JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: a risky reopening.

Restrictions are eased in all 50 states, despite falling short of CDC requirements amid a continually rising death toll.

Then: the state of the State Department.

Concerns abound following the ouster of an inspector general, and Secretary Pompeo offers denials of wrongdoing.

Plus: an uncertain future.

An inside look at predictive modeling for COVID-19 and why new infections from the disease are so difficult to foresee.

DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, Director of Health Metrics, University Of Washington: It is a reasonable strategy to try to look at models, like the economists do, which build in how individuals, local government, state government, are going to respond to the problems as they unfold.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: The reopening of America is now in full swing, from auto plants to theme parks.

It is happening at different rates in different states, as the national death toll reaches 93,000.

Stephanie Sy begins our coverage tonight.

STEPHANIE SY: A new phase in the fight to breathe life into an economy ravaged by COVID-19.

As of today, all 50 states have taken varying steps to reopen.

In Texas, where only minor restrictions remain in place, children are back at day care, and youth programs have opened, ahead of the summer break.

WHITT MELTON, Co-Owner, Legendary Black Belt Academy: It's been really good to bring back normalcy for the kiddos.

You know, we're really excited to get everybody back, but we want to -- we're really trying to make sure we do it the right way and the safe way.

STEPHANIE SY: By contrast, in New York, it is far from business as usual.

Retail stores are still closed to the public, only now beginning to offer curbside services.

And public parks, like this one in Brooklyn, are getting creative about how to distance New Yorkers eager to bask in spring weather.

BRITTANY DEGIROLAMO, New York Resident: The park basically just put down some circles to help people just see what six feet apart looks like, so it's easy for us to chill and not be worried about that.

STEPHANIE SY: Starting tomorrow, the state will also allow religious services with up to 10 people to resume.

In Orlando, Florida, tourists roamed around stores and restaurants inside Disney World, as the theme park began welcoming patrons.

Visiting a nursing home with Vice President Mike Pence today in Orlando, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis defended his decision to open faster than others, and he denied that an expert was fired for refusing to manipulate data to support his decision.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL): We have succeeded.

And I think that people just don't want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption, so they have got to try to find a boogeyman.

Maybe it's that there are black helicopters circling the Department of Health.

If you believe that, I got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

STEPHANIE SY: For weeks, states have taken steps toward lifting lockdowns, with mixed messages coming from federal authorities.

After much delay, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly released a 60-page document with guidance on testing and reopening, but it generally steers clear of language on mandatory rules.

It includes cleaning and social distancing recommendations for bars and restaurants, suggests staggered shifts and physical barriers to prevent contact in the workplace, and calls for limited ridership on public transportation, with required face coverings for transit workers.

Schools in areas that meet certain metrics for lower virus transmission are encouraged to space desks at least six feet apart, conduct daily temperature screenings, and serve lunch in the classroom, if they reopen.

Notably left out of the CDC document, any mention of how places of worship should resume activity safely.

Overseas, another glimpse of what moves toward normalcy might look like came from South Korea, where high school students returned to class for the first time today.

But, as more countries move to loosen restrictions, in Geneva, the World Health Organization warned the pandemic continues.

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WHO Director General: In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO, the most in a single day since the outbreak began.

STEPHANIE SY: The head of the WHO said, while the virus may be slowing down in developed nations, poorer countries are now seeing more infections.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And another top story today: the firing of the State Department inspector general, Steve Linick, who had an active investigation ongoing of the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

The secretary answered reporters' questions today.

And our foreign affairs correspondent, Nick Schifrin, joins me now.

So, Nick, what did Secretary Pompeo have to say?

NICK SCHIFRIN: Pompeo denied everything the reporters asked him related to Steve Linick, and he actually joked that he should have fired Steve Linick in the past.

Senior officials who are politically appointed around Pompeo have told me that they consider Linick a bit of a partisan hack, in their words.

And Pompeo today tried to turn the tables, instead pointing the finger at the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is trying to investigate why Pompeo fired Linick.

MIKE POMPEO, U.S. Secretary of State: This is all coming through the office of Senator Menendez.

I don't get my ethics guidance from a man who was criminally prosecuted, case number 15-155, New Jersey Federal District Court.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Now, for the record, it is not only Menendez who is investigating the firing.

It is also House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and other Democrats.

But Menendez did respond to Pompeo, Judy, in a statement accusing him of firing Linick, as Linick, as you said, was investigating Pompeo, and said the secretary was -- quote - - "using diversion tactics by attempting to smear me."

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Nick, as Senator Menendez mentions, Linick investigating Pompeo, what do we know he was investigating?

What do we know about that?

NICK SCHIFRIN: So, congressional officials tell me that Linick was investigating personal matters related to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, whether they had improperly used either political appointees or even diplomatic security officials to basically run errands for them.

