Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: The Future of Covid Vaccines Is Bright; Is Anyone Worried About Covid Anymore?
The New York Times: Science Can Make Covid Immunity Even Stronger
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a protracted battle between a generation-defining virus and scientists working at a breakneck pace to fight it. Following the development of the remarkably effective first-generation Covid-19 vaccines, the virus made its response: More infectious variants have emerged, capable of infecting people who have been vaccinated or were previously infected. This is by no means a failure of the vaccines, which continue to keep millions of people protected from the most devastating consequences of the virus. But science should be ready to make its next move. (Deepta Bhattacharya, 6/13)
Bloomberg: Covid-19 Public Health Guidance Is Now Anyone's Guess
We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing requirements to return to the US. Things feel as if they’ve lost any coherence. There’s no discernible strategy or guidance on what Covid precautions we should still be taking. (Faye Flam, 6/11)
USA Today: Pediatrician Says Kids Under 5 Should Get COVID Vaccine. Here's Why.
News that parents have been eagerly waiting for is finally here: They may be able to have kids under 5 vaccinated for COVID-19 as early as June 21. As a pediatrician, I'm thrilled because nothing matters more to me than keeping children healthy. (Dr.Daniel Summers, 6/11)
Los Angeles Times: Why We Need A National Day Of Remembrance For COVID Victims
In New York City, a woman opens her laptop to a bar graph showing the number of COVID-19 deaths nationwide each month in 2021 and fixes her gaze on April. She tells a researcher: “My mother is one of them.” The graph helps her see that her mother is “part of something bigger happening to the country,” she says. In the nation’s capital, a man kneels on a patch of grass near the Washington Monument to place a white flag in honor of his brother. He gestures to the field of 700,000 flags around him — each representing someone who, like his brother, died of COVID — and asks: “How can people not see that this is a national tragedy?” (Sarah E. Wagner, Roy R. Grinker and Joel C. Kuipers. 6/10)
Also —
Bloomberg: Supreme Court Abortion Ruling Would Lead To State-Law Confusion
Suppose Roe v. Wade is overturned. A recent fanfare of concern worries that a state would then be able to punish its citizens for traveling to other states to seek medical assistance in ending their pregnancies. Missouri is considering a statute that would do exactly that, and Texas activists are pushing a similar proposal. Other states may follow. (Stephen L. Carter, 6/12)
The Atlantic: The Most Important Study In The Abortion Debate
Foster, the director of the Bixby Population Sciences Research Unit at UC San Francisco, was at a meeting of abortion providers, seeking their help recruiting people for a new study. And she was racing against time. She wanted to look, she told me, “at the last person served in, say, Nebraska, compared to the first person turned away in Nebraska.” Nearly two dozen red and purple states are expected to enact stringent limits or even bans on abortion as soon as the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, as it is poised to do. Foster intends to study women with unwanted pregnancies just before and just after the right to an abortion vanishes. (Annie Lowrey, 6/11)
Los Angeles Times: I Am The Product Of Rape. Here's Why I Support Abortion Rights
“I wish you had never been born. I should have had an abortion.” I can’t remember the first time my mother told me that. But I do remember the first time I responded differently, other than freezing in place or bursting into tears. I was living with my grandmother in Mason, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, and my mother was visiting. We moved constantly and were never in the same place for too long, so I called our house by the name of the street where it was located, to give myself roots. There’s the Jefferson Avenue house, the Mason-Montgomery house. The Cowan Drive apartment. Sometimes we were evicted; other times, I’m not quite sure why we moved. (Victoria Reyes, 6/12)
