What A Day - WHO's Fault Is It Anyway?

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify this morning about the economic crisis and response. We preview the hearing.A biotech company called Moderna reported preliminary results from a phase one trial of their coronavirus vaccine. So far, the results are positive—but the vaccine still has a lot more testing to go. Plus, California starts its program to give out economic relief to people who are undocumented.And in headlines: embattled politicians scuffle inside Hong Kong’s legislature, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” hates breath, and South Korean pro soccer team gets cheered on by sex dolls.

It's Tuesday, May 19th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is what a day where we still love the post office, even if people aren't really talking about it that much right now. Yeah, I just love posts, post serials, the postal service, the band and the post office. I love making posts online for all my friends to see and respond to as well. On today's show, things get testy at a World Health Organization meeting, then some headlines. But first, the latest. Every player, unless they're from the same household, has to bring their own tennis balls so that you don't touch other people's tennis balls with your hands. You can kick their

balls, but you can't touch them. I'm going to blush. Sorry. If you're playing with someone in your household, you can touch those tennis balls. Yeah, make sure to kick their balls. All right. Well, that was Nassau County, New York, executive Laura Curran explaining the rules for tennis courts as they start to reopen. Button news. Later this morning, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve,

and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will testify to the Senate Banking Committee on the economic crisis and response. This comes over a month after the CARES Act was signed into law and Congress is trying to assess its impacts. It also comes as Congress has stalled out on negotiating the next round of relief money. So Gideon, let's go through some of what we expect to come up today. Yeah, so Powell has been pretty sober about the trouble that the United States is in when it comes to the economy right now. In a prepared statement, he said, quote,

the scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent and are significantly worse than any recession since World War II. So pretty bad news. He and Mnuchin are expected to talk about what is going on with this $500 billion fund in the CARES Act. Now, that fund is meant to back up trillions of dollars in lending from the Fed to big businesses, to cities and states, and other places to keep the economy stable. Some Democrats have been quite concerned about the fund because of the broad leeway that it gives to the Fed and the Treasury to decide how to spend that money.

Yesterday, a new Congressional Oversight Commission released their first report about the fund, and they had a lot of questions about how the money is going to be spent, who it's actually helping, and how success will be measured. One interesting thing that they noted was that much of the lending hasn't really gotten up and running yet. And one of the many examples they cited is the billions intended for the airline industry that hasn't been given out. So the report also details a pretty stark fact that has become clear over the last couple of months, that small businesses, lower wage workers, and people of color have been impacted the hardest by this crisis. Yeah, absolutely. And so questions around that and what's being done to help those groups are likely to come up as well. To that end, we also got a new survey on the Paycheck Protection Program. That's the small business loan or grant program in the CARES Act. And guess what

the data says? It says that minority-owned businesses are being left out. That's the Small Business Loan or Grant Program in the CARES Act. And guess what the data says? It says that minority-owned businesses are being left out. That's right. Yeah. I mean, this survey included interviews with about 500 minority business owners and 1,200 workers from the end of April until about a week ago. And only 12% of the owners who applied for loans via the program said they had gotten what they were seeking.

And almost half said that they would have to close permanently in the next six months. So those kinds of responses speak to the difficulty of quickly coming out of this economic crisis. It's not going to be a rebound that's that fast. This is part of what has caused such an uproar when you stack those stories against the ones of places like Shake Shack landing these sorts of loans. Shake Shack ultimately gave theirs back, and some other companies have followed suit on that. And yesterday was actually the official deadline for companies to return money if they think that they wrongly received it. But it's unclear how much of that money was actually given back. Mnuchin has said that companies that took more than $2 million would

be audited and could face possible criminal penalties if they don't actually qualify as a small business. However, there are questions that remain about what enforcement mechanisms there are here. Right. Well, sounds like these two guys are in for some grilling. Any other economic updates to chat about before we move on? Yeah, so really quick, the big three car makers, that's Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, all restarted production yesterday. They've got a lot of planned changes in the works for how they're actually going to work, including the potential for shorter shifts, required masks and temperature checks.

Apple also began reopening some stores across the world as of Sunday with limited occupancy. They're also requiring face coverings for customers and staff, as well as temperature checks at the door, among other things. So these are just yeah, right, exactly. And these are just a couple examples of how this process of reopening doesn't mean that a light switch gets turned on and everything is back to normal.

