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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
5 Million. That’s the number of COVID-19 cases surpassed worldwide as of today. The U.S. has recorded more than 1.55 million confirmed infections and the death toll there has passed 93,400, according to Johns Hopkins. Globally, more than 328,000 people have died.
Central Michigan dealing with massive flooding. Residents were ordered to evacuate from several cities in central Michigan, as rising floodwaters overwhelmed two dams near Midland, a city of 43,000 on the Tittabawassee River. You can find live updates at CNN.
Hundreds of thousands of self-employed workers receive unemployment. They don’t show up in federal unemployment reports but state data shows the impact they’ve had. Arizona mailed out unemployment checks to 165,000 self-employed individuals, while New Jersey processed 135,000 such applications.
36,000 lives could have been saved with a week earlier lockdown, model shows. According to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers, just one week earlier lockdown would have prevented a significant number of deaths. Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth, which by April had subsumed New York City, New Orleans and other major cities, the researchers found.
Super-cyclone Amphan slams into Bangladesh. The most powerful cyclone to hit Bangladesh and eastern India in more than 20 years tore down homes, carried cars down flooded streets and claimed the lives of up to 20 people. Looming for the U.S. is the expectation of an unusually active hurricane season beginning June 1st, which could complicate COVID-19 relief efforts.
WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO
THE COMMENT
“Often, it has been difficult for Black people to control journalistic narratives about our own lives and deaths. The Black press has done an effective job documenting cases of violence against Black people, even when the names of victims don’t rise to national prominence. But as newsrooms have integrated, the reach of the Black press has diminished; the stories they publish are seen by a decreasing number of readers. The dominant storylines are the ones that shock people on social media; eventually, the general public moves on and the consequences of trauma inflicted on Black people retreats back to the corners where it has always been.” - Alexandria Neason
THE STRANGEST
THE AV ROOM