John McLaughlin, Pollster and Strategist, Matt Towery, Syndicated Columnist, Attorney and Pollster, and Scott Rasmussen, Independent pollster and Editor-at-Large for Ballotpedia and author of "The Sun is Still Rising: Politics Has Failed but America Will Not" discuss the public perspective of the handling of COVID 19.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
And, you know, we've been through a lot of contentious times uh politically in this country.
And I'm I am just saying in my 31 years in radio, my 24 years at Fox, I've never seen this level of madness, psychosis, rage, insanity that we're now living through.
And that is, and I I want to make sure I I bifurcate this line really tight, because it's the same groups of people, and it's obvious what this is all about in the end for them.
If you you cannot be a member of the media mob, and they're a mob, it is a mob mindset.
You know, it's like you know what Ellen DeGeneres' big sin was.
She she laughed with George W. Bush.
That's unacceptable.
Can't do that.
You can't possibly like somebody who you politically have disagreements with.
That I'm telling you, that is a huge part of it, I think.
And you know, for Ellen to, you know, crack a joke.
I think Ellen's funny.
And I think, you know, the I well, you're not taking the virus seriously enough.
Uh, why?
Because Ellen told a joke and I laughed.
Or Dennis Miller was on last night.
He was funny last night.
Uh, on no, I it is it is so bad that it is, you know, never thought in all my years I'd get accused of murder.
Let's put it that way.
Um, and they had their facts wrong, completely wrong.
Provably wrong.
You want to talk about malice, libel, slander, you know.
Um, it is uh it these are just very strange times we live in.
But a lot of it is it's the same people, the same ones that have lied for two for three straight plus years.
It is they just hate Donald Trump at the bottom of it, and they hate anybody that likes Donald Trump.
And I'll tell you, it's it's a fear that they see a different Donald Trump.
This is my interpretation and opinion here.
And that you watch these marathons, I I could read the old and new testament probably faster than these press conferences go on.
But what you you see, a president that is he is so locked in, and I've known Donald Trump for many, many, many, many years, over two decades.
And I watch him, he is dialed in, locked in, he's zoned in, whatever you want to call it, you know, all hands on deck.
And it's like there's nothing that he will be able to say ever that the mob in the media will say, you know what?
That was you really got that you pulled that off.
And it's not gonna happen.
The Democrats are not going to ever admit he's done a single thing right in all of this.
Umbody's ever going to go after the governors that were so ill-prepared and the mayors so ill prepared that they needed everything handed to them from the federal government.
That's why De Blasio, Comrade De Blasio's comments, you know, are you telling New York to drop dead?
I'm like, wow, the guy just built you a 3,000-bed hospital.
He manned the hospital with his personnel, not yours.
He converted the hospital, not originally intended to accept COVID-19 patients.
He had to fix the ventilation system.
He sent the Navy ship, then converted that to COVID-19.
They also put the personnel in there.
Or that New York City was they they were warned to buy nearly 10,000 ventilators, over 9,000 ventilators, if in fact there's a pandemic.
They were told to buy them.
New York State was told that they'll be 15,783 short.
They didn't do it.
They didn't buy it.
They didn't spend the money.
They wasted the money all over the place.
And that's a big issue.
I'm glad Mitch McConnell rightly saying you're not going to balance your budgets, and we're not going to fund everything that you've screwed up in your states.
We are going to fund COVID relief and COVID relief only, period.
End of sentence.
And that includes, you know, everything else.
I mean, to watch all of this, all the mobilization, 25,000 hospital beds around the country built by our great Army Corps of Engineers, engineers, our great National Guardsmen and women, our military men and women, the greatest medical professionals.
You know, the comments about opening up, opening up, opening up.
Well, you know, did uh anybody not notice?
Because I noticed in New York and Long Island in the epicenter of this crap, that uh every time I've been to the store, which is fairly regularly, I gotta get out of the house, now wearing my mask and gloves.
Um, but I every time the guys were there stocking the shelves every single solitary time.
They, you know, it when there's no plan for them to get back to work.
They never stopped working.
And if they didn't work, reopen, if they closed, there would be no food for anybody in New York.
But they kept working.
I go to my local pharmacy, nice people, right?
Aid pharmacy.
Go in, they say hello every time.
Very nice.
They know me.
Hey, Mr. Hannity.
Hi, how are you?
How's your kids?
How's it?
They worked the whole time.
They didn't close down.
The restaurants still stayed open and they're still suffering, providing food for people.
And as I've been saying, and I really can't say it enough, because the farmers farmed, the Packers packed the truckers trucked, and they kept New York supply lines up and in place.
And the guys that stock the shelves, I did have a couple of weeks ago.
I gently, I was really nice about it.
I'm like, watching this guy, he's working, he's stocking the shelves.
And I said, I said, thank you for what you're doing.
Please, do you put please put your mask on?
He had it at his neck.
He put it down below his name.
He's probably sick of wearing it.
I said, please, you know, be careful.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Try to tip a guy.
I got yelled at by the manager, not yelled at, but whatever.
And it's like if if the mob in the media cannot ignore acknowledge a couple of simple things, there's no point ever in having any conversation with them.
But and then I will tell you, it's impossible to have conversations with them because they're so full of rage.
But it's the same two groups of people.
It's a democratic, radical, extreme socialists that are now even openly saying that they want to use COVID.
I'm excited, Joe Biden said.
Excited because COVID-19 creates an opportunity to change everything into new green policies.
I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
As people in the middle of a national emergency, the mob in the media, we can't take his press conferences.
They're lies.
If you can't acknowledge that what you and the mob called and Biden called racist, xenophobic, hysteria, fear mongering, the travel ban of the president, the quarantines for the first time in 50 years, and the subsequent travel bans, but the first travel ban from China 10 days after the first known identified case of coronavirus in New York in the United States.
If you can't say in retrospect, that was a game changer, and it saved an incalculable number of Americans from contracting the disease, and then exponentially saving the lives of Americans, then there's no more need for any discussion with these people.
You know, I've often said, you know, I can be friends with liberals.
I am friends with liberals.
I have liberal friends of mine.
They don't like my politics.
I'm still friends with them.
You know, maybe we we just, You know, we're friends for other reasons.
Um, I'll eat dinner with them, I'll probably pay.
Way it works.
Liberals, distribution, redistribution.
Um, I'm teasing, but it I'll live next to you, I'll talk to you.
My kids will play your kids.
I just don't want them in power.
What matters, truth does not matter at even at a moment like this.
Truth has become a casualty in all of this.
People that give really strong advice based on what we know at any given moment, and I'll use Dr. Fauci.
I think everybody likes Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci, you know, I don't know what his politics are.
I probably guess he's probably more left of center.
Likely, probably.
I'm pretty sure of that.
But Dr. Fauci, you know, February 29th said the risk is low.
March 9th, he said, yeah, young healthy people can go on a cruise.
Now, you know, did Dr. Fauci do it maliciously?
Of course, this guy dedicated decades of his life, and I would I will tell you his work, his life work has resulted in in the saving of human life.
I admire the guy doing his best.
China lied.
We all had misinformation, a ton of misinformation all over the place.
If Democrats cannot look at 25,000 beds, hospital beds built around the country, if New York didn't get the Javett Center converted to COVID, personnel manned by the president's team, same with the UN, the Navy ship, the comfort, the hospital ship.
If they every ventilator, they never ran out of ventilators, they have an overstock and supply, and we're gonna end up with more ventilators than they ever dreamed of.
Every bit of all the facial masks, all the respirators, why did that happen?
Because all the manufacturers, they didn't close either.
Manufacturers didn't close.
You know, if they did, then all those brave and their brave frontline medical workers from custodians all the way up through the ranks, doctors and directors, including nurses and orderlies and and other medical teams that go into the if those if they closed down, they wouldn't have had any protective gear.
If the pharmacies closed down, they wouldn't have any medicines either.
But the ability to get the ventilators, the 25,000 hospital beds, converting many of them to COVID-19 hospitals, manning them for New York, getting the gloves and the shields and the masks and the respirators and the gowns and the medicines and the test kits and the next iteration of testing, then the next iteration of test, and then the next iteration of testing, and you know, everyone thinks they can snap their freaking finger.
Oh, we got a hundred million ventilators.
Good luck.
Even the the geniuses, and they are genius engineers at GM, they had a hard time getting that sucker right, but they did.
Same with the testing, five million tests now.
It is like if you can't admit that this four or five-week period medical mobilization from even the point where Dr. Fauci was saying, yeah, the risk is low.
February 29th.
If you can't admit that, there's no discussing anything with you.
They, I do not see the same people that lied, smeared, slandered, besmirched, advanced one conspiracy theory after another conspiracy theory, the ones that were impeaching, the ones that were ripping up State of the Union addresses,
the ones that were saying come to Chinatown, the mayors that were saying go out, have go to a play in March, and the health people, if they had no help from the federal government, if the workers in the country had closed down, I can we can't calculate how many people would have died, just like we can't calculate how many people would have contracted the disease and also died had the president not bravely withstood the criticism.
They can't do it.
Truth is the biggest casualty.
Doctors that will tell you, you know, oh, do no harm.
There's no better expert on hydroxychloroquine than Daniel Wallace.
I'll read his letter again.
Nobody, nobody wants to print his words.
They can get one flawed negative study.
They're dying.
No, they're not.
Read directly from what he said.
You know, a guy that peer-reviewed this, peer reviewed this.
42 years of practice, no patient of mine ever has been hospitalized for an HCQ complication.
The risk of taking 400 HCQ a day followed by a single 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 to 60 days.
Nobody was getting it for 30 or 60 days.
It was 510, maybe 20 max.
But for an allergic rash or an upset stomach.
But they don't care.
If they can hurt Trump, bludgeon Trump, never give Trump credit, that's their goal.