All right, we also have some items to cover from across the country, including an important update on vaccines. Akilah, let's get into that. Yes, okay, so a biotech company called Moderna reported preliminary results from a phase one trial of their coronavirus vaccine, and the results are very positive, meaning, you know, the vaccine has been found safe so far in eight people. Phase one trials are meant to test out safety in a very small number of

healthy people, and this is data from only partway through phase one. Researchers also found that participants given the vaccine are developing antibodies similar to people who have had COVID-19. And that's pretty encouraging because it suggests the vaccine could be effective in creating immunity. While these are positive signs, they are also very early signs. The vaccine still has a lot more testing to go. The next rounds will have way more people and will test efficacy. Meanwhile, in news about drugs that have not been proven safe or effective for COVID-19, Trump told reporters yesterday that he has been taking the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, who, you know, who knows whether he's telling the truth. Also, who cares? And the state of California is offering the first COVID-19 monetary aid for

undocumented immigrants. It's a $75 million fund and offers a one-time grant of $500 per person, $1,000 per household. The application lines opened just yesterday morning and more than 630,000 calls came in within the first hour and a half to just one of the organizations working on the program. So, you know, those lines promptly crashed. There has been a callback list generated though. So if you're interested in applying, there is still hope. While the money is taxpayer funded, it doesn't necessarily reflect all of the money that undocumented immigrants do actually pay in taxes. It'll go to about 150,000 people, which is a fraction of the 2 million people who are undocumented living in the state of California. But philanthropists have thrown in another $50 million, so hopefully

that money is going to be distributed more widely to those who need it. Other states like Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts are also pursuing similar initiatives. As we talked about, the stimulus money from the federal government excludes people who are undocumented, their spouses, and their children. In their new draft relief bill, Democrats have expanded the program to include anyone with an individual taxpayer identification number, which would expand eligibility. Republicans, though, are really not expected to take up that bill. And in global politics, we also saw some tension rise at the World Health Organization meeting yesterday. This is the first meeting of all the member countries since the pandemic started.

So Gideon, what do we need to know? Yeah, so the big thing here was Alex Azar, Trump's health secretary, sent in this prepared video. Everybody was teleconferencing, so that's the reason for the video, in which he said in part, quote, there was a failure by this organization to obtain the information that the world needed, and that failure costs many lives. So the backdrop here is that beyond any legitimate concerns that they may have about how the pandemic was handled in its early days, the Trump administration is also looking to shift

blame because of their utter failure in response to this. It's an easier thing for them to do. And what Trump and Republicans have been mad about regarding the World Health Organization and China is kind of twofold. So one is this unproven idea that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan. Scientists are highly, highly skeptical of this. They're not the only ones. Yes. The other is that the WHO did a bad job in the early days of the virus's spread and was too deferential to China. Now, other countries share the concern that China did not give the full picture and severity of COVID-19 to the rest of the world as this was going on. But that second point about the WHO led the Trump administration to announce last month that it would halt its $550 million annual contribution to the organization. Then, perhaps as a response at the meeting yesterday, President

Xi Jinping of China pledged $2 billion to the organization and asked other countries to increase their contributions as well. So yeah, long story short, no easy resolution to this increasing animosity between the US and China. We'll keep track of this meeting as it goes on too. But that was the latest for now. Happy Tuesday to you, WOD Squad. We already know what it is, but just in case you don't, it is check-in time.

All right, so it was announced yesterday that LeBron James of prolific basketball and Space Jam fame will be producing a movie called Hustle for Netflix starring Adam Sandler. Gideon, what do you want the plot of this new Sandman film to be? The fact that it's called Hustle is very encouraging to me. I think this is going in a good direction. So in an ideal world, I think this might have to be a biopic by nature to get Sandler his Oscar because he was robbed for gems. It would also give LeBron his Oscar

because you get an Oscar if you produce. I think that's like a win-win situation. Could be like a cool biopic sports figure of sorts, maybe just spitballing here. I mean, like, but like who? So my first thought was Sandy Koufax. Okay. Just as like, you know, cool Jewish baseball player.

I don't think that Sandler looks like him. Zero percent. Yeah, that's a small, small hurdle. But you know, I have time to, to get my ideas to both of these guys who I'll text when we're done recording. But beyond these two, what unlikely duo would you want to sit and make a movie together? Okay. So I guess if we're looking like producer and leading actor, I think that, you know, I love a high low combination.

So if we have like, let's see. What about like, OK, Kevin Hart, because he makes a lot of movies. So, you know, he's just going to do it. And oh, my God, Greta Gerwig. Wow. They could do a period piece. I don't know what it would be about, but I would watch it every day.

It would be terrible. Yeah, I'm terrified of this science experiment, but also intrigued. Yeah, neither of them will win an Oscar for it, in my mind. It would be the one time, yeah, like Greta's trying to do the, you know, redemption, not being nominated last time.

And then somehow this is the next product. And then it's just like, no, sorry, you can't have it. Right. All right. Well, we did it. Another checked temperature. Let us know what pair you want to see a movie from. And we'll check back in tomorrow. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Congressional officials say former State Department Inspector General Steve

Linick was investigating Secretary of State Mike pompeo's decision to fast track an arms deal with saudi arabia as a reminder linick was also investigating pompeo's use of a political aid for personal chores until he was abruptly fired last friday pompeo said that he fired linick because he wasn't performing in a way that the State Department wanted him to and would not clarify what that meant. Pompeo also claimed that he didn't know he was being investigated by Linick, though it was confirmed that he refused to let Linick interview him as part of the Saudi arms deal investigation. Many face emojis from me. Even Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is calling on Trump to explain why Lennox was fired. Me too. I'll call on him. All right. Well, several pro-democracy lawmakers inside Hong Kong's

legislature were ejected from the chambers after a heated scuffle broke out on Monday. This is the second time lawmakers got physical inside the chambers this month. So you can add politician wrestling to the shortlist of sports that are currently up and running worldwide. The brawl started when opposition lawmakers tried to break through a wall of security guards shielding a pro-establishment lawmaker. After many of the opposition members were physically removed, Starry Li, another pro-establishment leader, conveniently won a re-election that will allow her to preside over the government's lawmaking agenda. That means she'll decide the fate of a controversial bill that would criminalize disrespecting China's national anthem.

Pro-democracy leaders have been trying to delay the progress of that bill until the current council's term ends in July. Edvard Munch's 1910 painting, The Scream, has been deteriorating over the years, and a group of scientists have now identified the cause. It is human breath, which leads to flaking and fading in places where Munch painted using an impure yellow paint. Now, maybe this was an accident, or maybe Munch wanted to do his own version of Banksy's

self-shredding portrait, only way less dramatic and over a period of 100 years. Human breath produces chlorides and moisture, yuck, both of which can damage paint, and it's all the more complicated in this case since the large open mouth featured in the scream is practically begging for you to breathe into it. Munch's painting is set to move to a new location in Oslo this year, where curators will design a

new, safer way to display it. If you're one of the people who got to free exhale on the screen before it was under glass, consider yourself very lucky. I don't think I've ever been so jealous. A professional soccer team in South Korea had their hearts in the right place when they replaced their crowds with mannequins. The only problem is these were special mannequins created to be lonely people's girlfriends.

About two dozen sex dolls were seated in the stands of FC Seoul's game on Monday. This approach to making an empty place seem full is known as the pervert Kevin McAllister. Dolls were identifiable from their T-shirts, some of which showed the logo of an erotic toy marketer. And from there, to quote the New York Times using words I would rather not say, hear, or see in my entire life, strikingly booksom physiques. The team's management has since apologized for their mistake, saying that they specifically checked with their supplier to make sure these weren't sex dolls. To be honest, it's a bad sign if you even have to ask. South Korean pro soccer is being watched more than usual right now, since their league is

one of the first to resume play since the start of the pandemic. Side note, if you have the means to foster a South Korean sex doll, I know of at least 24 of them in need of a home. Find it in your heart, friends. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show show make sure you subscribe leave a review don't breathe on our precious artworks and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just swear words hidden in disney movies like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out

and subscribe at crooked.com subscribe i'm akilah hughes i'm gideon Resnick and let's get Kevin Hart his Oscar honestly a good rule I still don't see it I don't see it happening what a day is a product of Crooked Media 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.