And an official said that there's been an undercurrent of those accusations the last few years.

And I should say, Judy, I have spoke ton former CIA officials while Pompeo was director of CIA, and they said they heard some of the same things.

Now, today, Pompeo said he didn't know whether the investigation into the personal matters existed, but, at the same time, denied the underlying substance behind them.

MIKE POMPEO: I have no sense of what investigations were taking place inside the inspector general's office.

Couldn't possibly have retaliated for all the things.

I have seen the various stories that someone was walking my dog to sell arms to my dry cleaner.

I mean, it's all just crazy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Nick, there is another question out there.

And that is whether the inspector general Linick was also looking into U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Yes, Judy, this is about the war in Yemen.

Some 100,000 people died in that war, and it's being fought by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia against an Iran-backed Houthi rebel in Yemen.

And those Saudis are armed by U.S. weapons authorized by U.S. officials.

Now, those sales were at first blocked by a Republican senator and then by Menendez.

But they restarted when the administration declared an emergency, that they had to get those arms sales.

And, last summer, Engel and other Democrats called for an investigation into that emergency by Steve Linick, the I.G.

They pointed out, why did you need to call an emergency if the arms weren't actually going to get there for two years?

And, today, we heard from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who brought up that accusation.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): They declared a fake emergency in order to initiate the sales, and then -- and that may have been part of the investigation.

That's what I'm very concerned about.

NICK SCHIFRIN: We know that Linick was investigating that declared emergency.

Pompeo declined to be interviewed as part of that investigation, but he did answer written questions about it.

And one official says that senior State Department officials have been briefed about that investigation, Judy, but we just don't know what the results were.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Nick, just one more piece of context here.

We know that Steve Linick was the fourth inspector general in the Trump administration to be removed just in the last six weeks.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Yes, this is part of an argument that President Trump has made against these inspector generals.

He was asked about Steve Linick on Monday, and he indicated he did not care what Linick had been investigating, only that Linick was appointed by Obama and that Pompeo wanted him gone.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: I said, who appointed him?

And they said, President Obama.

I said, look, I will terminate him.

I don't know what's going on other than that, but you would have to ask Mike Pompeo.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Judy, the irony is that congressional officials and officials inside the inspector general community tell me that Linick entered the I.G.

world through a Republican, Senator Richard Grassley, and that his first high-profile investigation was into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server.

They also tell me that Linick wasn't particularly aggressive against the Trump administration, nor, for that matter, were any of the inspector general's that Trump has relieved in the last few weeks.

Republican and Democratic officials are trying to figure out whether they can create some kind of for-cause removal in order to protect an inspector general.

But these officials who I'm talking to Judy saying this is a five-alarm fire inside the inspector general community.

Current inspector generals are scared, the mood is negative.

And the idea that inspector generals are there to speak truth to power, that's being eroded.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So important to report on this.

And I know the reporting will continue.

Nick Schifrin, thank you very much.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the day's other news: A tropical cyclone blasted India and Bangladesh, killing at least 14 people and destroying homes by the hundreds.

The storm surged out of the Bay of Bengal into a densely populated region that's been beset by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pounding India's Eastern coastline, the strongest cyclone in over a decade.

Winds reached 100 miles per hour, knocking down trees and damaging metal roofs.

Today in New Delhi, Indian officials said they are working to restore roads.

SATYA PRADHAN, Indian National Disaster Response Force (through translator): All teams are on the ground.

All teams are outside in the cyclone area.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In neighboring Bangladesh, riverbanks overflowed.

Yesterday, local officials began mass evacuations.

SNIGDHA CHAKRABORTY, Catholic Relief Services: Initially, they were not willing to evacuate, because they were weighing between the risk of cyclone, at the same time also the invisible risk of COVID-19.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Snigdha Chakraborty is the Bangladesh country director for Catholic Relief Services.

SNIGDHA CHAKRABORTY: They do not have income.

They do not have homes.

They also lost their crop in the field.

So, basically, it is a devastating situation and painful situation that they will have to live with now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Nearly three million people have been evacuated from their homes, and are hunkering down in cramped evacuation centers, where social distancing is impossible.

For thousands of Rohingya refugees in Southern Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, the only protection they have are plastic sheets to cover their homes.

As heavy rain hit the refugee camp today, residents worked to prevent flooding.

Nearly 10,000 people in Central Michigan have been ordered out of their homes after flooding breached two dams.

A river and connected lakes have topped record levels that were set in 1986, and they're still rising.

Today, debris, including a camper, floated down the river, and only street signs were above water in downtown Midland.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer said the flooding is expected to peak tonight.

GOV.

GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): If you're in an impacted area, please evacuate.

This is going to be hard, but we are anticipating several feet of water across this area.