194 days to go.
It's only gonna get worse.
All right, as we roll along, 800 nine-four.
One Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
So I got some interesting data.
Um look, it's it's hard.
You're looking at numbers, numbers, you know, when you look at numbers and people are dying, it sucks.
It's you know, the lowest number of deaths in New York, 438.
Um, in New York, there's there's a lot of new information that I'll share in the next half hour about New York in particular.
But there is, if you look at, we do have some numbers to share, probably subject to change.
New York City, if 21% of 8.4 million New York City residents were infected, that's 1,764,000.
New York City.gov lists 15,411 confirmed probable deaths.
That would be an infection fatality rate of 0.87.
Some calculations for New York state.
If 13.9%, which is the number Governor Cuomo used today, 19.45 million New York State residents, that would mean 2,703,000 infected.
That would be, and 15,740, you know, deaths in the state, that would work out to an infection fatality rate of 0.58%.
Remember they were talking about 3.5% at one point?
All right, 25 now till the uh top of the hour, 800 941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
So I mean, that's the New York state numbers death rate again, if you're using the state's numbers.
Uh, and uh I don't want to get um you don't want, you know, you gotta remember every statistic we're talking about here is a death.
There were times they were talking about, oh, it could be as high the the death rate could be as high as 3.5%.
In other words, infection fatality rate.
If you look at the New York State numbers, governor says 13.9%, 19.45 million New York State residents, two set 2,700, 3,550 infected.
New York State lists 15,740 dead in the state.
But um, that would work out to be an infection rate according to the Census Bureau, New York State Department of Health of 0.58% in the city of New York.
I won't go over their numbers again, 0.87.
They do a little bit different math than that.
But I'm just, you know, you look at it, and it's still, you know, it's now the the third drop, um, third day in a row that deaths have been below now 500 since April 1st, 438 today, the lowest uh, you know, in a long time.
And so you have a net decrease hospitalizations 10 straight days.
Uh you have a net decrease in intubations, 11 straight days.
Uh, you have preliminary antibody showing tests showing 3,000 people, infection rate, 19 counties, 40 localities, 13.9% testing positive with the antibody.
That's pretty high in the one cent, but in the other sense, the infection rate is high, which would mean the death rate may be lower.
Again, doing the math where we are now today, subject to change.
Um, and what's happening in New York?
Well, now you have the attorney general in New York in the middle of a pandemic, national emergency.
She now wants to sue President Trump over his decision to suspend all immigration uh so he can save American jobs and get all these people back to work.
Wow.
Okay.
Understood.
You know, this is where people's heads are at at this particular moment point in time.
And some other stuff that we're learning.
Now, we went over last night.
One state I was so worried about was Florida.
Because Florida has a very high elderly population.
I've been down to the villages.
America's friendliest hometown.
Very cool place.
I mean, let's be honest.
You know, they're all retired.
They want to enjoy the rest of their life.
They have a bazillion golf courses.
They have a zillion concerts.
They have movie theaters.
They have restaurants.
They have bars.
They just play pickleball and tennis and all those others.
They're having a good time.
And if somebody doesn't want to go outside, they usually make them go out.
Like they make you be happy, whether or not, you know, if you want to shut yourself down and be an old person, they're like, no, come on.
They got arts and crafts and reading and you know, fun stuff for people to do all day.
Um, but if you look at the hospitalizations down there per 100,000, well, for example, Michigan's 33.6.
Florida's 10.3.
How did they do that?
Then you look at the fatalities in Florida.
Again, highest percentage of old people.
And per 100,000, they're at 4% in Florida, 27% in Michigan.
This Michigan governor just botched this whole thing.
Um, hospitalizations currently in the ACU per uh ICU per 100,000, 3.2 Florida, 13.5 Michigan.
How did they do it?
Well, one of the things they immediately, and Ron DeSantis, remember, he was criticized for all the spring breakers down there.
You know, but at the time, if you remember, we were told by the experts, they changed their opinions a lot.
My timelines are definitive on all of this, uh, and it's on Hannity.com.
We were told, oh, young people, they're not at risk of getting us.
Then that changed in New York.
And I remember asking the first interview with coma, what happened?
And he goes, right, you're right.
He goes, we were told young people aren't getting it, but we're not seeing that in New York.
One period we were.
Now, we're seeing the look, it really ended up being what they had originally predicted in terms of those with underlying conditions, those with compromised immune systems.
Um, apparently obesity.
Listen, if you want to do one thing for your health, and I'm not a doctor, I say it all the time.
Lose weight.
But they deployed early in Florida while nobody was watching.
Mobile testing teams with the Florida National Guard to long-term care facilities.
They use their division of emergency management.
I give a ton of credit here to Ron DeSantis.
You know, they sent the protective uh personal protective equipment to long-term care facilities immediately.
They issued a directive requiring all staff with residents in long-term care facilities wearing masks almost immediately.
The agency for health administration made on-site visits.
Ron DeSantis handled it really well up to now.
I mean, it doesn't mean he won't make mistakes down the road, but uh, good job.
Because he went after the most vulnerable population.
Um, we see in New York, I mean, there's there was a New York Post editorial.
It was it's devastating.
That the New York nursing home debacle is by far the worst.
And it says if Donald Trump had merely been accused of what Governor Cuomo did here in New York by forcing nursing homes to take coronavirus patients.
I didn't know this until two days ago.
Like, what?
I mean, nursing homes were required.
Now, the New York Post writes of all the missteps in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, New York State's health department may have committed the worst ordering nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID-19.
Instead of quarantining the folks most vulnerable to the disease, the state encouraged its spread.
85% of the state's confirmed deaths from the bug are people over 60 with nearly a quarter of all corona fatalities coming in nursing or adult care facilities, and at least 2,210 such deaths tallied In the city.
Now the governor was asked about this.
He said it wasn't our job.
What?
It was up to privately run homes.
If if they needed help, the governor said he offered.
They should have asked, he said.
Well, actually, I no, it would be up to the state to contain the spread.
That's what Ron DeSantis did.
And his numbers are bearing out.
He nailed it.
Absolutely nailed it.
For the people in Florida, forget the spring break video.
I am telling you, they nailed it down in Florida heretofore.
You know, Dr. Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, made his order so patients could be released from hospitals, but the president, we never filled came near filling the Javitt Center or the Navy hospital ship comfort.
Never.
Unbelievable.
You know, the same Howard Zucker who decided not to buy the ventilators that New York desperately needed when they did the November 2015 story.
Anyway, but this indicates the uh coronavirus mortality rate.
MBC News even reporting, wow, occasionally they even get something right, uh, is far lower than previously thought.
They remember, they were up at three, three and a half percent fatality rate.
That's what the mortality rate that that's what they were saying.
You know, the the much predicted surge uh did not materialize in lockdown free South Dakota.
Now they had a problem at a meat packing plant.
Iowa had a similar problem, but they literally they dove on it really quickly.
And from what I hear anecdotally now, that most of those people are getting up and running again.
Um there is a study that shows a growing number of recovered corona patients can get re-infected.
Uh that's from doctors in Wuhan.
I I just can't, I can't report if and it's being covered, but I can't report that.
Um, because it's just ridiculous.
Uh this is this is how sick people are.
And then I'm we're gonna get to um a friend of the program, former professional baseball player uh Dan Venezia is with us in just a second.
So local Democrats in Detroit are actually going to hold the vote this weekend to censor a lawmaker who met with President Trump and credited him with saving her life after he touted hydroxychloroquine.
Now, I'm only saying this, I'm not getting involved in the whole medical mess data, etc.
But early data, New York State's hydroxychloroquine clinical trial now being reviewed by federal agencies, so we'll have some results there.
Um, you know, by the way, it they're now debunking, by the way, this widely cited non-clinical trial, which was so flawed, and everybody raced to run the results.
One of the things that remember Dr. Oz kept saying you fight with the army you have, not the army you wish you have.
We kept saying, and again, I'm not a doctor, consult your doctor, blah, blah, blah.
But it showed enormous hope, and we have all these stories about it.
And then I read the letter of this board certified rheumatologist at Cedar Sinai.
This guy's name is Daniel Wallace.
Nobody in the media wanted to print his letter.
He inherited the largest lupus practice in the U.S., 1985, cares for 2,000 patients with the disease.
Most of his patients take or have taken HCQ.
He's authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers, written the principal lupus textbook, past chairman of the Lupus Foundation of America, rheumatic rheumatology research foundation, blah, blah, blah.
He's he's authored numerous articles on anti-malarials.
This is his words.
Hydroxychloroquine, HCQ plaquinol, is a very safe drug.
It's been given tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval in 1955, 65 years now, and as a uh uh therapy, his monotherapy has not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose.
Forty-two years of practice, no patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for HCQ.
Then he says there are no protocols.
You don't get EKGs before prescribing HCQ, never had a problem.
Talks about the fact that it's also been given with azithromycin, no problem.
Then he's then this is his conclusion.
He says the risk of taking 400 milligrams HCQ a day following a single dose, 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 or 60 days.
The risk is nil.
His words.
Unless one has an allergic rash or upset stomach.
Um, and he said, contrary to all these articles, and then we find out this this Brazil thing, apparently tons of of uh doses were like five times higher than anything anyone has ever heard of.
All right, Dan is with us, Dan Venezia.
He is uh friend of the program, former professional baseball player with the Minnesota Twins and author of Coach Dan on sportsmanship.
He got the coronavirus.
How are you feeling?
And uh I'm sure that sucked.
Hey, Sean, yeah, no, I got hit by a Mac truck.
And uh luckily I'm getting better day by day, and you know, as I get older, there's no doubt my faith gets stronger, and first thing I want to do is that is give the grace to God.
And along with the power of prayer, my family, friends, and you know, the parishioners at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Patterson, they prayed for me every day.
