Operation Warp Speed Ahead
What A Day
What A Day
4.6 • 12.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
The Trump administration officially started the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization. “Operation Warp Speed,” the government’s program to fast-track Covid-19 vaccine development, signed its largest deal so far, allocating $1.6 billion to the pharmaceutical company Novavax. Plus, an update on testing issues in hotspots across the country.
Brazilian President and prominent virus skeptic Jair Bolsanaro has Covid-19. In Israel, the health minister stepped down because officials weren’t heeding her advice.
And in headlines: the Movement For Black Lives proposes legislation to transform the criminal justice system, Russia and China discourage marmot hunting, and Mike Pompeo wants the teens to get off TikTok.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Wednesday, July 8th. I'm Achila Hughes. |
| 0:08.1 | And I'm Gideon Ressick and this is what today, the official audio companion to the tell-all book written by Trump's niece. |
| 0:13.6 | That's right. It's kind of like the dark side of the moon, which is like when you listen to Pink Floyd and also watch the Wizard of Oz. |
| 0:19.6 | It's hard to explain if you don't do it, so I just say do it. |
| 0:22.2 | Yeah, if you sync it up, you see God. |
| 0:23.8 | That's what I was told. |
| 0:30.0 | Today's show, a quick look around the world at how other countries are dealing with new and never-ending outbreaks of coronavirus, then some headlines. |
| 0:41.6 | But first, the latest in the US. |
| 0:43.6 | Many of the states that have been experiencing record COVID-19 outbreaks are starting to see even more strain on their hospital and public health systems. |
| 0:50.8 | Arizona reported record hospitalizations in recent days and on Monday passed 100,000 known cases. |
| 0:56.6 | Florida's governor says the state is taking steps to help with hospital capacity as ICU units are filling up. |
| 1:02.4 | And Texas also reported over 10,000 new cases yesterday, though some of that could have been due to a reporting lag over the holiday weekend, which brings us to testing. |
| 1:12.0 | The US is testing more now than ever before, which is about 600,000 a day, but there are still major issues in bottlenecks. |
| 1:18.6 | So Gideon, get us up to speed. |
| 1:20.4 | Yeah, so this feels like a very familiar problem and a consistent one, but the country's testing system is still having issues, particularly as these cases grow in certain hotspots. |
| 1:30.8 | There are reports of places like New Orleans running out of tests at at least one site. |
| 1:34.7 | In Phoenix, some people have had to wait in their cars for up to eight hours in order to get a test in triple digit heat, no less. |
| 1:40.8 | And then in San Antonio and Austin, officials have had to revert back to these old limitations on who can actually get tested, like limiting to just individual showing symptoms. |
| 1:49.3 | Obviously, that's bad for tracking and suppressing asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread of the virus. |
| 1:54.7 | And many of these places have also had to fend for themselves in a way absent of a national testing plan. |
| 2:00.3 | But yesterday, the federal government took a step in announcing that they were going to set up, quote, surge testing in three cities with 15,000 tests a day for up to 12 days. |
| 2:09.6 | Still, though, the country is very behind other places like China, which have been much more aggressive with testing since the start of all this. |
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