The Morning Dispatch: Democratic Senate Candidates Raise ‘Staggering’ Amounts of Cash

Plus, revisiting Sweden's choice not to enforce strict lockdowns.

By The Dispatch Staff

Jul 8, 2020

Happy Wednesday! Let’s do this thing.

As of Tuesday night, 2,993,759 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 58,043 from yesterday) and 131,455 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 1,171 from yesterday, likely due to a holiday weekend backlog), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.4 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 36,878,106 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (845,777 conducted since yesterday), 8.1 percent have come back positive.

The Trump administration formally alerted the World Health Organization of its plans to pull out of the U.N. agency on Tuesday. The withdrawal won’t take effect until next July, meaning the move hinges on November’s election: Biden said the U.S. would remain a member if he wins.
The Chinese-owned video streaming app TikTok announced on Tuesday its plans to pull out of Hong Kong, citing concerns over Beijing’s new national security law. India banned the app last week in response to the country’s recent border dispute with China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the United States is considering banning the app as well.

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