrea Mitchell is out there now smearing red states, blaming them for corona spread.
You know, uh hyping a lengthy uh Washington Post article provided the segment source of material.
You know, Philip Rucker, another idiot over there at the Washington Post, uh, and they got a lot of stuff wrong in all of this as well, and basically called us a bunch of babies and the flu is much uh a much bigger threat, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, she provided it as the source of material, a searing account of failures of the Trump administration to take COVID-19 seriously.
Excuse me.
That is a lie, too.
Because if the president didn't take it seriously, why ten days after the first case in the U.S.?
That happened January 21st.
Why then did Donald Trump implement the travel ban?
And she, you know, goes on with this record of Trump calling the virus a hoax.
That's a lie, too.
If it if he thought it was a hoax, he wouldn't have implemented a travel ban and a quarantine and more travel bans.
It's it's such a spectacular lie that they convince themselves, but that's where their mindset is, which is again using a virus, national pandemic to bludgeon Trump politically.
That's all they do, that's all they've done, that's all they'll ever do.
They're not capable of anything more.
You know, the president is still resisting despite pressure.
We now see part of your reporting, the polling that there were a number of people in red states early on who did not heed the warnings to socially distance because they believed the president's false comments.
They just make this up constantly.
And it's the same thing you get at the New York Times, same thing at the Washington Post.
You know, Washington Post, op-ed January 31st, dismissing fears about the impending pandemic, you know, and going on as a figment of our collective imaginations.
They were the ones that were guilty of it.
The very thing they accused conservatives and the president of.
A few days later, the Post ran an opinion piece.
Why we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus.
Well, isn't that Eric Pop the Pimples newspaper?
No criticism for them.
No calling for them to be fired.
He's called for me to be fired, which is not going to happen, which has to break his heart.
February 5th, New York Times.
Who says uh it's not safe to travel to China?
That's six days after the president's travel ban.
And of course, Trump virus, if you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
You know, in the Times section, they have a, you know, uh what?
They seem to warn what was to come, but even the paper's editorial board praised Trump administration's foresight, but cautious optimism.
You know, there's nothing that Donald Trump is going to do.
Nothing that is ever going to satisfy those in the mob and those that are part of the Democratic Party.
It just seems to be impossible.
You know, all these media people saying Donald Trump, you know, should she need to do more press repressors and pressers, and he's not around, and we don't have daily press briefings, and this is outrageous.
Now they're saying, well, we shouldn't cover the president's daily coronavirus task force press briefings because why?
Uh we can't fact check him.
Uh he's giving the country an update.
And by the way, you want to know what the highest-rated shows on cable are?
Donald Trump.
That's I used to be number one.
I'm not anymore.
Those press briefings are massive audiences, unprecedented numbers, because people in this country want the information.
And they're tuning in every day.
And by the way, the president will be on Hannity tonight.
Now, as it relates to the cure, Treasury Secretary Manuchin announced today the president is now looking to reopen parts of the U.S. economy.
We have to do it.
And Manuchin told uh our friend at Fox Business, Maria Barutromo, that there are parts of the country like New York, where obviously this is very, very concerning, other parts where it is not as concerning.
Restaurants, bars, hotels, gyms, beauty salons, etc.
President's predicting that the U.S. economy will be opening up with a bang.
Yeah, it's the cure can't be worse.
Steve Scalise is the Republican whip in the House, Louisiana's first district.
First, I want to know how our friends in Louisiana are doing.
Not sure why the mayor and the governor allowed Mardi Gras to continue.
And then the mayor of New Orleans blaming, reminded me of Negan back in the day, blaming, you know, Donald Trump for not shutting down Mardi Gras, as if that was his decision.
Well, Sean, it's good to be with you, and I appreciate the concern about New Orleans.
You know, and look, people are pulling together.
You know, I've talked to the heads of our hospitals.
Uh they needed more PPE weeks ago.
We worked with FEMA.
The president was very quick to say, what do you need?
And got more PPE, over 100,000 two weeks ago, got more ventilators.
We had over 250 more ventilators coming in.
And, you know, hopefully we're starting to see the peak now.
But, you know, clearly uh people have taken it more seriously.
The, you know, from the governor on down, have been working with the president.
And the president, I think you look at his press conferences.
It's very informative.
He sticks with you know, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Burks, these great, brilliant professionals.
You have Vice President Pence who's heading up the task force.
And they're working with every state that needs help.
And uh, you know, look, resources are limited, but people are starting to get more creative, making masks out of all kinds of things now and helping uh other states helping each other.
And look at the innovations in medicine, Sean, where you finally starting to see like like some of these life-saving drugs for whether it's lupus or for malaria or other things that are already approved by the FDA.
And then the FDA, the president, told these agents he's cut the red tape.
