Even without the daily COVID Taskforce presser, we get notable pieces of disinformation, such as VP Pence not wearing a mask at the Mayo Clinic, and Trump trying to bypass the WH press corps with a surprise press conference at 3 pm. Trump did repeat his usual misinforming claims about numbers as case numbers reached one million and the death toll exceeds that of US deaths in the Vietnam War.
“Without national unity and global solidarity, trust us, the worst is yet ahead of us,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Let's prevent this tragedy. It's a virus that many people still don't understand.”
[…]
Tedros didn't go into details about what could lie ahead, but he did point to politics as a reason for potentially worsening conditions.
“It's the political problem that may fuel further this pandemic,” Tedros said.
Pushing politics amid the pandemic “is like playing with fire,” he added.
In order to be on track for ~73,000 US coronavirus deaths by August in the latest University of Washington model cited by the White House, the model would expect 57,351 total US deaths as of today. The current death count is 58,356.
For weeks, Trump's daily briefing traced coronavirus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.
Tyranny is the government telling you you can't go to a hair salon because there's a plague.
Freedom, on the other hand, is the government telling you you have to go back to work at your plague-stricken pork processing plant alongside workers who might be sick.
RED states. The ten poorest states are all RED states. The top blue states–CA, NY, NJ and PA–provide more than HALF the US economic base. Someone explain balance sheets to this dullard.
There’s data on the flu. It was declining rapidly as the season was ending. Then there is a huge spike up. Those are all Covid visits to the ED. pic.twitter.com/hRYQyzvp8y
We are doing far more, and better, Testing than any other country in the world, and yet the media does nothing but complain. No matter how good a job is done, the same as with the Ventilators, they will never say we are doing a great job, they will only viciously gripe!
The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!
Every day — sometimes every hour — there’s some new craziness to distract us.
Here is Trump suggesting that ingesting disinfectants may cure the coronavirus. Here he is trashing reporters on Twitter who won Pulitzer Prizes by talking about revoking their Nobel Prizes — but misspelling it as “Noble.” Here he is claiming he will somehow punish reporters by not having his near-daily briefings — and then changing his mind, as apress aide quips that reporters should be kept on their toes.
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But in the big picture and as a whole, we’ve never quite figured out how to cover Trump for the good of citizens. We’ve never really fully changed gears despite Trump’s constant, norm-busting behavior. Determined to do our jobs — dutifully covering the most powerful person in the world — we keep coming back for more:
Beat reporters file into the briefing room, sometimes to be publicly insulted and disparaged as “fake news” or “a terrible reporter.”
[…]
Someday, we’ll get some perspective on how the press has contributed to this mess — just as we can now look back on the news coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War and clearly see the sins committed then by most of Big Journalism: the shameful lack of skepticism, the foolish granting of anonymity to deceptive and self-interested sources.
When we have that distance, what I suspect we’ll see is a candidate and a president who played the media like a puppet while deeply damaging the public’s trust in the press as a democratic institution. Someone who dazzled us with his show, while acting constantly in his own self-interest as we willingly — almost helplessly — magnified his message.
We’ll figure out what happened and why. And we’ll know what to call it. But it won’t be “winning.”
“Show Trump as he is, in all of his contradictions and incoherence,” argues @OliviaNuzzi. “The American people can handle it — they may just not want to.” https://t.co/COGjKLIO6Y
Anthony Fauci told CNN today that every American who needs a coronavirus test should be able to get one by the end of May or beginning of June.https://t.co/JpEfx7Iobn
Pamela Karlan: “What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll… send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.†pic.twitter.com/J96FY30k3y
NEW: Everything you ever wanted to know about antibody studies and what they can tell us about the #coronavirus.
All the answers to your burning questions: Are we close to herd immunity? Does this mean it's actually like the flu? Spoilers: No and no.https://t.co/UOIpN4aCkW