And because those masses are now virtual, people are tuning in from all parts of the country.
I had over five thousand people praying.
Those prayers worked, this brutal disease tried to take over my mind.
It was successful at taking over my body body.
Luckily for a short period of time, but what the one thing it couldn't do was break my spirit.
How bad did it get and and how long now are we talking about since you contracted it?
Okay, so 28 days from my first symptom exactly to the day where I had uh I had a fever.
And then I went and got tested two days later.
It took them about four days to to send me the results.
I didn't need the results.
I had every every symptom in the book that you know you're hearing about the fever, the dry cough.
I had uh aches and pains.
I had a tremendously bad headache.
And uh so I get the results on Thursday, and then that following Sunday comes around, and it was just the the shortness of breath started get I have one of those little finger monitors that monitored my O2 level, and it got so bad where I had to take myself to the hospital.
You're you're like classic.
Everybody I've talked to, and I've talked to so many people late at night all day long.
So uh how old are you, by the way?
Forty-eight, former.
Do you have any underlying conditions?
I do have uh slight asthma, but you know, I have a rescue inhaler that I probably use once or twice a year when I'm around cats.
I think it's not a good thing.
What doesn't help with this disease though, especially because it's the lungs.
How did you get better?
How'd I get better?
Well, there were many, many reasons that got me better, but I tell you, I the first ten days I was just taking Tylenol and that was not working.
I was getting worse.
And uh I asked for the hydroxy chloroquine when I got to the hospital, and they said there's no guarantee we're gonna give it to you.
They actually uh I they they diagnosed me with pneumonia as well, but my numbers weren't that bad, I guess, in the in the ER, so they said we can send you home or or you can spend the night.
But there's still no guarantee we're gonna give you the drug.
And uh it was then that I I I called a friend, a doctor friend, Dr. Charles Thorne from New York City, and he said, You should you should stay tonight, and I'm glad I took that advice.
So they ended up giving it to me.
They gave me and and I and and they didn't give it to me with you know, you hear the stories about with zinc or with the Z pack.
They gave it to me straight up.
It was twice a day for for five days.
I didn't want to.
400 milligrams a day for five days?
Uh correct.
And at the end of those five and and and at the beginning, I tell you that first night in the hospital, uh my darkest hour, middle of the night, your mind starts to go to that place, you know, we've all been there, fear, anxiety, doubt, you question God, you see the death tolls, and uh I didn't allow myself to go there though.
You know, I I I had a very small conversation with the Lord, and I said, simply if this is your will, I'm not ready.
I have a wife and boys, but you know, two boys at home that need me and so much more to do.
And uh I started getting better each and every day, but there were there were many other factors that that led to my recovery.
But do you d you and from your experience do you think it helped you?
Well, absolutely.
I'm not a doctor, but I do know that when I didn't take it, I was getting-that like every second because Kennedy says he's saying I'm not I never said that.
I always tell consult your doctor.
You know, the but the best thing that I got out of it was it doesn't hurt people.
That's what that's what Dr. Wallace's letter says.
There's no more you know preeminent expert on this thing than him.
And when you see there's no harm, okay, what's a f a doctor's first mission?
All right, do no harm.
And what Dr. Oz always says, you gotta go to the war with the army you got, not the one you wish.
We always wish we could have those trials.
But listen, we're praying for you.
Get well.
Uh next time I see you, dinner's on me, okay, buddy.
I'm sorry you went through all that.
I'm glad you're better.
Go to if you could go to at Dan Venezia twenty-three Instagram, and I'm documenting my progress and in intention to help to help others battling this disease.
Appreciate it.
All right, gotta take a quick break.
We'll come back on the other side.
Dr. Oz with us, Newt Gingrich, uh our pollsters here, and much more, and your call straight ahead.
All right, hour two, Sean Hannity show.
Hey, I gotta thank our friends over at Pure Tonk USA.
Uh they actually so cool.
Not only did they give me a plan, they gave me a phone, they set it all up for me, because they must know I'm I'm technically a dope.
Um, and I mean they're the best at what they do.
You get the exact same service.
Uh you save hundreds and hundreds of dollars guaranteed same service, and every plan is unlimited talk text data.
You get data options that the big carriers don't offer, so you can even save more money if you don't need a lot of data on your phone plan.
You have many phones or family plan phones, you could save thousands a year.
Uh they're wonderful people, no contract to ever sign.
The exact, and I use that word purposefully, exact same coverage as big carriers.
And all you have to do is dial pound two fifty, say the keyword save now, pound two fifty, keyword save now, and you're gonna put money in your pocket, and what do I always say?
Money equals freedom.
Uh we bring back our friend, cardiac surgeon, host of the highly rated uh Dr. Oz Show.
Uh also somebody I just have come to admire a lot.
I know him, I know how hard this man works day and night, and you know uh there's a lot of art in medicine.
It's not all science all the time.
Now, what I mean by that is well, what does Dr. Oz say?
He says, You you go to the we go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you have.
Now think about that.
So it's not like, oh, here is the definitive answer.
You're looking for answers.
You're you're looking for what is what is a uh a doctor's first job.
Do no harm.
So you're looking for ways that you can thread a needle and save a life, save a lot of lives.
Um these new numbers are extremely interesting, but I think probably too early to tell uh where it's actually going, but I think it's something that we should really pay attention to.
And um I think it it really goes to the heart of well, okay, what what is the real mortality rate?
Because we now got New York City.gov.
They list 15,411 confirmed probable COVID-19 deaths in New York.
Twenty-one percent of eight point four million New York City residents infected.
That's one million seven hundred and sixty-four thousand.
That in New York City, uh, which they kind of do their numbers different than New York State.
Why I don't know.
The Census Bureau, New York City Department of Health.
Anyway, it would be an infection fatality rate of 0.87 for the state of New York, 13.9% is what the governor said today.
19.5 million people in New York, 2,703,550 infected, 15,740 deaths.
That infection rate for the state, again, infection fatality rate at this point in time, 0.58%.
Now, Dr. Oz, I remember people saying it might be 2%, might be 3%.
I even heard 3.5% at one point, which was really scary.
It's petrifying if that had happened.
Uh this is now the third report with using antibodies.
And admittedly, antibody tests are not perfect, but it's the third report from here, Southern California and Northern California, three areas that were clearly exposed to the virus that has reiterated that a lot more people were exposed than were tested and proving that we've had COVID-19.
And of course, there's two possible reasons.
We anyone who lives in this area, as you and I do, recognizes that from a long time we were told not to go to the hospital if we thought we might have COVID-19 because we didn't have enough tests, and we needed to save those for people who are really sick, so we can make quick diagnoses.
And the other reason, of course, is that a lot of people don't know they're sick.
The symptoms are minor, or they don't know what they are, or they had no symptoms.
And so uh this speaks to the fact that there's a lot of folks out there uh who did better than we expected.
Two caveats.
Uh there's a risk when you say this, because there's a uh, you know, it makes it harder to identify people who are uh suffering COVID-19, so they might inadvertently contaminate people around them.
But at the same token, it gives you a bit more confidence that uh most of us weather this.
And I was struck by that publication from Northwell, the biggest hospital system in this area, uh, and they uh shared their results with 5700 cases, and they showed that eighty-eight percent of people who came into the hospital, again, almost nine out of ten people come to the hospital, had not one but two chronic underlying issues like high blood pressure or high body mass index or or uh elevated blood sugar, which speaks to the fact that we actually have a bit more control over this potentially than we initially felt.
So God forbid you get infected with COVID-19.
If you have been able to help yourself by dealing with your blood pressure, your diabetes or lost weight, all things that you have some chance of influencing with lifestyle, then not you could reduce your incidence of being hurt, and that's good news because as the CDC guidelines roll out, you're allowed to leave in phase one and two.
Otherwise, the people who they're called called vulnerable, the vul vulnerable folks aren't supposed to leave the house for fear they'll end up in the hospital if they get COVID 19.
Unbelievable.
And you know, we see the numbers going down.
I mean, so you're still talking about a lot of people, but you know, it's only this week did New York, you know, finally go below 500 deaths a day since April 1st.
Uh today the lowest death rate.
Um we're learning some things, and I I'm not trying to drag in any political controversy here in any way, but there was a New York Post uh editorial today, and it talks about of all the missteps in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, the New York State Health Department may have committed the worst because they were ordering nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID 19.
And instead of quarantining the folks most vulnerable to the disease, which we we knew that very early, the state inc in that sense, you know it was it was it what that was a death sentence for people in my view.
Eighty-five percent of the state's confirmed deaths from the bug or people over sixty.
Um, and we know that nearly a quarter of all corona fatalities coming in nursing adult care facilities.
Now compare that to, you know, I know that uh that Ron DeSantis, he got criticized because of the kids who are on spring break, etc.
But what they did in Florida is fascinating to me, and uh let's compare it to Michigan.
Not I won't compare it to New York, but I was mo worried because of their high population of the elderly people down there, and I've been to the villages, America's friendliest hometown, et cetera.
But their fatality rate per hundred thousand is is four, four point zero.
Michigan's twenty-seven point zero.
And what they did early is deploy all of their mobile testing teams with the Florida National Guard to long-term care facilities.
Their division of emergency management sent the personal protective equipment to their long-term care facilities immediately.
They issued a directive requiring all staff that work with residents uh in long-term care facilities wear masks, and the agency for health administration, they were making on-site visits everywhere.
They worked with the villages almost from day one to prevent any big outbreak down there.
And again, on every level, current hospitalization ten point three per hundred thousand, where it's thirty-three point six in Michigan, or uh I mentioned fatalities four point oh to twenty-seven.
Uh if you look at ICU per hundred thousand, it's three point two in Florida, thirteen point five in Michigan.
