| The Coronavirus briefing
President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza spoke to the press at length on Thursday afternoon on the subject of the economy, the stimulus, and the checks being sent to individual taxpayers.
[Watch the briefing here]
After CNN, citing a memo from House Democrats, reported that some Americans could be waiting months for their checks from the CARE Act, Mnuchin was asked about timeframes during the briefing.
"That is not going to take five weeks," he said. "I am assuring the American public, they need the money now. What we're going to do is, again, if we have your information, you'll get it within two weeks."
Asked about people who don't have their info on file can still add their direct deposit information and get the money quickly. "This money does people no good if it shows up in four months, and we will deliver on that promise."
The president also took time in the briefing to say "witch hunt" a bunch. So there's that. 1 Million The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has now topped the 1 million mark. According to Johns Hopkins University, the threshold was crossed earlier on Thursday. The United States has more than double the cases of any other nation — with more than 236,000 as of this writing. Italy has the next most with more than 115,000. Spain is next, with more than 110,000. 74 professors Seventy-four communications and journalism professors signed an open letter to the heads of Fox News accusing the network of spreading misinformation on the coronavirus amid the global pandemic. The letter was addressed to both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch,
You don't say! China lied about a number of aspects of the coronavirus pandemic, and hid the true number of cases they faced, which led many observers to exclaim, in varying degrees of their own words, "well, duh."
The primary shall go on ... and on The Democratic National Committee has announced that they will postpone their 2020 presidential convention in Milwaukee, WI, until mid-August in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Don't breathe too much In a letter to the White House, Dr. Harvey Fineberg, who chairs the National Academy of Sciences’ Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, wrote that, regarding “the possibility that [coronavirus] could be spread by conversation, in addition to sneeze/cough-induced droplets,” the current research “supports the possibility that [coronavirus] could be spread via bioaerosols generated directly by patients’ exhalation.” HEY! That's... actually, that's a good question "Do you think perhaps, even though you don’t know for sure, politics is playing a role in this? The fact that the president thought he could be optimistic on it, did that actually bring politics into this and is this cure not moving forward because people don’t like the president?”
That's a question that Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Dr. Mehmet Oz on Thursday morning, on the topic of hydroxychloroquine.
Talking up the drug's potential as a cure has had ill consequences for some on Twitter, despite reportedly promising results and even first-hand accounts. Kilmeade's question should be asked by other outlets, too. It's rather important to know that information about Covid-19 is being treated with objectivity.
FOX News and Facebook virtual town hall Moderated by FNC’s Martha MacCallum, Fox is airing a virtual town hall tonight, which will feature a joint donation of $1 million to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund. The event will be available on the Fox Facebook page.
The tech is in keeping with the national mitigation measures of social distancing and, in many locales, stay at home orders, as they explain in the press release:
Facebook shipped each audience member a Portal device to allow guests to virtually attend and participate by asking the experts, including White House coronavirus task force members Dr. Deborah Birx and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, questions about the pandemic. That's pretty cool, actually. | 
