- Late-night hosts, including the speaker, are recording shows from their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- A TikTok hamster has provided more useful public health advice than the president.
- Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, tested positive for coronavirus.
- India's Prime Minister has imposed a nationwide lockdown and police are enforcing it with physical punishment.
- Italy's local leaders are posting videos online, scolding citizens for going outside irresponsibly.
- The US now has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world.
- The president initially downplayed the severity of the situation but has now declared it a war.
- Despite the need for social distancing, the president wants to open up the country by Easter, which is too soon.
- Some governors are taking the pandemic seriously, while others are resisting stay-at-home orders.
- The idea of sacrificing lives for the economy gained traction among conservative pundits.
- Relaxing social distancing measures would have severe consequences, including overwhelming hospitals and worsening the economy.

- The severity of the COVID-19 threat needs to be communicated clearly and consistently in order to manage the virus and return to normalcy.
- Hospitals are facing critical shortages of personal protective equipment, such as masks and ventilators.
- President Trump has made troubling decisions, including downplaying the need for ventilators.
- The Defense Production Act could help solve medical equipment shortages, but Trump has been slow to use it.
- States are competing against each other for essential supplies, leading to price bidding wars.
- Trump has failed to give the crisis the seriousness it requires.
- The healthcare system is struggling, and the situation is getting worse.
- Trump's response to the crisis is disheartening and inadequate.
- The crisis is revealing vulnerabilities in the medical system, political system, and national psyche.
- It is important for everyone to follow social distancing guidelines to support healthcare workers.
- The federal response to the crisis is angering and confusing.
- There have been displays of heroism, kindness, and ingenuity from essential workers.
- Help and support for healthcare workers is crucial.

As the coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, John Oliver discusses President Trump’s inconsistent response to the pandemic, including his suggestion of an Easter deadline for sending America back to work, and his reluctance to use the Defense Production Act.

Connect with Last Week Tonight online... 

Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight 

Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: www.facebook.com/lastweektonight 

Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: www.twitter.com/lastweektonight 

Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: www.hbo.com/lastweektonight

We're back with a show that's clearly going to look a little unusual.

As I'm sure you've seen, the coronavirus has forced a number of late-night hosts to record shows from their houses, and we're no different, as my home is, and this is true, a blank white void full of sad facts.

Now, a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, and I'll start with arguably the least important development.

The last time we spoke, I mentioned the work done by a very informative TikTok hamster.

Well, I'm thrilled to tell you, it seems the hamster saw it.

The hamster just genuinely offered more useful public health advice in 1 12-second TikTok than the president has in multiple addresses to the nation.

It might show just how much the isolation is getting to me.

That it's genuinely heartwarming to experience even a connection like that right now.

And by the way, I'd love to say that I would vote for that hamster for president, but given that their average life expectancy is just 3 years, I'm really gonna have to wait to find out who its VP pick is.

But COVID-19 continues to rip around the globe.

On Friday, Boris Johnson, who had bragged earlier this month about shaking hands with coronavirus patients, tested positive for coronavirus.

Meanwhile, India's Prime Minister has imposed a nationwide lockdown of its 1.3 billion residents, with some police punishing those who disobey by hitting them with sticks and making them do squats.

And in Italy, which continues to be hit incredibly hard, there's been a trend of local leaders posting videos online, yelling at their citizens for irresponsibly going outside, and they're incredible.

Prepare the celebration of the graduation.

We send the police, but we send them with the flamethrowers.

Now all the police officers have become Adelia.

Everyone who wants to run, but where did you go to run?

These fucking hairdressers who go home to fix the hair and the feb, what the fuck are they do?

Who the fuck is going to fix these hair if they don't have hair?

Now, I know that seems extreme, but he is right.

And yes, it'll be embarrassing, but you will get through it.

As for here in the United States, the virus continues to spread rapidly.

We now have more confirmed coronavirus cases than any country in the world.