That and then learning what we learned about New York, it seems like Governor DeSantis made a a hell of a early smart decision.
Well, I'll tell you, we've understood for a while where the real vulnerable population is.
You know, they're even without this version of the coronavirus, the older coronaviruses, the ones that normally are circulating in our population that cause sore throat and the like, they'll they'll kill thousands of folks a year, almost all elderly folks uh as well.
So this fact this virus picks on older people.
And I think the the cautionary uh and uh and big opportunity here uh is that if you start to protect and focus in on people who are most likely to suffer uh badly from being infected, it'll make a disproportionately good outcome.
I mean, what but uh former mayor Mike Bloomberg's doing, I think is is very wise.
He's building out uh helping to build out the city's testing and tracing programs.
We have about five hundred contact tracers in in New York right now.
It's just an example.
But imagine if we could do 40,000 tests a day, which is the goal here, and you you know, quadruple or further the number of contact tracers.
Then you've got people in Florida and in Michigan uh going around first targeting nursing homes, uh populations at risk, be really laser focused on public transportation, you know, and then most importantly, help people who test positive, not have to go back to a place where they're likely to infect others.
Those moves are hugely effective as we're shown in Florida.
So I think those are lessons that other governors, I hope, are taking into their states.
And of course, we've got the federal CC guidelines, which is get two weeks of trending data that you're effective in what you're doing.
So you keep it score, and then keep doing it.
If you if you move that way, the iterative process, I think most Americans get comfortable with this.
We're gonna have some place we've got to pull back.
Everyone's gonna trust the system because nothing's perfect, and then we'll go back and forth, back and forth till we fix this.
But eventually all the states will be completely open if we do it the right way.
You know, I I know the the the governor of uh Georgia, Kemp is taking a lot of heat.
I I don't get it, to be honest, my own humble opinion.
Uh I don't get tattoo parlors opening.
I really don't.
I don't get um nail salon, hair salon places opening yet.
Uh I want to know more.
Um I've given you for example, I think New York City faces all these unique challenges, and anyone wants to get in a building, temperature check, mask gloves in the workplace, and half the workforce has to stay and work from home, at least for the interim.
Um I missing and and and when you can get testing on board to a high extent, you're gonna have to test people, but then you have to test them three days later, right?
You well, I don't know what second test is not clear yet, but I I'll tell you something.
I mean, I'm struggling with this.
You are as well.
How about my own folks?
You know, I want I want them safe.
I want them feeling comfortable, I want them making the choice to come.
And if someone's got to take, you know, three different subway tr uh stops to come to the office, that that's a risk.
And I want them to feel that this says subways are safe before I expect that of them.
I do think a lot of us uh can work outside the the you know the main office we used to go to, at least for now.
But uh ideally our leadership will will create steps that we all want to take.
So we we're not challenged, you know, we don't have to be brave to do these things.
We should say, you know what, that makes sense.
You know, I got a family take care of.
Um I feel that's a safe thing for me to do.
Uh if not, I'll be I'm comfortable voicing that opinion.
But people around me have the same culture, but it begins to slowly create a expectations that are different.
None of us thought on I'll even go back on March the first.
I challenge anyone listening right now to ext to have predicted what happened over the next month.
It just was it's easy to look back and pick on people, but there are very, very few folks who could accurately predict that, and whoever they were, I don't think we were listening to.
So now we are a month into this plus into this, and everyone sort of is different expectations.
And now we gotta get everyone on the same page again to make the next step.
Otherwise, half the population move, half won't go, and then we'll end up with this argument internally.
It's your fault, no, it's your fault.
Yeah, uh well, I mean, all of that is true, all of that would happen.
Uh look, I I I I I don't, you know, a lot of people go to this, um I don't like the fact that there's been so much criticism of the president.
I think a lot of I think uh, you know, the travel ban, it's incalculable how much worse this could have been to me.
How many more Americans would have been infected, and he got the crap beat out of them, and uh, you know, Democrats politicized it.
But you know, uh I know you respect Anthony Fauci, and I'm not being critical, I promise you.
But he was say even saying February 29th, the yeah, the risk is low.
And March 9th, he said, Yeah, young, healthy people can take a cruise.
Um China lied to us.
That was a big part of it, wasn't it?
I don't think we had good in insight on what was really happening, not just in China but around the world.
I think a lot of folks were you know, you can it's hard to judge motivation, you can only judge action, but uh I don't think most of us had deep appreciation of what was going on.
And a lot of it, I gotta say, was driven by the fact that we didn't have any testing.
So I for my best guess we had you know all tens of thousands of cases in New York before we realized we had a problem.
It might have been more.
And you see, you look at those numbers, you think, oh my goodness, you know, there's a huge forest fire, and we didn't even smell the flames uh or the chart ember while we were trying to figure out how to slowly gently shut down.
Meanwhile, you know, the the infrastructure was burning up.
Yeah.
Well, I want to thank you.
I know that you're you work day and night.
I know you're looking for answers.
I know you care about health.
Oh, last thing.
You agree with me.
The best thing everybody can do is lose weight, right?
I uh no, I'm not no, I don't have a panacea.
I did it with the NJ Diet.
It's a pain in the neck.
I hate it.
You don't drink for 40 days.
And you know, you like 3.5 ounces of protein a day, two 12 ounce portion of vegetables a day, and two fruits a day.
That's it.
Um, and I lost the weight and I've been able to keep it off.
I just want people to be healthy, live longer lives, and isn't that one of the best things you can do?
Yeah, it might be the easiest, simplest thing to do right now.
And I tell you it's good for you anyway.
And frankly, you pick a way that works for you.
We've got lots of programs.
Uh your officer Sean have had great success with this.
You look like a greyhound these days.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Not exactly.
Oh, that's funny.
A lot of people sitting at home, uh, trying to figure out how do I how do I make a difference?
This is a good way of doing it.
You know what I do?
I drink a lot of chicken broth.
That may sound stupid, right?
I drink a ton of it.
No, not at all.
You know, brothers are very effective because they fill your stomach, and you actually digest them slower.
So it's one of the smartest things you can do.
Soups and broths.
No, I I honestly just ton.
Uh by the way, everyone's laughing.
My whole staff mocking me because you call me a greyhound.
Thanks a lot.
Uh all right, Dr. Os, thanks for all.
I know you work day and night.
Um, helping people.
Let's see, you were born to do this.
I I can see it.
I know your passion behind it.
I wish everybody knew the side of you that I now know, and thank you for all you do.
All right, as we roll along, 800 941 Sean Tollfree telephone number, you want to be a part of the program.
So much that um, you know, I I'm talking to a lot of friends.
Linda, you you're we were discussing this earlier, too.
Everybody's like, man, they're like everyone needs a break.
Every you know, and when they attacked Ellen, I'm like, really?
Now we're gonna attack Ellen for telling a joke.
Um, I think people I want to say, Ellen, don't stop telling jokes.
Keep doing it.
They're just taking themselves too seriously.
I mean, her job is to be a comedian.
It's to provide levity in a time of you know, struggle, and people are freaking out, they're upset.
So why shouldn't she tell a joke?
She's doing all the right things, she's practicing social distancing, she's in her home and she's making fun of herself.
I mean, what is the big deal?
I mean, honestly, I mean, that's what I'm like.
I'm looking at people, and then this is what else I hear.
You're doing it from a mansion.
All right.
Well, okay, that's where she lives.
Um God forbid somebody be successful and you're having a nice.
What would you prefer?
She live in a tent?
I think people are she doesn't care about the suffering of others.
I'm like, she's actually trying to relieve this constant stress.
And quite frankly, she's a very giving person.
She gives a lot to a lot of people.
She gave a million dollars for COVID relief.
So everyone needs to shut up and leave Ellen alone.
Ellen, if you ever hear Sean Hannity talking about you, please keep telling jokes.
More Hannity.
Less big government.
This is the Sean Hannity show.
All right, 25 now till the uh top of the hour.
Toll free, it's 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of this extravaganza, you know, um early on, former speaker of the house, he's he's been a dear friend of mine.
I mean, he's like family to me at this point.
Um I'm I'll forever be so proud of the fact that I was the MC uh the night that Newt Gang Gingrich uh became Speaker of the House in 1994.
I was the MC of that event uh that night.
I think it was the Cobb Galleria Center.
My mind's not that my mind's not as bad as Joe's.
Um and we just have been friends all throughout.
And and we've had parallel lives, careers.
He's a mentor, he's smart as hell, a great historian, and he also gave this country a very, very accurate, dire warning.
And it helped.
And that was he was in Italy.
Um, uh his wife Callista, as we all know, is ambassador to the the Vatican, the Holy See.
And he warned us about what was going on in Italy.
And he goes, You better take it seriously.
Got uh in touch with everybody from the president, Congress, Senate, everybody got the lowdown.
And uh to that extent, uh, Mr. Speaker, we owe you as a country a debt of gratitude, and I know you did it.
You were firm, you are tough, you said it loudly, and you were very clear, and I think people listen to you.
Well, thank you.
I think that's probably right.
And you know, I'm talking to you from Rome, we're close than I are still.
This is our seventh week of an effect being locked in the house.
Uh they're slowly starting to get better.
Uh, but it's been a really long grind.
I will say, by the way, to any of Calista's fans, that she has a great new picture on Facebook because today she had a dental emergency, and in the middle of the pandemic, if you go to the dentist, they really wrap you up.
And they took a picture of her, which those of you who know her well, will find a collector's item.
Uh, but it's also just a reminder.
This is changing, you know, this experience is changing something for every one of us everywhere in the world.
And we should start with that recognition that we're going to rebuild America and we're going to rebuild the world, but it's from a new baseline forced on us by the Chinese dishonesty and the Chinese manipulation, which has caused unbelievable human and financial costs.
You know, it really uh nobody saw a cut, you know.
