The Morning Dispatch: How Much Longer?

Plus, Trump pulls the plug on WHO funding, and Justin Amash is still toying with a presidential run.

By The Dispatch Staff

Apr 15, 2020

Happy Wednesday. We hope your freezer is as well-stocked as Nancy Pelosi’s.

As of Tuesday night, there are now 609,240 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States (a 4.7 percent increase from yesterday) and 26,033 deaths (a 10.3 percent increase from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.3 percent (the true mortality rate is difficult to calculate due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 3,081,620 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States, 19.6 percent have come back positive, per the COVID Tracking Project, a separate dataset with slightly different topline numbers.
Barack Obama officially endorsed Joe Biden, his former vice president, on Tuesday. “Joe has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times, and heal us through a long recovery,” Obama said in a 12-minute video. Bernie Sanders, in an interview with the Associated Press, said it would be “irresponsible” for his supporters not to vote for Biden.
President Trump announced the United States is placing a hold on funding for the World Health Organization due to the organization’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.

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