THE BIG STORY There’s growing panic that Donald Trump will rush a vaccine to save his presidency. That’s unlikely. Last week, concern grew among health experts and Democrats about the possibility that President Donald Trump might rush a potentially faulty coronavirus vaccine ahead of the November election, to save his presidency. But even though there are vaccine candidates entering Phase 3 clinical trials, it’s highly unlikely even the bare minimum of clinical trial data will be available by November, making any possible attempt to speed up a vaccine before the election extremely difficult. “I cannot imagine that you would have data that shows efficacy and in a period of time that would be over the next few months,” said vaccine expert Paul Offit of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who sits on the FDA vaccine advisory committee. Trump has certainly ignored established rules before. We dove deep into why the vaccine safety guardrails that exist may be too high for Trump to get around, even if he tries to bypass them. BuzzFeed News; Getty Images STAYING ON TOP OF THIS Trump says he plans to ban TikTok from the US
The president once again threatened to ban the popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app, citing national security concerns that the company could be misusing American consumer information. Traveling aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump told reporters, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States.” TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, said that the company stores user data entirely in the US and Singapore, and that it does not have to send user data to China. But skeptics point to a 2017 Chinese law that requires companies to comply with government requests for intelligence gathering. A source familiar with conversations between the administration and TikTok told us Trump is looking for a win by ensuring the company's US operations would be 100% US-owned. SNAPSHOTS Prosecutors said a 17-year-old and two others hacked all those famous people’s Twitter accounts in a Bitcoin scam. Authorities said Graham Ivan Clark, 17, of Tampa, was the “mastermind” of the hack of the accounts of prominent figures, and is facing 30 felony charges. According to prosecutors, the perpetrators received more than $100,000 in Bitcoin as a result of the scam. A staff member at a summer camp got COVID-19. Then more than 250 others tested positive. Almost half of the staffers and campers who tested were infected with COVID-19 at the overnight summer camp in Georgia. The CDC said singing and cheering “might have contributed to transmission.” A Delta flight was forced to turn around after two passengers refused to wear masks. The flight from Detroit to Atlanta returned to the gate “following two customers who were non-compliant with crew instructions,” according to Delta. CNN reported the two passengers were removed from the plane. The US Navy is investigating a video showing military dogs attacking a man in a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration. The demonstration reportedly took place at a Navy SEAL Museum event in Florida last year, but videos of the incident resurfaced online on Sunday. Two NASA astronauts on a SpaceX craft made the first splashdown in 45 years. The astronauts piloting a SpaceX craft returned to Earth after two months in space, concluding the first human test flight for Elon Musk's aerospace company. It was the first mission completed under NASA’s commercial crew program. THIS ISN'T WORKING Working parenthood is a terrible deal right now We’ve had a few months of living with the coronavirus pandemic and the ways it has upended life as we know it. We’ve pushed through until some of the new conditions have become...almost normal? But for parents who are trying to both do their jobs and parent from home, as fall approaches, the strategies for hunkering down and muscling through it aren’t going to work anymore. Venessa Wong wrote an excellent piece about the realities of working and parenting during a pandemic. “I was prepared for hard, but this feels impossible,” she writes. As a new school year approaches, Wong delves into the difficult choices parents have to balance right now, between trying to do your job, keeping your children stimulated, being desperate for schools to reopen, and feeling not ready to send kids back. PACKAGE DELIVERY This woman ordered a marble-style cutting board and found a giant penis instead Georgia Rogers wanted some cute cutting boards for her college apartment. What she received was a bit unexpected. After Rogers’ mom opened the Amazon package, she pulled out the cutting board, and found the outline of a giant dick printed on the cutting board finish. Rogers’ friend tweeted the image and it immediately went viral, because of course it did. I mean, how could it not: Wishing you tenderness and generosity today, Elamin BuzzFeed, Inc. 111 E. 18th St. New York, NY 10003
Unsubscribe |