What A Day - Class Of Covid-19

Episode Date: September 1, 2020

Joe Biden spoke in Pennsylvania yesterday, where he condemned violence of any kind at recent protests. Trump spoke at the White House yesterday, where he declined to tamp down violence among his supporters and suggested instead that Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old Wisconsin shooter, had acted in self-defense. Coronavirus outbreaks are continuing to pop up at colleges and universities in the US as the fall semester starts. Bars have been ordered closed in Alabama and Iowa after hundreds of students tested positive, and other schools are weighing the decision of whether to send students home if there are cases on campus. For more on schools, check out this week's episode of Hysteria: Crooked.com/HysteriaAnd in headlines: New York City will pay $5.9 million to the family of Layleen Polanco, Lebanon has chosen its designated Prime Minister, and Trump and his allies “fix it in post.”

It's Tuesday, September 1st. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Erin Ryan, in for Akilah Hughes, who comes back tomorrow. And this is What A Day, where we are asking Dunkin' Donuts again to sponsor us in honor of the Massachusetts primary today. I'm sorry, I am from a caribou coffee household, and I cannot read the script that was given to me. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be handling the rest of the show today. So, you know, send your complaints elsewhere. On today's show, COVID outbreaks on college campuses, then some headlines.

But first, the latest. We have to build. This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can't stop the violence because for years he's fomented it. You know, he may believe mouthing the words law and order makes him strong. But his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is. Harsh words from Joe Biden in Pittsburgh yesterday, pointing out that maybe the best person to solve the problems isn't the person who helped cause the problems. Right. So we haven't talked a ton about how Biden has responded to the recent police shootings, protests and counter protests. Yesterday, he made this big speech and it seemed to address

nervous Democrats and pundits concerned that the president was getting through with a message about protests in American cities. Biden clarified that he's not a radical socialist and is not in favor of defunding the police. I think most people that are not on the right know that that's true, but wanted an America safe from overlapping crises. He also condemned police violence. And on the protests, he said, quote, rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting and, quote, it's lawlessness, plain and simple. Of course, that didn't stop the Trump campaign from claiming that Biden didn't condemn the, quote, left wing mobs responsible for property damage in Kenosha.

Just a quick reminder, two human beings are dead and two more were shot. And none of the perpetrators of that violence against human beings were, quote, left wing mobs. The Trump administration's campaign strategy seems to be, you think this is bad? Imagine it worse. It's like if I pushed you down some stairs, Gideon, and then claimed that I was the only one qualified to put your broken arm in a cast. You've done it before, and I'm afraid you will again, quite frankly. But Aaron, there's been a lot of rhetoric from these campaigns and from other elected officials about our broken system that we live in. But let's actually talk about what, if anything, is being done right now.

It's mostly just talk for now. President Trump still plans to visit Kenosha, Wisconsin today against state and local government wishes. If he does follow through on this talk with an action, it'll be one that is almost guaranteed to make things more difficult for a grieving city and state. Also in Wisconsin, in terms of lack of action, the Republican-controlled state legislature finally gathered for a session on police reform yesterday at the urging of the Democratic governor. It lasted mere seconds before it was adjourned, so a standstill in my home state

and embarrassing place to be from, Wisconsin, at the moment. But Erin, let's check in on a state that doesn't have to deal with a Republican legislature. You'd think there'd be more success reigning in dangerous policing practices there, but not necessarily. Even in democratically controlled woketopia of California, it's a fight. that could potentially come up in the final wee hours would create a process for stripping badges from police officers with records of serious misconduct so they can't hop from department to department after wrongdoing. California is one of a handful of states that does not have a law like that on the books. Activists are pushing for that bill, but police unions have objections to it.

