Stranger Than Fiction

You can support my newsletter using PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, or purchase a subscription on Substack.Don’t forget to join us in the Stranger Slack for access to source documents and a running feed of news throughout the day.

TOP NEWS

• Trump’s Health and Human Services Chief Alex Azar was slow to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Azar waited 8 days after the first reported COVID-19 death to brief the president and told him that COVID-19 was under control. He said millions of tests would be available in weeks. None of that happened.

• COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes have surpassed 10,000. That number accounts for over 1 in 5 COVID deaths in the U.S. Some states still haven’t reported data on deaths in such facilities, including Ohio and Washington, but a Wall Street Journal survey has found at least 10,700 fatalities among more than 35 states that either report data online or responded to requests for information.

• Virus chief ousted for defying Trump on unproven treatment for COVID-19. A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services says he was ousted from his job this week for pushing back on demands that he sign off on a coronavirus treatment the president had advocated. "Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the Administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit. While I am prepared to look at all options and to think 'outside the box' for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public,"

• Eighty-eight percent of the 320 COVID-19 patients on ventilators who were tracked in a study died. That compares with the roughly 80 percent of patients who died on ventilators before the pandemic, according to previous studies — and with the roughly 50 percent death rate some critical care doctors had optimistically hoped when the first cases were diagnosed.

WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO

• A day in the life of a doctor treating homeless people in the age of COVID

• 5 models on what the next month might look like for COVID-19

• NYC council wants to open miles of streets to pedestrians for social distancing

• Virus puts Trump on his heels in key electoral states

• A document of the different ways humans are adapting and reacting during the crisis.

• What air travel could look like in a post-COVID world

THE COMMENT

"I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit. I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way," Dr. Rick Bright said Wednesday in a statement issued by his lawyers.

THE STRANGEST

• Peace N Peas Farm charges $50 to have one of its animals liven up a tedious virtual meetings.

THE AV ROOM