A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared.
While that’s clearly good news, it also means it’s impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life.
During Monday's coronavirus task force meeting, President Donald Trump emphasized the importance of U.S. manufacturing in keeping supply chains secure during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond, particularly in the area of pharmaceuticals.
China has imported pharmaceutical products to the U.S. since the 1990s, becoming the United States' second-largest exporter of medications and medical supplies. However, the Trump administration has looked at ways to diminish China's role in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain.
Defense Production Act policy coordinator and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro said in March he was working in collaboration with Trump on an executive order that would incentivize American production of pharmaceuticals.
SEN. TOM COTTON: The circumstantial evidence, which I began to cite in January, is stacking up pretty quickly that this virus may have originated in those labs in Wuhan. We knew from the very beginning that the Chinese Communist Party's front story about the food market was probably wrong.
For one, it appears that they don't even sell the kind of bats at that market from which this virus originated, and two, Chinese scientists in an authoritative study as early as January found that about a third of the early cases had not contact with the food market whatsoever. We know that China has a very sloppy history of laboratory safety. Some of our own diplomats at the embassies in China went to these labs as far back as two years ago and said the shape the practices there were very alarming. And you can see how the Chinese Communist Party has continued to lie about this from the very beginning as if they have someth.ing to cover up. If that's the case, it really is the biggest, the costliest, the most deadly cover up in the history of mankind.
...It is now a truism that almost every influential model that has been advanced about the spread of the coronavirus was flawed. They almost all erred on the side of exaggerated morbidity. But to suggest that in public is deemed heresy.
Even when the Imperial College scarifying “2.2 million” dead in the United States was withdrawn, or when Gavin Newsom’s “25.5 million infected” by early May in California seemed hysterical, or today’s prognostications from the University of Washington modified older models that politicians used to set policy, there was more ridicule leveled at the original skeptics than at the promulgators of such myths—despite the fact that some disastrous public policies resulted from assurances that hundreds of thousands would likely die soon from the virus.
Facebook has banned some pages promoting protests of stay-at-home mandates that challenge the government's advice about social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook. For this same reason, events that defy government's guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook," a company rep told Fox News.
Negotiators from the House, Senate and White House are close to finalizing an accord on the so-called “phase 3.5” response to the coronavirus pandemic and hope to have an agreement late Monday or Tuesday, Fox News is told.
The response will include $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which offers grants to small businesses struggling to make payroll, sources tell Fox News. The $350 billion fund depleted last Thursday.
A separate provision worth $60 billion (including $50 billion in loans and $10 billion in grants) would be allocated to economic disaster loans. Also included: $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for coronavirus testing. The total of the package would be north of $470 billion.