I like the way the president characterizes this as an invisible enemy.
Look, it's the same predictable people that have sadly politicized this.
It is incalculable to me.
The number of lives that were saved, the number of Americans uh uh uh the president's travel ban ten days after the first identified case of corona in the United States.
I've been brought in.
People were in the room I've talked to, and not a single person agreed with the president about the travel ban.
Not one.
And he did it anyway.
Well, look, and I got one decision.
Yeah, go ahead.
I can tell you because Callista and I are right here in Italy, where the Italian government for political correctness took the opposite track.
They had a hundred thousand Chinese workers in northern Italy.
They allowed the airplanes to keep coming from Wuhan three flights a week for weeks after the pandemic occurred, and they were just flying in the disease.
I mean, you look at the impact in Italy, a much smaller country, less than one-fifth the size of the United States, and you look at how close they came to collapsing totally, and it's because they didn't have a Donald Trump who had the courage to say, I'm gonna protect people in my own country.
And I I think no historian is gonna look back and ever say that the president was wrong.
It was the right decision.
It took a lot of guts, and people like Joe Biden and others all attacked him when he did it.
Uh, and their efforts nowadays are pathetic to try to hide from their responsibility, because their strategy would have led to a lot more Americans dying.
You know, what bothers me, and I think every candidate, we're 194 days away from an election, and right now I know nobody's really focused on it except the Democrats.
But there's such a level of intellectual dishonesty, because I think every Democratic candidate, Congress, Senate, local, whatever, it doesn't matter, Joe Biden, was the in retrospect was the racist, hysterical, xenophobic, um, and fear-mongering travel ban in retrospect was it the right call.
What did Donald Trump do right here?
Because, Mr. Speaker, we in a in a month's period of time.
Remember, Anthony Fauci said, you know, the risk is low on February 29th.
Remember, you know, Andrew Cuomo said, Oh no, we're prepared.
We're not like these other countries.
We're New Yorkers.
We're New Yorkers.
Um, you know, look what happened in New York.
That was March 2nd.
Anderson Cooper, fake news CNN, March 4th was saying uh that uh you should worry more about the flu than Corona.
March 9th, Anthony Fauci, who we all respect, said, Yeah, if you're young and healthy, you can go on a cruise.
And in a month's period of time, the president built 25,000 hospital beds around the country, the biggest hospital, the Javitt Center in the country, and manned it, all personnel from from uh from the federal government.
Then they converted it to COVID-19, then the comfort was sent to New York Harbor, then they converted that for COVID-19.
The millions of masks, respirators, the gowns, the gloves, the medicines, all, no, no state was ready at all.
They had nothing.
And they did it in four weeks.
The largest medical mobilization in history.
And not one thing can anybody in the mob in the media or the Democrats, you know, Nancy Pelosi with her designer ice cream on comedy shows, delaying aid so she can change election and immigration laws and give money to the endowments for the arts and humanities and the Kennedy Center.
They didn't do a thing.
They were impeaching him.
She was ripping up his speech while he was talking about corona.
She was telling people in Chinatown February 24th that, oh, come to Chinatown.
I I'm you know, I'm I'll I'll let you talk about it.
I'm thinking it angers me, you have no idea.
They they're they're so dishonest.
They're such liars, in my view.
Well, look, I think that's all true.
I look, I had uh Tony Fauci, you know I do a weekly podcast at uh Nixworld.
We had Tony on, he's an old friend, and we'd worked on HIV AIDS back in the 1980s, and he said in early early February, uh that this looked a lot like SARS, it was going to be controllable, it was not something to panic about.
But the reason he said that, and this we should never forget this.
The reason experts like Fauci said that is because the Chinese communist dictatorship was methodically and deliberately lying to the world.
Uh I personally believe there are at least 160 or 170,000 people dead today because of the Chinese communist dictatorship, and that we need to recognize how truly destructive and how dishonest they were, and that they were the starting point.
And remember at that point in time, people like Joe Biden were defending them and protecting them and saying, oh, it's not you know, let's not be a uh hostile to these people.
Well, the truth is what they were doing was deliberate, I think, and malicious.
They were the doctors who warned about this virus were locked up.
And they were told, you know, you're not going to get out until you sign something to say that what you said was not true.
You know, it's just unbelievable when you go back and look at how bad the dictatorship is.
You and you and the president and you, I'd say one and two, were the two people that have m war been warning us about China the longest, both of you.
Now the question is, well, they hold a lot of our debt.
I don't think we pay it back.
Can we do that?
I I just first of all, as you know, I wrote a book on Trump versus China back in October, outlining how bad they would be, and then they have lived out exactly what I described in the book.
Uh I just did an uh article this week on newsletter and made the argument that they are clearly guilty, and that we should both create a right of suit for private citizens, so every family who's lost somebody should be able to sue the communist dictatorship.
Uh, in the case of the Lockerby um uh terrorist bombing of Scotland, it amounted to about yeah, amounted to about eight million dollars per person, and in uh after inflation, there'd be probably about eleven million today.
Uh and then second, every government in the world, not just the U.S. government, every government in the world, the Italian, the Spanish, you name it, should calculate the economic cost of Chinese communist dishonesty, and we should charge them for that.
We can frankly impound their the debt that they hold.
We can impound all their assets in the United States, we can establish a virus debt repayment tariff, uh, and say to them, until we collect what you have cost us, uh, we're gonna not allow you to ever send anything under traditional rules, period.
But but it would be a disaster for the world if the dictatorship in China was to taught the lesson that they could lie to everybody, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and it'll be over 200,000 before this is done, cost the rest of the world trillions of dollars, and have nothing done.
And that's an enormous danger because our friends on the left just can't bring themselves to defend America against the Chinese communist dictatorship.
Let me ask you, because I think this is very, very important.
Um, if we do all of that, what consequences are they?
Are we gonna you know, is that gonna be viewed as an act of war?
Because I think one of the you know, beyond lying, remember there was a study in out of Great Britain that said ninety five percent of this could have all been prevented.
Have they invited in the world's experts?
And I asked uh Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if they gave you a call and said, Hey, we need help, what would you have done us?
He said we would have sent our best.
And but they did that.
But then they're not gonna be able to do that.
We we offered to send people.
Right.
But they remember when they did this.
They would not allow travel to or it within China to Wuhan or Wuhan to any part of China.
But they they kept open international flights, so they knew it was dangerous.
Right.
Right.
Look, I I think you have to have an assumption here that the Chinese communist dictatorship was deliberately and methodically lying, that it has been manipulating this entire situation for at least four months.
And and when people say to me, Well, what if they retaliate?
My answer is really simple.
If we haven't got the guts to stand up to them now, what are they going to be like 10 or 20 years from now?
I mean, this is a decisive turning point, and it's exactly what Churchill talked about in terms of Hitler in the in the in the tw in the 30s.
I mean, you reach a point where you either stand up for your principles and you stand up for what's right, or you allow the dictatorship to dominate.
It's exactly what Harry Truman was faced with in the late 40s.
He could have caved into Stalin, he could have given up Berlin, he could have allowed the Soviets to dominate, and he said no, and he took the risk.
And a lot of people said to him, Boy, that's really a big risk.
Well, let me tell you, it's a big risk to take on the Chinese communist dictatorship, and it's a bigger risk to not take on the Chinese Communist dictatorship.
I've never seen the mob as bad as they are in the media and Democrats as awful as they have been all throughout this.
We have an election in 194 days.
How th these are uncharted territories that we're in here, uncharted waters, rather, that we're in here, and uncharted territory.
How does this play out?
You see the vitriol.
Donald Trump could do nothing right.
They wouldn't give him credit for anything.
Right.
Right.
Three quick points.
One, Trump is the most hated president since Abraham Lincoln.
Uh as Alan Guelzo, a great scholar at Princeton has pointed out, uh, you have to go back to the slave owner newspapers in South Carolina attacking Lincoln in 1860 to have anything like the level of vitriol you get out of the modern left.
So that that's part one.
They hate him, they get up every morning, they know they hate him.
They're not sure what he did bad, but they know something was bad, and that's just reality.
Part part two.
The number one thing for the president is to pick up a lesson from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and be doctor defeat the virus and doctor create jobs.
He should not be a candidate in his own head until Labor Day.
From now to Labor Day, he should be the commander in chief, the person helping America, the man getting the job done, which of course shrinks Biden every single day because there's no possibility that Biden can compete with somebody who's an effective commander-in-chief.
Three.
This is my prediction.
You can we can come back to this later on this fall.
The weaker Biden is, the more indefensible and impossible Biden is, the more vicious the news media will become.
By the way, that is like, you know what?
That's a layup prediction.
Come on.
I make that prediction.
Let me ask you this.
Do you do this?
I'll take the layup.
No, you you already took the layup, but you could have fed it to me, but you decided to take it for yourself.
You know, I uh understand some people are selfish on the court.
I'm teasing in every way.
Do you think they're gonna try and steal this from him and they're gonna say, uh, he's really not doing well, we can't run.
Of course.
Oh, you mean Biden?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just got a note tonight from somebody who's a pretty good expert on who says he doesn't see technically how they can do it.
But does it Jill Biden step in the delegates?
And or does he uh does he do a Hail Mary and bring in uh let's see, uh Michelle Obama as a running mate?
Well, I don't think I don't think the Obamas would do that.
Um if you watch President Obama's reluctance to endorse him and then you look at how weak the endorsement was, that didn't strike me as somebody who's eager to go out and uh you know you know the Obamas right now can say we were this heroic, wonderful couple, we have a great life, we're doing fine.
Why would they want to tie their their career in history to a guy who's as weak and and clearly incompetent as Joe Biden?
Mr. Speaker, thank you.
You're the best.
Stay safe.
800-941-SHAWN.
