Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Time To Stop Trying To Damage WHO For Someone Else's Failures; Prioritize Testing When Supplies Are So Scarce, Stay Home
The Washington Post: Trump And Pompeo Need To Stop Making The WHO A Scapegoat For Their Failures
The Trump administration appears to be doubling down on a destructive campaign against the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, threatening to starve it of funds and support from the United States in the throes of a global pandemic. Not only is this strategy misguided and potentially harmful to millions of people, it is also based on skewed claims about the agency’s role, notably by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (4/27)
The New York Times: How Trump And His Team Covered Up The Coronavirus In Five Days
The strongest critics of the Trump’s administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic point to its flat-footedness and the consequences of time lost. But the full account looks worse. Over the last five days of February, President Trump and senior officials did something more sinister: They engaged in a cover-up. A look at this window of time gives insight into how several members of the president’s team were willing to manipulate Americans even when so many lives were at stake. (Ryan Goodman and Danielle Schulkin, 4/28)
CNN: Trump To America: Don't Blame Me
When the announcement came from the White House on Monday morning that there would be no briefing, there was a sigh of relief. And not just from weary fact-checkers and health care professionals, but from members of President Donald Trump's own political party who have been forced to at worst defend and at best explain his failure to prepare for, manage and communicate on the worst public health crisis in a century. (Jen Psaki, 4/27)
The Hill: Time To Act On The Founding Fathers' Vision For Managing The Pandemic
The Founding Fathers gave us the government we need to effectively manage the consequences of COVID-19 and its threat to our economy. It is federal and each level — national, state and local— has an essential role to play... The wisdom of the Founding Fathers has always served us well. Let’s keep in mind their three principles of federal policymaking and assignment of responsibilities. (Robert P. Inman and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 4/27)
Fox News: Coronavirus Testing 1, 2, 3 – It's Time For Plain Talk On What's Next
Our initiative, Resolve to Save Lives, released a brief Monday on how to prioritize testing for COVID-19 in the United States. It’s time for plain talk on testing. Plain fact one: We have nowhere near enough tests, and it’s not clear how many week or months away we are from having them. Facts are stubborn things, and so is math. (Tom Frieden and Cyrus Shahpar, 4/27)
The Hill: 'Wash Your Hands And Stay Home' Is Impossible For Millions
Public health experts fear that a disastrous spike in COVID-19 cases in many low- and middle-income countries may be looming. Across Africa and Southeast Asia, for example, there are currently around 75,000 confirmed cases, far fewer than the nearly one million cases in the US. The difference between containment and widespread outbreak of COVID-19 may depend on our response to another global crisis: water insecurity. (Joshua D. Miller and Sera L. Young, 4/27)
Stat: It's Time To Make ClinicalTrials.Gov A Better Tool For Patients
Millions of people visit ClinicalTrials.gov each year to find a trial that they or a loved one might be eligible to join. It’s the largest public database of clinical studies in the world, listing more than 300,000 trials in the U.S. and around the world. But as patients, families, and advocacy groups all say, ClinicalTrials.gov is not an easy website to use. (Jamie Webb and Alison Bateman-House, 4/28)
The Hill: Don't Let The Cure Be Worse Than The Problem Itself
On March 22, President Trump famously tweeted that “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” While many rushed to critique Trump’s tweet based on the perception that he was trivializing the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, he was simply saying that we should look at net benefits: Weigh the costs and the benefits associated with policy prescriptions. Now, over two months into the national quarantine, we are at a fundamental fork in the road. Do we continue with the quarantine, as some experts have suggested, or do we begin to reopen the economy with caution and testing, as other experts have suggested? (Christos A. Makridis, 4/27)
Des Moines Register: Coronavirus In Iowa: We Must Prize Right To Live Over Our Liberties
The Friday op ed "Yielding freedom to the government is risky" by Erin Kokemiller decries “the government’s regulation of liberty during this pandemic.” Ms. Kokemiller rails against all the current compulsory orders that close businesses, restrict travel and public gatherings, and require in-home lockdowns in larger cities, arguing that these measures will lead to a learned dependence on an increasingly controlling government (much like Soviet-style communism, to my mind) to the detriment of America’s sacrosanct regard for individual personal liberty. The government, through its imposition of burdensome mandates, Ms. Kokemiller contends, “can’t legislate common sense.” Instead, all that is accomplished is to throw “personal responsibility and individual freedom out the window.” On only one point do I agree with Ms. Kokemiller: “You can’t legislate common sense.” Yet, this is precisely the very reason that government at all levels in this country has implemented numerous restrictions, some more severe than others, on our freedom to behave and to live our lives as each of us would choose because, frankly, as a people, we are generally lacking in common sense. We need the restrictions in order to save us from ourselves. (Steven Pokorny, 4/27)