And so, while we're in the midst of a global pandemic, it's really important that, to the best of our ability, we observe the best practices to keep ourselves and our families safe.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Midland is home to Dow Chemical, and the flooding is already encroaching on the company's main plant site.

U.S.

Marshals in Massachusetts have arrested two men accused of helping former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn flee Japan.

They allegedly smuggled Ghosn to Lebanon in a box last December.

He was facing financial misconduct charges, but said that he could not expect a fair trial in Japan.

Israel is under new pressure to abandon plans for annexing parts of the West Bank.

The top U.N. envoy for the Middle East said today that it would deal a devastating blow to any hopes for peace.

And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that all agreements with Israel and the U.S. are void because of the annexation threat.

Back in this country, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the immediate release of secret grand jury testimony from the Russia investigation.

House Democrats had sued for access to the material.

But the court denied that request at least until early summer.

That all but guarantees the documents will not be released before Election Day.

Former Vice President Joe Biden accused President Trump and his lieutenants of abusing their law enforcement powers.

The Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting spoke via video link to Columbia Law School graduates today.

Last night, he rejected Mr. Trump's claims that he and former President Obama acted illegally to push the Russia investigation.

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), Presidential Candidate: This is his pattern: diversion, diversion, diversion, diversion, diversion.

Don't speak to whatever the issues before us are.

My God.

Obamagate, come on.

This is so venal, so petty.

The greatest crime?

I mean, my lord.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, the president condemned plans for mail-in voting in Michigan and Nevada, and he threatened to withhold federal funds from the states.

Later, he said he doubts that that will be necessary.

The number of babies born in the U.S. has fallen to a 35-year low.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 3.7 million births last year.

That is down 1 percent from 2018.

The decline has been trending for more than a decade.

And on Wall Street, stocks bounced back from Tuesday's losses, led by the tech sector.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 369 points to close near 24576.

The Nasdaq rose 190 points -- that's 2 percent -- and the S&P 500 added 48.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": the Trump administration continues deportation of migrant children, despite the pandemic; Brazil's former president on the country's chaotic response to the coronavirus; an inside look at predictive modeling and why new infections from COVID-19 are so difficult to foresee; plus, much more.

The coronavirus is changing life as we know it in the U.S., including the Trump administration's immigration policy.

As John Yang reports, one big shift is in the treatment of migrant children and teenagers.

JOHN YANG: Judy, The New York Times reports that, in March and April, more than 900 migrant children were deported by the Trump administration shortly after they reached the U.S. border.

That's much sooner in the process than before the pandemic.

It's part of a new, stepped-up border security policy that the Department of Homeland Security says is intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Caitlin Dickerson covers immigration for The New York Times, and she joins us now from her home in New York.

Caitlin, thanks so much for being with us.

What's the difference between the way these children are being treated now and the way they were being treated before the pandemic?

CAITLIN DICKERSON, The New York Times: Sure.

So, historically, when a child or a teenager, anybody under 18, arrived at the American border without an adult guardian, they were allowed into the country and taken through a pretty lengthy process in which they were assigned a social worker, they were sent to a shelter that was specifically designed to house children.

And that social worker helps determine whether or not they have a legal case to remain in the United States.

If the child isn't -- or doesn't qualify for one of those legal protections that our country offers, then they are returned to their home country, but only after a safety plan has been put into place.

So, the American government makes contact with family in the home country and makes sure that the child has a safe place to go back to, which, as you can imagine, is especially important, when a child is returning to a dangerous country.

Both of those things aren't happening now.

So, rather than being allowed into the country, children are being returned right away.

And even those kids who were already in the United States before this stepped-up border enforcement began, when those kids are being deported now, it's happening much more quickly and without that safety planning ahead of time, which means some kids have ended up back in home country.

Their family doesn't know they're there until they arrive, and the child may not have anywhere to go.

JOHN YANG: You start your tale with a 10-year-old boy, Gerson Rodriguez, who is about to set across the Rio Grande with a stranger, not his family.

Can you summarize what happened to him?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: Absolutely.

So, right, Gerson is 10.

He had been in Mexico with his mother since last October.

They fled Honduras because of his mother's partner, who had been abusive to both of them, who had withheld food from them and who had hit them.

And so, like so many other families, they went to Mexico.

They applied for asylum in the United States, but they were enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols that the Trump administration created.

That's the program that requires asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border until their cases are adjudicated.

And that didn't feel safe enough to Gerson's mother.

As you probably know, many of the migrants who are waiting on the Mexican side of the border have been subjected to kidnapping, to extortion.

It's very dangerous.

They were living outdoors in a tent camp.

And so his mother decided the safest thing she felt to do was to send her 10-year-old son across the border alone, so that he could go and live with his uncle in Houston.

But that didn't happen.

She didn't realize that this Trump administration policy had been implemented.

And so she heard nothing from her son for six days.

