WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

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• ???? Dept. of “We Have It Totally Under Control.”

• Global: Total confirmed cases: ~23,742,000; deaths: ~816,000

• U.S.: Total confirmed cases: ~5,770,000; deaths: ~179,000

• Source: Johns Hopkins University

• COVID-19 Live Blogs: CNN / Washington Post / New York Times

• ???? RNC Fact Checks: CNN / NBC News / Washington Post / New York Times

• ???? RNC Night 1 Recaps: Wall Street Journal / CNN / NBC News / Politico / New York Times

• ???? How To Vote In The 2020 Election In Every State. Everything you need to know about mail-in and early in-person voting in every state in the age of COVID-19, including the first day you can cast your ballot in the 2020 election. (FiveThirtyEight / NBC News / Wall Street Journal)

1/ The FDA “grossly misrepresented data” about the use of blood plasma therapy to treat coronavirus patients, according to the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh. Trump, Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, announced the emergency approval of convalescent plasma, claiming that it would reduce coronavirus deaths by 35% this year. Experts and scientists, however, say the way the administration framed the data is misleading and don’t know exactly where the statistic came from. The data may have been calculated based on a small subgroup of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a Mayo Clinic study, but does not appear in the official authorization letter issued by the FDA, nor was it in a memo written by FDA scientists. (New York Times)

2/ FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn apologized for overstating the benefits of treating COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma. While the therapy is considered safe, plasma has not yet been proven effective against the coronavirus. Hahn did not dispute Trump’s assessment that plasma is a “very effective” treatment at a news conference, but distorted the findings from a Mayo Clinic study when he said “if you are one of those 35 out of 100 people who these ...

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