We have a solemn duty to ensure these unemployed Americans regain their jobs and their livelihoods, therefore, in order to protect American workers.
I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States.
You heard about that last night.
By pausing immigration will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens.
So important.
It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad.
All right, that is the President News Roundup Information Overload Hour.
70% of Americans favor a ban on entry into the United States.
Uh sixty-nine percent believe false information from China made the pandemic worse, and only ten percent believe that China is telling the truth now.
Our polsters are all back.
John McLaughlin, Matt Towery, Scott Rasmussen.
Uh Scott, let's start.
Those are your numbers.
Uh I think the the backlash towards China is really only just beginning.
I think you're absolutely right about that.
You know, a few weeks ago we were polling and people weren't sure whether to blame China.
They weren't quite sure.
We were even having that debate about whether it's appropriate to call this uh you know a China virus or a Wuhan virus.
Well, now sixty-nine percent think that they made it worse, only eight percent disagree.
You know, this is a situation where China has lost all credibility, and I think what we're seeing is an issue that is going to get bigger and bigger as November gets closer, because people are really angry uh at the at what China has done to not just the United States but the entire world.
Yeah.
Uh what's your take, Matt Towery?
Oh, I think Scott's completely right.
Um the the ire that China is going to feel over the next six months to a year is going to be phenomenal.
I think you'll see uh production uh manufacturing come back to the United States, uh, even if it cost more money.
And I think you're going to see it become a huge issue in the election.
I don't see how the Democrats can really defend the positions they've taken with regard to China with the president uh ending the travel early on, the statements made by Biden, those are going to become very difficult to defend as you get to the last days of the election.
John McGlauck.
I've I'm seeing the same thing.
I mean, we've got uh we've got a poll coming out tomorrow that uh a businessman from Long Island, who's one of your neighborhoods, one of the good neighborhoods out there, Lawrence Cade is paid for.
70 percent think China knowingly kept coronavirus data from an international health care professionals.
Only 12% of the voters said no.
Uh think we need to end our dependence on Chinese imports, 75 to 16.
They think that the uh uh they they gotta change our trading relationship with China, 72 to 15, and they think we ought to mandate that we gotta bring uh uh technology companies, essential manufacturing companies back to the U.S. seventy especially pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, these are big numbers, but these are not small.
This is across the board.
All parties, all ideologies, every region of the country.
This is a wake-up call to America.
This is a huge after shock.
Let me ask you all this question, because if there was one guy that was out there front and center warning about China, warning about open borders, uh, which I think now are big issues, and and I've been saying it for years too as it relates to the border.
Why do you want to secure the border?
90% of our heroin comes from there.
We have three 300 dead Americans uh a week from opioids and our fentanyl crosses that border.
Uh then you have potential terrorists and and people with gang ties.
I think we have to do background checks, make sure before people enter the country.
Uh You certainly need to secure the border in terms of people need to be able to provide for themselves, and now I would add health issues to it.
These are two of Trump's signature issues, Scott Rasmussen, by in 194 days, how do those two issues factor into people's voting patterns?
Well, they factored not just into voting patterns and but to things that are going to be happening throughout the next decade.
This is going to be a fundamental change in the way we look at America's nation uh relationship with the rest of the world.
We saw last year that a lot of people recognize that tariff wars were going to hurt us economically.
People wouldn't have to pay more, but they still supported them because they recognized there were other issues involved.
Uh right now, you know, you mentioned the ban on immigration.
Our polling showed that among people who strongly disapprove of this president, the resistance to this president, 57% of them support the idea of this temporary ban.
Um the idea that we're going to have open borders, the idea that we're going to go back to the way things were just a losing issue at every level.
And I think the larger debate is going to be what is our how we're going to approach security in all of our travel and trade relationships with the rest of the world when something like the coronavirus virus can disrupt uh global patterns.
Uh your thoughts, Matt Towery.
Well, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
So it we've had, I don't want to say an exaggeration because this has been a terrible crisis.
But when you hype something beyond measure, it comes back to bite you in the end.
And that's when it's going to bite in the elections season, because you're going to look back and see that Donald Trump has done a magnificent job of dealing with an impossible situation.
And by the way, one that was made even more impossible because of bad decisions from prior administrations, whether it's globalism or whether it was decisions not to do uh certain public health measures.
Trump had to build an entire uh public health system, a secondary public health system in a matter of a month, and he did it.
And people are going to start to realize that when we get to November.
It's been the biggest medical mobilization, the fastest medical mobilization in the history of this country, John McLaughlin, starting with the travel ban that was labeled racist and xenophobic and hysterical and part of fear mongering on the president's part.
I think Joe Biden will eat those words.
But Matt is right here.
The states, there was no preparation in New York.
Donald Trump built the Javett Center, the largest hospital in the country, converted it to COVID-19, and he all the personnel came from Donald Trump.
Uh the same with the the hospital ship, the comfort.
Every ventilator New York needed, the mask, the gloves, the respirators, the gowns, the medicines, all came from Donald Trump.
New York had zero preparation.
Early March, the governor, the mayor, the health officials were all saying, No, we got this covered.
They didn't have anything covered.
Uh does he get credit for that?
Well, he should, but you've got to get the press to you know, get around the press distorting the truth.
But the amazing thing is in New York, the deaths that we had, they had a policy.
This we now find out the state had a policy that they would send coronavirus patients back into nursing homes.
Can you believe that?
That's why you had this massive death because it was this highly contagious disease among all people, and the state ordered it.
Governor Cuomo's state health commissioner ordered it.
So they were so they were sending people with coronavirus.
Well, the governor said today, well, that was their decision to do that.
No, I didn't do that.
Terrible.
This is so sad.
This is so sad.
So thousands of deaths.
Does he get credit for this?
Yeah, Scott, do you think?
You know, I I think that by November, we're not going to be talking about getting credit for these types of issues.
What we're going to be looking at is the way society has reopened.
And I and I think it's really important that we talk not just about reopening the economy but reopening society.
And people are going to be saying, what's been happening?
How how has life begun to resort return to something semi-normal?
If that's happening, if we're making progress in that way, the president will get credit for that, and these other arguments will have become ancient memory.
Matt, your thought your thoughts, where are we going to be in 194 days?
Well, we're not going to be where we were, you know, in February.
We know that.
Uh there's a lot of adjusting that has to take place.
We're going to have to walk before we run.
And we don't know what how what the cycle of this virus will will be.
But I predict one thing.
Regardless of where we are, the president has a magnificent opportunity to remind people of what he's accomplished pre-virus and post-virus.
And I believe this president, and I I just want to note, you know, networks really have no business polling in states because they do a terrible job.
But I noticed the CNBC came out with uh a poll in almost all the swing states yesterday, Trump up and every single one of them by one point.
That's in the middle of all this stuff going on.
So anybody who thinks this man is not going to be re-elected needs to go back and study again.
Well, if you want the the the media can't say a single good thing he's done, John McLaughlin, then never.
The mob in the media, Democrats, they can't name one thing good that he's done here.
Not one.
All they do is trash him.
No, and we just put we just by the way, we just put out, and granted I work for the campaign, but this is our monthly national survey that we do, not necessarily for the campaign, but we we put it out and we said we we basically asked people do you agree or disagree with the statement that the Democrats and liberal national media are trying to move the blame from the spread of coronavirus away from China to President Trump for partisan political gain.
And the plurality of Americans agree with that, 49 to 42.
And then we asked a question like, and it was kind of a tough question because we're saying, would you say that too many members of the media have been unfair, biased, and even disrespectful to the president, or has the media been fair and biased and always respectful?
They said they were unfair and disrespectful, 48 to 42, and it's higher among the 56 percent that regularly watch the briefings.
So they know that the media is is not telling the truth.
I mean, these briefings have really exposed them.
They're hostile to the president.
At a time we're in the same poll, 79% of all Americans want to be united and don't want to have anything to do with partisan politics.
So Donald Trump may have to fight for the credit that he deserves on what he's doing to save American lives and bring our economy back.
But we will fight for that, and the majority of Americans will recognize will recognize that.
So let's go to Biden.
Does how does Biden stack up to Trump?
He seems so diminished.
The ever the poor ever confused uh quid pro quo Joe.
Okay, if the election's held today, Scott Rasmussen, who wins?
Well, right now our latest polling shows that in the last couple of weeks, Joe Biden has actually gained a couple of points, and that's probably because he's been out of the public eyes so much.
Uh, but this is a poll of registered voters.
Uh it's early on, and it's a national poll.
Uh if the election were held right now today, I think we would be looking at for the places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to see who wins the electoral college.
It would be a close race.
Uh, I think the president emerges on top.
But as I said before, it all depends on what happens in the next few months and how we come out of these lockdowns.
Matt Towery.
Well, I mean, I I think Scott alluded to something which I believe, and that is Biden has gained only because he hasn't been out talking.
And at some point he has to come out of his basement and start campaigning again, and he's just, you know, by the way, he's been a disaster in his basement.
It is embarrassing.
He's a disaster.
The sad thing about it is for him, it's seriously.
He was much sharper three or four years ago.
And I it it seems like this during this campaign, he's just become increasingly confusing.
His words get jumbled.
We know what's going on here.
Now, if the American people want to vote for that, they can.
I don't think they will.
I think from President Trump and Biden debate, you're going to see a clear demarcation, and the president is once again going to come out on top.
And as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show Polsters, Scott Rasmussen, Matt Towery, John McLaughlin.
All right.
We see Joe Biden.
Well, we don't see him.
Seems very diminished, you know, very confused.
His uh readings are well now a thing of uh fame.
He's now claiming that this is good, this is a great opportunity.
I can't believe it.
Uh, in terms of, oh, we can do things that we weren't able to do.
I'm excited by this.
He made in a statement yesterday.
Anyway, do the Democrats try to dump him John McLaughlin?