And look at how amazing and how quick they're they're able to move to approved testing machines that can test within minutes to drugs that are working for other diseases that actually can help cure uh in some cases, not universally, but at least to help alleviate this crisis for more and more people.
And then, like you said, let's get to a point where we can start opening things back up again so that we can keep the economy and be allow people to get back uh get back to work and have jobs to go back to when this is over.
Okay, so what how do we do this?
Because look, we all like the fact that our our grocery stores uh they've been amazing.
I mean, I know can tell you in New York and Long Island, where it's right now the epicenter, that uh, you know, except for toilet paper and paper towels.
Well, I don't know why people are hoarding those things.
That's uh the first thing I would want is like Campbell's chicken noodle soup, which I can't get either.
But pretty much the the shelves are stocked and restocked regularly, and I go in there and you know, you just be socially distant.
And almost everybody has his gloves and a mask on.
That's fine with me.
Um, and I think people are doing their part to their credit, and people are keeping a distance when they're waiting in line to pay or whatever, and some stores are even limiting, you know, letting certain numbers of people in, certain numbers of people out at a time.
Um, so all of that works.
It seems to me that the answer to opening up the economy is gonna have to do with testing, especially in in a place like New York, tiny geographical area where high concentration of people, 11 million people in some days, that maybe the Abbott lab testing will result in a quicker opening,
and as much as if you can test people before they enter the building or take their temperature, like I had to have my temperature taken before I went to the UN uh the NSUS UN US NS Comfort.
Um, I think it's important that we get those things right.
That seems to me to be, you know, an advancement that we can know that people don't have the virus, and this way we can open things up even faster.
Right.
And with the prevalence of testing kits, you know, look, I know a lot of the hospitals in New Orleans I've talked to have gotten their own testing kits so they can if somebody comes in for some other illness, uh, and they need an emergency surgery.
Uh they can get tested right there on the spot.
So the doctor knows uh do they also have coronavirus uh and how can I properly treat that person?
And you know how can I keep the nurses and the medical staff safe?
So all of those things are being done.
People are like you said, uh following a lot more clearly than even two ago the guidelines about social distancing, and even if you go to a store to pick things up, uh maybe they're fighting less over the toilet paper.
Uh but they also know when you get home, it might be a good idea to wipe things down and and you know, make sure again you wash your hands a lot.
But uh look, everybody is doing their part.
Uh we just need to to start getting that curve coming on the downward style side.
And I think in some areas you're finally starting to see that.
We just need to stay vigilant.
I am uh I'm a big fan of Art Laffer.
Art Laffer is a big fan of the president.
He's been around since the Nix Nixon years.
We know all about the laffer curve.
He's not a big supporter of this particular Aid package, relief package.
He's more of a believer that probably we we would do better, would have done better if we had a payroll tax cut, about 750 billion, you know, go on for the next, I think seven or eight months is how he put it.
The president's thinking of an economic task force.
Uh I know some Democrats are salivating at the idea of another two trillion dollars uh in an infrastructure package.
Uh that scares the living daylights out of me, to be very honest, because uh we don't, you know, we know shovel ready jobs are in shovel ready, and we know these Democrats want to waste your m everybody's money.
And we don't know what the fallout yet is from the aid package that has been passed and now getting into the hands, hopefully sooner than later, the people that need it.
Yeah, let's keep the focus on making that last bill work.
The CARES Act has been incredibly successful uh for our small businesses who this is a true lifeline.
I've heard from so many small businesses that were teetering on the brink uh where they've already had their paperwork filled out.
You saw Secretary Minuchin working overtime with our bankers to make sure last Thursday night tweaking even up until that last minute to to make sure our banks could start accepting those applications Friday, and sure enough they did.
Uh you've already seen over $30 billion in applications approved to the point where Secretary Manuchin today working with President Trump said, let's put another two hundred and fifty billion into it uh for our small businesses and getting that relief to families, not all this garbage of growing government and green new deal and like you said, you know, changing voter same-day voter registration without picture ID.
I mean, what does that have to do with helping families who are struggling?
So I think people are seeing pretty clearly you got President Trump out there fighting for families, fighting for businesses to keep this country, what's great about this country going, and you see Speaker Pelosi and these socialists out there literally trying to take advantage of the crisis to look out for their buddies.
And I mean the Kennedy Center was a great example.
They get the 25 million and then they fire all the workers.
And you shamed them with me and others who were out there calling them out on it, and then just today they finally acknowledged maybe they ought to bring the people back after the public outcry was so widespread.
Yeah.
Well, we know that I mean, you can't even, you know, believe half this stuff.
Pelosi's saying she's going to include federally forced mail-in voting in the next round of coronavirus aid.
Did you hear about that?
