Immunologist says he has a possible coronavirus cure

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Immunologist says he has a possible coronavirus cure

Dr. Jacob Glanville, who was featured in the Netflix show 'Pandemic,' joins Tucker Carlson on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," April 3, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT.

A week ago, last Friday night when we opened the show, this country was just about to hit 100,000 cases of coronavirus. As of right now, there are more than 100,000 in New York State alone for perspective.

So for weeks, through all of this, the C.D.C. and the Surgeon General have told us that we shouldn't buy facemasks. Facemasks are not useful for stopping the coronavirus, they've said. In fact, they could make us sick and also we need to save them for first responders.

Well, those two points didn't make sense together, and we said so last week. Now, the government appears to agree with that and is advising Americans to cover their faces in public. It's a big change with big implications, and we'll follow it.

Meantime Fox's Rick Leventhal joins us for that. Plus, a look at the latest numbers across New York and the country. Hey, Rick.

RICK LEVENTHAL, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker, we just learned about those new C.D.C. guidelines at the White House Coronavirus briefing this afternoon where they urged Americans to wear non-medical cloth face coverings outdoors. The President added this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know that the transmission from individuals without symptoms is playing a more significant role in the spread of the virus than previously understood. So you don't seem to have symptoms and it still gets transferred.

In light of these studies, the C.D.C. is advising the use of non-medical cloth face covering as an additional voluntary public health measure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVENTHAL: New York remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with 562 deaths in just 24 hours, and authorities fear what's happening here could start happening across the country with Michigan, Louisiana, and Georgia, the next predicted hotspots based on death rates and proportion of residents testing positive.

Indiana, Illinois and Connecticut also showing spikes in infections with the next major city to claim the epicenter title, possibly Detroit showing a sharp rise in infections and deaths there.

But of course, New Jersey and New York still the hardest hit states with 35 percent of those tested having the virus.

The Pentagon trying to help in one way now agreeing to allow a temporary facility built at Javits Convention Center to take in COVID-19 patients with up to 3,000 extra beds, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Tucker is now reconsidering the order that the U.S. NS Comfort behind me here not take in COVID-19 patients because it's not set up to do that.

We can also tell you that after three days, they only had three patients on board. They had 20 patients as of last night, but they have a thousand beds and they're now trying to change the protocol so they can get more non- COVID patients, at least onto the ship and they think they will be able to do that very, very soon -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Rick, thanks a lot for that report. Appreciate it.

Well, the administration's mask guidance is a welcome change. But if you read it carefully, you'll notice and recognize it recommends cloth coverings over your mouth, not necessarily medical masks. And there's a reason for that. The reason is this. America doesn't produce nearly enough medical masks.

And as we showed last night, some of the masks we do produce, some of them are made abroad are not making their way to American hospitals.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED MOSKOWITZ, FLORIDA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: What I asked 3M is that, are they aware that they're authorized distributors? U.S. companies are telling me that the reason why our orders are being pushed down is because foreign countries are showing up with cash to purchase the orders.

And when I told 3M that, not only did they not dispute it, I asked them if they've put out any guidance to prevent the behavior, and the answer was no.

And so when I asked 3M, you know, what is your production? They said they're making 10 million masks a week. And when I said, great, I have money. I'd like to purchase some of those. They said I couldn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That's infuriating. Today, thank heaven, the President invoked the Defense Production Act to ban for their mask exports and he singled out the company 3M for specific criticism. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're not happy with 3M. We're not happy and the people that dealt with it directly or not at all happy with 3M, so we'll see whether or not we do. I heard what he had to say today. I don't know the gentleman, but we're not happy with 3M.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Earlier today, the CEO of 3M went to television to deny that his company has done anything wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE ROMAN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, 3M: The idea that 3M is not doing all it can to fight price gouging and unauthorized reselling is absurd.

We have increased our production as you said by millions and millions and we are bringing more respirators in from China. We are net importing into the U.S., and we've been telling the administration for days and days.

And it's important, David, that you understand, we're more than happy to shift our overseas production to the U.S., but there are going to be consequences on a humanitarian level, as we are the sole and often the sole provider of those respirators in countries around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Peter Navarro is the White House Trade Adviser. We're happy to have him today. Peter, thanks so much for coming on.

PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVIER: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So it's always a tip off, I think when you hear someone respond to a question nobody asked and you just saw the CEO of 3M defend his company against charges that they had prioritized other countries over the United States by saying we're not engaging in price gouging. That wasn't the accusation.

So 3M was shipping masks to other countries rather than the United States. Will that end now?

NAVARRO: Tucker, let you say that 3M needs to stop whining and just produce masks and give them to the American people, and I've been dealing with hundreds of CEOs on the frontlines here of President Trump's war against the virus, and 3M has been doing nothing but dissembling. We can't get any data out.

Here's the thing, Tucker, 3M is operating as if it's a sovereign nation. Its press department, it seems like he wants to be the Secretary of State. And what they're clearly doing as a multinational corporation, which offshored much of our production is basically going through this calculus as a sovereign nation of the short term interests of Americans dying at the frontlines versus their long term business interest.

The President just signed -- literally, I just came from the West Wing, he just signed the Defense Production Act, which going to crack down on the export of masks by two types of bad actors. One are these brokers operating in shady black markets that have been vacuuming up masks and other protective gear here and exporting. We're going to stop that right at the border with the help of C.B.P. and the Post Office and the Express Mail consigners.

And apropos of your great segment last night with the guy from Florida, these distributors who instead of filling orders here domestically are taking that money and running offshore, that's going to stop, too.

President Trump is the Commander-in-Chief, Attorney General Barr is the Sheriff in town and we're cracking down on that. To your point about what we're going to expect from 3M, 3M is basically going to be helping the American people fight this battle.

There will still be some exports from the United States factories to our friends in Mexico and Canada, but as for the rest of 3M's production around the world, we're going to try to get our fair share. We will get our fair share of that and 3M, look, Tucker, these guys have just got to stop whining and spinning and just do the business for the American people.

It's like exhausting to work with these people, and we don't have the hours, much less than minutes to deal with them. And it's just --

CARLSON: Exactly.

NAVARRO: Wow. I mean, come on. Come on dudes.

CARLSON: Peter Navarro, the most plain spoken official in government. Great to see you tonight. Thank you.

NAVARRO: Thank you. I'll wear that like a badge of honor.

CARLSON: Well, you ought to. It's a rare thing. Well, the emergence of a new and dangerous form of the coronavirus became known to the public outside of China about three months ago. The first case in this country appeared on January 21st of this year.

Since the middle of March, much of America has been locked down. We're three weeks into the largest and most disruptive response to a national emergency in our lifetimes.

Yet, in the middle of that, you still often get the sense that our leaders are still feeling their way along making up details ad hoc as they plod forward and the mass directive stay is a perfect example of that.

Why? Well, they're waiting to receive the details of what to do next from the professionals they have gathered around them for directions and it makes sense.

Chief among the experts now crafting national policy is a 79-year-old physician from Brooklyn called Anthony Fauci. Fauci certainly has the credentials for the job. He graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical School. He spent more than half a century practicing medicine.

He has been the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. For perspective, those of us who are 50 were freshmen in high school when he started there. So you can't say he's not experienced. He definitely is.

We've interviewed Dr. Fauci, respectfully on this program, and we'd gladly do that again if he came back and we hope he will come back. He's an impressive person.

But that does not mean that he is never wrong. On the question of this pandemic, Fauci has been wrong repeatedly. On January 21st, he appeared on television for example, to reassure the public that the Wuhan coronavirus was not worth worrying about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Bottom line? We don't have to worry about this one, right?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, you know, obviously, we need to take it seriously and do the kinds of things that the C.D.C. and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But this is not a major threat for the people in the United States. And this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's not a major threat. So two days after he made the appearance you just saw, Chinese Security Forces quarantined an entire city of 11 million people.

In some cases, they locked residents inside their homes from the outside, some died there. Chinese authorities were clearly panicked by what was happening, but Anthony Fauci was not. He assured Americans that while they might want to reconsider immediate travel plans to Wuhan, going to the Super Bowl was absolutely fine.

But as it turned out, it was not fun at all. Florida Governor Ron deSantis now believes the Super Bowl in Miami may have been a breeding ground for the spread of the virus, but Fauci kept going and he did it in public.