There's nobody running against him.
He's told he's won the race.
Everybody dropped out.
So Jill Biden come in and say, you know what, he's not feeling up to it.
You guys pick someone else.
Well, you know what?
Remember back in 2016, you brought me out to do radio in Milwaukee, and we met with Ben candidate Donald Trump, and you had me tell him he was going to lose Wisconsin to Cruz.
But then once all we had to do was we said, okay, we're going to go win Indiana, and that we'll win New York, Northeast, Indiana, lock it up in two weeks.
Once we did that, they kept spinning for an open convention.
It wasn't gonna happen.
What about that Matt Towery and uh what about all this talk about?
Well, maybe we'll put Michelle Obama on the ticket.
Well, I'm a little more skeptical about Joe Batten's future than perhaps others.
I I think that this could be a real crisis for the Democrats.
Um, because as I said, I I this is just one person's opinion, he doesn't seem as sharp as he did when he started his campaign, which I find very interesting.
So I think there's always a possibility, Sean, that something could happen.
And he's and he could could bow out.
That's not out of it's not out of possibility as far as I'm concerned.
And then they'd steal it from Bernie.
Good luck with that, because Bernie fans will, you know, no fun pun intended, they'll be burned.
That's the problem.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Scott, what do you think?
And any of you have any thoughts on the Michelle Obama rumors.
Well, look, uh Sean, what I think is that if for some reason Joe Biden had to step aside for because of health or any other concerns, the Democrats have a choice.
They can either give it to Bernie Sanders and put forward a very weak national candidate, or give it to somebody else and really divide the party at that point.
Uh there are no good options.
There are.
Would Michelle Obama do it real quick?
Last question, yes or no, John McLaughlin.
No, no, because she wants to be the top of the ticket, not the bottom.
Matt Towery.
No way, she's not gonna do it.
Scott Rasmussen.
I agree, not gonna happen.
All right, want to thank you all.
When we come back, final half hour, wide open phones.
Hannity tonight at 9800-941 Sean.
You want to be a part of the program.
And we're waiting for coronavirus task force briefing.
If it happens, we'll take it straight ahead.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
We don't know when, but sometime soon the coronavirus task force briefing will uh begin.
And for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network, we'll continue to follow our usual protocol and uh give you all the discretion you want, need necessary to take your breaks as uh warranted.
Uh want to remind everybody look, Mother's Day is coming.
Let me tell you, it's tough on moms, right?
I mean, by the way, some some of you out there, many of you, I'm sure, especially in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and some other areas, you know, probably you might be socially distancing from grandma and from moms and dads and grandpa's, uh, which is because you love them, not but for any other bad reason.
But anyway, Mother's Day is coming, and our friends at 1-800 Flowers.com, your Rose Authority.
They're amazing people.
Right now, they're offering this great deal, and you want to get your order in early now because everything's limited, and they have limited delivery windows, and they're doing safe delivery.
They're committed to the safety of their team members.
They're doing contact less delivery.
So a little more complicated, but you want to remember mom and all the love they give you all year round, all the moms in your life.
That means mom, grandma, mother-in-law, uh, you know, the mother of your kids, everybody you can think of.
Three dozen beautiful sorbet roses, uh, 25% off the original price.
Your official florist, 1-800 flowers.com, three dozen sorbet roses.
Uh just go to 1-800 flowers.com, click on the radio icon, enter the code Hannity.
1-800 flowers.com, code Hannity, and don't forget, do it now while you can.
Lock them in, contactless deliveries.
All right, let's get to our busy phones here.
Um, let's say hi to Louis in New Mexico.
Louis, how are you doing out there?
I know it's not as crazy as here, but uh hopefully not.
What's going on?
Hey, I just thought I'd thank you for being a champion for small businesses.
Um, you know, I uh it's interesting.
I got um interviewed because I own shooting ranges and gun stores here in New Mexico, and uh our governor um being the central uh any place that in her mandate that anybody who serves uh law law enforcement and military, and you know, we have Albuquerque Police, State Police, uh ATF always in our shooting ranges.
And it's interesting.
Once our story got out about calibers, I'm sorry, wasn't supposed to say that.
Um about I'm sorry, I didn't even hear what you said.
I didn't I didn't even hear what you said.
Okay, good.
I'm glad you didn't hear the name of my store because I wasn't supposed to say that.
Uh but yeah, it all sudden the governor deems this non-essential and closes us down.
Um and she's doing it to all small businesses, and she's literally picking winners and losers in New Mexico, you know, and as I'm just so stupid.
It is it is ridiculous.
You know, because listen, I'm telling you right now, if I and again, I go to the stores all the time.
If I if the and I I talk to everybody, I can't shut up.
I'm a talk show host.
I and I talk through my new, you know, my respirator, my mask.
And but I see every time I go to the store.
Stores are filled in in in New York and Long Island, they're they're packed.
They're fully.
Yeah, guess what?
And I talked to the guys stocking the shelves.
Now, uh, excuse me, they never close down because otherwise New Yorkers would have starved to death.
You know, if farmers didn't farm, packers didn't pack, truckers didn't truck, uh, pharmaceutical companies didn't do their thing, and and those manufacturing all this medical equipment that saved New York, because New York uh government failed on a spectacular level.
Um we'd be dead.
We were dead without if America closed down.
Now, if all those people can do it, why can't others do it?
We can control how many people we allow in our store, we can do social distancing and the and the interesting thing is you know, New Mexico is last in so many categories in business, but yet she's allowing uh hundreds, hundreds of people into the big box stores at a time.
And we knew we were getting targeted because we are a gun store in a shooting range, but the fact of the matter is that she's literally picking winners and losers, and where we're looking at 80% of small businesses in New Mexico will never open their doors again.
And it's you know, and we're we're not even asking to open up 100%.
We're at the end of the day.
I'm telling you, yeah, uh listen, I for example, I just mentioned Prof uh 1800 flowers.
I mean, you know, they're gonna do contact less delivery.
Okay, right.
I go to all my I go grocery shopping, I go to Mario's, my favorite pizza place, I go to all my favorite restaurants.
I have, you know, Chris and Tony's and La Pazeta, Rothman's when they reopen.
I'm gonna I go to my local Delhi.
I go, you know, I'm I'm going everywhere I can try to spend money.
And I'm I'm not I'm not saying that to Pat Mysai, I'm saying I feel so bad for people.
You're trying to keep their freaking doors open.
And you know, they're all struggling.
And it's like everyone else around the country saved New York's ass because they got up and they went to work.
They didn't close down.
And there's a we gotta find the ways to do it safely.
Okay, if it means that in New York, you have half your workforce in New York City, work from home.
All right, you just built in all the social distancing that never existed.
Then you put everybody in a temperature check to get in a building.
When you have more testing, you can do that too.
Then you put everybody in masks and gloves in the workplace all day long.
You know what?
Open the city up.
Do it safely.
Same with Yankee Stadium.
I talked to Randy Levine, he's with the Yankees.
All right, maybe you start Bill O'Reilly's way and you just show it on TV.
I'm cool with that.
But then, you know, if everyone gets the temperature check, they actually have these turnstiles I told you about.
This company makes them where everyone's you walk through and it takes your temperature.
That fast.
Pretty amazing.
So the equipment's there.
The Yankees will build, you know, Randy Levine.
I don't want to speak for him, but I'm sure they'll they'll make masks with Yankee emblems on it or Mets emblems or jets or giants emblems.
Let the MLB, let the NHL, MBA, NFL, let these guys do their thing, work with the health officials to make it safe.
And And if you if you're sick, compromised immune system, underlying conditions, take the year off.
Don't go to a game.
Don't go.
I'm sorry.
I would recommend you not go.
But there's ways to do it.
Do it safely.
You can test everyone that works at every stadium.
Make sure you give them the real test.
Nobody no food handler, no ticket taker.
Can't be working with unless they're tested.
Same with the players, coaches, trainers, et cetera.
You can do it.
If you want to do it, you can do it.
Um I don't know how you open a bar.
Maybe I just Louie, if you have any ideas, you know how to open a bar.
I have no idea.
I don't know how you pull up.
Well no.
No, I just own shooting ranges.
But you know, we did everything she has.
We separated every other stall.
We had curbside service.
Uh but you know, this isn't only this isn't only about my shooting range.
This is about, you know, tennis stores.
Uh this is about florists, restaurants.
And these places can't even afford to pay their mortgages.
And we're trying to hold on.
And the fact that she's picking winners and losers for where the big box stores are gonna record these record earnings at the quarter, and New Mexico's gonna be recording record bankruptcies from small businesses.
That'll never open our doors again.
It's you know, it's it's uh to the and the bathing shot.
We can't afford this.
Right.
We got this way we're too smart not to not to pull it off.
We're too smart.
And here's the issue, New Mexico only has two million people, the fifth largest geographic area, and she just pushed us back from May 1st to the 15th and made a statement that she'll only open once a vaccine is is out.
Well, that could be in December.
By that time, the only you know what?
She's not gonna have to worry about reopening New Mexico because everybody's gonna be closed, but you know, the big boxes will still be going.
And it's gonna put the rest of us out of business.
But um thank you for the case.
Again, New York's dead.
If people if the whole country shut down, we we were dead.
We'd starve to death, we'd have no medicine.
Our m our frontline medical heroes would have nothing.
And and they're the ones that they saved the day.
They saved New York.
They s apps without that logistical support, supply chain uh uh support, we we wouldn't have no food.
We wouldn't have any medicine.
We wouldn't have any protective gear.
Nothing.
They did it.
Uh good call.
Louie, I wish you the best.
What's the name of your place, by the way?
We'll give you a plug.
What's the name?
Caliber's indoor shooting ranges in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Yeah, I had a guy in Florida, Felix, he just uh he's down in Sarasota area.