When she finally did hear from him, she learned that he was back in Honduras, that he'd been deported there, again, without anyone in his family being informed.

JOHN YANG: And what's the Trump administration's rationale for this new policy?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: So, this policy came down through an executive order invoking the power of the surgeon general to prevent people from entering the United States because of the threat of a very serious disease or illness.

In this case, we're talking, of course, about the coronavirus pandemic.

But important context to note here is that this idea of using the public health authority to shut down the border is not something that originated as a novel response to this unprecedented pandemic.

It's actually something that Stephen Miller, who's President Trump's chief adviser on immigration, had come up with years ago, shortly after President Trump took office.

He'd been looking for a way to implement it.

And, as my reporting has shown, he got that opportunity with the coronavirus pandemic.

JOHN YANG: And some House Democrats are saying that this violates U.S. law with this new policy.

What's the -- what's behind that argument?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: What they're talking about is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

It's a decades-old law that's designed to protect this very population that we're talking about, kids who come to the United States on their own.

And it's not hard to understand why special protections have been put in place, when you think about what it's like for someone as young as Gerson, for example, a 10-year-old, to be traversing international borders on their own.

They really are targets for exploitation of any kind.

It doesn't always happen, but because of the vulnerability that they face from people who may want to kidnap them or may want to extort their families for money and do a number of things, this law was created to try to prevent that from happening and to give them two opportunities, actually, legally, they're entitled to, to apply for asylum to try to win protection in the United States, and basically to make sure that there's no provision of the immigration law that could offer them protection before they're actually sent home.

And it's also, of course, designed to ensure that, when the United States does send them home, that they're not put in harm's way.

JOHN YANG: Caitlin Dickerson of The New York Times, thanks so much.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump counts Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro as an ally and kindred spirit.

But not even their closeness prevented Mr. Trump from saying yesterday that he's considering banning Brazilians from traveling to the U.S.

The coronavirus crisis in that country is one of the world's most dire by several metrics.

Bolsonaro is also coming under attack by a popular former Brazilian president, who is reemerging on the political scene after being released from prison.

Amna Nawaz spoke with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva late last week.

AMNA NAWAZ: In late 2019, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known widely just as Lula, walked out of prison after 580 days, and stepped right back onto the political stage.

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA, Former Brazilian President (through translator): Today, I'm a guy that doesn't have a job, a president without a pension, not even a television in my apartment.

My life is totally blocked.

The only thing I'm certain of is that I have more courage to fight than before.

AMNA NAWAZ: His top targets?

The current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and his allies, whom Lula claims wrongfully convicted him of corruption in 2017, a conviction he's now appealing.

Today, the focus of Lula's criticism is Bolsonaro's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): We have an invisible enemy which we do not know.

We do not have the medication to cure it.

And many leaders, such as the president of Brazil and the president of the U.S., are not treating it seriously, with the necessary precautions to face the pandemic.

AMNA NAWAZ: To date, more than 18,000 Brazilians have died of COVID-19, and the virus is running rampant through vulnerable communities, the sprawling, crowded urban areas known as favelas and among indigenous communities in the Amazon and other remote regions.

The death toll in Latin America's largest country is now the sixth worst in the world.

The total number of infections ranks third globally.

But experts believe the government is likely vastly underreporting the number of cases, and fear what will follow.

Do you believe that Brazil will become the next global epicenter for this pandemic?

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): I think Brazil runs the risk of becoming the next epicenter of the pandemic.

The country alone has more people contaminated and deaths than all of South America.

The problem we have in Brazil -- and this is my present concern -- is that the pandemic is beginning to reach the poorest places and peripheries throughout the country.

AMNA NAWAZ: Like President Trump, President Bolsonaro downplayed early concerns over the virus.

He clashed with health officials, firing his first health minister, who criticized his approach.

His second health minister stepped down after just one month on the job.

And he's peddled misinformation, leading both Facebook and Twitter to remove his posts saying the drug hydroxychloroquine was -- quote -- "working in all places."

Bolsonaro, who's so far been unable to make good on his promise to fix a faltering economy, has also pushed for Brazilian businesses to reopen, mimicking President Trump's message.

JAIR BOLSONARO, Brazilian President (through translator): People are dying.

They are.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

But more will die, much, much more, if the economy continues to be destroyed by those measures.

AMNA NAWAZ: And, just like Trump's supporters, Bolsonaro's backers have taken to the streets, in defiance of local social distancing orders.

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): President Bolsonaro likes to copy, to repeat President Trump's actions.

That is, President Bolsonaro believes President Trump is a higher being, so he simply copies everything Trump says.

And Bolsonaro does not discuss the pandemic.

He discusses any topic.

He offends the Supreme Court, native indigenous peoples, blacks, women, Congress, Senate, the opposition, governors, mayors, but he does not take care of the pandemic.