It's not gonna happen.
It's not gonna happen, Sean.
You know, let's help families.
Let's keep this targeted to making sure that we're gonna be able to do that.
Well, why are we going with more two point two trillion is an awful lot?
Four trillion in loan guarantees by the Fed is an awful lot.
Um, and we now see that the numbers that had originally been projected are wrong.
Um I'm looking, for example, at you know, the numbers we're seeing in New York, and while things look very grim for a while, they ended up being not as bad.
Uh the latest round, for example, uh, I can tell you there's actually a guy that's doing a really good job, Alex uh Berenson.
Uh I think he was formerly of the Times, believe it or not, but he's pointing out that in New York, for example, the trend is clear.
Net intubations rose by less than a hundred, down eighty percent since Friday in New York alone, a fantastic day.
And he he writes a terrible day for team apocalypse.
Uh it seems like we might be at not only the apex, but on the decline, which is what we've all wanted.
Um, and other data we now know that we're 50 percent what the predicted hospital uh rate would be and 50 percent ICU rate would be, and um those contractions seem to be uh going down.
But I'll give you the last 20 seconds.
Yeah, no, I mean look, there are a lot of models out there, and I think in Washington they've got models too that look at every state.
They look at death rates, and you know, the death rates uh they're surely tragic when you see people uh dying from any disease, but from this disease especially.
But you're starting to see in some of those areas that they're hitting a peak.
Uh but the social distancing has worked.
What President Trump did on the front end uh by saying that we're gonna have to do that.
I agree to save lives.
And then we have to start, we have to start focusing and open up the country, Sean.
I agree.
All right, thank you, Steve uh Scalise.
All right, news roundup information overload hour 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, uh the cure cannot be worse than the problem.
The president has said it again and again and again, and we're not designed not to have an open country.
Uh I noticed that Denmark is now identified April 15th as their reopening date.
Norway as well, Czech Republic as well, and and some other places.
And uh there are some telltale signs.
They had issues in Japan and South Korea.
If you open too early, you don't have the if you're not ready for a rebound of of some kind.
You gotta be very, very careful.
It's got to be done the right way so you don't have to go through this hell not a second time.
I think the antidote is going to end up being, now that Abbott has these tests that they have created.
I mean, what the free market has developed in the course of this pandemic has been inspiring and amazing in their ability to help their fellow countrymen also inspiring and amazing.
But the idea that, well, they can test uh Americans at least 50,000 a day now, but if we could design it in a highly concentrated area, small geographical area with a high concentration of people like New York City, where people are getting tested before they go into buildings, for example.
That might be the answer to opening up safely the country uh as it relates to the economy uh faster than we otherwise would.
Anyway, Glenn Beck is uh with us.
He's got a brand new book out, arguing with socialists, by the way.
Don't waste your breath.
Uh, but it's a good point about the dangers of socialism in so many ways.
He's written 13 New York Times best-selling books, uh well known for radio and TV and the Blaze.
How are you, sir?
Long time no here.
I'm great, Don.
How are you?
I'm good.
Um well, it's good to have you back.
Let me first ask, because we we can we kind of went through this little metamorphos.
Um, I know for a while you were anti-Trump pretty and then you and Pat and Stu are ripping my head off for a number of days that I noticed, but uh but let by guns be bygones.
It never bothered me because I believe in freedom of speech.
Um where are you now on Donald Trump?
Where do you stand with him as a president?
Same place I've been with him for uh what, two and a half years.
Uh yeah, is that when you put the Trump hat on?
Make America Great Again, you got slammed for it?
Uh yeah, well, I put the Trump hat on because I was making the point that the media is doing everything in its power to make people who may not have liked Trump want to defend Trump, and they have no idea what they've done.
They have no idea what they've done.
The more they are the especially in this pandemic, they are so untrustworthy and such absolute liars because they hate him so much.
If you can't tell me, I mean, look, I I I liken Donald Trump to McDonald's.
People will say McDonald's, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible food.
Really?
Because I like a lot of their food.
I like a lot of it.
No, I don't I don't like it.
I love it, Glenn Beck.
And I love KFC and Wendy's too.
Right.
And if you can't tell me that there's something at KFC or Wendy's or McDonald's, like McDonald Fry's, if you can't tell me that those are the best, then you have absolutely no credibility.
There's a lot of stuff that this president has done that I never thought he would do.
The way he's handling this COVID crisis is absolutely beyond my wildest dreams.
I think he is doing a fantastic job on COVID.
I think he is um pushing away the socialists, pushing away all these cries of people who said he was a dictator.
He's absolutely going to become a dictator according to the left.
And yet they want him to seize power of corporations.
They want him to seize power um in the economy.
He wants they want him to call out the National Guards for states, and what is he constantly saying?
