Hey, I'm Chris Cuomo. We're going to a special edition of Primetime Live tonight because we have a mountain of news to cover on this

Ash Wednesday, the stage behind me for major candidates just before the all-important South Carolina primary took to the town hall format to make their case to voters in this state.

It's such a big hurdle for the Democrats. You had Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

Each one of them needs to make a mark. Bloomberg, of course, not on the ballot here, but this was his last moment before Super Tuesday to really introduce himself to this state and all of you in general.

The other big story. The president came forward today with the vice president to make the point that he is ready, that this country is ready for the coronavirus.

How compelling was it? How much do the facts back up their preparedness? Is the VP the right choice to head up this team? And the president says it's about politics on the Democrat side, but we're going to look at what he said versus what the CDC and the facts tell us. There's a lot to cover. So let's get after it.

All right, all four candidates on the stage here in South Carolina took on the president following his wild news conference where he blamed Democrats for quote panic over the coronavirus.

While he argued the risks of an outbreak are very low, the CDC says that there's a new case in California and that they're not sure how it got here. It's not clear to the CDC how the victim may have been exposed. Okay. And look, that's not unusual here, but the point is don't play it as simple and don't play any concern as politics.

If there's any politics being played, it's the disconnect between this president and his own CDC. Here's what the president said today, we're actually tonight about what our concern should be.

The risk to the American people remains very low. We're ready to adapt and we're ready to do whatever we have to as the disease spreads. If it spreads, I don't think it's inevitable.

Now, look, let's just remember the facts here. The president should be taken at his word. He does have all these experts around him. The threat levels should be low at this point, but pandemics and potential pandemics are about preparedness. Okay. And they were briefed about this a month ago.

There were cuts made in spending that would change the ability to be prepared here. And it does look from the outside and from what we can see as a little bit of a game of catch up.

But the main priority here is what should the real concern level and how ready are we for that level? Contrast what the president just said with what his own CDC put out about what we should be looking at happening here in the United States.

It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more question of exactly when this will happen.

And look, you want to be ready for things like this. Of course, you don't want to overhype it. You don't want to have people running around with masks. They don't even know if they need or not and worried that everybody who has a cough has something that could kill you. Of course, you want to be ready and you want to be right and you need to be on the same page. So let's do this.

Let's take the it's not if it's when. Let's take the news about this case in California and then trying to figure it out. And let's bring in two people who know a lot about this to figure out what matters to us and what our questions are going forward.

We have our doctor, of course, Sanjay Gupta and Philip T. Arno, professor of microbiology and pathology at NYU. Gentlemen, thank you both. Sanjay, you had an exchange with the president today about where we should be in terms of preparedness, how we should be seeing this. Let's play that for the audience.

We have a fatality ratio of about 0.1 for sure. This has a fatality ratio of summer between two.

We think we don't know exactly the number so far and the fluid's higher than that. The fluid's much higher than that.

There's more people who get the flu that this is spreading. You're just going to spread maybe given communities that's it may expect.

It may not. Does that does that worry you because that seems to be what worries the more because we're ready for it.

Now look, there's nothing wrong with this president. In fact, it's somewhat atypical from the beyond us, Sanjay, to place something down to not exaggerate the significance of something and you don't want to create a scare.

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