AMNA NAWAZ: In recent weeks, though, Lula has escalated his attacks, saying in one recent interview that Brazilian society has the -- quote - - "right to remove Bolsonaro."

You don't have votes in Congress to impeach him.

He's unlikely to step down.

So, what exactly are you calling for when you say that society has the right to remove President Bolsonaro.

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): I think it is very difficult for any president to continue in office doing what Bolsonaro is doing in Brazil.

He is not governing Brazil.

He is constantly producing fake news.

He spends the nights writing tweets.

He does not wear a mask.

I think, and society expects, the House of Representatives should start an impeachment procedure to discuss whether this man has the necessary political conditions to continue to governing this country.

AMNA NAWAZ: I just want to be clear about this, President da Silva.

You are calling for the impeachment process against President Bolsonaro to begin; you believe that should start?

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): I think, if Bolsonaro continues to act irresponsibly, as he has been doing, the people will not accept him for three more years.

I am not in favor of removing a president every year through an impeachment process.

I am in favor of a government that truly governs the country, respecting democracy.

AMNA NAWAZ: Lula himself has faced some of the same criticism.

Despite leaving office after two terms with sky-high popularity, he was ensnared years later in a massive corruption and bribery scandal.

Lula maintains he did nothing wrong.

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): For the past four years, I have been asking them to prove any one of the charges held against me.

So far, nothing has been proven.

AMNA NAWAZ: And in another recent twist, the judge who convicted Lula was later handpicked as justice minister by Bolsonaro.

And just last month, he resigned, saying the president pressured him to fire the police chief.

Even today, Lula remains popular among Brazilians, and, when pressed, would neither confirm nor deny he would run again when Bolsonaro's term is up in 2022.

But he is still making the pitch directly to Brazilians, begging them to once again believe in his Workers Party, known as the P.T., by its Portuguese initials.

Why should they believe things would be any better today, at this moment of crisis, under the Workers' Party or under you, under anyone else?

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA (through translator): I will tell you something.

First of all, people should believe in the P.T., because it was the party that brought the greatest social inclusion in Brazil's history.

That is, in 13 years, we did what had not been done in the last 100 years in the country.

We invested the most in employment, education, health, electrical power, and social improvement for the poor.

That is why they should believe.

AMNA NAWAZ: A former leader reemerging to fight once again amid political turmoil and the uncertainty of a pandemic now setting its sights on Brazil.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Amna Nawaz.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Even as more states are trying to reopen their economy, a new "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll found that 77 percent of Americans worry about a second wave of infections yet to come.

This comes as computer-based models suggest that the U.S. will pass its own grim milestone by June, 100,000-plus deaths.

That higher projection is arriving even sooner than some of the models estimated just weeks ago.

But models are not crystal balls.

The work that goes into making them and their ultimate purpose is more complicated than you might be able to tell from the headlines.

Miles O'Brien explains in his latest report for our series the Leading Edge.

MILES O'BRIEN: We live in a complicated world, filled with more data than insight.

Finding a path to clarity is not easy, even on a good day.

And these are not good days.

So, how can we take a huge amount of data and make it understandable, so we can see the future?

BETZ HALLORAN, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: You can't believe every number that comes out.

But if we don't try to formulate our thinking about a complex process, then we will be running blind.

MILES O'BRIEN: Betz Halloran is an infectious disease modeler.

She writes mathematical formulas that define the chaotic, exponential spread of infection.

A biostatistician at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, she's part of the team that curates the Global Epidemic and Mobility Model, or GLEAM.

BETZ HALLORAN: The GLEAM model is a big mobility model that can answer global questions.

MILES O'BRIEN: GLEAM begins with the first infection in China and travels down the many paths of exponential growth, constantly calculating who is susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered, S-E-I-R, or SEIR.

BETZ HALLORAN: You can structure it in many different ways.

But, usually, when we talk about infectious disease modeling, that's the basic sort of meat and potatoes of what's going to be in a model.

MILES O'BRIEN: But the model does not stop there.

It factors in the entire global transportation network, including airline schedules and capacity.

BETZ HALLORAN: So, the question we were asking way back then was, where is it going to spread?

If it gets into the United States, where would it go first?

And once it gets in, then we could use GLEAM to look at the question of, how much is it going to spread in the different places?

Where is it going to go first?

And then we predicted that pretty well.

MILES O'BRIEN: Halloran and her team did accurately predict where COVID-19 would first surge in the United States.

But, as the pandemic wore on, the limitations of the models became more evident.

After all, no one really knows how the virus is transmitted, who's likely to get sick and who won't, who's likely to die, who might have immunity.

All those questions won't be answered until there is widespread testing.

So, in the meantime, the models muddle on, with sometimes dizzyingly confusing results.