No, no, no.
I don't understand how people don't see him in the in the realm of FDR at this particular time.
I think he's doing an outstanding job.
Look, I would argue, and I'm I'm not even really throwing you a lifeline as much as it's just a fact that those that maybe looked at Donald Trump from the outside, didn't know the guy that I've known personally for over two decades, well over two decades now, um, that I knew what he really thought about issues that saw that that he would donate to Republicans and Democrats and be it, you know, Hillary Clinton's, I guess, daughter's wedding and things like that.
Um, and and an evolution that was real, for example, on the issue of life, uh, why they would think that way.
Um on paper, I was saying at the time, I understand why there is reason to question it, but there is there became it what I thought an irrational hatred for him, and now I think other people with open minds have watched everything that he's done.
Uh I've never seen a politician in my lifetime make this list of promises, and that is ending b burdensome regulation and tax cuts and following through on the border one way or the other.
He got the money, he's building the wall uh wall as we speak.
Uh then issues about better, free or fairer trade deals that didn't lead to trade wars, et cetera, as people had predicted.
And up until COVID 19, uh, you know, all these promises made and kept, I think have created a dynamic environment, shattering one record after another.
Um you see what the left is offering, which fits right into the the issues you bring up in your book, which I think is extraordinarily well done and very important and timely, and that is arguing with socialists, because that is what the Democratic Party represents today, uh Glenn Beck.
Uh uh not only that, but we are we are marching towards it quickly.
Um and you see it, the Fed is already operating under a uh modern monetary theory where we just print money, don't worry about the spending.
There are times that we have to spend, and there are times that we have to do what we have to do.
Shutting off the economy is one of them.
And one of the things that drives me nuts about people is when they're saying that Donald Trump is being duped.
Really?
You don't think he'd be calling him fat head fauci if if he thought if he disagreed with him?
He's done his homework, he's got it.
There's no one that wants to turn the economy on more than than Donald Trump, and we have to turn the economy back on.
I don't understand, um, and I think it's just coming from this this hatred of him.
If you can't admit that the guy has kept his promises, you may not like him, but he has not he has not done anything that is outrageous, other than you might disagree with it, but nothing has been outrageous.
And the way he's handled himself, first of all, I think we're gonna probably uh be ready to come back out of our houses closer to Easter than we are uh in July.
That is another reason why they won't they'll go crazy when he says, let's go ahead, let's start going back out.
They will do everything they can to make sure that he's wrong.
Same thing with all of the drugs.
He's he talks about a drug and he doesn't say take it.
He says talk to your doctor.
Then if the doctor says maybe the doctor should look into it and use it, they still cannot reason that maybe he was right on that.
Well, I I just read this letter from the pre-guy by the name of Dr. Daniel uh uh Wallace out at Cena's side eye with more credentials, more knowledge of hydroxychloroquine than anybody else in the country.
You took a lot of heat, and I read your whole statement.
I didn't hear it, but I read it and I read it a couple of times, and I remember you said, I well, I would rather, you're 56 years old, have my children stay home and be safe, uh, and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep the economy going.
And boy, you got your head handed to you, and I was I was watching, and I said, What he's really saying is he doesn't want the economy to collapse for our children and grandchildren while we're dealing with COVID-19, and I, as an older person would rather me get it than my kids.
That's how I interpreted it.
How how is that?
How is that controversial, except in today's America with today's press?
How is that controversial?
What I'm saying is what every American believes.
I have children.
I you know, Mary, my daughter with special needs.
When she was born, I prayed, Lord, please take that away from her, give it to me.
That's what every adult does.
Every parent, every grandparent does.
What I was saying is this is our time.
Don't take away our ability to sacrifice if it means the end of the nation.
If it means no economy, uh, and they they come back to a uh some sort of a socialist nightmare.
Let us go in and do our job, keep our children safe, keep our grandparents safe, but let us go in and start the engine of this economy.
What?
It was okay for the firefighters in uh Chernobyl to do it, but somehow or another it's irresponsible for us to do it.
You know, you uh we have this aid package that they passed, and we could talk the politics of it, and they tried to change the voting laws and they tried to change the immigration laws, and then they you know they withheld money from workers that desperately needed the aid through no fault of their own, losing jobs and small businesses and large businesses and hospitals that needed the aid, which shows you just how radical extremists they really are, and they're talking about it even again if there's any future aid, but it's 2.2 trillion dollars, Glenn Beck.
It's another four trillion in loan guarantees from the Fed.
Now they're talking about another two trillion in infrastructure that scares the hell out of me.
Um I am all for helping those people in this country.
We rebuilt all of Europe, Glenn Beck.
We won, you know, we beat back every evil ism in the history of mankind and paid a dear price for it.
