WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

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• Daily Damage Report.

• Global: Total confirmed cases ~1,979,000; Total deaths: ~125,200; Total recoveries: ~471,000. (Johns Hopkins University)

• U.S.: Total confirmed cases ~599,000; Total deaths: ~25,200; Total recoveries: ~45,000

• Markets: Dow ????; S&P 500 ????; Nasdaq ????

• Live Blogs: New York Times / Washington Post / NBC News / CNN / ABC News / CBS News / The Guardian / NPR

• ✏️ Our Pandemic Summer: The fight against the coronavirus won’t be over when the U.S. reopens. Here’s how the nation must prepare itself. (The Atlantic)

• ✏️ Coronavirus distancing may need to continue until 2022, say experts. Scientists say one-time lockdown will not bring pandemic under control. (The Guardian)

1/ YESTERDAY: Trump interrupted the daily coronavirus task force briefing to play a heavily-edited, campaign-style highlight reel of video clips and soundbites praising himself and the steps his administration has taken to combat the virus over the last four months. “Everything we did was right,” Trump said, while calling the New York Times a “fake newspaper.” Trump prefaced the video as his response to a recent report in the Times that revealed he wasted several weeks doing nothing to prevent the spread of the virus throughout the U.S., despite several warnings and calls to action from senior U.S. officials and public health experts. While the video played, Trump grinned and pointed to the screen when he saw clips of himself speaking. At one point Trump paused to boast, “But I guess I’m doing okay because, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States, despite the things that are said.” CNN stopped its live coverage of the briefing and accused Trump of playing “a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room.” The briefing began with Trump turning to Dr. Anthony Fauci and asking him to “say a few words before we go any further.” Fauci offered a not-quite-apology for confirming the report that he and other health experts had made mitigation recommendations to Trump as early as the third weekend of February and said that earlier mitigation “could have saved lives.” (