And for what it's worth, police unions contribute thousands of dollars to state lawmakers in California, including Democratic ones. Earlier this year, we saw a few progressive state officials start to reject that money amid the protests, but it's far from a trend right now. That's right. And somewhat less surprising is the lack of success that is on the federal level at the moment. This summer, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have, among other things, ended qualified immunity for police officers. But it's currently somewhere in the giant Scrooge McDuck money bin sized chamber where Mitch McConnell throws all the bills that Congress has passed that will never come up for a vote in the Senate because Mitch McConnell is a hairball that cannot be horked from the throat of American

democracy. Sorry, that's gross. But I wrote that during a hairball horking of a cat. Plus, even if the feds did pass something meaningful, there's no way Trump would sign it. Because like Kellyanne Conway said, first and last time I will quote Kellyanne Conway, the more unrest in America, the better Trump feels his chances are of winning reelection. Yeah. And so to that point and back to rhetoric, yesterday, Kayleigh McEnany was asked whether President Trump condemned the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who shot three protesters and killed two in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She said, quote, the president is not going to weigh in on that. But unfortunately, Trump did weigh in on that later on Monday. He defended Rittenhouse in a press conference at the White House, implying that shooting protesters might

have somehow been in self-defense and that the Portland pro-Trump demonstrators who were shooting paintballs into Black Lives Matter protesters from trucks were also acting in self-defense. What's the opposite of a racist dog whistle? A racist Wilhelm scream? Whatever it is, that's what the president's doing. Doesn't seem like he wants to stop this at all, nor does it seem like anything will change if he does get reelected. Yeah, I personally think he's going to adopt a new tone in 2021. I need a thousand words on that by 8 a.m. tomorrow. I'm going to put it on the website.

Biggest place on the homepage. All right. Got it. Moving on to coronavirus. The United States has now surpassed six million cases of COVID-19. And while new cases in many states with outbreaks throughout the summer have slowed down, like Texas, Florida, and Arizona, the start of the school year at colleges and universities around the country has become a new cause of concern. Yeah, that's right.

So we touched on this a couple of weeks ago when there was an outbreak at the University of North Carolina that caused them to switch from in-person to online classes. And now we have more outbreaks at universities. And this isn have more outbreaks at universities, and this isn't just affecting students. It's also impacting local communities. So, for example, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, all bars have been ordered closed for two weeks since last Monday because there have been an estimated 1,300-plus positive test results

among students, staff, and faculty at the University of Alabama. And right now, Iowa is experiencing a similar problem across multiple universities. At Iowa State University in Ames, there was reported 13.6% positive test rating in the first week of classes, which is quite high. And there were similar problems at the University of Iowa. The Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, ordered bars closed in six nearby counties

for a majority of September. But then in recent days, the White House has recommended that she go much further to close bars in 61 counties, not just six, and test all students who are returning to college, according to the Des Moines Register. So just to give a sense of scale here for the last two weeks, Ames and Iowa City have actually had the highest new case rate in the country, according to a tracker from The New York Times. And yet for now, Iowa State plans to allow 25,000 people to attend its football opener on September 12th.

And I'm going to go ahead and bet that a good 50% of the students currently at Iowa State University would make better governors than Kim Reynolds. Also, when these cases get identified, what is the protocol in terms of keeping students there? It seems like potentially bad news to send them home and just seed outbreaks everywhere. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's a topic of conversation at the moment with some public health officials coming to that conclusion that you're mentioning that it's better to keep the students who test positive on campus, i.e. avoid sparking an outbreak in their hometowns and also making it easier to isolate tests and trace their contacts. According to Bloomberg, schools like UNC, East Carolina University and Towson University in Maryland have already sent students home for remote learning

following outbreaks on their campuses. But in New York, the current plan is that colleges would switch to online learning for two weeks if there is an outbreak, but students would stay exactly where they are. Notre Dame, which is in Indiana, has done something similar and actually is planning to restart classes this week following some cases there. So as an alum of Notre Dame, I'm just going to say that the group text this week has been really lit up with comparisons between the administration and a baby deer on roller skates. They are not handling it well. It is not going well in South Bend, Indiana, unfortunately. So that's a window into where things stand on cases in the country.