We we will win this and get this behind us.
But I think the answer to opening the economy is gonna be, you know, the great entrepreneurs like Abbott will have a result of your COVID-19 positive in five minutes.
If you mass produce those tests, you can even open small geographic areas with high populations like New York City faster than I think anybody thought.
Your thoughts.
Look, if you listen to the news out of London, they have national health care, and they are on television, on the BBC, on Sky News, and the the entrepreneurs are begging the government, let us make ventilators, let us make masks, let us work on uh a vaccine.
The government will allow it.
If anyone's gonna solve this, it's either gonna it's gonna be one of two countries, Israel or the United States.
My guess is the United States of America.
If this is the greatest uh uh uh lesson to be learned by socialists, will they learn it?
No, because you have a press.
But this is the greatest lesson for the socialists right now.
America not only is going to uh lead the way in getting out of this and lead the way and find the answer for this, but we're also gonna turn these engines back on if we're not held back too long, and we have our freedom on the other side, and we will come roaring back, always do.
But we stay right there, Glenn Beck.
When we come back.
We expect the coronavirus task force uh press conference to uh take place after the news at the bottom of the hour.
In the meantime, we continue.
Glenn Beck is with us, his brand new book, Arguing with Socialists, uh, on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores everywhere when you can go.
Um we have an election in 210 days, Glenn Beck.
We have this 2.2 trillion dollar relief package.
Uh I agree with your sentiment.
We gotta open the country as quickly as possible, also as safely as possible.
I think some people would keep us quarantined forever if they could.
So how does this all play out from your vantage point?
Uh it really depends on um a couple of things.
It depends on if Donald Trump can continue to do what he's been doing, uh, which is captivating the American people with his press conferences, making the right decisions as long as the press continues to do what they're doing, which is make all the wrong decisions, uh, and continue this unbelievable lie.
And um we have good luck getting out of this, and we can re to uh to Stephen Mulpy recently, who's an optimist.
He's always talking eight down out of three.
Um he was he was very concerned about uh the amount of time that we are spending uh not uh in uh with the economy not fired up.
We've got to fire this economy up soon.
And I I hear it from Donald Trump all the time, and I just hope that we are possibly entering a time now where uh you know it it is beginning to look like maybe we're gonna be able to do that.
Well, I think the upside.
I've been saying uh solve the problem.
And the problem being start preventing the deaths.
The the predictions now, the models have gone down dramatically.
I mean, well, if we didn't do anything, any mitigation or travel ban or quarantine, yeah, two and a half million people could have died, then they were at 240,000 like a week ago.
Now they're below 100,000.
So we don't know, but you know the doctors are gonna want more mitigation and social distancing.
How do you balance it in the 30 seconds I have left for you?
I think we just we just have to uh understand that this thing could come back next, even next year.
We just have to do what's right.
Uh listen to uh the experts and just be American.
Be American.
Yeah.
All right, Glenn.
Uh good to talk to you again.
It's been a while.
We uh miss having you on, Glenn Beck, his new book argued with socialists.
I'm sure it's at Glennbeck.com as well, Hannity.com, Amazon.com, and eventually when bookstores reopen, uh it'll be there as well.
Uh we'll take a quick break.
We actually have a caller from Los Angeles who says he had COVID-19 and hydroxychloroquine, he says saves his life.
We'll get to that.
The coronavirus task force daily briefing coming up, and the president and Dr. Oz on Hannity tonight at nine.
We'll continue.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
The president will uh be having his task force briefing any moment when it happens, we'll bring it to you.
He'll be joining us exclusively tonight on Hannity.
No, many people are busy during the day, they don't have a chance to watch these.
Uh so you'll get to hear from the president directly tonight on the latest with the economy, the latest on hydroxychloroquine, where his where his thinking is at at the time.
Uh Daniel is in Los Angeles with our affiliate out there, K E I B. And uh apparently you're Daniel, you had COVID 19.
Yes, I did.
By the way, I'm gonna tell you what I told the great one.
Right now I feel like a schoolgirl talking to my favorite pop star, so I'm just trying to Well, I mean it's either me or Mark.
You can't I'll say it.
Nobody else will say it.
There, I said it.
You guys, you you using in Russia are my favorite boy band.
So our favorite boy band.
Well, thank you for your kind words, I think.
But uh, how'd you get this thing?
And tell us about it.
So I don't know how I got it.
I mean, it could have come from anywhere.
Uh it was about a week of at first it started out light and then it started to spiral.
And I started to feel like uh Scrooge getting visited by a different, you know, symptom every night.
I'm the ghost of diarrhea, I'm the ghost of uh coughing.
It was a different symptom every single night.
And uh then before I knew it, um I couldn't breathe.
And uh that was the second week.