On February 17th, when coronavirus virus cases were starting to appear all over the world, and it was a real concern, he once again reassured the American public that the danger in this country was just "miniscule."

He said people ought to worry more about the "real and present danger of the annual flu" than about coronavirus. Now, to be clear, we're not attacking Tony Fauci for getting it wrong on coronavirus. Most people did get it wrong, in and out of medicine.

It's never easy predicting which faraway problems will become imminent crises here at home. Even the experts make big mistakes. They're human beings. They make human mistakes. And that's exactly the point that we ought to remember going forward.

Human beings frequently underestimate risk, particularly risk on the horizon. Then they very often in turn overreact to risk once they identify it, and we may be watching that happen right now.

Fewer than two months ago, Anthony Fauci told us not to worry about this epidemic. Now he is demanding that the Federal government quarantine the entire country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Does it make sense to you that some states are still not issuing stay at home orders? I mean, whether there should be a federally mandated directive for that or not that I guess, that's more of a political question. But just scientifically, doesn't everybody have to be on the same page with this stuff?

FAUCI: Yes, I think so, Anderson. I don't understand why that's not happening. As you said, you know, the tension between federally mandated versus state's rights to do what they want is something I don't want to get into.

But if you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that. We really should be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: A nationally federally mandated shutdown. So how long would such a shutdown last? Well, just two days ago, Anthony Fauci suggested the country should remain under quarantine until there are no more coronavirus infections and no more deaths.

He did not suggest when that might be, if ever, but politicians followed his lead anyway. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has shuttered his state until June 10th. A source with knowledge reports tonight that Andrew Cuomo has privately discussed locking down the State of New York until possibly fall.

Meanwhile, various epidemiologists are talking about putting the entire nation on a year of cycled shutdowns. That means Americans will be allowed back to work and then ordered home again, then back to work over and over again.

To be clear, these are extreme measures. We can only guess at the social and economic destruction they might wreak, but it would be profound, that's for sure.

With this much at stake, it's important to know more about the science behind these proposed policies. So what is the science? It begins with sophisticated computer models that predict where and how quickly the virus will spread? The purpose of these predictions is to as you've often heard, flatten the curve, not necessarily to lower the death rate. We haven't been able to do that much, but to slow the spread of the pandemic over a longer period of time.

Why? Because if everyone were to get sick at once, our healthcare system would collapse and that would leave coronavirus patients and many other sick people without care and that would be a disaster. So we're trying hard to prevent it and we should.

But it means these predictions really matter. How reliable have they been? Well, many government policymakers have relied on a model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation the I.H.M.E.

By some measures like death rates, that model has been fairly accurate. Yesterday, for example, the model predicted 1,036 deaths nationwide, and that turned out to be close to what happened. Today, it predicts about 1,200 and judging by the numbers right now at 8:14 Eastern Time, that should be roughly accurate, too.

But other likely more important numbers, these predictions have been terrible at best. As of yesterday, the I.H.M.E. model predicted the country would need 135,000 hospital beds just to treat coronavirus patients. That's what they said.

In New York alone, the model predicted it would need 56,000. That turned out to be not even close. Yesterday, in New York, it was at about 13,400 coronavirus hospitalizations. That's not even a quarter of what the model predicted.

And even that was closer than what the model foresaw in other states. For example, the model predicted that Oklahoma would need a thousand hospital beds. How many are they using now? Thirty eight.

Louisiana was forecasted to need 5,800 beds, and said yesterday the state had about 1,600 hospitalizations, just a small fraction, and so on and so on.

Nationwide, just three states had more hospitalizations than the model predicted and all three of those they were small states with very small outbreaks so far.

So why does this matter? Here's the problem with getting these numbers so horribly wrong. These numbers have driven massively disruptive government policy.

Our entire national shutdown is based on the fear that coronavirus patients would overwhelm hospitals and outside of parts of New York City that has not happened and we're glad for that. But we're concerned about what we've done to prevent it on the basis of models that have been wrong.

So flip it on its head. What would have happened if the model had been accurate, if it accurately predicted how many hospital beds we needed? If we'd known that, would we have quarantined the country? That's a good question. Unfortunately, it's too late now.

