Good morning. As a symbol of US leadership amid the coronavirus crisis, the images are almost too on the nose: Donald Trump and his chief of staff were the only people not wearing face masks during a tour of a medical equipment distribution facility in Pennsylvania on Thursday.
And if the president isn’t much of a role model for Americans, then the US isn’t much of a role model for the rest of the world, either. Trump claimed last week that he had called multiple world leaders, and that “all of them” had told him they believed the US was leading the way. But as the Guardian’s correspondents report from four continents, other countries are agog at Trump’s outlandish behaviour and at his administration’s flailing response to the pandemic.
Trump is blaming China … In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, Trump suggested he could scrap the recent US-China trade deal and “cut off the whole relationship”, a move Chinese state media described as “lunacy”.
… and he’s blaming Joe Biden. With unemployment climbing and the stock market in a slump, the Trump 2020 campaign has little to brag about, so it has pivoted to a simple new strategy, reports Lauren Gambino: attack Joe Biden.
The Covid-19 whistleblower says the US faces a dark winter
The federal government’s failures in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic could leave the US facing its “darkest winter in modern history”, according to a health official who was ousted from his job overseeing vaccine research for the Trump administration. Rick Bright told a congressional committee on Thursday that the “window is closing to address this pandemic” in the US, and that “the virus is still spreading everywhere”, even as many states reopen.
Bright wrote in a recent whistleblower complaint that he had been removed from his role last month after resisting pressure from above to roll out unproven and potentially harmful drugs as coronavirus treatments, including two antimalarials touted by Trump.
Dozens more children have fallen ill in the US from a rare but potentially lethal inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to Covid-19.
National parks are reopening, raising fears of fresh coronavirus outbreaks, particularly in rural US towns close to popular parks.
Health workers could suffer PTSD due to the pandemic, experts say – one of many mental health consequences likely to linger on long after the worst effects of the disease have passed. Jessica Glenza reports.
Why is Fox News denying the coronavirus death toll?
Most public health experts believe the official US coronavirus death toll will turn out to be an underestimate of the true number of fatalities. But Fox News personalities appear to think the opposite. The political analyst Brit Hume, host Laura Ingraham and others on the right continue to suggest that hospitals, coroners and medical professionals across the US have been mislabelling deaths. And Trump is reportedly coming round to the idea, too.
Conspiracy theory. Fox News has shifted its focus from the pandemic. According to research, the channel mentioned Michael Flynn, the FBI and Barack Obama far more often than coronavirus in the past week, as it enthusiastically covers the spurious “Obamagate” scandal.
Africa can expect a quarter of a billion coronavirus cases
The World Health Organization has said almost 250 million people in 47 African countries are likely to catch coronavirus over the coming year, with a “huge impact” on already overstretched health services. Yet research also suggested the continent would face far fewer deaths than the US and Europe, thanks to its young population and relatively low rates of obesity.
In Nigeria, lockdown measures have compounded existing problems, says the photographer Nurudeen Olugbade.
In Kenya, farmers face another equally devastating crisis: the country’s worst invasion of locusts for 70 years.
In other news…
Richard Burr has stepped down as chair of the Senate intelligence committee after investigators seized his phone, amid allegations that the North Carolina Republican used inside information from private coronavirus briefings to dump his shares before the market plunged.
The former police officer charged with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery lost his power of arrest after failing to complete sufficient basic law enforcement training – including courses on firearms and the use of force – for years.
Matt Damon has said life in the Dublin village of Dalkey is ‘like a fairytale’ after the actor was stranded there with his family by the coronavirus lockdown while shooting his new film in Ireland.
Great reads
Film-makers on their favourite moments at the movies
The lockdown has temporarily denied us the thrill of the big screen. While they wait for the day when theatres can reopen safely, film-makers and critics recall their most formative moments at the movies, while the veteran editor Walter Murch explains why cinema demands a crowd.
Going viral for lip-syncing Trump
The comedian Sarah Cooper has become internet famous during the pandemic, with a series of TikTok videos in which she does little more than lip-sync the president’s bizarre pronouncements. “Everything he says is already so ridiculous that it is hard to heighten it,” she tells Poppy Noor.
Flying long haul in the Covid-19 era
What is it like to take a long-haul flight during a pandemic? When she travelled home to Hong Kong from Europe, Laurel Chor braved testing, quarantine, and fellow passengers in full-body protective suits to find out.
Opinion: Give me one last shot at a Spelling Bee win
Simone Kaplan was the runner-up at last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, so she decided to give it one more shot this year. But with the event cancelled due to coronavirus, she says she may no longer get the last chance she deserves.
The International Olympic Committee and NCAA decided that since Covid-19 cancelled athletes’ events due to no fault of the athletes’, they should be given another chance to compete. Shouldn’t eighth-graders have the same chance to train, compete, and demonstrate that academic pursuits are as important as athletics?
Last Thing: catching an escaped tiger, the Mexican way
“Diós mio!” screams the woman who captured the incident on camera, and that is really the only appropriate response: three men chasing and catching an escaped tiger on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico, with nothing but a lasso.
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