Went to the hospital, was put in the ICU, and uh they put me on the uh hydroxychloroquine and uh a uh kind of a Z pack for a Z pack for my um for a little bit.
Yeah, well that that's the treatment that they give it, and they sometimes had the additional uh additive of zinc, etc.
Um where in Los Angeles did you go, if you don't mind, did you go to the hospital to get it, or were you able to get it from your local pharmacy out there?
They gave it to me in the hospital, and then when uh when they released me, they gave me the last two doses from the pharmacy.
Yeah, I mean for me and sent me on a while.
Although we now have 29 million doses uh available, so it went to your lungs.
You were never admitted to the hospital, or you were admitted to the hospital.
I was admitted when it went to my lungs, uh the doctors were on the phone to go to the ER.
I went to the ER, and then they admitted me, and I was in the hospital for four days.
Okay, and that's where you first got your initial doses of hydroxychloroquine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, and so tell us.
So it I guess you had the usual symptoms that we you talked about a cough.
Did you have a high temp at different times?
Um I it it was like between 102 and 103.
Yeah, that's high enough.
Um and then it went into your lungs.
Uh look, I've talked to enough people that have had it that when it gets to your lungs, one one friend had it pretty advanced before he went on hydroxychloroquine uh down in Florida, and uh and Dr. Oz was very kind and helpful in his particular case.
But it long story short is that he recovered and it but it still took some time.
It works faster on some people than others based on everything I'm reading.
And when did you start feeling the impact you feel from hydroxychloroquine and ZPAC?
So I started feeling, I mean, let's look, I went to the hospital and then they started giving it to me, and it started my symptoms started to go away.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
I started to get better.
And I gotta tell you something I'm not hearing from anybody, but you know, it's been over a week since my census have stopped, almost two weeks.
And uh I have more energy now than I've ever had.
It dropped 20 pounds.
I'm back to running.
Um I am like it's it it was a it completely cleaned out my body and mind.
It's a it was a crazy experience.
But I know, I know because I felt it inside me that this drug saved my life.
You know, it look, here's what is important to me is I'm not a doctor, but I've read more about hydroxychloroquine than I never thought I'd ever read in my life.
Learn more about pandemics than I've ever thought I'd ever learn in my life.
Um learned uh, you know, this this one doctor that happens to be in the Southland where you are at Cedar Sinai, um, Daniel Wallace's letter is I mean, this is the doctor.
You know, and he's saying hydroxychloroquine, plaquinel, a very safe drugs, his words not mine, been given a tens of millions of individuals around the world since 1955.
That's 65 years.
All these people on TV saying, oh, it's dangerous, it's untested, people can die.
You know, they're so reckless and wrong.
And he said, you know, none of this has been associated with any deaths and the recommended dose.
Forty-two years of practice.
Now he inherited the largest lupus practice in the U.S. in 1985.
He has 2,000 patients with the disease, most of them taking HCQ.
He's authored 400 peer-reviewed papers, written a principal lupus textbook, past chairman of the lupus foundation and rheumatology research foundation.
I mean, and he says, 42 years, no patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for HCQ complications.
Rheumatologists, they don't get EKGs before prescribing it.
They never had a problem.
There's no treatment guidelines.
And then he even goes further.
And he talks about uh his words, not mine, the risk of taking 400 milligrams of HCQ a day following a single 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 or 60 days is nil, his words, unless one has an allergic rash or an upset stomach.
So with all these other countries using it, him saying that there's no safer drug, and then you hear people saying on TV, Dr. Wolf Blitzer, Dr. Humpty Dumpty.
And I'm sitting there thinking they they're just liars.
They don't care.
And you you know, you you you have experience if they had their way, the president would never have recommended it, I guess.
Watching them on TV, I just want to jump to the screen and grab them by the neck because it's it's there's nothing wrong with the drug.
It's not, it has nothing to do with the drug.
It's all Trump hating, and that's what it is.
If this was Obama, uh they would be touting the drug and everybody would be wearing a t-shirt.
This is Trump hating, and that's all it is.
Well, number one, I'm glad you're better.
Um, congratulations to you and your doctors.
Um, you know, it's interesting in New York, and I think Gavin Newsom, and by the way, I'm not a big fan of Gavin Newsom's, but he's done exponentially better for the people of California.
Did you know that your state is now sending ventilators to New York?
Because they don't need them.
Yep.
That's how good a job the people in California did versus New York.
I have a disdain for Gavin Newsom, and I even had to admit, I mean, the way that he's governing right now, there's no Trump bashing.
He's actually defending the president and administration, and he's doing a great job.
I have to tip my hat, so my there's nothing bad I can say.
Now with that, he's a through and through socialist.
I'll never gonna agree with anything he says short of this.