And the president has only recently seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.

As recently as a month ago, he was saying, we have it very much under control, adding, stock market starting to look very good to me.

Before abruptly shifting gears to claim that he felt it was a pandemic long before it was called 1, and then, just last week, making this grand declaration.

This is a war, different kind of a war than we've ever had.

It's like World War II, only the enemy is invisible.

Or like the Vietnam War, only this time, Trump is actually taking part.

And yet, incredibly, after briefly embracing the need for everyone to engage in social distancing to flatten the curve, On Tuesday, our wartime president seemed to already be considering giving up the fight and encouraging everyone to go back to work.

We're opening up this incredible country because we have to do that.

It's such an important day for other reasons, but I'll make it an important day for this too.

Okay, setting aside the Easter's unimportant day for other reasons.

The date he's setting is just 2 weeks from now, which is objectively way too soon.

Although, if you're going to pick a holiday to break quarantine, you could do a lot worse than 1 honoring the time that Jesus was supposed to stay inside and didn't.

And it's worth taking a moment to appreciate just how irresponsible that attitude is.

Because we wasted so much time that we could have spent preparing, the virus is now widespread.

And thanks to how we have massively botched the rollout of testing for the virus, we still don't know exactly how bad things are.

So strict social distancing measures are our best shot at slowing this outbreak.

Epidemiologists have said, if it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting 6 feet apart, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt.

Now, obviously, that magic wand is impossible, but Some people aren't even doing anything close to that.

And if you need proof of just how true that is, just listen to the understandably exasperated governor of Kentucky.

We have a positive case today from someone who attended a Coronavirus Party.

I, the person that tell everybody to be calm, have to remain calm myself.

Well, good luck with that, because you just used the phrase, coronavirus party.

And his disgust at that infuriating term was perfectly expressed by his sign language interpreter, who really got across the whole, what the fuck is wrong with you people sentiment.

Truly, that gesture speaks for America right now.

So, we absolutely should not be relaxing measures yet.

And Trump actually can't force states to do that.

It's up to governors, some of whom, from both parties, are taking this very seriously.

Ron DeSantis in Florida is still resisting issuing a statewide stay-at-home order.

And In Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick took things even further, agreeing with the president that the economic damage of a lockdown is just too great to bear.

What I'm living in fear of is what's happening to this country.

And, you know, Tucker, no 1 reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?

First, if you really want to die so the U.S.

Economy can boom, we already have a system in place for that, and it's called Black Friday.

Second, we know what's happened in other countries like Iran and Spain that didn't take social distancing seriously.

They're now home to mass graves you can see from space and ice skating rinks being used as makeshift morgues.

And I'm in no way minimizing the economic suffering caused by the shutdown, and we should do everything we can to mitigate it.

This week's stimulus bill is probably only the start of what is needed for workers.

But the idea that people should sacrifice themselves for the economy is absurd.

And yet, it actually gained traction this week, co-signed by a variety of conservative pundits, perhaps none more enthusiastically than this guy.

I contend there are millions of Americans, just like me, that will look at their children and their grandchildren's future and they will say, I am not going to have them a slave to debt.

I am not going to erase their future because I was afraid to die.

And that dooms millions to poverty, illness, starvation, and a lack of hope.

Yeah, let's see if that will trend, you thirsty bitch.

But you get that the coronavirus is not the Hunger Games, right?

And what you're doing is actually much darker.

You are actively volunteering others, including people of all ages with health conditions, to die.

And even if these guys are okay with letting the coronavirus kill as many people as it feels like, so that the economy's protected, which again, really, There are, and I cannot believe I have to say this, significant drawbacks to hundreds of thousands of people dying.

Hospitals would be completely overwhelmed, which means people suffering from things that aren't the coronavirus also wouldn't be able to get the treatment that they need, leading to even more people dying, which, to put this in the only terms that they seem to care about, also tanks the economy.

