Your Daily Roundup for August 25th

What do you think?

Good morning. As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a toll on life in America, our team at Future Majority is tracking the latest updates: 

Last night marked the beginning of the Republican National Convention:

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were formally nominated to lead their party’s ticket yesterday when the Republican National Convention began its mostly virtual event after changes to the original convention plans were made due to COVID-19.

President Trump claimed that “We just have to make this China virus go away, and it’s happening.” The President has been criticized for using racist and xenophobic langauge around COVID-19, and official data from the U.S. on the spread of the virus shows that new cases are still in the tens of thousands. The United States leads the world in both cases and deaths.

Scientists are worried about misleading claims out of the FDA:

On Sunday, President Trump held a news conference to announce the emergency authorization for the use of blood plasma to treat patients hospitalized due to COVID-19. At the conference, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said that the treatment would reduce deaths by 35% -- according to a small study by the Mayo Clinic. But scientists are warning that this statistic is “grossly misrepresented” and that instead it showed that the treatment doesn’t impact the overall death rate, but rather the relative, not absolutely, mortality rate. Moreover, the treatment has not been proven through randomized controlled trials.

There is a stark partisan split on perceptions of COVID-19 in the U.S.:

According to the battleground state poll out Sunday, Americans are fiercely divided on their views of COVID-19 based on their part allegiance.

For instance, a staggering 57% of Republicans think that the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the country have been “acceptable” while 43% disagree. On the other side of the aisle, 10% of Democrats find the deaths acceptable and 90% do not.

Republicans also give much higher marks for the country’s dealing with the coronavirus crisis. 73% of Republican voters say that it is going well versus 38% of voters overall.