Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Change Image Of Sickened Navajo Nation To Resilient; Blaming COVID For Mental Health Crisis Is Simply Wrong
The New York Times: The Top U.S. Coronavirus Hot Spots Are All Indian Lands
The Navajo Nation is a vast, awe-inspiring land of desert crags and canyons, the largest reservation in the country, but today it reverberates with grief and fear. The Navajo have had more people infected with the coronavirus per capita than any state in the country. Decades of neglect, exploitation and discrimination mean that even before this pandemic, Navajo here had a shorter life expectancy (72) than people in Guatemala (74) — and now Covid-19 is hitting Native Americans with particular force. (Nicholas Kristof, 5/30)
Stat: Don't Use 'Deaths Of Despair' As Rationale For Premature Reopening
Following congressional testimony last week about frontline workers’ experiences during the Covid-19 epidemic, members of the U.S. House of Representatives raised the specter of a rise in “deaths of despair” due to Covid-19 shutdowns. They implied that the country had a moral obligation to reopen quickly, if only to avoid current and future deaths from suicide, homicide, opioids, and alcohol. A comment by a trauma physician in California that his hospital had seen “a year’s worth of suicide attempts in four weeks” went viral this week, picked up by Fox News and presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway to support the argument to reopen the country, even though the remark was incorrect and there’s been no rise in suicide deaths in his county this year. (Megan L. Ranney and Jessica Gold, 5/31)
The Hill: Senior Citizens Deserve Better Than To Be Left In Isolation
On March 4, 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), and later the Los Angeles County Health Department, declared a state of emergency, which included mandatory lockdowns of all senior living centers and nursing homes... Similar orders were soon promulgated all over the country, by most states and counties. Though the rest of society is now opening up, there is still little interest in lifting or modifying these senior care facility lockdown orders. Government seems determined to prevent any senior in a residential community from dying of COVID-19. That is a noble goal, but has unintended adverse consequences. (Dr. Thomas W. Lagrelius, 5/31)
St. Louis Post Dispatch: The Tragedy Of 100,000 Deaths Could Have Been Worse. The Fight Must Continue.
Last week’s grim milestone of surpassing 100,000 U.S. pandemic deaths represents both a tragedy and a victory. As sobering as that six-figure body count is, it’s a small fraction of the deaths that might have occurred by now had the nation not taken the unprecedented step of shutting down the economy. But there are troubling indications that much of the country is letting up on the fight to save lives, either in mistaken confidence that the worst has passed, or in resignation that many thousands more deaths are inevitable. Both ideas should be resisted. (5/30)
CNN: A 30-Year-Old Teacher's Covid-19 Death Tells Us Volumes
Last month, Covid-19 claimed the life of a 30-year-old Brooklyn schoolteacher named Rana Zoe Mungin. After weeks on life support, she died on April 27. Her story has sparked widespread outrage in the media and beyond. It is one of systemic failures and missed opportunities, and all the more shocking because of her youth and promise. (Paula A. Johnson, 5/31)
The New York Times: What It’s Like To Wear A Mask In The South
I bought four face masks from Etsy early on in this pandemic, anticipating the day when my husband’s 91-year-old father would need to flee his retirement community. Papa saw no reason to leave his apartment while it was coronavirus-free, and we needed to make sure our home was a safe place for him to come to when the virus took hold there. We figured it was just a matter of time. So far not one resident of my father-in-law’s retirement community has tested positive, and contrary to all predictions, including my own, Tennessee has successfully flattened the curve: Barely more than 350 Tennesseans have died of the coronavirus so far, and the expected run on emergency rooms and intensive care units never happened. (Margaret Renkl, 6/1)
Stat: Earlier Diagnosis Would Have A Big Impact On Global Breast Cancer
Covid-19 news could be nudged out of the spotlight this weekend as the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual scientific meeting, this year being held virtually, mobilizes 40,000 people around the world across industry, academia, and government. Breakthroughs will almost certainly be announced. Among the nearly 5,300 scientific abstracts being presented at the ASCO meeting, only about 10 focus on breast cancer in low- and middle-income countries, even though the death rate from breast cancer in those countries is almost double that of the U.S. (Maura McCarthy, 5/30)