So, relaxing social distancing right now isn't just trading 1 bad outcome for another, It's trading 1 bad outcome for both bad outcomes.

It's shitting on your cake and choking on it, too.

Look, it's critically important for America to be getting a clear, consistent message about the severity of the threat that we're currently facing.

That is the only way that we will be able to manage this virus, contain casualties, and get back to something resembling normalcy.

And floating an Easter end date isn't the only troubling decision the president has made.

Right now, 1 of the major challenges facing hospitals across the country is a critical shortage of even basic personal protective equipment like masks, respirators, gloves, and face shields.

Because they are running short to an alarming extent.

There are people that literally are wearing bandanas because they have nothing better than that to protect themselves.

I've seen people using the plastic protector sheets for their kids' homework to put in as a face mask.

I've seen people even wearing ski goggles, Halloween costumes that were masked to try and cover up parts of their face.

That is terrifying, both for the medical workers who are risking their lives to help patients, but also for the patients.

Imagine being hospitalized for coronavirus and then seeing this walk through the door.

But that's better than whatever this freaky shit is.

Hospitals also need equipment like ventilators to help people breathe.

And yet, as recently as Thursday, Trump was choosing to not so much address the problem as try and minimize it.

Watch him dismiss a request for ventilators from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be.

I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.

You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they'll have 2 ventilators.

And now, all of a sudden, they're saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?

Hospitals don't have that many ventilators, and now, there's a pandemic.

Trump must be so confused by fire departments.

You walk into most houses, they got some sinks, maybe a few cups.

Now all of a sudden they're on fire and they say they need hundreds of gallons of water sprayed at them with hoses.

And the thing is, medical equipment shortages are a problem that Trump actually could help solve.

As a wartime president, he has a major tool at his disposal, the Defense Production Act.

It enables the federal government to compel companies to prioritize the production of essential supplies.

People have been begging him to use that authority for weeks now.

But he only did so for the first time on Friday to force GM and only GM to make ventilators.

And it's not like the DPA can magic them out of nowhere.

It could still take months for companies to make them.

That is why it would have been nice if Trump had invoked it fucking months ago.

You know, when he saw it was a pandemic before everyone else.

And there is still so much more he could be doing with the DPA, because it also allows the federal government to take charge of allocating materials, like protective equipment, and direct them to where they're most needed.

And without that happening, right Now, states are competing against each other in a free-for-all, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will tell you.

I'm bidding up other states on the prices.

Because you have manufacturers who sit there and California offers them 4 dollars, and they say, well, California offered 4 dollars, I offer 5 dollars, another state calls in and offers 6 dollars.

States obviously shouldn't have to hope they can outbid each other for boxes of life-saving equipment while the nation watches.

This is the government's response to a pandemic, not fucking storage wars.

Again and again, Trump has failed to give this crisis the seriousness it requires.

Too often, people discuss this in bloodless terms, citing the eeriness of empty streets or closed schools.

But while the streets may be empty, hospitals are increasingly bursting at the seams, and the agony this virus causes is profound.

I'm sure you've been reading the same stories I have of the woman whose 44-year-old husband died from this, or the parents of a 25-year-old who was placed in a medically-induced coma.

And the healthcare workers on the front lines know that this is just the beginning.

Today is kind of getting worse and worse.

We had to get a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of patients who are dying.

We are right now scrambling to try to get a few additional ventilators.

We don't have the tools that we need in the emergency department and in the hospital to take care of them.

But it actually didn't need to be this hard.

And that is why it's so profoundly disheartening that we're being led through this crisis by a man who may be less equipped to deal with this historical moment than anybody in recorded history.

Just watch what happened when 1 reporter pressed him on whether his Easter deadline was wise.

Lawmakers and economists on both sides of the aisle have said that reopening the country by Easter is not a good idea.

I think there are certain people that would like it not to open so quickly.

I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly, because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls.