He's I bought some stuff from him recently.
Um really good stuff.
I'm actually really happy about it.
Thank you, Felix.
Thank you, uh sir.
Uh all right, Amy Colorado.
What's up, Amy?
How are you?
Hi, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
Um you'll be happy to know that funding is going to marijuana shops in Colorado, I read apparently today.
I know, right?
I know it's pretty crazy, but at least our governor decided to open the state app starting on the 27th.
And just a little example of how we can do it in a smart way.
I go to nail salon, and my nail salon actually sent me an email today stating they're opening on the first of May, and that all they're deep cleaning the entire place.
They're doing their spacing so that we have social distancing.
They're like taking a certain amount of customers.
They're all gonna be wearing P PPE masks.
Um, they asked their customers to wear masks, and that's that's all they're asking of us is to wear masks, and they're gonna do the rest pretty much.
So there are ways of of getting a happy medium between taking things seriously and you know, doing things smartly so that we can get our economy going again.
Listen, I just want the best for all of you.
I I'm a little concerned about nail salons.
You know, I don't I've never been to a nail salon for myself, but I I used to take my daughter.
I mean, she hated when I took her.
And Linda hates when I tell this story because I re I never knew the process of going to a nail salon.
I mean, you you do the whole thing, right?
You stick your your your feet in the in the pool that they have, right?
You get the massage that you they offer, you do the whole thing, right?
Um, yeah.
I usually I do a pedicure and a manicure.
Right.
It takes forever.
You know, it's I've never I'm like, I'm like coming out of my skin.
So I would hire two people.
Then I'd hire three people.
I tipped everybody really well.
So they all wanted when I they saw me come in, they they they love me.
But my daughter was like, Daddy, it's embarrassing.
You know, nobody else here has two people working on them.
Why are you doing this?
I'm like, because we get out faster.
And I guess that apparently takes away from the experience.
Linda's shaking her head.
Yeah, I mean, I don't really understand.
If you're supposed to be getting your nails and your feet done, and it's supposed to be relaxing.
I don't think having you standing around chomping at the bit to get out of there is exactly the most relaxing experience.
Quite frankly, I think you should wait in the car.
That's just me.
Okay.
I just I don't know how people do it.
I it looks like I don't understand how to do it.
That's how you see on the beach.
How about this?
How do people sit on the beach all day and and hang out?
First of all, all day.
I can't talk about that because I'm, you know, 18 shades of see-through white and I burn at the drop of the sunlight.
So that's not even the right.
But it's not that.
It's just even if you sit under a uh a what do you call it, umbrella.
Who can sit there for an all day?
I I'm I'm one of them blow my brains out sitting there, I'm bored to death.
I think we should have a poll after COVID and we're allowed to go back out and the salons are back open.
How many people think you should go into a salon and experience this for yourself so that you have a better understanding of the relaxation that's possible when you allow yourself to sit there?
When I allow myself, what do you think?
What do you think?
You want to go get a paticure?
There's one right up the street from the studio.
I think I'll pass on all of it.
How's that?
I think we'll do a poll.
I think you're gonna have to do it with the audience once.
Um, I'm never doing it.
I'm not I'll not take a poll on that either.
Not no you know why?
Because the audience would do it just to torture me.
You know, no.
I think it would be hysterical.
No, nobody wants to touch it's disgusting.
And you know what I'll do?
I'll stand right next to you the whole time and I'll tell them to hurry up and hurry up and then.
All right, so uh because they're doing this in Georgia.
I'm a little worried about what Kemp's doing down there, because if Kemp fails, and the tattoo parlors sound dumb to me, but if he fails down there, very dumb.
Okay.
Which he might.
You know what they're gonna do?
They're gonna say, see, you open too soon.
That's what they're gonna do.
Listen, you've got to open the right way and do it safely.
We have to understand that as soon as we open, there there might be some increases in what we see is people that are going back out after not being out for so long, right?
So there's a there's a potential for a raise in this.
But I think ultimately if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing, we we could be okay.
We have to be safe and smart.
I gotta leave it there.
The president just steps to the podium to our stations.
Hannity tonight at nine.
Uh, we'll let you close this out.
We'll see you back here tomorrow.
See you tonight at nine.
Thank you very much.
Later this evening, we expect the House to pass paycheck protection program and health care enhancement act.
I'm grateful that Congress is answering my call to deliver these additional 320 billion dollars in relief for the American worker and for small businesses.
At a time when many Americans are enduring significant economic challenges, this bill will help small businesses to keep millions of workers on the payroll.
You see, states are starting to open up now, and it's very exciting to see.
I think it's very awe-inspiring.
We're coming out of it, and we're coming out of it well.
And we're really I'm very happy the governor's been the governors really have been doing a really good job working with us, and it's uh it's really pretty uh impressive to see.
I've spoken to numerous leaders of countries over the last 48 hours, and they are saying we're leading the way.
We're really leading the way in so many different ways.
Well, I'm also very pleased that Harvard, as you know, is Harvard and Stanford and Princeton and numerous other universities and colleges and also large businesses have uh sent funds back to us, and in some cases I stopped funds that I looked at,
and uh we uh are pleased to report that the funds have either not gone out or it's about 350 million dollars, and they've either not gone out or uh we've renegotiated it and uh they're not getting them.
So uh in a couple of cases they're sending them back and sending them back immediately.
So I think it was very nice.
I want to thank Harvard in particular.
They acted very quickly and decisively.
And they agreed when they heard the facts that they should not be getting it.
So we appreciate it very much from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other institutions.
The bill also includes 30 billion dollars to support small lending institutions serving distressed communities, helping countless African American and Hispanic American small businesses.
As we continue our battle against the virus, the data and facts on the ground suggest that we're making great progress.
In 23 states, new cases have declined in the peak week.
40% of American counties have also seen a rapid decline in new cases.
Forty-six states report a drop in patients showing coronavirus-like symptoms.
That's a big number.
To keep America gaining momentum, every citizen needs to maintain the vigilance, and we all understand that very well.
We've gone over it many, many times.
includes practicing good hygiene, maintaining social distance, and the voluntary use of face covering.
A safe and phased reopening of our economy.
It's very exciting, but it does not mean that we are letting down our guard at all in any way.
On the contrary, continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy to get our country back to work, to take our country back.
We're winning this, and we're going to win it, and we're going to keep watching.
We're going to watch very closely for the invisible enemy.
With each passing day, we're learning more and more about this enemy.
The scientists at DHS have released a report offering a number of insights about how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates, and surfaces.
The findings confirm that the virus survives better in colder and drier environments and does less well in warmer and more humid environments.
I have to say that very excitingly we're going to have somebody up Bill will be up in just a little while.
It was a great report you gave.
And he's going to be talking about how the virus reacts in sunlight.
U.S. trials of the COVID-19 have been going on and have been approved in the United States, Germany, UK, and China.
That's big news.
And we're uh a lot of trials are going on.
We have a lot of great, brilliant minds working on this, uh, both from the standpoint of uh vaccine and therapeutics.
We must be careful in all conditions, but we will uh we will get this uh done.
We're very close to a vaccine.
Unfortunately, we're not very close to testing because when the testing starts, it takes a period of time, but we'll get it done.
And I want to thank uh the head of uh DHS science and technology, Bill Bryan, for uh what he's going to be doing and what he's going to be saying and the report that he's uh about to give.
I think it's gonna be uh something that uh nobody's ever heard.
It will be brand new information and very important information.
My administration continues to leverage the Defense Production Act to dramatically increase the manufacture and delivery of critical medical supplies.
We finalized three contracts to produce 39 million more N95 masks in 90 days, and as you know, we're also using a sterilization process, some uh great equipment that will sterilize the masks, up to 20 times per mask.
So that's like ordering 20 times more masks, and it's working very well.
We just want the hospitals and the institutions where it is to use it.
A lot of people don't use it.
They're so used to getting a new mask, they don't want to use it.
They want to go and immediately uh get a new one.
We're asking them to use the sterilization process.
Every bit is good, up to 20 times, think of that.
In addition to ramping up our domestic assembly lines, we also have airlifted nearly 750 million pieces of personal protective equipment into the United States through our project Air Bridge, which has been an incredible thing to watch.
It's really a military operation.
The Vice President is now providing each governor with an exhaustive count by county breakdown of the privately distributed personal protection, and and this is uh equipment and things that are incredible.
It's personal protective equipment.
It's incredible, and it's uh all brand new and at the highest level.
We're getting only the highest level.
And uh also we're looking at essential gear within their states and is being delivered to different states quickly and as we speak.
This way the governors should know exactly what's being delivered through a private sector supply chain within their states as well as through the Project Airbridge.
We're trying to get it immediately from the plane to the state when we can't do that.
We bring it into our facilities and get it to the governors.
And we're getting them fast and we're notifying them very strongly so they know it's there.
Governors can use this information to quickly ensure that they get materials where and when they are needed.
Today I also want to extend my special thanks to our nation's incredible county emergency management teams who have been working relentlessly for weeks around the clock, end on end to serve their communities, help distribute critical supplies, and save countless American lives.
We salute these heroic officials on the front lines.
As we continue to develop potential therapies, the FDA has recently begun a national effort to expand access to convalescent plasma donated from the blood of those who have recovered from the virus.
The blood of these donors contains antibodies that can potentially reduce the severity of the illness and those who are sick.
And frankly, those that are very sick.
Nearly 3,000 patients are now enrolled in the expanded access program receiving transfusions nationwide.
And I want to thank all of the people that recovered for what they've done.
They, as I said yesterday, they raised their hand when they barely can walk, and they're saying, I want to donate blood, I want to donate whatever it is that you want because we want to help people.
It's really quite incredible.
Convalescent plasma will also be used to manufacture a concentrated antibody treatment that does not have to be matched with a particular blood type.