One of them, from Britain's Imperial College, predicted two million COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

But that assumed no human response, no social distancing.

BETZ HALLORAN: All models are wrong, but some models are helpful, and I think it's important to remember that.

MILES O'BRIEN: Nearby, at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, they built a much simpler model that started with a specific question in mind: Did the health care system have the capacity to treat a surge of COVID-19 patients?

Chris Murray is the director.

He and his team wrote a model that, unlike many others at the time, factored in the human response to the pandemic.

DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, Director of Health Metrics, University Of Washington: If you ignore the behavioral response, you're going to massively overshoot.

And so I think it is a reasonable strategy to try to look at models, like the economists do, which build in how individuals, local government, state government, are going to respond to the problems as they unfold.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator: So I'm sure you're interested in seeing all the states.

MILES O'BRIEN: Producing speedy state-by-state results, with consistently lower projections, the University of Washington model was frequently cited by the White House in daily coronavirus briefings.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: And I think, if you ask Chris Murray, he would say...

MILES O'BRIEN: But the model initially assumed there would be widespread adoption of social distancing restrictions in the U.S. Once it became clear that wasn't happening, the modeling team went back to the drawing board, releasing a new version on May 4.

It now uses mobility data gleaned from cell phone usage to better understand how well people are complying with the expert advice.

As a result, that model's projection for the total U.S. death toll by August 4 from COVID-19 instantly went from about 72,000 to 134,000.

DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY: It's sensible to try to look at a wide array of models and try to look at how -- do they tell you the same story?

Are they converging?

It's very confusing, I think, for many decision-makers to navigate through some of the models.

MAN: We're going to start off with this weekend.

MILES O'BRIEN: Weather forecasters are some of the most adept at navigating the inherent uncertainties of modeling.

MAN: Going to have some travel problems if...

MILES O'BRIEN: After all, it's been 70 years since they first ran a model through a computer to create a forecast.

It's been steady improvement ever since.

It's now possible to reliably forecast seven days in advance with 80 percent accuracy.

But, with a novel virus, there are so many unknowns.

And weather models do not have to account for human behavior.

Marshall Shepherd is director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia.

MARSHALL SHEPHERD, Atmospheric Sciences Program Director, University of Georgia: It's very important, when consuming these coronavirus models and weather models, to consume the uncertainty that we know is inherent.

But we have a way to get around that in weather called ensemble modeling.

MILES O'BRIEN: Ensemble modeling, meaning combining the predictions of many different models, it's a crucial tool that has greatly improved forecasting the weather and, in the past three years, seasonal influenza as well.

Nick Reich is an associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he leads a team that builds ensemble models to improve predictions of the spread of the flu.

NICK REICH, University of Massachusetts-Amherst: I don't think any one model should be viewed as gospel truth.

When you just use one model, you end up with a too strong reliance on one particular set of assumptions and one particular viewpoint.

And this is why it's really critical to consider multiple models together.

MILES O'BRIEN: The influenza models are informed by up to 20 years of experience with the viruses and the accuracy of the models.

Reich and his team have now built a COVID-19 ensemble model.

But it, of course, does not have the benefits of a long backstory.

NICK REICH: We do have hundreds of years of theory about how to build mathematical models of infectious disease, but have they ever been tested in real time in this way, with all of the data sources that are available to us?

No.

We're building this car as it's careening down the highway, and we're learning about these models as we go.

MILES O'BRIEN: Infectious disease modelers are scrambling to figure out where we are headed, depending on the decisions we make.

If we take the time to better understand what the models can and cannot do, maybe we will do the same as we search for the path back to normalcy.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Throughout this entire crisis, questions continue to be raised about why the U.S. government was not better prepared for such a challenge.

As William Brangham tells us, those questions include how the Trump administration views the role of government and civil service broadly.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right, Judy.

Most people would agree that the scale and speed of this pandemic would have taxed the resources and abilities of any administration and of any president.

But the Trump administration's response has certainly come under some intense scrutiny.

Let's turn now to two writers who have looked at this response closely.

Yuval Levin is the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

He's the author of "A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream."

And George Packer's recent articles in "The Atlantic" look at the Trump administration's response to this crisis.

He is also author of a recent book on the diplomat Richard Holbrooke and, before that, author of "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America," among other books.

Gentlemen, thank you both very much for being here.

George Packer, to you first.

You have written that the seeds of the administration's response were in some ways predictable, given the way the administration viewed the role of the government preceding this crisis.

Can you explain that a little bit more?

GEORGE PACKER, "The Atlantic": I think Trump spent the first three years of his administration almost in combat with his own government, his own bureaucracy, rooting out people he perceived as disloyal, placing cronies and sycophants in key political jobs, and creating an atmosphere of fear and of chill among the career civil service, so that, by the time the pandemic came, there was a kind of passivity and even absenteeism in big, important areas of the federal government that Trump had seen as serving no purpose, beyond his own personal political interests.