I don't know if that's so, but I do think it's so that a lot of...

That there are people in your profession that would like that to happen.

These guidelines did not revolve around you.

For once, something has come along that is more toxic and more threatening than this president, and somehow, he's got fucking stage envy.

And look, I know this isn't exactly the first time that I've criticized Donald Trump, but I can't tell you how much I was rooting for him to do this better.

Handling a crisis well is not inherently political.

I disagree with him on basically everything, but he's doing a pretty good job so far.

Also, if I'm honest, I never really liked Andrew Cuomo before this, but I will admit, he's doing admirably well, and I can't wait to get to the other side of this and go back to being irritated by him again.

And I wish I could honestly say that we're going to be fine, but I don't know that.

And the number who won't is very much up in the air right now.

What is clear is that a crisis of this magnitude ends up revealing a lot about who you are as a nation.

And not all of what's being revealed is good.

This virus is exposing some central vulnerabilities in our medical system, our political system, and our national psyche.

Hospitals that have spent years trying to operate at maximum efficiency, and now watching that efficiency turn into scarcity.

Our decentralized government, which can be good when local leaders are empowered to protect their communities, has also led to states fighting each other for resources and a patchwork quarantine strategy that will almost certainly draw out the agony of this crisis.

Meanwhile, we've been forced to confront some of the strangest, darkest implications of our national mindset, in which market worship threatens to become a fucking death cult.

But, at the same time, this virus has exposed some reserves of real strength in this country.

We've seen extraordinary heroism, kindness, and ingenuity from everyone in essential lines of work.

From our grocery store workers, to those making deliveries, and especially, our medical professionals, who deserve, among other things, a fucking parade whenever we're allowed to have parades again.

And the least we can do right now is help them.

Right now, what we all choose to do outside of our hospitals has a direct and significant impact on what happens inside of them.

The more strictly that we all follow social distancing guidelines, to the maximum extent that we can, the easier it will be for our healthcare workers to do their jobs.

It is the only way to counteract an appalling federal response that inspires a mixture of anger, bafflement, and disgust.

Perhaps best summed up by my new favorite sign language interpreter who said, if I may translate, what the Fuck!


Speaker 0: ♪♪ Well, hello again. We're back with a show that's clearly going to look a little unusual. As I'm sure you've seen, the coronavirus has forced a number of late-night hosts to record shows from their houses, and we're no different, as my home is, and this is true, a blank white void full of sad facts. Where else did you think I lived? Now, a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, and I'll start with arguably the least important development.

The last time we spoke, I mentioned the work done by a very informative TikTok hamster. Well, I'm thrilled to tell you, it seems the hamster saw it. The hamster just genuinely offered more useful public health advice in 1 12-second TikTok than the president has in multiple addresses to the nation. ♪♪ Yes! Yes, yes, yes!

The hamster knows who I am! It might show just how much the isolation is getting to me. That it's genuinely heartwarming to experience even a connection like that right now. And by the way, I'd love to say that I would vote for that hamster for president, but given that their average life expectancy is just 3 years, I'm really gonna have to wait to find out who its VP pick is. But COVID-19 continues to rip around the globe.

On Friday, Boris Johnson, who had bragged earlier this month about shaking hands with coronavirus patients, tested positive for coronavirus. Meanwhile, India's Prime Minister has imposed a nationwide lockdown of its 1.3 billion residents, with some police punishing those who disobey by hitting them with sticks and making them do squats. And in Italy, which continues to be hit incredibly hard, there's been a trend of local leaders posting videos online, yelling at their citizens for irresponsibly going outside, and they're incredible.

Speaker 1: Prepare the celebration of the graduation. We send the police, but we send them with the flamethrowers. Now all the police officers have become Adelia. Everyone who wants to run, but where did you go to run? These fucking hairdressers who go home to fix the hair and the feb, what the fuck are they do?

