Naked News, Tuesday April 21, 2020

Hello, my dears, I’m Laura Desiree, this is Naked News and I’m delighted to guide you through today’s show. One interesting thing about the news these days is how much more we’re talking about science and medicine. And while we have to remember the only experts ARE the experts, we’re all learning as we go. And one WORD we’ve all had to learn recently Eila, is ‘hydroxychloroquine’. I understand there’s a new development on this anti-malaria drug?

Well, Laura, there’s obviously a lot of controversy regarding the usefulness of this drug as a COVID-19 treatment, but we’re about to take a big step towards knowing the truth! Welcome to the newsroom everyone, ‘hydroxychloroquine’, the anti-malaria drug which has been promoted by Donald Trump as a cure for coronavirus has been given the go ahead for US trials. Pharmaceutical giant Novartis (no-VAHR-tis will be running the trial, using over 400 COVID-19 patients currently in U.S. hospitals. Enrollment is expected to begin in the next few weeks but to be clear, clinical tests are already being conducted, and the results have been mixed, at best. But this should provide a DEFINITIVE answer.

We all tell Facebook everything about ourselves… and the social media site is now putting that to good use! Facebook has teamed up with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to create a COVID-19 Symptom Map. In essence, Facebook users are surveyed about COVID-19 symptoms they might have… and that data is used to generate a map showing the estimated percentage of people with symptoms by county. This could give health officials valuable real-time information about coronavirus activity, and according to Mark Zuckerberg, the project’s about to go global!

It took some time AND pressure, but Ticketmaster will be giving refunds for shows and events cancelled or postponed by the pandemic. Starting May 1st, people will have thirty days to request refunds for as many as EIGHTEEN THOUSAND scrubbed events. This covers all the shows that were scheduled to happen through July… and if you’re feeling patient, one option is to exchange your tickets for up to a hundred-and-fifty percent of face value in CREDIT for future events! Not a bad deal. Don’t go away!