Neil Young Harvests a Half-Victory for COVID Disinfo
If you missed last week's Joe Rogan/Neil Young/Spotify dustup, here's a quick recap: musician Neil Young (one of Canada's greatest contributions to the world) threatened to remove his music from Spotify (the world's most popular music streaming service) over the latter’s hosting of controversial COVID-related podcast episodes from Joe Rogan (a comedian/commentator who makes the world's most popular podcast). Young was particularly incensed by a recent episode of Rogan's show, The Joe Rogan Experience, that featured a doctor who did early work on mRNA vaccine technology, but has since become a leading source of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation. Others have also accused the podcast host of spreading coronavirus disinformation himself to his millions of listeners, or allowing guests to do so with minimal, if any, pushback.
Spotify was never likely to ditch Rogan over Young's threat. In 2020, it reportedly paid more than $100 million for the exclusive rights to Rogan's podcast; losing Young would probably cost it far less (the company's stock took a hit last week, falling by around 25%, but it's already recovered most of that ground). But the pressure from Young—and other musical artists who followed suit, like Joni Mitchell —at least forced the company to make its content policies public for the first time. "We have had rules in place for many years but admittedly, we haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a blog post yesterday.
That's a long overdue step for Spotify, which has spent the last few years investing big in podcasts and audiobooks and can no longer hide behind the excuse of "look, we just stream music" (music, of course, can also wade into controversial COVID territory; look no further than Eric Clapton's latest and utterly bewildering work ). The very least that Spotify—and all other content platforms—can and should do is to present clear rules. The hard work comes with enforcement; once the rules are out there, they need to be applied, and fairly so. But that requires a kind of public ombudsmanship that's impossible if the rulebook is kept private, and so what Young achieved is a real victory in terms of making it possible for the world to at least keep Spotify honest about its own promises around misinformation.
Rogan, for his part, seems to have taken the whole experience to heart; he's promised to reflect on his role in the media ecosystem and be more thoughtful about how he uses his platform. If he follows through, it could be a valuable lesson for millions on how to gracefully back away from misinformation without doubling down, as so many believers tend to do when their views are challenged.
Young, meanwhile, has taken his talents to Amazon Music, where fans new to the service can get four months of free listening. That suggests the rocker hasn't done a ton of research into Amazon's own COVID-related offerings, which include plenty of suspect material. There are, of course, only so many music streaming services in town, and most of them are tied to a corporate entity that's doing at least a few objectionable things. It turns out it's hard, these days, to keep on rockin' in the free world.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 374.6 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.6 million people have died. On Jan. 30, there were more than 2.1 million new cases and 5,440 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 74.3 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 884,200 people have died. On Jan. 30, there were 96,282 new cases and 321 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Jan. 31, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
A long-awaited report into accusations that the U.K. Prime Minister and others close to him held or attended gatherings that were prohibited by the country's anti-COVID measures at the time found "failures of leadership and judgment" at the highest levels of Boris Johnson's administration. The situation, called "Partygate" in the British press, has left Johnson on a knife's edge, with many—including some in his own Conservative Party—calling for his resignation.
U.S. health regulators have given Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine full approval for use in adults, the Food and Drug Administration announced today. The shot was previously given under emergency use authorization; the new designation comes after a more rigorous and lengthy review process. Public health experts had been optimistic that full FDA approval of the COVID-19 vaccines would lead to more Americans getting their shots, but that didn't play out with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which was fully approved in August of last year.
Two Long Island, New York nurses made $1.5 million by selling fake vaccination cards for $85–$220, and entering false information into the state's vaccination database, local prosecutors said over the weekend. Both have been charged with felony forgery, while one also faces charges of offering a false instrument for filing. "I hope this sends a message to others who are considering gaming the system that they will get caught and that we will enforce the law to the fullest extent," Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tested positive for COVID-19 but is "feeling fine," he said on Twitter this morning. Trudeau's infection comes after thousands of protesters—many of them truckers who drove in from across Canada in so-called "freedom convoys"—descended on Ottawa over the weekend to protest the country's vaccine mandates and other pandemic-curbing measures.
Officials in China have already detected 119 cases among Olympic athletes and staffers even before the winter games begin later this week, Reuters reports. All Olympic travelers entering China are required to test upon arrival and are tested daily; those who test positive are isolated until they test negative twice over a 24-hour period. However, these early positive tests underscore how difficult it will be to prevent the virus from disrupting the competitions—if many athletes test positive, it could force schedule changes or forfeitures that could taint this year's games.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Alex Fitzpatrick and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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