I mean, did you understand that... Did you understand that... Did you understand that... Who the fuck is going to fix these hair if they don't have hair?

Speaker 0: Now, I know that seems extreme, but he is right. If your hair is bad, don't panic. Just let it be bad for a while. Yes, people may see it. And yes, it'll be embarrassing, but you will get through it.

Trust me. Trust me. Hey, listen. Trust me. As for here in the United States, the virus continues to spread rapidly.

We now have more confirmed coronavirus cases than any country in the world. Number 1. Number 1. And the president has only recently seemed to realize the gravity of the situation. As recently as a month ago, he was saying, we have it very much under control, adding, stock market starting to look very good to me.

Before abruptly shifting gears to claim that he felt it was a pandemic long before it was called 1, and then, just last week, making this grand declaration.

Speaker 2: I'm a wartime president. This is a war. This is a war, different kind of a war than we've ever had.

Speaker 0: Yeah, I guess it is different, isn't it? It's like World War II, only the enemy is invisible. Or like the Vietnam War, only this time, Trump is actually taking part. And yet, incredibly, after briefly embracing the need for everyone to engage in social distancing to flatten the curve, On Tuesday, our wartime president seemed to already be considering giving up the fight and encouraging everyone to go back to work.

Speaker 2: We're opening up this incredible country because we have to do that. I'd love to have it open by Easter. Okay? I would love to have it open by Easter. I will tell you that right now.

I would love to have that. It's such an important day for other reasons, but I'll make it an important day for this too.

Speaker 0: Okay, setting aside the Easter's unimportant day for other reasons. The date he's setting is just 2 weeks from now, which is objectively way too soon. Although, if you're going to pick a holiday to break quarantine, you could do a lot worse than 1 honoring the time that Jesus was supposed to stay inside and didn't. And it's worth taking a moment to appreciate just how irresponsible that attitude is. Because we wasted so much time that we could have spent preparing, the virus is now widespread.

And thanks to how we have massively botched the rollout of testing for the virus, we still don't know exactly how bad things are. So strict social distancing measures are our best shot at slowing this outbreak. Epidemiologists have said, if it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting 6 feet apart, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt. Now, obviously, that magic wand is impossible, but Some people aren't even doing anything close to that. And if you need proof of just how true that is, just listen to the understandably exasperated governor of Kentucky.

Speaker 3: We have a positive case today from someone who attended a Coronavirus Party. And this is the part, where... I, the person that tell everybody to be calm, have to remain calm myself.

Speaker 0: Well, good luck with that, because you just used the phrase, coronavirus party. And his disgust at that infuriating term was perfectly expressed by his sign language interpreter, who really got across the whole, what the fuck is wrong with you people sentiment. Truly, that gesture speaks for America right now. Gift that woman immediately. So, we absolutely should not be relaxing measures yet.

And Trump actually can't force states to do that. It's up to governors, some of whom, from both parties, are taking this very seriously. Unfortunately, other governors are not. Ron DeSantis in Florida is still resisting issuing a statewide stay-at-home order. And In Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick took things even further, agreeing with the president that the economic damage of a lockdown is just too great to bear.

Speaker 4: I'm not living in fear of COVID-19. What I'm living in fear of is what's happening to this country. And, you know, Tucker, no 1 reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that's the exchange, I'm all in.

Speaker 0: What are you talking about? First, if you really want to die so the U.S. Economy can boom, we already have a system in place for that, and it's called Black Friday. Have at it. Second, we know what's happened in other countries like Iran and Spain that didn't take social distancing seriously.

They're now home to mass graves you can see from space and ice skating rinks being used as makeshift morgues. And I'm in no way minimizing the economic suffering caused by the shutdown, and we should do everything we can to mitigate it. This week's stimulus bill is probably only the start of what is needed for workers. But the idea that people should sacrifice themselves for the economy is absurd. And yet, it actually gained traction this week, co-signed by a variety of conservative pundits, perhaps none more enthusiastically than this guy.