But there are moments the virus is not asking people ahead of time, are you a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal?
Um it is uh unbiased in terms of impacting and infecting anyone.
And you know, but look, that's unfortunately the the state of things, it's always going to be that way when it's 210 days away from an election.
But we're glad you're on the mend.
God bless you.
And you have great doctors obviously out there, and we applaud them for what they're doing.
I know that we have 29 million doses right now.
Um and thanks for the call of uh hydroxychloroquine.
The president, by the way, uh just to update you, on March 25th, India banned the export of hydroxychloroquine.
During a press conference on Monday, the president Suggested that the U.S. would be excluded from that ban after a phone conversation.
And Tuesday, though, news sources in India reported the government, quote, had rescinded its earlier ban of the export of hydroxychloroquine, which is now being used in countries such as the U.S. as a possible line of tree treatment.
India's Ministry of External Affairs confirmed and said in view of the humanit humanitarian aspects of the pandemic, we will be supplying these essential drugs to nations that have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic.
You gotta say thank you to everybody that's on board.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Today we continue to send our love to the great people of New York and New Jersey.
We support them fully.
We grieve alongside every family who has lost a precious loved one.
New Yorkers are tough and strong and brave.
New Jerseyites are tough and strong and brave, and they're being hit very hard right now.
And for the next week, hopefully not much longer than that.
It's going to start to go in the other direction.
Our country is being hit hard, but some areas have done so incredibly well.
We're so proud of them.
They will beat this virus.
We're going to beat it with the grit in the heart for which they're known and for which our country is known.
And we appreciate everything that everybody is doing.
We also we pray for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
He's become a great friend of ours.
He loves this country.
He loves his country, but he loves the USA.
And he's always been very good to us.
Whenever we had difficulty, he was with us, and we appreciate it.
So we pray for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
It's going through a lot.
As we intensify our military campaign against the virus, I think that uh it it must be brought out that we have to thank the American people for continuing to follow our guidelines on slowing the spread.
An expression that more and more people are thinking about.
Nobody ever heard of it two months ago, and now everybody is talking about slowing the spread, stopping the spread.
Even during this painful week, we see glimmers of uh very, very strong hope.
And uh this will be a very painful week in next week, at least part of next week, but probably uh all of it.
Look, if one person dies, that's a painful week.
And we know that's gonna unfortunately happen.
This is a monster we're fighting.
But signs are that our strategy is totally working.
Every American has a role to play in winning this war, and we're going to be winning it, and we're going to be winning it powerfully.
And we'll be prepared for the next one should it happen, but hopefully it won't.
Our massive airlift operation for critical supplies.
It's called Project Airbridge, continued today as five massive planes, flights landed in the United States, packed with personal protective equipment.
And our nation's heroic health care workers uh will be the beneficiaries of that.
Twenty-seven more flights are scheduled in the near future over the next couple of weeks.
The Army Corps of Engineers is constructing facilities that will support more than 15,000 hospital beds to treat patients in need.
So they're building now approximately 15,000.
They just completed the big one in New York.
They just completed and are in the process of continuing in Chicago.
And many other places.
They're incredible.
The Army Corps of Engineers, we owe them a lot.
What they're able to do in such a short period of time.
They'll build these massive facilities, 2,000 beds in four days.
So that's really something very special.
I know I was in the construction industry, and you don't see that happen very often.
I want to remind governors and emergency managers that sharing real-time data with us about equipment and their needs is very important.
All of their supplies, hospital occupancy is critical.
A lot of the occupancy is uh really getting a little bit lower than anticipated, and that's good.
We sort of thought that was going to happen.
And uh we're getting along very well with the governors.
This whole situation with respect to talking to us about equipment and equipment needs, giving us a little bit of lead time.
So important, all the supplies.
Uh We're getting it to everybody like they never thought possible.
But we'll ensure that we can rapidly deploy federal assets where and when they're needed, especially on ventilators.
We're actually getting some ventilators back, as you know, the state of California was great.
They sent some back, which they won't need.
And Washington State likewise.
And we have some others coming back, so we're using them in areas we need them.
We are pressing forward aggressively on the scientific frontier of the medical war.
The companies I've spoken to, the four leading, uh I call them the genius companies.
Uh they're doing incredibly well with respect to uh cures and uh also with respect to a vaccine that's going to uh protect us totally, protect us, and they have some great potential.
It's gonna take a little while yet, but they have some great potential, some great early results.
And the governor's been working hard, and uh we are working hard with the governors.
There's been great coordination, especially over the last little while.
We're giving them a lot of equipment, a lot of ventilators, but a lot of equipment of all types.
And uh I will protect you if your governor fails.
If you have a governor that's failing, we're gonna protect you.