But let's get into a little bit more on cases in the country. But let's get into a little bit more on testing vaccines and the White House response. Yeah, so what we're seeing now is a race against time from a lot of companies that are trying to increase the options available in the country as these schools restart and flu season approaches. So that means everything from amping up production of rapid antigen tests that don't have to go to a lab and even some that could detect COVID and flu all in one. Abbott got emergency use authorization from the FDA last week for a test that costs just $5, is about the size of a credit card, and returns results in about 15 minutes. They're hoping to have 50 million of them in October, which would be about double the amount of tests

conducted in July, per the Wall Street Journal. Then on the vaccine front, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn recently raised the possibility of granting an emergency use authorization to a vaccine before phase three trials are done, if that is safe to do so, a considerably large if there. This comes amid criticism of China and Russia for pursuing similar approaches, and on top of concerns about Trump potentially politicizing this entire process, and also not helping Trump's credibility or his administration's at the moment, there was a report from the Washington Post about a new pandemic advisor named Scott Atlas, who has reportedly been pushing a controversial herd immunity approach to the pandemic. Now, it doesn't seem like there's a level of concreteness to any such plan like that at the moment, something that was brought up, we don't really know if it's

actually going to be a thing, but Sweden pursued something similar that didn't help it avoid the worst of COVID's impact on people's lives and the economy. So we'll keep track of all of this in the coming It's Tuesday, WOD Squad, and for today's temp check, we are talking about a special kind of dog in Papua New Guinea. It's called the Highland Wild Dog and also the New Guinea Singing Dog because it sounds like this. That is awesome uh the dog was considered extinct in the wild but a dna study published yesterday in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences showed they still exist in the wild it's considered one of the most ancient dogs on earth and might share a common ancestor with akitas and shiba inus so aaron do we need more singing versions of common animals?

Gideon, that is an inside boy question, because I grew up in a rural area, and I can tell you that most animals that live outside are yelling constantly. There's so many singing animals, and I would never interfere with the singing animals that currently exist. I think the hummingbirds that come to my feeder

sounding like deranged robots that are horny for sugar water. That's fine. It's disruptive to me, but it's fine. But you know, you go into the wild, like bears make a crazy sound. Foxes have their own little sound. You know, coyotes have their own sound

because they're in the city that we both live. Yeah, every animal can sing if you just give it a microphone and a panel of three judges. Yeah, it's true. They just need a little bit of pressure from, you know, like a nice judge, a mean British one, and then, you know, another that is sort of just along for the ride. I think that all of them will find what's theirs, you know. Wait, Gideon, do you have a dog? I do not have a dog. I do not have a dog.

I wish I had a dog. Okay. If you could have a dog, what kind of dog would you want to get? A singing one or a different kind? It would definitely sing. It would definitely do many sorts of tricks and talents. I think that this would be the dog that I would have would be a show off that would make the other neighbor dogs feel less than adequate about their particular talents and really just try to, you know, push them to do more, whether that's shot put, um, you know, trigonometry, uh, advanced calculus, any, any number of things. Like essentially what I want to do is use it as a vector to, uh, show off the dog's awesomeness. And just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe, and we will check in with you all again tomorrow.

Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. New York City will pay $5.9 million to the family of a transgender woman who died in Rikers Island Jail last year. The settlement is still being finalized, but it will be the largest ever paid over an inmate's death in a New York City jail. Last June, 27-year-old Aileen Polanco died in solitary confinement after having an epileptic seizure. Later reports revealed officers failed to conduct frequent checks on Polanco as were required due to her history of seizures. Polanco's death led to protests against the discrimination that trans people of color experience in the criminal justice system. The settlement was brought on by a federal civil rights lawsuit while city investigators declined to pursue criminal charges. City officials also claimed that 17 officers, including a captain, have been disciplined,

but no further details have been released. Polanco's sister says the settlement is just the beginning of justice. Such a sad story. Officials in Lebanon have chosen who will be stepping in as the country's new prime minister. Little-known diplomat Mustafa Adib was chosen by an influential group of Lebanese prime ministers and designated on Monday. The appointment comes less than a month after the explosion in Beirut that killed over 180 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Since then, protesters have been holding frequent demonstrations to demand an overhaul of what they saw as a corrupt and negligent government. That led to the resignation of outgoing PM Hassan Diab.