Speaker 5: I contend there are millions of Americans, just like me, that will look at their children and their grandchildren's future and they will say, I am not going to have them a slave to debt. I am not going to erase their future because I was afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. I am afraid that our nation might die. And that dooms millions to poverty, illness, starvation, and a lack of hope.

Let's see if that will trend.

Speaker 0: Yeah, let's see if that will trend, you thirsty bitch. But you get that the coronavirus is not the Hunger Games, right? You can't volunteer yourself as tribute. And what you're doing is actually much darker. You are actively volunteering others, including people of all ages with health conditions, to die.

And even if these guys are okay with letting the coronavirus kill as many people as it feels like, so that the economy's protected, which again, really, There are, and I cannot believe I have to say this, significant drawbacks to hundreds of thousands of people dying. Hospitals would be completely overwhelmed, which means people suffering from things that aren't the coronavirus also wouldn't be able to get the treatment that they need, leading to even more people dying, which, to put this in the only terms that they seem to care about, also tanks the economy. So, relaxing social distancing right now isn't just trading 1 bad outcome for another, It's trading 1 bad outcome for both bad outcomes. It's shitting on your cake and choking on it, too. Look, it's critically important for America to be getting a clear, consistent message about the severity of the threat that we're currently facing.

That is the only way that we will be able to manage this virus, contain casualties, and get back to something resembling normalcy. And floating an Easter end date isn't the only troubling decision the president has made. Right now, 1 of the major challenges facing hospitals across the country is a critical shortage of even basic personal protective equipment like masks, respirators, gloves, and face shields. Because they are running short to an alarming extent.

Speaker 2: There are people that literally are wearing bandanas because they have nothing better than that to protect themselves.

Speaker 6: I've seen people using the plastic protector sheets for their kids' homework to put in as a face mask. I've seen people even wearing ski goggles, Halloween costumes that were masked to try and cover up parts of their face.

Speaker 0: Holy shit. That is terrifying, both for the medical workers who are risking their lives to help patients, but also for the patients. Imagine being hospitalized for coronavirus and then seeing this walk through the door. I'd opt out. Yeah, I might die.

But that's better than whatever this freaky shit is. And it's not just masks. Hospitals also need equipment like ventilators to help people breathe. Without enough of them, people will die. And yet, as recently as Thursday, Trump was choosing to not so much address the problem as try and minimize it.

Watch him dismiss a request for ventilators from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 2: I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be. I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they'll have 2 ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they're saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?

Speaker 0: Yeah. That's the problem. Hospitals don't have that many ventilators, and now, there's a pandemic. Trump must be so confused by fire departments. You walk into most houses, they got some sinks, maybe a few cups.

Now all of a sudden they're on fire and they say they need hundreds of gallons of water sprayed at them with hoses. I just don't buy it. And the thing is, medical equipment shortages are a problem that Trump actually could help solve. As a wartime president, he has a major tool at his disposal, the Defense Production Act. It enables the federal government to compel companies to prioritize the production of essential supplies.

People have been begging him to use that authority for weeks now. But he only did so for the first time on Friday to force GM and only GM to make ventilators. And it's not like the DPA can magic them out of nowhere. It could still take months for companies to make them. That is why it would have been nice if Trump had invoked it fucking months ago.

You know, when he saw it was a pandemic before everyone else. And there is still so much more he could be doing with the DPA, because it also allows the federal government to take charge of allocating materials, like protective equipment, and direct them to where they're most needed. And without that happening, right Now, states are competing against each other in a free-for-all, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will tell you.

Speaker 7: I'm competing with other states. I'm bidding up other states on the prices. Because you have manufacturers who sit there and California offers them 4 dollars, and they say, well, California offered 4 dollars, I offer 5 dollars, another state calls in and offers 6 dollars. It's not the way to do it.