And so once he needed a bureaucracy to do things in order to keep the country safe, to protect us, it wasn't there.

Either people - - jobs were unfilled or people were, in a sense, hiding under their desks because they knew that, if they said something Trump didn't like, he would come after them.

And that's been happening throughout the pandemic.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Yuval Levin, the same question to you.

You have written also that there has been certainly a denigration of expertise and a somewhat chaotic decision-making process within the White House.

Do you think that that has also affected the pandemic response?

YUVAL LEVIN, American Enterprise Institute: I do.

I agree with what George has said.

And I think the way that he's it in his recent pieces in "The Atlantic" has been quite right.

But I would focus particularly on the White House staff and the team around the president, which expresses the president's own attitude about the relationship he should have to the rest of the government.

The White House staff is there to enable the president to receive information in the form of decisions to be made and to process it, to listen to expertise, to make decisions.

And the fact is, that process has never existed in this White House.

There has never been a functional structure of decision-making.

That's a problem at any time, but it becomes an enormous problem at a moment of crisis, when you have to have a reliable chain of command, you have to have a reliable process for making decisions, you have to have distinctions between what's said in public and what is said in private, and how the president thinks about his task of communicating to the public in a reassuring way.

None of that, none, is happening in an effective way in this administration.

And what you're finding is a president whose understanding of the job has not been formed by any experience at any level in government.

For the first time in our history, we have a president who has not served either as a senior military officer or as a senior public official before becoming president.

Instead, he comes into the job as a performer, and he sees himself in the job as a public performer putting on a show.

And the fact, is in a crisis, the president has to be an inside player, where he has to be making decisions and operating the arms of the government from within.

This president just has no conception of how that is supposed to work, no trust in the rest of the system.

And in a time of pressure and crisis, it shows.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: George, you and Yuval are making this same point, but devil's advocate here.

We have seen other crises affect other administrations where they have been caught flat-footed.

We saw it in Katrina, after 9/11, even in the initial stages of the housing crisis.

Isn't some flat-footedness, isn't some initial chaos and confusion to be expected, especially when this virus really does, in some ways, trump the severity of those other crises?

GEORGE PACKER: Yes, that's true.

And in other countries that we look to as examples of well-functioning democracies in Europe and in Asia, even the ones that seem to have done well, Germany, South Korea, they have made mistakes.

Others, Spain and Italy, have seen results that have been as bad as or worse than ours.

I think the difference is what you Yuval was just describing, which is that these are the kind of unavoidable blunders of big, unwieldy governments faced with something that very few governments plan for, anticipate and are ready for.

And very few politicians have the courage and foresight to get out ahead of facts and listen to their scientists and their experts, and do things the public may not like even before the public knows they're doing them.

What we see in this case, in Trump's case, is a White House that has continually undermined its own administration's response at every step of the way.

It's as if, at every moment, when the question was, what is the best way to get out ahead of this and minimize suffering and death, Trump has done the opposite.

And that's -- I don't know if that's true in any other country in the world, and that's a direct result of his idea of what it means to be president, which I think, in his case, is -- that means to use power to serve his own interests, not to lead the country, not to solve the country's problems, certainly not to bring the country together, instead, to divide us in his own interests.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Yuval, picking up on George's point here, it has been brought up several times that, if the president really does see this as primarily a political issue to solve, not a public health one, one could argue that the president should have used all the levers at his power in the federal government to ramp up testing, to deal with the shortages of protective supplies.

Why do you think that the president seemingly was reluctant to use the levers of government, if one could argue those might have saved lives and those might have then strengthened his electoral chances in November?

YUVAL LEVIN: Yes, I think reluctance ends up just not being quite the right term here.

I think the president has turned out to be incapable of using the levers of power in an effective way.

There's no question, as you suggest, and as George says, that this is a crisis that would have overwhelmed any government and that has overwhelmed many governments.

The question is, how do you learn from mistakes in your response?

How do you mobilize over time?

That our government wasn't prepared for this in advance is not an indictment.

But that we have not learned from mistakes over two and three months, that we are still basically in the same place we were in terms of our capacity to establish a process for decision-making that helps us improve over time is the fault of the senior executives in the Trump administration.

There's no way around it.

Our country has done some things very well.

I think the health system handled this OK.

The American public has been willing to make tremendous sacrifices.

Many governors have stepped up.

Some federal officials have stepped up.

But the president has a distinct role here, a coordinating and reassuring role, that he has simply failed to perform.

And I don't think that that's a decision he's made.

I think that's just an incapacity that's been revealed and which, of course, was evident in some respects before, but becomes especially problematic in a moment of crisis like this.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, really interesting conversation.