In an attempt to not repeat what happened in Beirut, officials in Senegal have ordered the removal of over 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate from their capital. What was it doing there? Don't store that in your capital. That seems like a bad idea. That's a little over the amount that triggered the blast in Beirut. Yeah, yikes. India now has the world's fastest growing coronavirus outbreak, announcing more than 75,000 new cases

a day for the past five days each. The spike in reported cases is partly due to more testing, along with loosening lockdown restrictions. India's government enforced a strict lockdown from late March to late May, but it's been significantly relaxed. Rollbacks were made as recently as this weekend when India said it would allow everything to open except schools, cinemas, swimming pools, and international flights. The reopening is driven by economic pressure. India's economy contracted by almost 24% in the first quarter of this year, and while most white-collar workers were able to keep their jobs through the lockdown, hundreds of millions of poor laborers were left without income and made vulnerable to starvation. In Europe, Spain is at the head of the pandemic's

second wave with the most new cases on the continent. An enthusiastic return to nightlife and group activities following lockdown helped fuel the spread. Trump and his allies are using a controversial campaign strategy called fixing it in post little, uh, showbiz jargon for you. They uploaded at least three Twitter videos over the last two days that used dishonest video editing to take shots at Joe Biden. The first was from house minority whip,

Steve Scalise, who should know better. He posted an edited interview that made it seem like healthcare activist, 80 Barkin asked Biden he'd defund the police and got an affirmative response barkin has als and communicates using a computerized voice making it possible for a team of amoral video ghouls to swap out his words as cool as it would be to hear joe endorsed defunding police departments he made it clear in the same interview that he wouldn't do that the second manipulated clip was posted by Trump's deputy chief of staff and Gen Xer memer Dan Scavino, also crazy eyed man.

And it showed Biden appearing to fall asleep in an interview. This one used footage from a seven year old interview of Calypso legend Harry Belafonte. By the way, if you're trying to make people defect from Joe, a bad argument to make is that he's too damn chill to be president. The campaign account Trump's War Room also posted a three-second Biden speech clip out of context and got hit with a manipulated media disclaimer. These people are pushing the field of special effects forward at a rate not seen since Avatar.

Gideon, how long ago did you buy your Avatar 2 tickets? And how excited are you to see that movie when it comes out in 20 years? I got it the second that they were announced. And I have literally counted down every single day. Starring Joe Biden. Avatar 2 starring Joe Biden. Yes, it's going to be quite the banger. And those are the headlines.

Quick announcement before we go today is National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. And of all the fake holidays to exist, this might be one of the most important. When polling places don't have enough poll workers, those polling places close, which leaves voters with less options and leaves many people unheard. Vote Save America is working to recruit 10,000 poll workers. If you are healthy and able, sign up to be trained and work as a poll worker at your local polling station. Find more information at votesaveamerica.com slash everylastvote. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review,

help keep the hype going for Avatar in 20 years, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the lyrics to dog songs like me, woof, woof, bark, bark, Whataday is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And don't let conservatives buy editing software anymore. They should not have Adobe. They should not have iMovie. What a day is a Crooked Media production. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. All right, Wild Heads, listen up. You got to listen to the brand new podcast from Exactly Right Media.

It is called Bananas. Every Tuesday, hosts Kurt Brauneler and Scotty Landis present the strange, fascinating, and downright bananas news of our very weird world. It is that indeed. And they've got great guests like Erin Brockovich, Emily Gordon, Naomi Perrigan, and Kirsten Schaal talking about pigeons living in a man's pants. NASA trying to teach dolphins to speak English and a woman who accidentally used a block of cheese as hand soap for a full week. Doesn't sound that bad. So if you love news, appreciate the strange and just want to take a break from our current hellscape, then tune in every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen.