Viewpoints: COVID Treatments Need To Be Given To Communities With Racial Health Disparities; Impoverished Social Lives Undermining Seniors’ Mental Health

Stat: Communities With Health Disparities Should Get Remdesivir First 
As the federal government haphazardly distributed remdesivir, Gilead Sciences’ repurposed antiviral drug, to some of the states hit hardest by Covid-19, policymakers scrambled to develop criteria to allocate the drug to their hospitals. Our state, Michigan, was among these states. The disparities in the burden of suffering from Covid-19 in the state are striking. Detroit’s death rate from the infection are more than four times the state average. So you might think that Detroit would have been high on the list for getting remdesivir. (Parker Crutchfield, Tyler S. Gibb and Michael Redinger, 6/9)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Public Health Leaders Should Address African Americans’ Coronavirus Vaccine Concerns Now 
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought racial health disparities to the forefront of public discourse. Data has consistently revealed across the country that African Americans are at an increased risk of contracting the illness and dying from it, including in Philadelphia, where African Americans account for 46.5% of all cases and 51.2% of deaths. These disparities, which result from centuries of institutional racism, have now also been exemplified through attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccine. Recent data from Pew has uncovered that African Americans are significantly less likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available. While 74% of both white and Hispanic adults reported intentions to get vaccinated, only 54% of African Americans stated the same. (Chioma Woko, 6/8)

The New York Times: For Older People, Despair, As Well As Covid-19, Is Costing Lives
Earlier this month, a colleague who heads the geriatrics service at a prominent San Francisco hospital told me they had begun seeing startling numbers of suicide attempts by older adults. These were not cry-for-help gestures, but true efforts to die by people using guns, knives and repurposed household items. Such so-called “failed suicides” turn out to be the most extreme cases of a rapidly growing phenomenon among older Americans as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic: lives stripped of human contact, meaningful activity, purpose and hope that things will get better in a time frame that is relevant to people in the last decades or years of life. (Louise Aronson, 6/8)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Pandemic’s Needless Deaths
More than 100,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. Beyond those deaths are other casualties of the pandemic — Americans seriously ill with other ailments who avoided care because they feared contracting the coronavirus at hospitals and clinics. The toll from their deaths may be close to the toll from Covid-19. The trends are clear and concerning. Government orders to shelter in place and health care leaders’ decisions to defer nonessential care successfully prevented the spread of the virus. But these policies — complicated by the loss of employer-provided health insurance as people lost their jobs — have had the unintended effect of delaying care for some of our sickest patients. (Tomislav Mihaljevic and Gianrico Farrugia, 6/9)

NBC News: Coronavirus Cases Have Not Gone Away. And Neither Has Doctors' Emotional Trauma.
Although epicenters like New York have started to see a decline in cases, the coronavirus pandemic has not gone away; cases are continuing to increase in states across the country. Meanwhile, much of what has been seen or experienced during this first wave of COVID-19 cannot be readily unseen or forgotten. And given what we know about disaster-related post-traumatic stress disorder, the mental health aftermath of this pandemic may devolve into its own version of a crisis. (Jalal Baig, 6/8)

The Hill: A Straightforward Solution To The Newly Uninsured 
In early April, my patient Lucas was four years into a job at a car dealership when the company laid off nearly all of its employees, including him. Forty-seven, divorced, with asthma and hypertension, he was unable to afford the continuing health insurance coverage of COBRA and is without insurance coverage for the first time in his life. Before the novel coronavirus outbreak, approximately 28 million Americans were uninsured. Now another 27 million are estimated to lose insurance coverage as jobs are lost and employment-based insurance evaporates, more than 20 percent of which are projected to have no other source of coverage. (Michael Stein and Nicole Huberfeld, 6/8)

Stat: A National Registry Could Help Defeat Sepsis, A Covid-19-Linked Killer 
As doctors and paramedics who treat the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen firsthand the devastating impact of this disease on our patients, their families, and our communities. The cause of the disease, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is often called a novel coronavirus, but there is nothing new or novel about what actually kills most Covid-19 patients: sepsis. (Steven Q. Simpson, Karin H. Molander and Rommie Duckworth, 6/9)

The Hill: COVID-19 Has Highlighted The Risks Home Health Workers Face - Here's What Can Be Done To Help
There are more than 2 million home health and personal care aides working in the United States. They provide support and heath care assistance in people’s homes across America. Before COVID-19, and certainly now, they face unique risks. These individuals are critical in providing comfort, aid, and maintenance of dignity for patients and family members alike. Yet, they are poorly compensated and often work more than one job while supporting their own families. (Nathan Boucher, 6/8)

Des Moines Register: An Abortion Ban? Now, Of All Times? Iowa Republican Lawmakers Are Showing They Don't Value Life
As COVID deaths continue to climb and the economy lies in ruins, as black people are slain in the streets and communities rise up to confront racial injustice, Republican lawmakers in Iowa have decided to invest precious time and resources in revising the Iowa state constitution to ban abortion. Banning abortion will never end abortion, but it does threaten the lives of those who carry children. Passing laws forcing doctors to lie to patients is unethical; indeed, it demonstrates deep disregard for and hostility toward women’s lives. Attempting to pass restrictive abortion laws during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly affecting communities of color that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus, is equally unethical.  Restrictions like these will hurt all Iowans, but will disproportionately affect low-income Iowans, Iowans of color, young people, immigrants, and obviously, women. (Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz and Lina-Maria Murillo, 6/8)

The Hill: Websites Need To Become 'Places Of Public Accommodation' Under The Americans With Disabilities Act 
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was groundbreaking. Congress passed it to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities. Though the ADA never fully achieved that goal, it was a significant step in the right direction. However, 30 years later, in the information age, the ADA is obsolete and urgently needs an update. (Mason Marks, 6/8)