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Stranger Than Fiction
A brief daily note of things you might find interesting or useful
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TOP NEWS
Rikers Island is one of the most infected COVID-19 workplaces in the country. More than 800 city correction employees have tested positive and eight have died. Their union says that 70% to 80% of the cases in the correctional system of New York are at Rikers. Including inmates, there have been 10 deaths and more than 1,200 confirmed cases in the city’s jails.
The Senate passed a $484 billion stimulus package to send fresh aid to small businesses and hospitals. Funding to ramp up testing for COVID-19 is also included. Democrats sought funds for hard-hit state and local budgets but that was pushed off to be negotiated in future stimulus packages. Aid to hospitals has been delayed, despite $70 billion allocated by previous stimulus packages.
The earliest known death by COVID-19 in the U.S. was earlier than previously thought. A medical examiner for Santa Clara, California revealed two people who died in their homes in early February were infected with COVID-19, that was weeks earlier than the first previously recorded death in Seattle.
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is now over 45,000. New coronavirus cases in the U.S. rose past 825,000. Globally, the virus has infected more than 2.56 million people and claimed more than 177,000 lives, according to Johns Hopkins.
U.S. intelligence assessed that Chinese operatives pushed COVID-19 disinformation in the U.S. The amplification techniques included texts sent to Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before.
WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO
THE COMMENT
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”
“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said.
THE STRANGEST
THE AV ROOM