Perspectives: Let’s Not Forget The Horrific Death Toll From COVID; Lessons On ‘It Is What It Is’ And Leadership

USA Today: Amid Coronavirus Drama, Don't Forget Nightmarish Death Toll In America
Every 80 seconds another American dies of coronavirus, according to a running average from the past week. That's more than a thousand lives lost every 24 hours, a staggering rate. America's tally of now more than 170,000 COVID-19 deaths is expressed in various ways: nearly 60 times the loved ones lost on 9/11; more than the combined U.S. combat deaths of World War I and the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and more than any other country in the world. Yet America's horrific toll from the pandemic too often gets overshadowed amid news of racial discord, hurricanes, wildfires, political party conventions and an endless drumbeat of COVID-related controversies, such as inadequate testing or fears about going back to school. (8/17)

The Washington Post: 'It Is What Is,' Michelle Obama Says About Trump’s Presidency During Democratic National Convention
On social media, many seemed to think it was not a coincidence that the line been deployed by the president himself two weeks ago during an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan. As Swan grilled the president on the U.S.'s growing coronavirus death toll, which stands at more than 167,000, Trump used the saying to insist that his administration was successfully managing the pandemic. “They are dying. That’s true,” Trump said during the interview. “It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.” (Teo Armus, 8/17)

Los Angeles Times: Michelle Obama Still Going High When They Go Low 
How do you hold a political convention on a flat TV screen, enervated, deprived of people in three dimensions, whether it be impassioned speakers or crowds of delegates in their goofy hats and lanyard IDs? How do you make it feel not like an infomercial but like an event? You get Michelle Obama to speak. To many in her party, she’s already the patron saint, the rabbi, the shaman, the fairy godmother of Democratic politics — at least partially because she stays above the political fray. Look, I’m not one of her acolytes. And she has many — the folks who paid hundreds of dollars to hear her speak at one of the events for her mega-selling memoir. That’s not me. But she is an unerring moral compass for the Democratic Party and, I dare say, the entire nation. Four years ago at the Democratic National Convention, she memorably explained what she and then-President Barack Obama told their daughters about how to respond to bullies, saying, “When they go low, we go high.” People cheered, never dreaming that going low would mean anything beyond a nasty campaign and certainly not four years of a toxic presidency. (Carla Hall, 8/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Lockdown Becomes An Australian Nightmare 
Australia’s coronavirus response was, until recently, the envy of the world. Like its economy, which had gone nearly 30 years without a recession, Australia seemed to have cracked the Covid code. Community transmission had been all but eliminated, deaths kept low—a little over 100—and life in the population centers of Sydney and Melbourne was getting back to normal. At the same time, economists and business leaders had their fingers crossed for a V-shaped recovery, with hopes that the federal government would wind up its expensive stimulus and support programs before the end of the year.No longer. Australia is discovering what much of the world has already learned: Like holding a beach ball underwater, you can keep your infection rate down only for so long before it pops up again. And there’s only so much you can do to stop a virus from spreading without resort to petty totalitarianism. (James Morrow, 8/17)

The New York Times: It’s Simple. Contain The Virus. The Economy Will Come Back.
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” So said the poet T.S. Eliot. It’s an apt explanation for the White House’s failure to respond adequately to the pandemic that has swept across America and the rest of the world.Even as reality continues to intrude, President Trump has either largely dismissed or ignored his science and medical advisers. And the result is that the economy, the one thing he seems to care most about, and which he hoped would escort him to a second term, has been devastated. (John M. Barry, 8/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus, Contracts And The Constitution
Plaintiff lawyers want insurance companies to absorb the cost to business of the Covid-19 pandemic—and they’ve had some early successes. A federal judge in Kansas City, Mo., last week allowed salon and restaurant owners to proceed with a lawsuit claiming that Covid shutdowns constituted “direct physical loss or damage” covered by business-interruption policies. California lawmakers introduced legislation in June that would establish a presumption that Covid-19 qualifies for such coverage.Yet however sympathetic their clients, the lawyers’ efforts are unconstitutional and dangerous. They threaten to bankrupt the insurance industry, on which American businesses and consumers depend. (David B. Rivkin Jr. and J. Michael Luttig, 8/17)

Stat: ICU Capacity Is More About The Clinicians Than The Number Of Beds 
Each time communities experience surges of Covid-19, concerns arise over the availability of hospital and intensive care unit beds in affected regions. To monitor ICU capacity, several states have begun to track and publicly report hospitalization rates and the availability of intensive care unit beds. In our zeal to understand how our health systems are coping with Covid-19, a key issue is often overlooked: human capacity. (Hayley B. Gershengorn, 8/18)

Los Angeles Times: Trump's Foolhardy Push To Expand Arctic Drilling
Finishing a task that a Republican-controlled Congress gave it three years ago, the Trump administration has finalized plans for new oil and gas leases in one of the most pristine stretches of the world: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a manifestly bad idea that Congress was wrong to slip into the 2017 budget bill, and in its rush to craft the new rules the administration has likely opened a door for legal challenges. But Congress should not defer to the courts on this — it must fix the problem it created. Congress approved offering the leases — ending more than 35 years of protections — not in response to the will of the people but in defiance of public sentiment. ...And Trump, whose retrograde enthusiasm for burning ever more fossil fuels endangers the health of the planet and its suitability for human habitation. (Scott Martell, 8/17)

Des Moines Register: Medicaid Managed Care Is A Model That Works
A recent editorial titled “Goodbye, Mike Randol. Hello, opportunity to return Iowa's Medicaid program to state control” misrepresented many elements of the Medicaid managed care model. In 2016, Iowa moved away from a state-run, fee-for-service system to a coordinated and comprehensive Medicaid managed care model. Under this model, states provide Medicaid health benefits by contracting with managed care organizations, or MCOs, to deliver high-quality care to Medicaid enrollees. Contrary to the editorial’s assertions, managed care provides more predictability and transparency than a fee-for-service system, in which payments are based on the quantity rather than the quality of services. (Craig A. Kennedy, 8/18)