But the governors are working well with us over the last period of time.
Um today in our stockpile of ventilators, and again, we need the stockpile so we can immediately move them from place to place wherever the monster hits, it's a monster.
We have 8,675 ventilators right now in stock, ready to move.
And we have all sorts of incredible soldiers, our military is going to move them should they be needed in as an example if we need additional in New York or the New York City area, you have state, you have city, and uh spoke to Mayor de Blasio, and we've really have a great well coordinated campaign with Mayor de Blasio.
It's been really good.
Spoke to Governor Cuomo, it's been great coordination.
So if they need something, we have it.
If Louisiana needs something, we have it.
Same thing with Michigan, same thing with Illinois.
There are certain spots that are very hot.
And we'll see what happens, but we'll know pretty much we'll have time, and we'll be able to move it.
In addition to the 8,675 ventilators, we have 2,200 arriving on April 13th.
We have 5,500 arriving on May 4th.
These are ones that we're building for the most part.
Uh, and we have, as you know, great companies building them for General Motors, uh, GE.
We have really some great companies that are doing it.
Uh on May 18th, we have 12,000.
On June 1st, we have 20,000.
On June 29th, we have 60,000 ventilators coming, 60, 60.
So we have a total of 110,000 ventilators coming over a short period of time.
I don't think we'll need them.
Hopefully, we won't need them.
I don't think we'll need anywhere near them.
But we'll have them for the future, and we'll also be able to help other countries who are desperate for ventilators.
The UK called today and they wanted to know would it be possible to get 200 and we're going to work it out.
We've got to work it out.
They've been great partners, United Kingdom.
And uh we're gonna work it out for them.
So they wanted 200, they needed them desperately.
We now have 10 drugs and active trials with 15 more soon to follow, as well as two vaccine candidates in active clinical trials.
We'll do whatever it takes to secure needed medical supplies and bring more production of essential medicines back to our shores.
We're doing that.
We're bringing them back to our shores.
A lot of these companies, they went a little bit haywire.
They went away from this great country, and they had them produced elsewhere, so we're gonna start bringing them back.
I've been talking about that for a long time, not only with medical, but lots of other things.
America continues to perform more tests than any other nation in the world, and I think that's probably why we have more cases.
Because when you look at some of these very large countries, say I know they I know for a fact that they have far more cases than we do, but they don't report them.
We've uh performed 1.87 million tests today, so that's 1,870,000 million tests.
Think of that, 1,870,000 tests to date.
And now we're performing them at a level that nobody's ever seen before.
As we announced yesterday, CVS testing sites in Georgia and Rhode Island will be using Abbott Labs, rapid five-minute tests.
We're down to now five minutes.
It's a five-minute test so that people can get the results back very quickly.
And we're actively engaging on the problem of increased impacts.
There's a real problem, and it's showing up uh very strongly in our data on the African American community, and we're doing everything in our power to address this challenge.
It's a tremendous uh challenge.
It's terrible.
And provide support to African American citizens of this country who are going through a lot, uh, but it's been disproportional.
Uh they're getting hit very, very hard.
In fact, uh, while we have Tony here, I'd like to maybe have you come up and address that one and then I'll continue.
But if you could address that, it would be great, Tony, please.
Yes, thank you, Mr. President.
We have a particularly difficult problem of uh exacerbation of a health disparity.
We've known literally forever that diseases like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and asthma are disproportionately afflicting the minority populations, particularly the African Americans.
Unfortunately, when you look at the predisposing conditions that lead to a bad outcome with coronavirus, the things that get people into ICUs that require intubation and often lead to death, they are just those very comorbidities that are unfortunately disproportionately prevalent in the African American population.
So we're very concerned about that.
It's very sad.
It's nothing we can do about it right now except to try and give them the best possible care to avoid those complications.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And Tony, I think you're gonna have some pretty accurate numbers over the next few days, right?
But they are very uh they're very nasty numbers, terrible numbers.
In total, uh 1,200 Abbott machines, Abbott laboratories have been fantastic, have been shipped now nationwide.
Up to 500 more are being produced every week, and 50,000 testing cartridges are being manufactured per day.
That means a lot of very fast tests.
No nation in the world has developed a more diverse and robust testing capacity than the United States.
We're dealing with other nations, helping them out because the testing is very tough for them, and uh our tests are very accurate.
A lot of tests are out there and they're not accurate at all.
In fact, some of the tests you don't have a clue what's going on.
So we're working with other nations trying to get them help also.
At a time when many Americans are experiencing increased stress, anxiety, and personal loss, we must also ensure that our country can meet the mental health needs of those struggling in this crisis.
There are people struggling.
They're struggling.
And some people are getting to know each other, frankly.
Some families are getting to know each other on a positive note.