More than 10 million Americans have already lost their jobs. Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide. And yet, that's what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least.

Now, we're not suggesting Fauci wants to hurt America. We don't think he does. He seems like a very decent man. But Fauci is not an economist or for that matter, someone who fears being unemployed himself. Like most of the people around him, this is not an attack, just an observation. Fauci has bulletproof job security. He's not thinking that way.

He has the luxury of looking at the world through the narrow lens of his profession. He doesn't seem to think much outside that lens. Watch this exchange from NBC's morning show yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: I know it's difficult, but we're having a lot of suffering, a lot of death. This is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Inconvenient? Ten million Americans out of work and staring at poverty that is not "inconvenient," as you just heard Dr. Fauci put it. It's horrifying.

In fact, it's a far bigger disaster than the virus itself by any measure. Tony Fauci, decent as he may be, can't see that because he doesn't think it's his job to see it.

But even a doctor should be able to think beyond the models. Our response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation. Poor countries are unhealthy countries, always and everywhere. In poor countries people die of treatable diseases. In poor countries, people are far more vulnerable to obscure viruses like the one we're fighting now.

You want to Americans from dying before their time? Then don't impoverish them. For all his credentials, his experience, his apparent personal decency, Dr. Anthony Fauci does not seem to understand any of this and we should never let someone like that run this country.

Bret Baier is our chief political anchor and hosts "Special Report" every evening at six. We're always glad to see him particularly tonight for some political perspective on all of this. Bret, thanks a lot for coming on.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL ANCHOR: Sure, Tucker.

CARLSON: These -- underneath it all are essentially political questions. These are questions that are decided by people we elect our politicians.

And so what's the political backdrop behind the question of lockdowns? The President needs to decide whether to do a Federal lockdown or not. Where do you think they're at on that right now?

BAIER: We'll Tucker, I like how you started, first of all, saying that Dr. Fauci is one of the world renowned, most respected Infectious Disease experts in the world.

CARLSON: Yes.

BAIER: And he and Deborah Birx have had the sway and the ear of President Trump from the beginning, and especially in recent weeks, when his tone has obviously changed and his actions changed.

I do think that the President is leaning towards letting the governors in this Federalist Society decide these -- make these decisions on shelter-in- place rules. And as you mentioned, he is balancing out, basically a nuclear bomb on the U.S. economy.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and you can say what you want about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the data that it puts out, but said that one in four small businesses is either closed or teetering on closing. You have efforts to salvage these things, but for another month alone, let alone talk about a year, you're talking about major devastation in the economy and that is a policy decision that goes beyond the medical decision.

The seriousness of it not taken away. You've been doing interviews about this virus since January. But there is a balancing here that even Dr. Fauci talked about with Steph Curry just a few days ago. He said there are places, I think there are places in the country where you want to look carefully and maybe you want to pull back a little bit on the restriction, so long as you don't let it rip and say I don't care what happens.

You treat New York City a little bit different than the way you treat Nebraska.

CARLSON: And that's certainly encouraging to hear that. Without getting into the details of the numbers, I'm don't think I am fluent enough in it speaking for myself, but it seems like the model has been fairly accurate on the death rate, maybe the easier part to predict. It's not been accurate at all on the hospitalization rate, which is really significant for the reasons we just explained.

Have you in covering this story, heard anybody making decisions mention that that there are massive flaws with the predictions here?

BAIER: When pressed on it, experts say the models are only as good as the data that you put in, right? So the data that they're getting from Spain and Italy and these countries all abroad, and now here in New York and New Orleans and Washington, they are putting that in. It could change that curve and once you start going down, maybe it changes the trajectory.

You know, our late great friend, Dr. Charles Krauthammer said this about Ebola. He said, "Quarantine is the ultimate violation of civil liberties. Having committed no crime, having done no wrong, you are sentenced to house arrest or banishment. It's unfair, it's un-American. But when an epidemic threatens, when it does, we do it because we must. Viruses don't wait. The sooner we reset the balance, the sooner we get serious."

The problem is you have to get over that hump, and the economy has to come back.

