Naked News, Tuesday April 14, 2020

Hello, everyone. I’m Tia Larose, welcome to the program! Obviously, when it comes to the coronavirus, we still have a long road ahead of us. But we’ve reached the point where some hard hit countries are taking baby steps back towards normal, including Spain. Laura’s in the Naked Newsroom with the story.

As more and more countries get a handle on the spread of Coronavirus, SOME, including hard hit Spain and Italy, are lifting some of their lockdown restrictions. Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their ‘non-essential’ jobs because Spain has recorded its lowest number of cases in almost a month. Meanwhile some shops in Italy and Austria are preparing to re-open and In Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday. Of course all this will be done with very strict safety protocols in place.

Here’s something we should have seen coming: Americans are drinking a lot more! In the last full week of March, alcohol sales were up OVER TWENTY PERCENT relative to the same week last year. That includes a seventeen percent bump in beer, cider, and flavored malt, and a TWENTY-SEVEN percent increase in wines and spirits. Hard to know how much of that is increased drinking and how much is stocking up… but either way, salut!

As you know, and we’ve reported on, there are a LOT of conspiracy theories floating around out there about COVID-19. But one that has 30 percent of Americans believing it’s true, is that it was created in a Chinese lab. This according to a new Pew Research Center survey of close to 9000 adults. Of that 30, 23 percent believe it was made in a lab on PURPOSE, and 7 percent think it was made in a lab by accident. The survey also showed that Republicans were twice as likely to believe the myth than Democrats. The origins of the virus are still being investigated, but scientists believe that Covid-19 first originated in bats, and was later transmitted to humans. ‘ll be back a little later with more headlines, don’t go away!