Speaker 0: No, it isn't. States obviously shouldn't have to hope they can outbid each other for boxes of life-saving equipment while the nation watches. This is the government's response to a pandemic, not fucking storage wars. Again and again, Trump has failed to give this crisis the seriousness it requires. And make no mistake, this is serious.

Too often, people discuss this in bloodless terms, citing the eeriness of empty streets or closed schools. But while the streets may be empty, hospitals are increasingly bursting at the seams, and the agony this virus causes is profound. I'm sure you've been reading the same stories I have of the woman whose 44-year-old husband died from this, or the parents of a 25-year-old who was placed in a medically-induced coma. And the healthcare workers on the front lines know that this is just the beginning.

Speaker 8: Today is kind of getting worse and worse. We had to get a refrigerated truck to store the bodies of patients who are dying. We are right now scrambling to try to get a few additional ventilators.

Speaker 9: I want people to know that This is bad. People are dying. We don't have the tools that we need in the emergency department and in the hospital to take care of them. And... And it's really hard.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And this was always going to be hard. But it actually didn't need to be this hard. And that is why it's so profoundly disheartening that we're being led through this crisis by a man who may be less equipped to deal with this historical moment than anybody in recorded history. Just watch what happened when 1 reporter pressed him on whether his Easter deadline was wise.

Speaker 3: Lawmakers and economists on both sides of the aisle have said that reopening the country by Easter is not a good idea. What is that plan based on?

Speaker 2: Just so you understand, are you ready? I think there are certain people that would like it not to open so quickly. I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly, because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls. And... I don't know if that's so, but I do think it's so that a lot of...

That there are people in your profession that would like that to happen.

Speaker 0: Oh, for fuck's sake! No 1 is thinking about you! These guidelines did not revolve around you. For once, something has come along that is more toxic and more threatening than this president, and somehow, he's got fucking stage envy. And look, I know this isn't exactly the first time that I've criticized Donald Trump, but I can't tell you how much I was rooting for him to do this better.

Handling a crisis well is not inherently political. Take Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. I disagree with him on basically everything, but he's doing a pretty good job so far. Also, if I'm honest, I never really liked Andrew Cuomo before this, but I will admit, he's doing admirably well, and I can't wait to get to the other side of this and go back to being irritated by him again. And I wish I could honestly say that we're going to be fine, but I don't know that.

Most of us will, but not all of us. And the number who won't is very much up in the air right now. What is clear is that a crisis of this magnitude ends up revealing a lot about who you are as a nation. And not all of what's being revealed is good. This virus is exposing some central vulnerabilities in our medical system, our political system, and our national psyche.

Hospitals that have spent years trying to operate at maximum efficiency, and now watching that efficiency turn into scarcity. Our decentralized government, which can be good when local leaders are empowered to protect their communities, has also led to states fighting each other for resources and a patchwork quarantine strategy that will almost certainly draw out the agony of this crisis. Meanwhile, we've been forced to confront some of the strangest, darkest implications of our national mindset, in which market worship threatens to become a fucking death cult. But, at the same time, this virus has exposed some reserves of real strength in this country. We've seen extraordinary heroism, kindness, and ingenuity from everyone in essential lines of work.

From our grocery store workers, to those making deliveries, and especially, our medical professionals, who deserve, among other things, a fucking parade whenever we're allowed to have parades again. And the least we can do right now is help them. Right now, what we all choose to do outside of our hospitals has a direct and significant impact on what happens inside of them. The more strictly that we all follow social distancing guidelines, to the maximum extent that we can, the easier it will be for our healthcare workers to do their jobs. It is the only way to counteract an appalling federal response that inspires a mixture of anger, bafflement, and disgust.

Perhaps best summed up by my new favorite sign language interpreter who said, if I may translate, what the Fuck! And now, this.

See all LastWeekTonight transcripts on Youtube

Coronavirus III: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)