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Stranger Than Fiction
A brief daily note of things you might find interesting or useful
I’ll be sharing stories from doctors, nurses and other medical workers who are on the frontlines of COVID-19. You can read them here. The article will continue to be updated with new stories. If you know frontline workers who would like to be included, let me know.
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TOP NEWS
WHO provided real-time updates to U.S. officials about the spread of COVID-19, undercutting President Trump’s assertion that WHO’s failed to communicate the extent of the threat. More than a dozen U.S. officials were working full-time at WHO’s Geneva headquarters as COVID-19 emerged last year.
Labs cannot get the proper equipment needed to get fast, widespread testing necessary to reopen businesses in America. According to a top Trump admin official testing through April will only meet about half the capacity that is needed. Trump said he would use the Defense Production Act to increase production of hard to find swabs. Ralph Northam of Virginia told CNN on that claims by Trump that states have plenty of tests were “just delusional”
Lawmakers were close to a deal on Sunday to replenish the small-business aid program. The program ran out of funding last week.
Hospitalizations in New York fell below 17,000. The U.S. has 235,000 reported coronavirus cases and the death toll is nearly 38,000, the global deaths have surpassed 157,000. The daily number of new cases in the U.S. has yet to fall below 25,000 since the beginning of April.
Nearly 6 in 10 Americans fear reopening the country too soon. A WSJ/NBC News poll showed more than three-quarters said the outbreak had changed their lives in major ways.
Trump Admin has ordered more than $110 mil of N95 masks at high prices from unproven vendors. Some have missed delivery deadlines. One vendor's owners have been accused of fraud in multiple civil suits.
WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO
THE COMMENT
“It is a little bit insane. Everyone is running around trying to get as much as they can from every vendor,” said David Grenache, the lab director at TriCore Reference Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. “Laboratories are competing with each other to get needed resources,” he said, and often coming up short.
THE STRANGEST
THE AV ROOM