What A Day: Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad data

President Trump visited a Ford plant in Michigan without wearing a mask today, in defiance of statewide orders and direct warnings from Michigan’s attorney general, and just a day after threatening Michigan’s federal funding over its absentee-voting expansion. (With the election less than six months away, it’s time to start really flipping the bird at these swing states.)
 

• Another 2.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the last week, bringing the total number of first-time unemployment claims over the past nine weeks to 38.6 million. Congrats to American billionaires, though, who have collectively raked in another $434 billion during the lockdown. And special kudos to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who yesterday vowed to House Republicans that the $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits will not be extended, and that his top priority is still liability protections for companies.
   
• Not only has the economic crisis yet to hit bottom, the data that’s meant to help us start recovering has been compromised. The CDC has been mixing together the results of diagnostic tests (for current coronavirus infections) with those of antibody tests, which determine whether someone has previously had the virus. That distorts several key metrics, and paints an exaggerated picture of the country’s testing capacity. It’s not yet clear if the CDC did this deliberately, or just goofed up in a big way. Several states have been throwing their data in the same blender: Some (Virginia, Maine, Vermont) have said “whoops” and reversed course. Others (Texas, Georgia) have refused to acknowledge what they’re doing, even though it is indefensible as a statistical method, suggesting they’re doing it to paint a misleading picture of the outbreaks in their states.
   
• With the official U.S. death toll nearing 100,000, a new model from Columbia University estimated that starting social distancing measures even a week earlier would have saved around 36,000 lives. If lockdowns had begun two weeks earlier, about 83 percent of the country’s deaths would have been avoided. That adds devastating weight to reporting like this: Top Florida health officials were internally sounding alarms about the coronavirus in February, even quietly monitoring hundreds of people for possible exposure, long before state leaders told the public there was anything to worry about.

Trump has blamed his slow lurch to action on, among many other parties, the intelligence analyst who briefed him on the coronavirus. But Trump is notoriously impossible to brief, and particularly so on national security issues.
 

• A New York Times report confirms whatever you’ve been picturing. Intelligence officials who have briefed Trump say that he has no attention span, veers off topic, interjects with gossip he’s heard from his friends, and won’t absorb information that he doesn’t like, or that contradicts his worldview. Intelligence agencies have even hired outside consultants to study how best to get through to him.
   
• But we don’t have to look backward to find Trump ignoring warnings; it’s still happening. Nine prominent scientists who served as advisers during the Obama administration have written a report cautioning that the U.S. has just three months to rebuild its medical stockpile in order to be adequately supplied for an expected resurgence of infections in the fall. That echoes Dr. Rick Bright’s warning in his congressional testimony, but of course, that testimony only happened because Bright was fired for issuing other warnings Trump didn’t want to hear.
   

Millions more Americans are out of work for the ninth week in a row, the CDC has made a mess of the data that should be informing our path forward, and the White House is in no particular rush to either a) get more relief funding out the door, or b) prepare for the fall outbreak that health experts agree is looming. If you’re able, it’s another good day to send some help to the people who need it most.

The name “Operation Warp Speed” for the Trump administration’s vaccine initiative has fueled an online anti-vaccine movement. Many members of the online fringe movement against strict lockdown orders have also aligned themselves with anti-vaxxers, and have pre-emptively refused to take the coronavirus vaccine when it exists. To back up their baseless claims about the dangers of vaccines, they’ve latched onto the incredible speed the Trump administration has promised. The anti-vaccine movement is built on the false notions that vaccines are rushed and not adequately tested, and that the federal government is in league with drug companies. “Operation Warp Speed” plays into those beliefs, and the White House hasn’t made any effort to refute the resulting misinformation that could undermine efforts to distribute a vaccine.

• The White House said the U.S. will pull out of the Open Skies Treaty, which permits 34 countries to conduct unarmed surveillance flights over one another. That marks Trump’s third withdrawal from a major arms control agreement, which will upset U.S. allies and compromise our national security, but which suits Russia just fine.
   
• The Senate has confirmed Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) as the next director of national intelligence with a vote along party lines. Here’s the thing about having an ardent Trump loyalist as the nation’s spy chief: It’s not great!
   
• The Biden campaign has begun hiring a diverse senior leadership as part of an effort to increase outreach to communities of color. The campaign has also begun vetting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as a contender to be Biden’s running mate, just in case it gets bored with that strategy.
   
• The man who filmed the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery has been arrested and charged with murder.
   
• Lori Laughlin and her husband have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, a taste of a long-ago episode that will bring memories of the Before Times flooding back to you, much like Proust’s madeleine. 
   
• Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen has been released from prison and into home confinement. His release was initially granted in April, and then mysteriously reversed and reinstated. 
   
• A QAnon conspiracy theorist handily won the GOP Senate primary in Oregon this week. One small step for Jo Rae Perkins, one very disturbing leap forward for QAnon.
   
• The Atlantic has laid off 68 people, nearly 20 percent of its staff.
   
• SpaceX is scheduled to launch two NASA astronauts from Kennedy Space Center next week. It will be the first manned launch from U.S. soil since 2011, the first ever by a private company, and the first non-annoying thing that Elon Musk has done in months.
   
• Lana Del Ray has become the latest white woman to ignite a social media firestorm by criticizing women of color in her field, but also described herself as “not not a feminist,” which is a fun new spin on an old unforced error.

China plans to impose a controversial national-security law in Hong Kong, a major escalation in its efforts to undercut Hong Kong’s autonomy. In a direct response to last year’s mass protests—which the pandemic has conveniently stifled—the law will criminalize secession, subversion of state power, and “foreign interference.” It’s China’s boldest move yet to bring Hong Kong under its full control, allowing the government to directly tackle political dissent. Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong have appealed to the Trump administration for intervention, but though Trump has ramped up his criticism of China to deflect blame for the coronavirus, he hasn’t had much to say about Hong Kong. The legislation will bypass all of Hong Kong’s usual processes and could pass as early as next week.

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Los Angeles County, the epicenter of California’s coronavirus outbreak, has hit a promising milestone in its decreasing transmission rate.
 

Love Beyond Walls has installed hand washing stations in cities across the country, to help people experiencing homelessness protect themselves from the virus.

Donald Trump’s political team is very worried about Republicans' one Arizona Senate seat as Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) falls behind Democrat Mark Kelly. Wanna really keep ‘em up at night?

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has embraced the idea of a four-day work week. New Zealand did so well handling its coronavirus outbreak, it just feels like we should all listen to Ardern on this one.