CARLSON: That's right. You're making me miss Charles, and not for the first time. Bret Baier, great to see you tonight. Thank you for that.

Up next, we'll speak to a scientist featured in a Netflix documentary who says he may have found a cure for the coronavirus.

But first our Kyle Rothenberg looks at the usually bustling town of Santa Monica in California.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Just days after this new, this novel version of coronavirus surfaced in Wuhan, China, Netflix released a series called "Pandemic." Talk about good timing.

One of the stars of that series was a doctor called Jacob Glanville. In the documentary, he talked about how his small lab was able to beat major actors at finding treatments for deadly diseases. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JACOB GLANVILLE, BIOENGINEER AND IMMUNOLOGIST: We should not have been able to beat major pharmaceutical companies who had way more money than us and they have way more people than us, but my experience in Big Pharma is they typically move very slow, and they're risk adverse.

And so there actually aren't that many people as you might think working on new techniques. So that's worked to our advantage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Now, the physician you just saw says he may have found some kind of cure for coronavirus. Dr. Glanville joins us now. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on. So, obviously, I should just say at the outset, we approach everything like this with skepticism and also with the mind of a non- scientist. So, explain for our audience, me what this is and why you think it works.

GLANVILLE: Sure. Thanks for having me on, Tucker. So what we have done is we've engineered neutralizing antibodies that go and block the virus, the coronavirus, if you were to zoom in on it, you would see a ring of spikes, and it uses those spikes to invade human cells.

We've identified a series of super potent antibodies that block those spikes and therefore make the virus no longer infectious.

CARLSON: So how -- I mean, is this something that is done to defeat other viruses?

GLANVILLE: Yes, so this is the thing that turned the tide against Ebola. Ebola used to be a death sentence, about 50 percent mortality rate and then once a good antibody neutralizing solution was made, then I think 94 percent of people can walk away.

So that transformed Ebola from a dangerous crisis to a manageable treatment. We've also got antibodies to treat rabies. We've got antibodies to treat RSV in babies.

Antibodies are used for anti-venom. So this is an extremely well established platform technology and it has the advantage that you can produce antibodies much faster and you can make a vaccine.

And as I'd heard you mentioned previously on all that modeling, every day counts, we're venting an incredible amount of money out of our economy and risking lives, and so you want to have a medicine as quickly as possible.

CARLSON: That's right. Well, that is exactly right. So assuming this does work, how long would it take to get from your lab to the public?

GLANVILLE: Well, yes, so to address the question of skepticism, I'm glad you brought that up. Our next move is we hand this off to the U.S. military, a consortium from the Gates Foundation and some private groups, and all of them are going to test the potency of neutralization of our therapeutic.

We're also working with Charles River Laboratories that runs safety in talks to make sure this stuff is safe to put into people. And we're going to go into a scaled-up manufacture.

So at that point, what you do is you do a Phase 1/2 human trial, and that's where I'm going to do that towards the end of the summer, around August. We're giving that to about 600 patients, an antibody you can give to a patient and it works within five to 10 days to protect them, whereas a vaccine, you know, you need six or seven weeks before the person is protected. So that's another advantage.

And as soon as we know that, A, it's safe, so people can take it without it hurting them, and B, that it's effective that they receive an antibody and they're no longer dying or getting much more sick, then at that point, you can release the drug through something called compassionate use.

This is something that was done also in the Ebola crisis where if you don't have something F.D.A. approved yet, but you've got proof of efficacy and there's nothing else good, you could start releasing that to masses.

CARLSON: Last super quick question because our segments on TV are not long enough really to explain something this complex and I know some of our viewers are going to want to follow up by searching online. If you wanted to type into Google a term that would get you to an explanation, a deeper explanation of what this is what would you type in?

GLANVILLE: I would type in centivax.com which is our website and has a whole bunch of information around monoclonal therapeutics.

CARLSON: Centivax?

GLANVILLE: That's right.

CARLSON: Centivax.com. Great. Dr. Glanville, I appreciate your coming on tonight. Thanks for -- of course, we're rooting for you.

GLANVILLE: Thank you very much.

CARLSON: From the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, doctors on the frontline have really promising news about the antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine.

The President wanting to cheer up a frightened nation cited that drug at one point as potential therapy because the President was hopeful the press was the opposite of that.

Basically, they opposed finding a cure for the coronavirus because they feared it might give the President some political advantage. This was everywhere. Here are a few examples.

"USA Today" wrote this, "Dr. Donald Trump peddle snake oil and false hope." CNN needless to say, said the same, "Trump peddles unsubstantiated hope in dark times." "The Washington Post," a loathsome publication, barely even a newspaper now, a few days later declared this, "Trump is giving people false hope of coronavirus cures. It's all snake oil." Cliches being a specialty over at "The Washington Post."

None of these people had any clue, any freaking clue what they were talking about. In fact, they're the ones who are peddling unsubstantiated snake oil.

Hydroxychloroquine is still being researched. But this will tell you a lot. Doctors who were actually treating people who are sick with the coronavirus seem to believe in it, many of them do. Here's how we know that.

A global survey of 6,200 medical professionals currently fighting the coronavirus pandemic found that hydroxychloroquine was the most frequently cited drug they would turn to, to treat patients. It had the plurality, 37 percent. It was number one out of 15 options.

The biggest believers in hydroxychloroquine were not people who watch Fox News or even governed by Donald Trump, they were doctors in Spain and Italy, two countries where the epidemic has been the worst.

Just to let you know, unequivocally and for all time that the media lied about a potential therapy to defeat this disease and save your life because they are political partisans. That tells you everything you need to know.

Fox medical contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel joins us tonight. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on. Without dragging you into all the political nonsense. It's not your world, not where you live, not where you want to live. Tell us what doctors are saying about hydroxychloroquine.

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Tucker. First of all, hydroxychloroquine has been looked at in the test tube in China and found to be very, very effective against this coronavirus, specifically a part of the cell where the virus enters. That was a very strong study.

Then China also had some follow up studies where they looked at the effects in people and it looked very effective in people.

In France, we've talked about a study in France, which was pretty small, but showed that it was effective.

Now, as you said, doctors have been using it all over the United States, many are saying that it is working. We've seen it in New York State, giving it to hundreds of people right now in hospitals with a lot of promising signs.

And finally, the University of Pennsylvania has just begun a major double blinded, randomized prospective clinical trial. And you know, when they do that? When they spend that kind of money is when they believe a treatment may work. So I can't prove to you that it works at this point, but it's extremely promising. And there's a lot of evidence that it does work.

CARLSON: That's so interesting. Do you think and this is politically tinged, but I cannot resist. The terrible publicity this drug has received just relentlessly over the past three weeks. This is a crackpot cure. This is snake oil. Do you think that has made physicians hesitant to try it as a therapy?

SIEGEL: No, I think physicians go with what works. I think physicians are facing a situation where they don't know what to offer patients, where patients are getting worse, and the idea that there's a drug out there that's very well tolerated for malaria prophylaxis, and for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus that you could use it for something like this makes doctors want to try it.

CARLSON: Right. That's right. Yes. I mean, I think a lot of us have -- I know I've taken it on trips abroad, to malaria zones, Sub Saharan Africa, whatever. It's a common drug.

So here's another question I just wanted to ask. There's a message you said you'd like to deliver to nurses and doctors tonight fighting the coronavirus. What is it?

SIEGEL: Tucker, Kious Kelly was a nurse who died last week, tragically. He may not have had enough personal protective equipment in New York. John Murray is a 92-year-old physician who helped discover the kind of lung problem that's actually killing people from coronavirus and he died of coronavirus.

We've been seeing a lot of medical professionals on the frontlines. Emergency technicians, nurses, doctors, over 60 doctors in Italy have died trying to treat the COVID-19 coronavirus.

I have a medical student who I trained and he is now graduating three months early at NYU Langone Medical Center to go on the frontlines to fight COVID-19. He's reinvesting his soul in why he went into Medicine in the first place.

He has fear. He is worried about his family. His name is Gabe, by the way, but he is investing himself. A lot of doctors around New York right now are changing their professions. They're going from being an orthopedist or being retired or having been on the frontlines now to go to fight the virus.

That's the war against the virus health. Workers, nurses, doctors EMTs on the frontlines, paramedics and we should congratulate them for their efforts.

CARLSON: I couldn't agree more. That's the rest of us are cowering in fear and we should be afraid and these people are jumping face first into a situation that could kill them and I really admire that. I think we should all admire that. Thank you, Dr. Siegel, for saying that.

SIEGEL: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, if you thought the shutdown in response to coronavirus might give you a respite, a brief holiday from the political lunacy we've been marinating in for three years, think again. We'll describe what some are doing to advance the woke agenda as America fights a pandemic. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: So the rest of the country is thinking about keeping their loved ones from dying from the Wuhan coronavirus, but some political activists see this pandemic as a perfect chance to push through their preexisting political agenda.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said as much out loud this week. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn reportedly told party members the virus was, "a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision," which by the way, is disgusting.

For Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fighting a deadly virus is just a smaller front in the fight to push or punish Americans, reward or punish them for their skin color. Her race obsession is a topic she is completely fixated on arose today in this tweet, "COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in black and brown communities. Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, et cetera underlying health conditions. Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with the lens of reparations."

By the way, we should say there's nobody dumber or more shallow in America than this child of privilege, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she should be quiet while the nation suffers, and anyone who listens to her is foolish.

Chris Rufo is a Research Fellow at the Discovery Institute, a contributing editor at "City Journal." He joins us tonight. Chris, thanks so much for coming on.

It does feel like -- and this is not most people. I'm not accusing most Democrats this because I don't think they're guilty of it. But there are some at the core who see this as an opportunity. What are they trying to do with it?

CHRIS RUFO, RESEARCH FELLOW, DISCOVERY INSTITUTE: Well, that's exactly right, and for the last hundred years, progressive and socialist movements have always sought to capitalize on the opportunity from wars, from famines, from crisis, from epidemics to implement their political agenda and we're seeing the same thing happening now.

You have everything from criminal justice advocates who are using this moment to empty out thousands and thousands of people from jails. You have people in Congress like Rashida Tlaib who are now advocating for minting $1 trillion platinum coins and distributing them to the people.

And you're seeing every kind of expansive, progressive and socialist idea. But I think this is the real thing is that they're falling flat. If you have 10 million people out of work, this kind of identity politics that has really captured American life over the past few years is falling on deaf ears.

And I hope if there's a silver lining with the coronavirus, it's that we can focus on real tangible problems and leave identity politics behind.

CARLSON: Well, of course, because there's nothing more corrosive, it'll destroy your country. It turns the country against itself, it's always been a recipe for destruction. It's never been a healing idea.

I wonder, do you think -- this is speculative, but I can't resist -- do you think the audience for this has shrunk? Like, do you think the average person even hears that garbage anymore? Do they just wave their hand and say, oh, be quiet?

RUFO: Yes, I think it is. It really shows the disproportionate nature of our discourse. On Twitter, you have this this kind of high octane rhetoric that is capturing a very small group of activists.

But if you actually go out into the cities and the towns across America, people are really worrying about the things that matter. They're worried about their families, they're worried about their jobs. They're worried about small businesses.

They're not worried about any of these abstract issues, and I think what it really reveals is the decade's long failure of progressive politicians to tackle those real kitchen table issues and they are reverting to abstractions, because they can't make an argument on the merits that it's working in real life.

CARLSON: It's totally right. So you know, we're looking at 30 percent unemployment and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is giving us another rich girl lecture on racism. It's like -- it's too much. Just be quiet. Please.

Chris, great to see you tonight. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

Well, one goal that's been in progress for a long time among activists is being pursued with gusto during the shutdown, and that's the plan to empty the nation's prisons.

Recently, a California Federal judge ordered immigrants to be released from I.C.E. detention if they are medically "vulnerable," which by the way, would describe like most of the country this point.

One beneficiary of that order was a man called Martin Vargas Arellano. He was released for having diabetes and hepatitis C. He is a sex offender. He is guilty of child molestation, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor.

Another diabetic immigrant, Paolo Ray Anvitey (ph) was convicted despite a conviction for child abuse, so apparently that's the standard now. Until we have a vaccine for coronavirus and who knows when that'll be, we have to release child molesters, as long as they have diabetes.

