WTF Community

Day 1364

General Discussion
#1

1/ U.S. coronavirus cases are rising again. In 46 states and Washington DC, the seven-day average of new coronavirus cases is up 46.5% in the past month, while tests are up 28.9%. Nationwide, the seven-day average as of Tuesday was 51,027 – the highest since Aug. 16. More than 20 states have hit a new high in their seven-day average of case counts in the past week, and more than half of those states also set new records again on Tuesday. Overall deaths in the United States during the pandemic are more than 85% higher than in 18 other high-income countries, such as Germany, Israel, and Denmark after adjusting for population size. Deaths in the U.S. are 29% higher than in Sweden, which never ordered strict social distancing and never went in to a full lockdown. (Bloomberg / NPR / Washington Post)

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2020/10/14/day-1364/
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#2

There’s a big turnout of voters in lines and mail-in for the country. 20 days and counting.

As voters turn out in record numbers to choose between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Americans continued to endure hours-long waits to vote early.

A record of 14 million Americans have already voted in the general election, according to an analysis of voting information from the US Elections Project. In key swing states such as Florida more than 2 million voters have already cast their ballots.

“The numbers are pretty staggering for us and the return rates and the polling look good,” Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida, told Politico. “But there’s just a lot we don’t know.”

In Georgia, residents waited for as long as eight hours to exercise their democratic right. Many took to social media to share their experiences with early voting, noting lines of voters spanning several city blocks or school parking lots.

Political analyst Roland Martin was moved to tears as dozens of voters lined the exterior of a voting center located at a Texas church.

“I’m a grown man, but I have no problem showing this type of emotion because I know what is at stake for our people,” he wrote on Instagram. “I know what Black folks have been through in this country. Voting is not the be-all-to-end-all, but I sure as hell know it is part of the solution”.

As of 10.14.20 - close to 15 million votes

Republicans typically hold a slight edge in absentee ballot returns in Florida elections. But this year, there’s been a stunning development.

For the first time ever at this stage of a general election, Democrats here are outvoting Republicans — and by a mammoth 384,000-vote margin through Tuesday.

T he unprecedented early voting numbers have electrified Democrats in President Donald Trump’s must-win swing state, but Florida campaign veterans warn that it’s too early for the party to celebrate.

“There’s a big wave of Republicans coming. And frankly, that’s a data point that a lot of people tweeting about this fail to realize,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic operative in Florida who heads the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country.

From Tuesday Oct 13, 2020

More than 10.6 million voters across the U.S. have cast their ballots in the November election as of Tuesday morning, according to data from the U.S. Elections Project.

With exactly three weeks until Election Day, early voting turnout in 2020 far outpaces that of 2016.

Democrats are leading the historic surge of early voting, though the project’s director emphasizes that high levels of blue turnout thus far should not be interpreted as an indicator of final election results.

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#3

This story reflects how selective the WH was telling those who needed to know about the upcoming spread of virus in Feb 2020, before it got bad. In a gathering for the conservative group - Hoover Institute to top financial leaders and hedge fund market executives, Larry Kudlow warned them of pending problems for the country, even if to the US families the WH kept downgrading the pending threat.

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”

But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.

The next day, board members — many of them Republican donors — got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know,” according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.

The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover’s board, was stark. “What struck me,” the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world. U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.

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#4

October 15, 2020

In the last day of ACB’s hearings, here are some summary points as to the unfairness and wrong timing of this deliberations. The votes are there for ACB…so these seem like moot issues.

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#5

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