In other news, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Trump stealing funds from the Pentagon to build his glorified border fence was illegal. This will hopefully delay any further construction until we have a chance to vote him out.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson have paused their coronavirus vaccine trial because of an unexpected illness. AstraZeneca's U.S. trial is also still on hold.
Finally, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that our current coronavirus death toll is probably higher than official figures.
"For every two Americans that we know of who are dying of Covid-19, another American is dying," said Dr. Steven Woolf, author of the new research and director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. [...]
The study found that from March through July, there were 225,530 "excess" deaths — a 20 percent increase over the average number of deaths expected for those months. (Excess deaths refer to the number of fatalities above what would be expected in a typical time period.)
Deaths directly linked to Covid-19 account for 67 percent of those excess deaths, the study found, leaving the remaining 33 percent without a clear explanation.
One explanation for the gap may be underreporting or misreporting of Covid-19-related deaths — in other words, not counting Covid-19 deaths.