WTF Just Happened Today

Thursday, March 5, 2020

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1/ The Trump administration won’t meet its promised timeline of having a million coronavirus tests available by the end of the week. Lawmakers said the government is “in the process” of sending test kits out and that people will then need to be trained on how to use them, saying that the process could take days or weeks. Earlier this week, the FDA said the U.S. would have the “capacity” to perform up to 1 million tests by the end of this week, which was backed up by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Mike Pence also said that 1.5 million tests would be going out. The Senate, meanwhile, passed an $8.3 billion emergency funding bill to fight the coronavirus. The package will be sent to the White House for Trump’s signature after passing the House yesterday. (Bloomberg / Politico / CNBC / CNN)

• Patients in 18 states have tested positive or are presumptively positive for coronavirus. Officials in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas said they had identified new cases in the last 24 hours. At least 162 people nationwide have been infected. (The Hill / The Nevada Independent)

• COVID-19 cases in New York doubled overnight to 22 state-wide. At least eight of the new cases are connected to a lawyer from Westchester. Two of the new cases are in New York City and one is in Long Island. (CNBC)

• The Dow closed down 3.5%, the S&P 500 dropped 3.3%, and the Nasdaq fell 3.1% on fears that the coronavirus will disrupt the global economy. (Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / CNBC / New York Times / Washington Post)

2/ A State Department official blamed Russia for “swarms of online, false personas” spreading misinformation about coronavirus on social media, saying the “entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation is at play.” Lea Gabrielle, the coordinator of the government’s Global Engagement Center, testified to Congress that Russian actors using “state proxy websites,” official state-owned media, and fake accounts online were part of an effort to “take advantage of a health crisis, where people are terrified worldwide, to try to advance their priorities.” A Global Engagement Center report last week revealed nearly 2 million tweets over a three-week period that pushed coronavirus-related conspiracies. (Washington Post /