President Trump considers reopening the economy as an epidemiologist's protests.

The media tried to blame Trump for some dude actually eating fish tank cleaner.

And Democrats continue to play politics with an economic rescue bill.

I'm Ben Shapiro.

This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Stand Up up for your digital rights. Take action right now at

ExpressVPN.com slash man. I really mean that. A lot of people getting hacked right now. ExpressVPN.com

slash pen to protect your online activity. Okay. So we begin as always with your latest updates on the news before we get to

the politics. So the coronavirus map today is showing a vast increase in number of deaths in the United States. There are over 100 deaths yesterday in the United States. We're up to 591 total deaths at this hour in the United States from coronavirus. 46,485 cases diagnosed so far. Now, we are expecting these numbers to rise, obviously. That is not a great shock. Again, we are testing. Once we start testing, you're going to start finding things that you are testing for, as opposed to what China, there's rumors that China is actually continuing to see coronavirus cases and they stop testing. And that's why they're not seeing an increase in the number of cases that are out there. Now, one of the big problems here is that China's path is one of the great hopes for the

world because if China's been able to tamp this thing down, it makes everybody feel like, okay, well, maybe we can tamp this thing down too. That's why more people are putting faith at this point in South Korea, which has seen 9,000 total cases in 120 deaths and has not completely shut down their economy to do so. the difference being South Korea had massive testing regimes already in place,

thanks to H1N1 in their economy to do so. The difference being South Korea had massive testing regimes already in place, thanks to H1N1 and their response to SARS in the past. Because

of all of that, they had been pretty well prepared for all of this. The United States simply was not

and we were late on the game. Because we were late on the game, the entire ball game here has been

how do we shift from Chinese lockdown strategies, everybody stay home, into South Korean social distancing, everybody wear a mask, strategies where most of us can go back to work. If you're sick, you stay home. If you're elderly or you're vulnerable, you stay home, right? Everybody keeps saying, I hear this from a lot of people on the right side of the aisle. Why don't the old people and the vulnerable people, why don't they just stay home

and everybody else goes back to work? And the problem is right now there's too much social mixing. You don't know who has it and who does not. There's no way to tamp down the people who actually are sick. And so because we have not yet gotten this thing under control, you can't go to South Korean type measures. The question is how fast we can get there. Meanwhile, in Italy, the situation continues to be incredibly grim.

Italy has about 64,000 cases at this hour with approximately 6,000 total deaths. Their death rate is significantly higher than that of the United States. Again, we are gaining on them in terms

of total number of cases, but we have fewer, well under 1,000 deaths at this point, just about

600 deaths. Italy has 64,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. That is because their health care system is being overwhelmed. And that is why so many people in the United States right now are worried about the overwhelming of our health care system at this time. That is why people are also worried about a bed shortage looming in California. According to the New York Times, Governor Gavin Newsom estimates California will be short about 17,000 hospital beds, although the state is frantically trying to source

thousands more of them. The pace of testing remains stubbornly slow in California. I've been hearing

from hospitals in the area that they are indeed inundated with people who are coming in for coronavirus,

although we have heard no stories about ventilator shortages at this point in time. Elon Musk actually

came up with a thousand ventilators yesterday. We're quickly ramping up production across the country

...