Yuval Levin, George Packer, thank you both very much for being here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Truck drivers are on the front lines of the pandemic, facing lower pay these days and higher risks, as they deliver much-needed food and supplies.

Tonight's Brief But Spectacular features Kansas city-based husband and wife truckers Chante and Ron Drew.

After Ron began experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 last month, producer Steve Goldbloom conducted a series of interviews with the couple over the course of several weeks.

CHANTE DREW, Truck Driver: Ron and I are a married couple.

We drive a team freight across the country.

We haul a lot of groceries, a lot of produce, a lot of meats, things like that.

RON DREW, Truck Driver: Truck drivers, we have always been kind of like -- we don't get a lot of respect.

We're kind of looked down upon.

But people saw how crazy things got when their toilet paper ran out.

Can you imagine if you go to the grocery store and there's no food in there?

I don't know why they're not making more of an effort to get personal equipment for drivers.

You need us to run, so you can have food.

We have got two beds.

The bottom bed, we leave as a table, so we have some place to sit and eat.

CHANTE DREW: When I'm driving, he's sleeping, and when he's sleeping, I'm driving.

RON DREW: I first started experiencing symptoms when I was in Phoenix last week, mostly like body aches, hurting in my knees, hurt in my elbows.

My fever would just spike.

And I just start just aching and aching.

CHANTE DREW: Hot, cold chills.

RON DREW: Hot, cold chills.

But I trooped it out, got her done.

CHANTE DREW: And then we just went today to get his test, finally.

RON DREW: You had to crack your window down, and then they just squeegee your sinuses.

CHANTE DREW: I figured, since -- if Ron's positive, obviously, I will be positive as well.

So, we figure, save the testing for somebody else.

We have both got it, probably.

RON DREW: Hopefully, we will know by Wednesday at the latest.

I feel horrible.

Since Saturday, I have not been able to get really out of bed for anything.

I have dropped about 30 pounds.

I have never experienced anything like this, where you just -- you sleep constantly.

CHANTE DREW: We got Ron's COVID test back, and it was positive.

I opted at first not to get tested.

I figured I'm probably positive.

But then, after talking to the nurse, she said, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and get tested.

I'm not showing too many symptoms, other than just being extremely fatigued.

I'm pretty sure that I will test positive.

We have been in contact with the company that we are leasing a truck from, and they have suspended our truck payments for as long as needed.

We're probably going to go lay down right now and just rest and recover and hope and pray that nobody else has to go through this.

I was tested for COVID.

I tested negative.

Our doctor and the health department both told us to go ahead and assume that I had it, since I had all the same symptoms as Ron.

The doctor told me that they're getting a lot of false negatives, just with the way that a lot of the people are doing the swab testing.

But we have been slowly recovering.

RON DREW: One morning you wake up, you feel great.

You go outside, just do a couple things, and next thing you know, you're winded, you're in bed, you're sleeping again for 12 hours straight during the day.

Almost 20 -- 22 days, we have been off work.

We got turned on to a resource called St. Christopher's Fund, which is for truck drivers.

And they ended up making our rent payment for the month.

CHANTE DREW: That was huge.

RON DREW: Which helped a ton.

Luckily for us, the company we drive for, they got freight right now.

CHANTE DREW: I'm glad our first trip is going out to Seattle.

It's always fun going out that way.

RON DREW: I just wanted to get back out and get moving.

CHANTE DREW: Get the wind in your hair, and get the dogs back out at the rest areas, and do what we do best.

(LAUGHTER) RON DREW: This thing is no joke.

Like, your lung capacity doesn't come back up right away.

You still can't taste or smell for God knows how long this is going to be.

I still get pain in my knees that I didn't have before.

Just don't brush it off and thinking, oh, 99 percent of us are going to get well.

Well, you're not going to get 100 percent well.

CHANTE DREW: My advice would be to have compassion for each other, and quit trying to hurry the process of getting back out there and getting back to work, because it'll happen.

It's just you have got to listen to the experts.

Before the pandemic, I think a lot of people didn't realize where their food came from.

We have heard friends that have seen signs that people are saying, we love truck drivers.

Truck drivers have never asked for hazard pay.

You know, in fact, our rates have gone down since the pandemic started.

So, we're making less overall than when this first started.

And we just want to still be able to do our jobs.

And I just hope that people don't forget about it as time goes on.

My name is Chante Drew.

RON DREW: My name is Ron Drew.

CHANTE DREW: And this is our Brief But Spectacular take on living through COVID-19.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And here at the "NewsHour," we love truck drivers.

And thank you, Chante and Ron.

We're so glad you're better.

And you can find all of our Brief But Spectacular segments online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

And online, a new "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll out today finds that shows sharp partisan divides over how long it will take for daily life to return to a sense of normal.

You can read more on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.

And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Join us online and again here tomorrow evening.

For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon.