It comes as the U.

S hitter grim milestone records show that 40,000 people have died from the virus.

Despite the numbers, governors in several states have been under pressure following demonstrations from people demanding locked down restrictions being lifted.

Protesters air angry about how measures to control the spread of Corona virus have affected they work and the economy.

Some have lost their jobs as a result and say they'd rather risk catching the virus, then continued like this hour.

North America editor John So Paul raised the issue with President Trump at his latest briefing.

There are groups of people planning to protest tomorrow against the government.

Shut down!

What would be your advice against the shutdown that they want the shutdown lifted?

Should they way?

You stay where you haven't seen people feel that way, you're allowed to protest.

I mean, they they feel that I watch the protests and they were all six feet apart.

It was a very orderly group of people.

But, you know, some some have gone too far.

Some governors have gone too far.

Some of the things that happened are, uh, maybe not so appropriate.

And I think in the end, it's not gonna matter because we're starting to open up our states, and I think they're gonna open up very well.

Well, I spoke to our Washington correspondent, Gary O.

Donohue, who said, President Trump is defending people demonstrating against lockdowns later, actually, all in that press conference, he was asked again about it.

Andi.

He excused them even further by saying that they had what he called cabin fever.

So these are very mind these guidelines that he himself is putting plates, that he's an MP empathizing with people for protesting against.

So in the sense, I suppose some people would say he's tryingto have it both ways.

There is some suggestion that some of the protests have been a bit coordinated, perhaps by particular lobby groups, not all of them, but some of them on again.

The president did he appear to empathize with some of that that nature of protests the other day in the tweet where he talked about liberating certain States from the restrictions they were under.

So you know it on the one hand, on the other, a bit.

This part of the game this president is playing in terms of these protests, Gary.

I mean, when you look at the numbers, it's it's grim.

The death toll has now gone past 40,000.

Yes, it has almost 41,000 now, Andi.

So over 3/4 of a 1,000,000 cases all together.

The good news, if there is such a thing, is that hospitalizations in some of these hot spots like New York and Connecticut have started toe come down.

But there are other areas of concern as well, like Chicago and on Boston, potentially in the meantime, people on Capitol Hill, the Senate in particular today are trying to look at more help for small businesses.

Because if you remember, we talked a couple of weeks ago about that $2 trillion spending package enormous spending package that have been agreed by Congress wealth.

The $350 billion that was in there for small builders businesses is all gone, so the pot is empty on a lot of small businesses still haven't been helped so they're trying to negotiate yet another package on top of that to really keep people on the payroll, that's essentially what it's for.

That was our Washington correspondent Gary O'Donoghue.

There was staying in the United States, and President Trump has said the U.

S government wants to send a team into China to investigate the Corona virus outbreak.

The U.

S and other countries have been highly critical of Beijing's handling off the crisis.

It's reported that American teams want to investigate security at a laboratory Wuhan, and an unsubstantiated theory pushed in conservative media outlets in the US that the virus escaped from the facility into the surrounding population.

The scientific consensus is that the virus, which causes covered 19 originated in animals most likely and bats on, was transmitted via live animal markets.

Well, to discuss this with me further is Jamie Metzl, who was a former member of the U.

S National Security Council and is now a member of the World Health Organization's expert advisory committee, is also the author of Hacking Doll in a book that covers the US China rivalry.

Thank you very much, Jamie, for joining us here on the program As I was saying, there is currently a lot of discussion about the origins off this particular virus and of course, as the pressure mounts on China, people want to understand where it came from and how.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

It's critically important that we understand where this virus and this outbreak come from, and we have to do it quickly and definitely at least I and I think most people abhor any kind of intolerance, racism or anything like that.

But asking the tough questions about where this comes from, I think is critically important.

Most scientists agree this is not some kind of bio weapon or some kind of manipulated virus, but I certainly believe, and I tried to look very dispassionately at the evidence that it's probably most likely and it's impossible now, without more evidence to confirm this, that this could very well be a leak from one of the Chinese virology institutes in Wuhan.

I've posted a lot of the evidence on my personal Web site.

I just think that we have to understand when you talk about the evidence because as we've said, you know this.

Scientists overwhelmingly believed that it had come from animals and most likely bats.

And there's a lot of talk about the live animal wet markets as they known that she ever is not correct.

What you just said is actually not correct.

I think everybody, most people agree that this is me.

This is a zoonotic virus that jumped from animals and humans.

But the question is, did it happen in a wet market, which seems extremely unlikely.

And again, I have that evidence on my site?

Or is this a virus that was isolated in a lab with the best of intentions of developing a vaccine?

And there was yet another security breach in one of those labs.

So I think that that the way you've characterized this, I think is actually not correct.

Eso then, based on what I mean, I know you talk about your your block, but there was a Washington Post article just last week looking at cables from 20 18.

And, of course, Fox News and the president are pushing this as well.

This theory about about the labs.

But just just if you could briefly give us a sense of what insurance you've got, Sure, and just to be clear, I am a progressive.

The last thing that I would want to do is to support anything that not anything but most of anything that what President Trump is saying or the toxins that are being spewed on Fox News.

But let's look at the at the evidence first.

If this was a zoonotic jump, um, how would it have happened?

This was a seafood market, not a bad market, not a civic market.

If it had been those animals, there likely would have been.

They don't have pangolins indigenous in Wuhan, they would have gone from someplace else.

The Lancet in January had reports on that there were cases of this Corona virus of the pandemic, not yet a pandemic in Wuhan before the cluster in in the seafood market on, and we have lots of there's lots of of information about not just the cover up and how aggressive the cover up waas, but about the nature of the research that was being done in these Wuhan lab.

And again, this is this is all speculation, but at the heart of this, Jamie is really the great power competition between China and the US, which you've written extensively about and how you now work work with a rival like China.

We, the United States and China must work together closely in our energy interdependent world.

To ask questions about where this this outbreak comes from doesn't mean we have to undermine our relationship with China.

And its it would be a blow if what I'm saying is is accurate.

But the way I see this, imagine there's a plane crash and then we would say, Oh, well, some people may say what now is not the time to ask why the plane crashed, but there are planes in the air.

We don't know if these pandemics come in ones or twos or threes.

There could be this same problem that has brought us this pandemic could be brewing now.

So if we don't know where this is coming from, if we're not asking the tough questions, shame on us.

But that doesn't mean this has to play into some terrible rivalry that this has to play in tow, racism or intolerance.

If there's one thing this virus has taught us, it's that we're all interconnected and the Onley way we're going to solve our problems is by working far closer together than we have in the past.

But asking tough questions and getting to the truth as best we can needs to be part of that process.

Jamie Metzl, Great talking to you.

Thank you so much for joining us.