Meanwhile, people are being threatened with jail for going outside without permission. You just saw authorities in Florida arrest a Minister for having a church service. So they put the Christian in prison. They let the child molester out.

Oh, in Virginia, you saw a shopkeeper imprisoned. He's there without bail for the crime of defending himself against burglars. By the way, he has diabetes, too. He just collapsed from it. They're keeping him without bail. That's the progressive paradise.

At this rate, they won't want a cure for coronavirus because they're enjoying it so much. I shouldn't have said that. Everyone wants a cure for coronavirus, but they should not be using this moment to leverage their political views. They shouldn't. It is wrong.

Well, federal regulators hindered the rollout of testing for coronavirus, now they're holding up the production of hand sanitizer and possibly other important products. We'll tell you why and how after the break.

Plus the very latest footage out of a weirdly quiet Los Angeles.

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CARLSON: Early in this epidemic, medical laboratories were blocked from testing for the disease by the C.D.C. That's a story that needs to be told in much more detail, and at some point, we need to find out how and who did it.

But for right now America is suffering a shortage of hand sanitizer. Alcohol distilleries could step up to fix that shortage because at the core of hand sanitizer is ethanol, but they're now being hindered by F.D.A. safety rules. It's hard to believe, but it's true.

Jim Copland is Director of Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute. We're happy to have him on tonight. Jim, thanks so much for joining us. Explain this kind of hard to believe story, if you would.

JIM COPLAND, DIRECTOR OF LEGAL POLICY, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: Of course.

COPLAND: Well, when it comes to hand sanitizers, the alcohol based hand sanitizers go through the Food and Drug Administration. And so they've been slow here, just as they've been slow throughout this process, most notably at the testing process at the very outset of this where they basically told private industry to stay away and let the C.D.C., the Centers for Disease Control develop, manufacture and conduct all the testing in the United States, which is why our testing was so far behind than most of the other developed countries.

CARLSON: And what we've kind of laid off criticizing C.D.C. on this show because, you know, there are a lot of good people there and we believe they're trying hard, but when the history of this period is written, C.D.C. is going to look like a villain, I think because they really screwed up and the fact that they're slowing this down --

I mean, we've had ethanol for thousands of years. What do they need to tell -- we know what ethanol is and ethyl alcohol, all the derivations. What would they need to test? It's hand sanitizer.

COPLAND: It's letting the perfection rule, the perfect be the enemy of the good and that's what we see time and again. And that's the way our regulatory system is set up. Our courts defer to these regulators. They're experts, but they're experts in a narrow way, as you talked about earlier in the show in talking about Dr. Fauci.

But his boss, Dr. Redfield is a virologist who has got decades of research, dealing with HIV and Dr. Hahn at the F.D.A. is a noted oncologist. These are these are experts. They're not political hacks in these jobs, plus, they don't necessarily know how to mass produce and distribute a test on the scale that was necessary here and we needed to bring in the private sector.

We're seeing now that companies in the private sector are developing much better tests much more quickly and rolling them out on a much grander scale.

CARLSON: Can I just ask the obvious question and again, there will be time to really get forensic about what happened. But has anyone at the C.D.C. taken responsibility for their failure with testing for producing flawed tests, very late. Has anyone apologized?

COPLAND: I believe Dr. Fauci did say in one of these press conferences that you know, there were failures made. I mean, listen, no one wants to discourage these folks. They are working hard. I think they do have the best infrastructure of the country at heart.

The problem is our regulatory structure is a 1962 regulatory structure. And we're more worried about eliminating error rates than having perfectly safe tests, perfectly safe drugs, perfectly safe vaccines, than we are rolling things out and this is what my colleagues and I have been talking about for years.

I hope we reexamine this at the end of this. Right now, we need all hands on deck, but I hope at the end of this, we reexamine our regulatory structure and realize that delaying the introduction of medical device and drugs also cost lives.

CARLSON: Jim Copland, great to see you tonight. Thank you. More to come. We'll be right back.

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CARLSON: That's it for us tonight. We are out of time. The week is over. It's a different country than it was on Monday. It will be a different country next Friday from what it will be on Monday.

In the meantime, the upside of this is you may get to see the ones you love a little more.

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