Viewpoints: Bizarre CDC Explainer On Airborne Transmissions Needs Correction; Fast Testing Can Avert A Second Wave

The Washington Post: Yes, Airborne Transmission Is Happening. The CDC Needs To Set The Record Straight.
There’s something odd going on at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For a moment, it seemed that the agency had finally woken up to an important fact: The novel coronavirus is airborne. On Friday, the CDC updated its website with guidance on “how covid-19 spreads.” For the first time, they mentioned aerosols — the tiny particles that can stay airborne for hours and travel beyond six feet. Per the guidance, the virus travels “through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes. These particles can be inhaled into the nose, mouth, airways, and lungs and cause infection.” It ended with this kicker: “this is thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” But on Monday, the CDC removed this information from its website, bizarrely explaining that it “does not reflect our current state of knowledge.” (Joseph G. Allen and Linsey C. Marr, 9/22)

Stat: Fast, Low-Cost Coronavirus Testing Can Avert A New Covid-19 Wave 
Since the first Covid-19 cases emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, attitudes toward coronavirus testing have evolved as we’ve learned more about the novel coronavirus and how it spreads. Initially, testing was intended to be diagnostic and confirm infections in people with symptoms such as cough, fever, shortness of breath, and fatigue. At that time, there was no understanding of the risk of silent transmission within the community via infected people who had not yet developed symptoms or who never developed them. (Menachem Fromer, Paul Varghese and Robert M. Califf, 9/23)

USA Today: COVID-19 Deaths: 200,000 Souls Are Asking Their Fellow Americans Why
Midday on Tuesday, the death toll in America from COVID-19 passed the grim mark of 200,000. This is, without doubt, a monumental tragedy. It is also a massive national embarrassment. The United States accounts for 4% of the world’s population yet more than 20% of the world’s pandemic fatalities. Put another way, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is what would have resulted had Osama bin Laden mounted 67 attacks on the United States similar to those of 9/11.Had the United States matched Canada’s performance in restraining the number of deaths per capita, 118,000 of those 200,000 people would still be alive. If it had matched Germany’s, 163,000 would still be alive. (9/22)

Bloomberg: Coronavirus On Campus: Colleges Should Rethink Their Reopening Plans
Across the U.S., the reopening of college campuses is fast becoming a new public-health crisis. The arrival of students for the start of the fall semester has caused Covid-19 infections to spike in college towns from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Chico, California. Of counties where college students are at least 10% of the population, half have seen Covid cases hit their highest-ever levels in the past month. Given lack of guidance from federal and state officials and the inadequacy of the U.S.’s testing system, mounting infections among college students were all too likely. College administrators failed to anticipate the scale of the outbreaks or develop plans for containing them. To protect students, faculty and residents of surrounding communities, colleges now need to curtail student activities and move classes online. (9/21)

Boston Globe: The Messy Science Behind The Coronavirus And Opening Schools
Decisions about whether and how to safely re-open K through 12 schools have become polarized. A vast and growing number of scientific studies are related to COVID-19 and schools, yet few are landmark studies — those that definitively settle a scientific question. (9/22)

The Wall Street Journal: A Little Debate On Plasma Is Healthy For Science
By now many have heard about the debate over convalescent plasma as an effective treatment for Covid-19. On Aug. 23, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization stating that convalescent plasma—extracted from the blood of recovered patients—“may be effective” in hospitalized patients and can be used in the current emergency. The agency stopped short of fully authorizing or licensing convalescent plasma. But on Sept. 1 a National Institutes of Health panel argued that the data were insufficient “to recommend either for or against” use of plasma. How can two federal agencies come to different conclusions on a topic of such great importance in the middle of an epidemic? Understanding the dispute requires a little history and also thinking about how experts evaluate evidence. (Arturo Casadevall and Nigel Paneth, 9/22)

Stat: Make Mental Health Care Via Telehealth A Right For All Americans 
The year 2020 has put an exclamation point on the need for robust mental health care in the United States, first with the ongoing isolation posed by Covid-19 that is now magnified in the West by wildfires forcing everybody indoors. Americans are being asked to take never-before-seen steps to keep themselves safe: staying at home, wearing face coverings in public, limiting social interactions and human contact, and more. These measures are necessary to slow the spread of Covid-19, but they are taking their toll on Americans’ minds. (Wyden, 9/23)

CNN: The Unrelenting Horizonlessness Of The Covid World 
Six months into the pandemic with no end in sight, many of us have been feeling a sense of unease that goes beyond anxiety or distress. It's a nameless feeling that somehow makes it hard to go on with even the nice things we regularly do. (Nick Couldry and Bruce Schneier, 9/22)

Stat: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Remarkable Life As A Cancer Survivor 
Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week at the age of 87, is rightfully being memorialized as a “feminist icon,” a “history-making jurist,” and as “Notorious RBG,” a pop culture legend. One more huzzah should be added to the list: cancer survivor. (Steven Petrow, 9/22)