US Cases: 7,045,170*
US Deaths: 196,562*
Worldwide Cases: 32,747,374*
Worldwide Deaths: 992,984*
* - Numbers are a lower bound. True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration
I've been writing about #COVID19 for 200 days now. Back when I started, I thought --- naively, I now realize --- that these daily updates would become irrelevant sometime around the start of August. What is positively stunning is that, as far as the news media is concerned, the coronavirus IS irrelevant.
Stop and think for minute. In 200 days, nearly 200,000 people have died in America (over 200,000, if you use the numbers from Johns Hopkins). That's an average of 1,000 people a day, every day, for more than half a year. It is projected to be the third leading cause of death in America in 2020. There's no end in sight, and people who actually know about such things are predicting it will only get worse through the winter.
And yes, there's an election in just over 5 weeks. But the devastation caused by the virus, and Trump's heinous malfeasance, should play a major role in election coverage. Less than 3 weeks ago, Bob Woodward dropped a bombshell when he released recordings of Trump acknowledging the dangers of the virus back in February, even though he has spent the past 7 months comparing it to the common flu, calling it a hoax, refusing to wear a mask and so on.
In a functioning democracy, Trump wouldn't even be president any more. But not only is he still in office, and not only has the media dropped Woodward's bombshell --- they've dropped the coronavirus altogether.
(So a bit of inside baseball on how I make my sausage. Typically, I will run across a story during the day which I think will be good to write about. On the rare days when that doesn't happen, I go check my trusted news sources --- first Talking Points Memo, then Vox, and then CNN as a last resort).
Here is a screen shot of the CNN home page just a few minutes ago:
It is utterly flabbergasting.
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